KaKoo

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Wingsplay

Quick Pitch: Earn money to share ads with your social network

Genius Idea: Wingsplay gives average people incentive to share ads with their social networks to drive product or service engagement and increase buzz.

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Advertisers are sneaking into your Twitter and Facebook feeds — with help from your social media connections.

Wingsplay, a startup that launched last month, pays its users to share video ads on their social networks. The distribution model is key; it relies heavily on connected social networks. The founder, Olivier Lasry, says the best way for online advertisements to resonate with people is if a link has been recommended by a friend or social media connection.

Even though you may not Like or follow advertisers, ads could trickle into your feeds via a friend who is trying to make a quick buck or just likes to watch funny ads. Users can earn money by sharing up to four video ads per week. Users are paid by cost per view. The service is not meant to be used to spam social media, but more to drive conversations.

“The Web made it almost impossible to reach people with boring ads,” Lasry said. “People don’t care about advertisers who interrupt them. But the opportunity is huge for remarkable video ads, which people actually want to watch and share.”

For example, Major League Soccer is promoting the April 14 Philadelphia v. Columbus soccer match on Wingsplay. After sharing the video, Wingsplay users are paid 21 cents each time someone from their social network clicks on the user’s link and watches the MLS video featuring David Beckham.

But the financial incentive isn’t enough for a person to share an ad. Lasry says users actually like the ads they choose to share.

“26% of our influencers shared the first videos we distributed on Wingsplay, which shows that influencers only share videos they like, and that the monetary incentive is only part of the experience,” Lasry said.

Oxygen and NBC were the first big names to promote ads through Wingsplay in an effort to target a larger social media audience. The week before the new shows aired on NBC and Oxygen, both networks promote their new series through Wingsplay. Users shared a video trailer ad for the new ABC show “Awake,” which premiered March 1 and Oxygen’s March 26 premiere of “Brooklyn 11223.”

Lasry said the site, which is still in beta, has started with trailers as a test. Moving forward, he wants the ads to be funny, gripping, cause-related or clever.

“[Trailers] might not be the best fit for our distribution model, but there are many of them and they give us a sense of the minimum performance that can be expected from our network,” he said. “Given the results of our first campaigns, we expect funny ads to deliver an Earned:Paid ratio around 6, which is unheard of in the industry.”

Lasry, who is originally from France, was inspired to start Wingsplay after seeing his friends share ads on their social networks. He figure if people are already sharing ads on Facebook, why not introduce advertisements through the consumer first? From there, real people can start coversations about the ads they’re interested in.

Unlike celebrity brand ambassadors, the average social media user talks with friends on a personal level about the content he or she is sharing. People or more likely to enjoy the same things their friends like, Lasry said. So far, Wingsplay users are posting to Facebook most — 84% of all Wingsplay shares have been distributed on Facebook.

What do you think of advertising encroaching on your social networks? Does advertising make social media better or worse? Will you sign up for Wingsplay? Tell us in the comments.

Photos courtesy of Wingsplay, iStock, kizilkayaphotos

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Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

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The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: Advertising, bizspark, online advertising, social sharing, spark of genius series

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News that popular social bookmarking site Pinterest might be generating revenue by adjusting and tracking the links attached to user-generated pins made the rounds online on Wednesday — but according to the site’s affiliate tracking partner, the concept is hardly a new one.

A report by social media blog LLSocial brought attention to the fact that Pinterest — which allows users to collect and share things they like on the Internet — is using a service called Skimlinks to add affiliate links to products.

“Is Pinterest receiving revenue from tracking user-generated pins? Yes, but there is nothing negative about it,” Skimlinks CEO Alicia Navarro told Mashable. “Affiliated networks help companies monetize their sites and there’s nothing illegal or wrong about it. It’s common, effective and smart. It should be celebrated.”

It’s so common, in fact, that about 18,000 retailers are working with a network of 26 affiliated partners, Navarro said. Publishers from small blogs to bigger companies such as Pinterest work with affiliated partners so when a link directs a visitor to a retailer involved in the affiliated network and makes a purchase, the merchant will pay the affiliated network, who will then pay the publisher. Skimlinks takes about 25% of the generated affiliated revenue.

