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Gilt Launches Personalized Sales, Because Personalization Is Where It's At
Personalization seems to be the name of the game in e-commerce right now, and to that end, the luxury flash sales site Gilt has just added a user-specific sales page to their offerings. The algorithm-powered feature, aptly called “Your Personal Sale,” culls and presents the best sales for each user based on factors like their purchase history, geographic location, and browsing behavior.
It’s a step beyond the daily emails that Gilt shoppers receive, which already tailor content to the user. It also represents a continued investment in the flash sale model, which other sites like Fab have not been able to sustain.
“We’re fully invested in flash. Flash is all about the daily visit,” Gilt CIO Steve Jacobs told us. “We’re investing more in the flash model by creating an every day sale that’s new. People are coming back more frequently, and they’re excited to see what’s in their sale tomorrow.”
For users who do check the site daily, a personalized sale roster could be helpful as a way to assess their options quickly, especially given how easy it is to miss a flash sale. And, of course, showing people items that they’re predisposed to like is an easy way to get them buying and coming back for more.
E-commerce personalization often blends into the woodwork, taking the form of sidebar recommendations and ads on Facebook showing items similar to the one I bought one from that retailer last week. Gilt’s “Your Personal Sale” turns it into the main event and a destination.
“Your Personal Sale” is launching for womenswear and menswear today, with home and kids categories to follow. Gilt is also at work on another personalized sale feature, which will likely go live in a few months’ time.
Google Reader Alternative Feedly Opens Pro Access To All
Earlier this month, Google Reader replacement Feedly began offering a paid version of its service, but only in limited quantities. Barely a day after the paid tier became available, the company sold out of the introductory 5,000 Pro accounts it had initially offered. Today, the startup is making Feedly Pro generally available to anyone interested, as previously promised.
The premium tier offers in-demand features like search, one-click Evernote and Pocket integration, plus premium customer support, and the company says that more Pro features will be added regularly in the future.
Search has been one of the features serious RSS subscribers have felt was worth paying for, as it’s something which a majority of the feed reading apps today still neglect to include or having yet built. (Feedspot being one of the more prominent exceptions currently. Competitor Digg Reader has also said that search would eventually be considered part of its forthcoming premium product, too.)
That being said, our initial experiences with search have found the integration still in need of having some its kinks worked out. Sometimes, search would fail to produce results we knew were there (and found via Googling), other times it was just too slow to be effective. Certainly, its capabilities will vary depending on the size of your own database of feeds – or, as they say, your mileage may vary. It’s still far more convenient to have the option, buggy it may be, than not.
When Feedly first introduced its Pro tier in August, it found traction in countries all over the world, including not just the U.S., but also Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, the U.K., and parts of Asia. However, the $99 lifetime account being offered at that time will no longer be an option going forward. As the company explained then, the lifetime account was meant to be a one-time reward for Feedly’s early adopters. Today’s launch of Pro sees instead the previous price points of $5 per month or $45 per year as the only two plans now offered.
The launch of premium pricing should help to quell some people’s fears that Feedly was not building a sustainable business. The company, which has been bootstrapping until now, hasn’t discounted the idea of raising funding eventually, but has not yet done so, co-founders Edwin Khodabakchian and Cyril Moutran recently told us. But at least now with Feedly Pro, the startup will have some revenues.
Feedly has grown to over 13 million users since Google Reader’s shutdown, and has 30 API partners live on its Feedly Cloud platform, which is what allows other news reading services to utilize Feedly’s backend for their own purposes. And more API partners are on the way, we hear.
The option to purchase a Feedly Pro subscription is live now here.
Docstoc Makes Its First Acquisition, Purchasing Work App Recommendation Platform BestVendor
Since being founded in 2007, DocStoc has been best known for its platform for sharing professional documents. But over the years, it’s worked to morph into a one-stop shop for small businesses, providing them with premium services and resources that go above and beyond just document sharing. Now it’s making its first acquisition to bring another tool into the Docstoc family of products, professional services and software recommendation platform BestVendor.
The acquisition follows Docstoc’s expansion of its product set with the release of License123, which provides a database of licenses and permits needed to start a business, as well as its ExpertCircle platform for sharing recommendations of the best online and offline vendors for small businesses.
Just as those two platforms operate as independent products, BestVendor will continue to be an independent platform following the acquisition, Docstoc co-founder and CEO Jason Nazar told me. The platform operates as a kind of “Yelp for small businesses,” providing them with tools and recommendations for choosing between different SaaS and software services. In that respect, Nazar sees an opportunity to integrate it with premium subscription service ExpertCircle under the BestVendor brand.
