Stylefeeder ("The Personal Shopping Engine") hat sich, obwohl bereits profitabel, 500.000 Dollar zusätzliches Kapital von seinen bestehenden Investoren besorgt.
Seit dem Start im Jahr 2005 hat Stylefeeder damit (je nach Quelle) 3,5 Mio. (bis 4 Mio.) Dollar eingesammelt.
Im Interview mit Xconomy ("Stylefeeder's Execs on How to Do A Lot With A Little") äußern sich die Gründer u.a. zu ihren Erfahrungen mit Facebook:
"Xconomy: How important is Facebook for you these days as a channel? At one time it was your main source of new members, wasn’t it?
Phil Jacob: It’s no longer what it once was. Facebook has really deemphasized applications through a series of user-interface changes that make it impossible at this point to scale to the level that a Slide or a RockYou got to.
We still have people using it, and there is this viral nature where people can see what other people have posted to their Facebook feed, and it does drive some traffic, but the window of opportunity for third-party apps is gone.
But it was a huge success for us, in terms of driving awareness and registered users. It was the single best thing we’ve done from a growth standpoint."
Und dann kommt natürlich die Standardfrage, die immer kommen muss beim Thema Social Shopping:
"X: I have to confess that I’m not a huge user of StyleFeeder, because I’m not usually looking for product recommendations. I know what I want, I go in to a store or a website and buy it, and I’m out.
PJ: That’s because you’re a man. And it’s actually been frustrating over the years, as we were raising money, trying to talk to venture capitalists—who are almost all men and who shop the same way you do. Women browse a lot more and tend to be less direct, more circuitous.
There is this idea called the “savannah hypothesis of shopping” that says men are hunters and women are gatherers, and we totally see that on the site. As you rate products on the site, and as you add things to your style feed or wish list, those are strong signals, and we can predict your gender with an accuracy rate of 95 percent just from these things you do as a user."
Das Interview ist sehr lang, aber extrem informativ. Teil 1 gibts hier und Teil 2 hier.
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