SEE ALSO: 7 Pinterest Clones: Can You Tell the Difference?

“The advertiser or retailer pays only if the user makes a purchase,” Navarro said. “Pinterest is one of many companies using services like this, and it’s become an ubiquitous practice in online marketing, like investing in banner ads or texting programs.”

However, the cause of concern by some was that Pinterest doesn’t disclose that it modifies its links by adding a tracking code on the site.

“As most bloggers are aware, when you use an affiliate link in your post, you need to provide some type of disclosure either by it clearly being an ad, mentioning it is an affiliate link or at a minimum providing some type of prominent disclosure that your site features affiliate links,” LLSocial said. “This is done because you have a financial interest in promoting the product.”

Although Navarro said the company endorses disclosure, it’s up to the publisher: “I’m sure many publishers and media outlets don’t go out of their way to make it known to users about who their advertising partners are,” Navarro said.

For more information on affiliated networks and how Pinterest is using the service, visit Navarro’s latest blog post on Skimlinks here.

Do you think Pinterest should make it more clear that it’s adding tracking code to user’s pins? Or do you think it doesn’t matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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BONUS: A Pinterest Timeline

March 2010: Pinterest Launched

Pinterest is launched to a closed beta. Later it will move to the email invite system it currently employs.

Click here to view this gallery.

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Check Out More of Mashable’s Coverage of Pinterest

• How to Get a Pinterest Invite
• How Pinterest Is Changing Website Design Forever
• 7 Tips for Planning a Wedding on Pinterest
• Pinterest Drives More Traffic Than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn Combined [STUDY]
• 21 Must-Follow Pinterest Users

More About: Advertising, online advertising, pinterest, Social Media, trending

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Will an IPO change Facebook? The sudden influx of $5 billion (and more) will certainly give it lots of opportunity, though it’ll also mean Facebook will soon answer to shareholders. And those shareholders will demand that the company keep increasing the value of their investment.

In his letter within the IPO filing, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks high-mindedly about his creation being a social experience first, and a company second. But in the same document, Facebook talks about the value its massive scale and knowledge of “demographic factors” can bring to advertisers and marketers, calling out vaguely uncomfortable examples, like Starbucks being able to pay to get users’ check-ins promoted in their friends’ news feeds.

There’s no question Facebook’s utility as an advertising tool is huge, and it’s only getting bigger. Facebook’s ad revenue was over $3 billion last year and has been growing at more than $1 billion every year since 2009. That’s what’s really driving the its evolution, and it would be true whether Facebook went public or not.

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The Problem With Google Comparisons

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We could look to Google‘s IPO for guidance in what will happen to Facebook. But when Google went public back in 2004, the online advertising market was just $9 billion — less than half of the roughly $32 billion it garnered in 2011, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and eMarketer.

While digital advertising came of age over the past seven years, Google continued its pattern of innovation for years after its IPO. Google Labs cranked out project after project, many unveiled with great fanfare (remember Wave?) only to fall flat.

Then last year, under CEO Larry Page, Google started to get “serious.” The company cut an unprecedented number for projects, and launched a full-fledged effort to unite its many services into a more cohesive platform, connected to its new social network, Google+.

This has led to some clumsy attempts to capitalize on its products, the latest of which is “Search Plus Your World.” The change to its fundamental search tool — which now points users toward Google+ every chance it gets — has been widely criticized for worsening the search experience.

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Online Advertising Gets Real

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Twitter has gone through similar growing pains. When it introduced the Quick Bar (a.k.a. “Dickbar”) to its mobile app last year, it was so widely criticized that the company had to relent and remove it. The blatant attempt to steer users toward one of its ad-revenue streams, promoted trends, was ultimately not in Twitter’s best interests.