The deal is primarily an asset purchase, as Docstoc acquired all of BestVendor’s code and database, but not necessarily the team behind it. As a result, all future development for the product will move to Docstoc’s Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters. Otherwise, terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Running profitably for years after raising just $4 million, Docstoc has been looking for acquisition targets over the past year. The company is hoping to find businesses that are complementary to its current small business offerings. BestVendor fit the bill, but Nazar reckons there are other similar opportunities out there.
Using its 35 million registered users, Docstoc can help drive new users to businesses like BestVendor, which had a great platform but wasn’t growing as quickly as it could have been. Docstoc has more than 17 million unique visitors a month, as well as another 5 million who see its documents embedded on other sites. And it gets another 30,000 new registered users per day.
“One of the advantages we have is distribution,” Nazar said. “We can get this in front of people.”
Earmark & Dollarbird Help Encourage Financial Responsibility, Not Careless Spending
If the plethora of “aspirational” shopping companions have left you with something of a bad taste in your mouth for encouraging overspending, here’s a palate cleanser: a couple of newer apps for iOS, Dollarbird and Earmark, are focused on making responsible money management as enjoyable as browsing through personalized feeds of product recommendations.
Well, almost.
Track Your Cash Flow
Dollarbird, which launched in July, is a calendar-like app which aims to mimic the way those living from paycheck to paycheck tend to still handle bill paying, expenses, and tracking spending – by marking up a calendar with what gets paid or spent when in order to figure out how much that leaves you for other necessities, like Ramen noodles or gasoline.
But the app doesn’t just appeal to the hand-to-mouth set. Because of its attractive looks, and smart feature set which includes support for things like tracking recurring transactions, bill reminders, CSV export, and automatic balance calculations, Dollarbird makes sense for anyone who wants to keep a closer eye on their cash flow for better financial planning purposes.
The calendar interface gives Dollarbird an at-a-glance visualization of when you owe money for things like rent, utilities, car payments, or anything else you want to track, and can also serve as a way to keep a log of which bills have already been paid. You can use its built-in, color-coded categories or create your own, as well as add little notes to each expense, or enter your income if you’re also tracking your available cash.
The app’s name comes from its own take on Clippy, with a little bird that offers up financial tips and tricks. (You can shut this guy off in the settings, if virtual assistants aren’t your cup of tea.)
Dollarbird is made by Halycon Mobile, a Romanian-based agency founded by Levi Szabo and Szabi Szekely which, since 2005, has focused on designing apps for clients. The company first released the app as a paid offering ($1.99), but is now in the process of making a switch to a more sophisticated business model (details to come), the company tells us. With the launch of its next major release, Dollarbird will include support for multiple accounts, syncing calendars between users (handy for couples or roommates), and other advanced features.
Dollarbird is available for iOS here.
Save First, Then Spend
Meanwhile, Earmark is a new social savings app released in August that encourages users to not just immediately spend their money, but push themselves toward frugality so they can save up for something they really want, whether big or small. It’s designed for those who justify purchases by cutting other areas of everyday expenses – like eating out, buying that morning coffee, resisting the latest gadget, and so on.
To use the app, you enter your top five splurge items then track the things you don’t buy with those items in mind. For example: you didn’t buy that latte? You’re saving $X per week by quitting smoking? Those little things can add up. And as you limit your unnecessary purchases in search of a larger reward, you can optionally also move money from your bank account to a Dwolla account to keep the savings out of sight until your goals are reached.
Earmark also includes a social element, which allows Facebook friends to make suggestions as to what you should spend your money on, or give you feedback on your “earmarked” items. It’s like the flip side of all these social shopping apps, such as Wanelo, Wish, Wantworthy’s Fresh, Polyvore, Fancy and others: instead of having friends’ recommendations push users into spending money they may not have, the social involvement is meant to foster a more responsible approach to managing money. It’s a “yes, save for this” kind of sentiment, rather than a “yes, buy it now!” one. And that seems more practical in today’s still deteriorating economic reality.
Founder and CEO Josh Chambers, whose ad agency background saw him working with brands like Nike+ FuelBand, Reebok and others, explains that Earmark eventually wants to connect brands and retailers with potential customers whose purchase intent data is clear. They would be about to deliver you offers and coupons in the app, to convince you to spend your savings on their products, which is not a bad idea, and one that could give the app continued life even after users give up on what may become tedious – the manual entry of their every responsible decision.
The company just passed half a million in spending intent, since its release in mid-August, Chambers says.
Earmark is available on iOS here.
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