Techno-fille

Karaoke Contest started today

The eSnips karaoke community is in the spotlight this week and the highlight is the karaoke contest that's starting today and ending August 6.  Go listen, the singers are excellent and make sure you vote (it's on the home page www.esnips.com): the winner gets an Ipod Nano. I voted firth thing this morning, it was a though decision.   You can only vote once, so make sure you give your voice to the best singer / song.  ENJOY!

 

Yet another typical eSnipper - me!

It is very typical for eSnippers to start with one private or group shared folder, and then gradually 'evolved' to publishing one folder, and then many more.  I took the same path. I now have around 5 public folders. A new one I recently started is: things that make me laugh.  I just updated it today with a funny piece I received by email just now and made me laugh (not just smile) while waiting at the airport gate. Bush's part to be the funniest.

eSnips Spotlight Weeks - letting our communities take center stage

As part of the 'eSnips Spotlight Weeks' many of our the facinating communities on eSnips will take center stage on our home page.  The first community in the spotlight were artists selling their work on eSnips that week was called the 'Open Studio Week' .

Next in the spotlight is the Karaoke community, definitely one of my favorite eSnips communities. I am seriously planning on joining in.  More info in eSnippers den, there's a contest this time!!!

Hagit Katzenelson Joins as VP of Marketing

Hagit Katzenelson recently officially joined the eSnips team as the company's VP of Marketing (or as it says on her new biz card:  Marketing Diva!).
Hagit has been with us as a consultant for several months and has already made a significant contribution to our marketing efforts, so we know her well; she's a great addition to our team and quite a unique character.

Short background:  Hagit grew up in Palo Alto. She has an MBA from Berkeley and a BSc from the Technion in Israel. She worked in the internet industry in a variety of marketing roles since 1998.

Prior to her return to Israel Hagit led the online marketing for Fremont based Genealogy.com (now Ancestry) and upon her return to Israel she headed the marketing for Internet Advertising Network Oridian.  Prior to that, she spent several years in the engineering teams at Comverse and DSP Group.

Hagit wants to hear your ideas, comments and insights.  hagit at esnips.com 

Snippy update

For those who were concerned with the state of Snippy, (the little bird I found a few weeks ago): Well he (or she) made it, she can now fly and her favorite landing area is on people's heads as you can see in the picture:

It turns our this is a bird called Blackbird, or in professional terminology:  Turdus merula    (they are usually black with yellow / orange beeks, so ours may either be a female or not still in its final colors. In case you ever find one of those and want to save it, it's not too complicated, just give it wet dog food, boiled egg and fruit.  What's next? We don't know, I hope we can release her soon. It's the noisiest bird I have ever heard. We'll stick to the graphic Snippy :). 

4 Things that send me off to a good weekend:

1. We just crossed 5000 daily registerations to eSnips
2. Our traffic is at it's highest and showing a consistent nice curve up on Alexa:
      


3. People put amazing stuff for sale on eSnips. Here's one I would just love to get my hands on:
    
4. The little bird I found last week is begining to learn how to fly

Baptiste Rubat covered eSnips on 'Journal du Net' following our presentation in 'The Next Web Conference' that took place last week in Amsterdam.  Europe makes a significant portion of our user base so it's great to to see that eSnips is beginging to coverage there.   

About our business model

The review in Techcrunch created an interesting discussion about our business model.  So it's a good opportunity to post about that, the business models and the current implementation. So: our business model is based on advertising and ecommerce and there is no plan to charge for premium services at this point.

We currently use Adsense and Paypal just because it's the quickest and easiest way to test a concept or our users' response to an offering, and not because those are the ideal ways for generating revenues. Naturally as the traffic and ecommerce transaction volumes will grow, we will start focusing on optimizing and are likely to change the current  implementation or selection of technologies / partners. 

And why not charge for premium services such as additional storage or extended functionality?  because conversion rates from a free offering to a fee based premium offerings in broad consumer services are very low, and not too scalable especially in comparisson to the other two models. Also, when you charge for additional services, storage or backup, there's an operation overhead that is required to support it and ads to the overall cost structure.

Lastly, there's a mention of spamm from eSnips sellers, there's nothing in eSnips that can facilitate that, I'll be also curious to see it, if anyone gets anything like that please send it to me or post it here.

The review in Techcrunch created an interesting discussion about our business model.  So it's a good opportunity to post about that, the business models and the current implementation. So: our business model is based on advertising and ecommerce and there is no plan to charge for premium services at this point.

We currently use Adsense and Paypal just because it's the quickest and easiest way to test a concept or our users' response to an offering, and not because those are the ideal ways for generating revenues. Naturally as the traffic and ecommerce transaction volumes will grow, we will start focusing on optimizing and are likely to change the current  implementation or selection of technologies / partners. 