Even smaller digital players like Flipboard have begun integrating ad platforms to their tools. Everyone wants to monetize their apps, of course, but Flipboard to launched its advertising tool just one year after the app’s debut. Compared with that, Foursquare, which took more than two years to roll out brand pages, is really taking its time.

There’s a reason all these digital brands — big and small — are getting money crazy. The online advertising market has reached a tipping point, and virtually every digital brand is getting swept up in the change. According to eMarketer, spending on online advertising in the U.S. is due to surpass print for the first time this year — and it’s projected to double by 2016.

Meanwhile, major players like Google and Facebook are gobbling up much of that new revenue for themselves. And they both keep innovating, leveraging their networks and aggregated data to try and make themselves more valuable then other options as well as each other’s.

If you’re in this space and you’re not making noise with your ad platform now, you risk getting left behind. That’s certainly what happened to Yahoo, which has now challenged itself to re-establish itself as a leader in the game or die trying.

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The Real Reason Behind Facebook’s IPO

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Again, all of this would have been happening whether Facebook went public or not. What led Facebook to IPO, I believe, is a desire to steer where online advertising is going rather than vice-versa. As its revenue grows, it recognized a need to create its own Google- or Amazon-scale services with the back end to match. As big as Facebook is, you need IPO money for that.

Will that fundamentally be better for the user? We’ll have to wait and see, but there are two ways this could go. One the one hand, competition is fundamentally good, and the more players that can go toe-to-toe at the highest levels of online advertising, the better. On the other, the digital players are now so large and so influential that they risk losing sight of the very customers they’re fighting for.

This is the web in 2012, and the stakes only get bigger from here.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, -Oxford-

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BONUS: Facebook’s Greatest Fears

1. Competitors

"Users increasingly engage with competing products."

Image courtesy of Flickr, Mukumbura

Click here to view this gallery.

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Additional Facebook IPO Coverage

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• Facebook Files for $5 Billion IPO
• Facebook IPO Reveals How It Made $3.71 Billion in 2011
• 10 Giant Things Less Valuable Than Facebook
• Zuckerberg to Potential Shareholders: Facebook Is on a Social Mission
• Facebook IPO Filing Flings Open the Social Network Kimono
• Facebook: Zynga Generates 12% of Our Revenue and We Need Them
• Sheryl Sandberg Was Facebook’s Best-Paid Employee in 2011

More About: amazon, digital advertising, Facebook, facebook ipo, Flipboard, foursquare, Google, online advertising, Opinion, Twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

• Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
• Become a Fan on Facebook
• Subscribe to the Social Media channel
• Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. Ad agency JWT has used mobile marketing for two brand name clients. During a marketers’ panel discussion, John Baker explained the important role mobile played in a promotion for Zyrtec and for a campaign across media for Macy’s.

Maybe advertisers should stop hoping that their new campaigns should be super-successful and instead wish for them to be moderately well-received.

After all, almost no one has been able to create a second act for ad campaigns that become cultural touchstones. Remember Budweiser’s “Wassup” for instance? That campaign broke in 1999, but only lasted for a few more executions. The “You’re getting a Dell, dude” guy also wore out his welcome, fast.

If anything, adding a social media layer to a successful campaign only raises the stakes as bloggers, Tweeters and Facebookers pile on to celebrate and watch to see if new ads live up to the set standard, then mercilessly scold it for not doing so. Such was the situation Old Spice and ad agency Wieden + Kennedy found themselves in in the fall of 2010.

By then, Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign had already received heaps of industry accolades, including the Cannes Film Lion Grand Prix, and it had broken new ground by having spokesman Isaiah Mustafa star in hundreds of YouTube videos, responding by name to bloggers and fans who tweeted comments about the campaign.

“It was definitely daunting,” says Jason Bagley, a creative director at Wieden. “It was both the best and worst spot to be in,” adds Craig Allen, another creative director. After batting around ideas, Bagley, Allen and other creatives on the account at Wieden decided that instead of abandoning the campaign or risking repeating themselves, they’d use Mustafa’s character to create a storyline. In this case, it was sort of a riff on the classic 1950 drama All About Eve. While that film featured a wide-eyed ingenue usurping the role of an aging star, it was decided that a long-in-the-tooth star would try to steal Mustafa’s spokesman role.

