Online fashion retailers are a fast-growing segment of the Internet. WebMediaBrands CEO Alan Meckler recently spoke to Ella Gorgla, the CEO of I-Ella, a buy-sell-or-trade fashion marketplace.
Gorgla participated in our Elevator Pitch series, and in this follow-up video, she’s back to tell Meckler how things are going with her new custom gift-bag service. She’s so passionate about fashion that she almost gets Meckler to try on a red dress by Jean Paul Gaultier.
The social discovery app Sonar has received funding from Bing Fund, Sonar and Microsoft said today.
The announcement comes a year after social discovery apps were the hot new trend at South by Southwest 2012. (The 2013 event starts next week, and SocialTimes will be there.)
Since then, Facebook acquired the social discovery app Glancee, using it to power Friends Nearby, while apps Highlight and Sonar have been relatively quiet.
By tapping in to a user’s profiles on Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and LinkedIn, Sonar alerts the user when friends or friends of friends are nearby.
The company praised Bing’s use of “location and social” in its announcement of the partnership.
“They’ll be great friends to have along on our adventures in helping customers connect with the most relevant people, places and things nearby,” Sonar said in a blog post.
Bing’s investment hints that the search engine may be looking to make its social search results location-sensitive. Microsoft has endeavored to differentiate Bing from Google Search with more extensive social search results which are kept separate from standard Web results.
“Utilizing tech in an innovative and unique way is a quality the Bing Fund champions, like many investors and accelerators do,” Bing Fund’s senior program manager Aya Zook said of the investment.
Social discovery apps have triggered some privacy concerns. One such app, Girls Around Me, controversially advised men when a particular night club had a favorable gender balance and displayed the profile photos of the women there.
Brett Martin remains convinces that social discovery will become a fact of life.
“There’s just no possibly way that I can envision a world three to five years from now where you can’t open your phone and interact with people in the same room as you as easily as you can with people across the world,” he told SocialTimes’s parent company, MediaBistro, last year.
Martin also told MediaBistro CEO Alan Meckler that Sonar, whose main existing investor was Blumberg Capital, was only looking for additional funding from “value-add investors.”
Here’s MediaBistro an elevator-pitch interview with founder Brett Martin last year.
In the latest episode of “Elevator Pitch,” host Alan Meckler talks with Marissa Evans, founder and CEO of “Go Try It On.” It’s an iPhone app that acts like a virtual stylist. Users upload a photo of an outfit they plan on wearing and let their friends and the community respond.
In this episode of Elevator Pitch, host Alan Meckler meets with TwoChop founder Mo Lam and AppAddictive CEO Mike Onghai about their gamification venture, Two Chop. If you run a blog or other content-oriented website containing text, music or images, TwoChop can take that content and turn it into a game.
For more videos, check out Mediabistro.tv, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV
In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “Elevator Pitch,” host Alan Meckler meets with Yago Amerlinck Huerta, whose startup, Wyst, gives users the ability to send a digital message in a bottle from their iPhones.
In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “Elevator Pitch,” host Alan Meckler chats with the co-founders of Moonit, a social discovery app that connects people using astrology.
In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “Elevator Pitch,” host Alan Meckler chats with the co-founders of Moonit, a social discovery app that connects people using astrology.
In the latest episode of mediabistroTV’s “Elevator Pitch,” host Alan Meckler meets with Storyville co-founder Paul Vidich. Storyville is a mobile app for short stories that connects readers and authors. A former music executive, Vidich helped Steve Jobs bring music singles to iTunes. He hopes Storyville will do for the short story what iTunes did for the single.
The social discovery app Sonar has received funding from Bing Fund, Sonar and Microsoft said today.