And why not charge for premium services such as additional storage or extended functionality?  because conversion rates from a free offering to a fee based premium offerings in broad consumer services are very low, and not too scalable especially in comparisson to the other two models. Also, when you charge for additional services, storage or backup, there's an operation overhead that is required to support it and ads to the overall cost structure.

Lastly, there's a mention of spamm from eSnips sellers, there's nothing in eSnips that can facilitate that, I'll be also curious to see it, if anyone gets anything like that please send it to me or post it here.

eCommerce enablemenet of eSnips was announced yesterday

The announcement itself is here.  We got a great review on Techcrunch by Marshall Kirkpatrick. Here is a quote:

"ESnips is an unassuming site that seems to just plain work for people. The company is currently hosting an “open studio week” highlighting selected artists who share their work on the site. I guess it’s all just further proof that the Web 2.0 world of user generated content, data portability and social networking doesn’t have to be flashy to get peoples’ attention.

This seems like the kind of thing that would have flopped a decade ago, but that could really work now that the idea of sharing content online has become much more mainstream. Has it become mainstream enough to support business models like the one at eSnips? We shall see".

This is a very exciting time for us here at eSnips, being the firt player to provide a social service with multipurpose approach that combines content sharing, socializing and a marketplace.  We're getting excellent feedback from the eSnippers (aka: our dear users) – which frankly, is the feedback that counts most to us.  It strongly reinforces our underlying assumption that most of us just want the convenience of having one place for all our online sharing needs and then we're happy to extent it beyond just sharing and socializing to actively promoting or selling our work or cause right from that same space.   And we're working on more of these things as I write this post.   

Here are some great foldes of users selling stuff on eSnips:

D'aviartgallery sells her original fine art, check out d'avi art gallery.

Erin Young, artist, singer, photographer from Georgia, US sells her original art work.

Michael Markham, a graphic designer, illustrator, and musician sells his experimental, noise rock from the Detroit underground.

Eddie Kagimu a London based self taught artist sells his Watercolor painting,

Tehilla Chamiel uses lots of creativity, with a little bit of math, sells abstract digital posters,

Jwelsley a local artist from Atlanta, US sells her paintings (I love this artist's philosophy or life too:  " Life is like a stepping stone. Step lightly until you're grounded... ")

The announcement itself is here.  We got a great review on Techcrunch by Marshall Kirkpatrick. Here is a quote:

"ESnips is an unassuming site that seems to just plain work for people. The company is currently hosting an “open studio week” highlighting selected artists who share their work on the site. I guess it’s all just further proof that the Web 2.0 world of user generated content, data portability and social networking doesn’t have to be flashy to get peoples’ attention.

This seems like the kind of thing that would have flopped a decade ago, but that could really work now that the idea of sharing content online has become much more mainstream. Has it become mainstream enough to support business models like the one at eSnips? We shall see".

This is a very exciting time for us here at eSnips, being the firt player to provide a social service with multipurpose approach that combines content sharing, socializing and a marketplace.  We're getting excellent feedback from the eSnippers (aka: our dear users) – which frankly, is the feedback that counts most to us.  It strongly reinforces our underlying assumption that most of us just want the convenience of having one place for all our online sharing needs and then we're happy to extent it beyond just sharing and socializing to actively promoting or selling our work or cause right from that same space.   And we're working on more of these things as I write this post.   

Here are some great foldes of users selling stuff on eSnips:

D'aviartgallery sells her original fine art, check out d'avi art gallery.

Erin Young, artist, singer, photographer from Georgia, US sells her original art work.

Michael Markham, a graphic designer, illustrator, and musician sells his experimental, noise rock from the Detroit underground.

Eddie Kagimu a London based self taught artist sells his Watercolor painting,

Tehilla Chamiel uses lots of creativity, with a little bit of math, sells abstract digital posters,

Jwelsley a local artist from Atlanta, US sells her paintings (I love this artist's philosophy or life too:  " Life is like a stepping stone. Step lightly until you're grounded... ")

Open Studio Week on eSnips

Open Sudio Week on eSnips:  Letting our artists be in center stage

As some of you may have noticed, we changed our home page yesterday and placed what we think is a big easel front and center.  This spot now features several artists who have decided both share and sell their art on eSnips.

One of the special things that you can do on eSnips is publish different folders for each of your interests.  Some of our artists have posted not just folders with their art, but also folders with original music, their photos, and so on.  This meshes well with the offline concept of an open studio, where visitors are invited to the artist’s studio, so see not only their art, but how they work.   This multi-faceted approach to a person’s online profile is unique to eSnips and makes our open studio ‘tour’ exciting for both the artists and the visitors. 

And on a cheerful note, we're here in Amsterdam for the Next Web conference.  So far, Amsterdam has treated us well, with great coffee and wonderful weather.