But who would play Mustafa’s foe? The first name that came to mind was Fabio Lanzoni, the Italian model who is better known by just his first name. After all, Fabio had performed a role similar to Mustafa’s in ads for I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter that ran in the ’90s. “Fabio was the first name that popped up,” says Allen, “but we assumed he didn’t want to do it.” In preparation for rejection, Wieden decided they would plan to tap other short-listed candidates David Hasselhoff and Dolph Lundgren. It turned out, though, that Fabio was on board.

Upon meeting Fabio, Bagley and Allen soon discovered why. “He has a great sense of humor,” says Bagley. “Something we learned is that the Fabio you know from TV is a character. We thought maybe he was going to be this cheesy metrosexual model, but in reality he’s a guy’s guy.” Months after the shoot, the three would even become friends with Fabio and visit his home in Los Angeles, where they would sample Fabio’s 300-deep motorcycle collection.

With their villain on board, the agency concocted a loose storyline in which Fabio was jealous of Mustafa’s popularity and wanted to challenge him for the throne. The brand unleashed the first of the Fabio ads on YouTube and on TV on July 20 with no explanation. On July 25, Fabio laid out his “Mano a Mano in el Baño” challenge to Mustafa at “9 a.m. tomorrow, Internets.” The next day, Mustafa accepted.

That week, over a three-day period, Mustafa and Fabio would shoot more than 150 videos at Wieden’s Portland, Oregon, headquarters. As Bagley recalls, the crew went in with just a vague idea of a plot and no ending. The idea was to incorporate fans’ comments (including Mashable‘s own Pete Cashmore) into the storyline, but that wasn’t as easy as hoped. “We were kind of freaking out the first day,” says Bagley. “We weren’t shooting enough video.”

Eventually, they found a rhythm. Part of it was playing to each actor’s strengths: Mustafa got the verbose, absurd speeches while Fabio’s responses were kept short. As for an ending: A fan named Jordan S. suggested that Mustafa should build a time machine to prevent Fabio from trying to take his place. Bingo! They had their denouement.

When the dust settled, the campaign looked like a winner. Overall, it netted more than 22 million YouTube views in one week. Old Spice and New Old Spice Guy Fabio held the number one and number four spots for most viewed channels for the month on YouTube. Old Spice rep Andrew Nicolai says that’s the first time that’s happened, a claim that a YouTube rep confirmed. Other measures were also impressive: The campaign drew more than 53,000 YouTube comments and 68,000 new Facebook fans.

Did it sell more Old Spice? Mike Norton, a rep for Procter & Gamble Male Grooming (Old Spice is a P&G brand), says Nielsen figures show it did, though he declined to share exact numbers. But the campaign also solved a problem for the brand. “We set an objective to engage fans the way we did last year,” says Norton. “We didn’t want to try to do the same thing.”

Mission accomplished. But what about next year? Soon, the Wieden team will be brainstorming concepts for summer 2012. Meanwhile, the brand has experimented with a new campaign featuring multiple spokesmen, including a sea captain (or a guy who wants to be one). Rather than get worked up about 2012 though, Bagley and Allen are savoring the moment, at least for now. “l always fear that people aren’t going to care and wonder if they’re going to engage,” says Bagley. “We’re really happy that millions of people have done just that.”

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Series supported by IDG

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The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. Mobile marketing is projected to grow rapidly in the next few years as marketing catches up with the surge in mobile device use. It’s a new, experimental platform to reach consumers. JWT executive John Baker told marketers at a panel discussion in New York how JWT used mobile for two of its clients. Watch the panel discussion here.

More About: campaign, features, mashable, Modern Media Agency Series, old spice, online advertising, trending, YouTube

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As a small business owner, your time is limited. Each week we put together a roundup of essential social media resources to help you stay on top.

We wanted to give you even more of a leg up with this megalist of our top small business resources from the past few months, including social media, tech, startups, marketing & advertising, dev & design and mobile posts that were written with small business in mind.

Of course, if you’re still hungry for more business resources, you can follow Mashable‘s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. Happy reading!

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Social Media

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• HOW TO: Poll Consumers on Facebook
  We collected some simple ways to poll your consumers on Facebook, as well as a mini-list of best practices.
• HOW TO: Set Up a Foursquare Special
  There are now seven types of specials available on Foursquare — here’s an explanation of each special, along with some tips to help you get started.
• 10 Proven Strategies for Greater Likeability on Facebook
  Here are 10 universal laws for brand likeability in social media.
• HOW TO: Get Your Employees On Board With Your Social Media Policy
  It’s not an easy job to help people reconcile their public and private lives on social media, and it all comes down to training, mentorship, and establishing guidelines and best practices. Here are some tips.
• 5 Best Practices for Travel & Tourism Brands on Facebook
  Best practices for travel and tourism brands on Facebook — borrowed from the big players in the industry — that will help you attract gadling jetsetters and secure more reservations.
• HOW TO: Create a Group Tumblr Blog
  Want to set up a company blog that contributors can post to from multiple accounts? Want to use a password-protected Tumblr internally? Here we show you how.
• 5 Tips for Closing a Sale on Facebook
  How can you maximize the social network to close sales for your own business? Here are five tips to help you design a Facebook presence that makes buying your products more desirable and easy.
• 14 Best Practices for Long-Term Social Media Success
  Following these best practices will prevent your brand from falling victim to the coming wave of customer unlikes and unfollows. But more importantly, focusing social channels and investing in the value of each will improve the customer experience and encourage greater engagement.
• HOW TO: Start Marketing on Foursquare
  The most recent iteration of the location-based app, Foursquare 3.0, expanded the features and made it much easier for businesses to jump on the bandwagon and start marketing. Get started here.
• HOW TO: Get Started With Photo Blogging
  We consume so much content in our digital lives, it seems we’ve developed a need for it to be presented in the simplest, most efficient way possible. Enter: the photo blog.
• Social Media for Small Businesses: 6 Effective Strategies
  Many small business owners are either too busy for social media, or they don’t truly understand Facebook, Foursquare or Twitter. So they choose to delegate these tools to interns or specialists. This may not always be in the best interest of the company.
• How Tasti D-Lite Has Raised the Bar for Social Media Success
  Frozen dessert shop Tasti D-Lite has been heating up the social space over the past few years, introducing a series of innovative digital programs and campaigns. We spoke with Chief Marketing Officer Bill Zinke to get a taste for what the company is up to lately and what digital and social projects it’s working on next.
• How Small Businesses Can Use Social Media for Customer Service [INTERVIEW]
  Customer relationship management isn’t just the domain of big brands, and these days, more and more companies are offering free online tools to make it easier for SMBs to keep track of and reach out to their customers.
• HOW TO: Start Marketing With HootSuite
  As social media increasingly becomes optimized for brands, marketers are finding themselves juggling multiple accounts across a variety of networks. With so many statuses to update and so little time, keeping yourself organized is key.
• 5 YouTube Marketing Tips for Better Engagement
  In addition to its incredible success as the de facto portal for video uploads and viewing, YouTube is itself a community. For brands, it provides an additional viable opportunities to spark discussion with followers. It’s a place to build relationships and create a space for users to converse with each other about branded content.
• 5 Tips for Recruiting College Students via Social Media
  More and more companies are recognizing the value of social media in building their employer brand in the minds of college students. From the Department of State (@DOScareers) to Google (@GoogleStudents) to MTV (@MTVNetworksJobs), organizations across many industries are taking to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and blogs to enhance their image and build a pipeline of talent from college campuses.
• HOW TO: Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Website
  For many sites, adding social sharing buttons is a simple and effective way to quickly boost pageviews and sharing stats. Unfortunately, it can also be a way to clutter up your pages, confuse your users, and cause massive bugs and layout issues. Here’s a quick guide to best practices for adding social sharing buttons to your site or blog.
• Should You Outsource Your Social Media Efforts?
  Hiring a social media consultant may not be as straightforward as hiring other types of professional service providers, such as a web designer or an accountant. Here are four questions to consider when deciding whether to outsource your social media.
• How The Pros Measure Social Media Marketing Success
  The notion that marketing costs can’t always be understood is an ancient one. John Wanamaker, a department store mogul who died in 1922, once mused, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Here are some tips to help you figure it out.
• HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook and Twitter Promotions
  As social media has worked its way into every aspect of our lives, we as a culture have come to expect that our favorite brands — from “Big Gay Ice Cream” trucks to national airlines and fashion houses — are easily accessible on the most popular social networks.
• 9 Digital Marketing Lessons From Top Social Brands
  Big brands have already blazed trails in the digital marketing world. We spoke to social media and marketing experts at MTV, American Express, Xbox, NBA and AT&T to get the scoop on how they learned to hit the mark.
• HOW TO: Use Facebook Social Plugins on Your Website
  One of the easiest ways to make your online presence more social is by adding Facebook social plugins to your website. There are many different Facebook social plugins to choose from — here are four of the top plugins for business and tips on how and when to use them.
• How Businesses Can Survive a Product Recall Using Social Media
  These five tips will help companies maximize the potential of social media to protect consumers and their brands in the midst of any product recall situation.
• HOW TO: Avoid and Prevent Facebook Spam
  Facebook is doing a lot to help curb app-generated spam, with platform spam down 95% in 2010, but no automated system is perfect. Here are some tips to reduce the amount of spam that you see on Facebook — and avoid contributing to the problem yourself.
• 6 Common Email Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make
  For small businesses, email still represents a cheap, effective way to establish or maintain a relationship with clients. But the content has the power to either attract or repel — check out these tips before you hit “send.”

• HOW TO: Launch Any Product Using Social Media
  Guy Kawasaki shares 12 things he did to launch his new book, including information about costs, vendors and analytics.
• 5 Excellent Small Business Blogs To Learn From
  Here are five small businesses that are using a blog to reach local communities and showcase the company’s experience and expertise. We’ve outlined exactly what they’re doing right as a guide for other small businesses to improve their own blogging activities.
• 10 Tips for Posting on Your Brand’s Facebook Page
  Once your brand is on Facebook, the question becomes: How you engage those fans and sustain a meaningful online dialogue with your customers?
• Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid on Your Company Blog
  Corporate websites are often little more than interactive brochures that display basic information and describe what the business offers. But if you’re looking to do more, then a company blog is a much better choice.
• 5 Tips for Maintaining Brand Consistency Across Social Media
  As the recent foibles of Aflac, Chrysler and Kenneth Cole and others demonstrate, keeping an up-to-date, 24/7 presence on social media has its risks. A bigger risk though, is to ignore social media. So what is a brand to do?
• The Pros and Cons Of Tumblr For Small Business
  More and more businesses have been getting hip to social blogging platform Tumblr, which may have you wondering, “Should I be on Tumblr, too?”

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Business

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• The 7-Stage Evolution of a Socially Responsible Brand
  Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn’t happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.
• HOW TO: Decide Which Charities Your Business Should Support
  Businesses are willing to give, but are often confused as to which causes might be best for them. A successful match can lead to a fulfilling partnership and helping others, while a mismatch may lead to disaster.
• 5 Simple Web Apps For Saving Time at Work
  Much has been made of some excellent mobile and tablet apps that let users stay productive on the go. But let’s face it — the majority of your work is still done at your desk, and much of it, perhaps, in a web browser.
• HOW TO: Spread Your Business Footprint Around the Web
  The web, as we know, is a great place to market your business — but only if people can find you.
• HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Company Profile for Recruiting
  LinkedIn offers companies the ability to provide more information about their organization via their company pages. On a company page, you can include information about your products and services along with information about job opportunities.
• 6 Ways Small Businesses Can Band Together for Better Results
  If you’re a small business owner, seek out symbiotic and collaborative relationships with other businesses whenever possible — small businesses need to look at each other as partners, not competitors.
• 4 Simple Programs for Managing Employee Goals
  Here are four programs that concentrate on the features small businesses need to track employee goals at a price they can afford.
• 10 Ways to Turn Your Local Business Into a Global Success
  Today’s Internet represents a momentous age in the history of global commerce. Never before have so many people met in one, international marketplace. It has never been so easy to reach so many people.

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Startups

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• HOW TO: Recruit All-Star Employees on a Startup Budget
  Your first few hires set the tone for your culture. What’s more, it’s often said that A-level hires get you more top quality hires in the long run. You don’t just need to make time for recruiting — you have to be great at it.
• How Startups Will Benefit if the SEC Relaxes Funding Regulations
  The areas that the SEC is going to review are general solicitation rules, the 500 share holder limit and regulations around crowdfunding. Easing these regulations will have a major impact on how startups raise capital and will help more startups raise funding.
• HOW TO: Better Communicate With Remote Startup Employees
  Communicating with remote workers can be a challenge, but for any company that has employees or contractors working outside of the office, learning how to properly communicate is an important way to increase productivity.
• HOW TO: Sign Up Users Even Before You Launch Your Startup
  In April, “stealth” social media startup Kohort announced its upcoming launch. Within a few days, the site received thousands of user signups, according to its founder Mark Davis. In the startup world, this itself perhaps isn’t uncommon, but what made Kohort’s story unique is the fact that those thousands of users had no idea what Kohort was when they signed up.

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Tech and Gadgets

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• 10 Best BlackBerry PlayBook Cases [PICS]
  If you’re in the market for a cover for your new super-sized ‘Berry then take a look through the photo gallery of available choices.
• 4 Free Ways to Learn to Code Online
  Learning to code is something every tech-minded person should try at least once — and the wealth of online courses, many of which are free or surprisingly inexpensive, make learning about programming easier than ever.
• 14 Tips for Hiring the Perfect CTO
  Hiring the wrong person for key company positions can cost a business thousands — or tens of thousands — of dollars and man hours. This is especially true when it comes to tech companies hiring the wrong chief technology officer.
• Flip Alternatives: 5 Great Pocket Video Cameras
  While many are content to shoot casual videos with the cameras built into their phones, if you’re looking for a standalone gadget that shoots true HD and is still easy on the wallet, check out these alternatives to the once-popular Flip.
• Big Data: How New Technology Is Helping Marketers Create Better Consumer Experiences
  In this era of constant connectivity and tracking, we are creating huge amounts of data every second. Just like consumers, marketers are facing information overload. The big question is: How can we use this data to produce better, more relevant customer experiences?
• 11 Excellent iPad Apps for Meetings and Presentations
  Here are 11 iPad apps that will enhance your presentations.
• HOW TO: Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful
  QR codes are malleable and can be redesigned in truly extraordinary ways, while still maintaining their scanability. The truth is, QR codes no longer have to be checkerbox in appearance. We’ve entered a new phase of “designer codes” that can be integrated into marketing campaigns in an attractive way that isn’t an eyesore.
• Closed or Open Source: Which CMS is Right for Your Business?
  It seems there are new contenders vying to be the top content management system (CMS) every day. Making it easy to add products, articles and just about anything else is a mandatory development skill today. Inevitably, the question always arises: “Do we download something free and open source, or do we buy a solution?”

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Marketing & Advertising

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• Why 5 Big Brand Marketing Campaigns Are Betting Big on Social Gaming
  In 2011, U.S. gamers will spark $653 million in revenue solely from purchasing virtual items. That figure is expected to reach $792 million in 2012.
• 5 Marketing Jobs Worth Paying For
  Now, if you’ve started your own company, chances are you’re the type of person who is willing to roll up your sleeves and get things done yourself. But there are some areas of marketing in which the experience of a professional — administered at the right moment — can really make the difference between a polished, awesome product and a complete mess.
• The 5 Qualities of Highly Effective Community Managers
  Today, the role of community manager is common at companies of all sizes — from startups to multinational corporations. Despite their ubiquity, there is still a lot of confusion around what a community manager actually does and what employers should look for when hiring one.
• 5 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch
  Small businesses plan to increase spending on inbound marketing in 2011, allocating money to initiatives such as Facebook campaigns and location-based advertising, but businesses will also experiment with a handful of new (and not so new) strategies.
• 8 Ways to Improve Your Live Event With Social Media
  Whether you just want to generate a bit of buzz or instead have specific goals to increase ticket sales and attract top speakers and attendees, social media can make the planning process smoother by leveraging digital word-of-mouth. Here are eight tips for best results.
• How 3 Companies Took Content Marketing to the Next Level
  There is a laundry list of issues that need to be addressed when it comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we’ve narrowed it down to 10 tips that companies should work on.
• 6 Smart & Effective Email Marketing Tactics
  Successful brands are cross-pollinating email marketing strategies via email clients, social platforms and mobile devices. Brands still find email effective because it’s inexpensive and universally accepted by people all over the world.
• HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Google AdWords
  Often, small businesses set up a campaign and load it with relevant phrases, only to see little traction. Or worse, they get clicks (which cost money) but aren’t converting them into sales.
• Top 4 Tips for Creating a Podcast for Your Small Business
  Podcasts are an interesting challenge for small businesses. They require a little more know-how, energy and time than signing up for Twitter, Facebook or even Foursquare. But they’re not nearly as daunting as you might think, and they offer an excellent opportunity to build a unique audience and generate leads for your business.
• Top 5 YouTube Marketing Mistakes Committed by Small Businesses
  We’ve spoken to three top experts in the video marketing arena to get professional advice about the common mistakes that small companies make on the video-sharing platform so that you can avoid making those same errors.
• 5 Tips for Creating Your Own Group Buying Deals
  Group deals have become a popular way to attract new customers and boost sales. While this phenomenon started with marketing service providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial, it has expanded to such diverse businesses as Facebook and The New York Times. The group buying market is now estimated at $4 billion.
• 4 Innovative Ways to Use Web Video for Small Business
  How does a small business compete with disturbingly low attention spans and a whole Internet of viral videos? Read on for five ways that small businesses can take advantage of web video without blowing their budgets.
• 4 Inspiring Small Business Video Successes
  Looking for inexpensive PR? We spoke to some PR pros to find out how to tap into the online media and get your biz a little exposure without breaking the bank.
• 3 Podcast Success Stories from Creative Small Businesses
  Despite the challenges, there is value in video for small businesses, even if you’re a video greenhorn. We found four businesses that have had real world success thanks to video.

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Dev & Design

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• 5 Ways to Ensure Your Site Is Accessible to the Visually Impaired
  The web is full of tips on how to design websites for blind users, most of which are geared toward making your website accessible to screen readers.
• Top 5 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make
  If you’re a small business owner, your website is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.
• 5 Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch
  Your website has to capture a visitor’s attention, entice him or her to stay and browse around, create an interest in your product or service, and result in sales. For small businesses with limited time and budgets, design is an essential factor in both attracting and converting potential customers.

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Mobile

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• How 5 Companies Are Using the iPad to Increase Productivity
  These five companies are making a pretty strong case for how Apple’s iPad (and its competitors, when they catch up) has a lot of potential to make business more efficient.
• How The iPad Is Helping Businesses Go Green
  Apple’s iPad tablet device is helping businesses take on more environmentally friendly habits, enabling them to cut costs and save resources.
• HOW TO: Build a Mobile App for Better Customer Support
  Building a smartphone application that’s able to deliver a superior customer care experience is more complicated than just porting a mobile version of your FAQ.
• 5 iPad Apps That Rival Their Desktop Counterparts
  With more than 65,000 apps built to take advantage of the iPad’s features, there are tons of options, from photo editing to word processing that match — or outpace — their desktop counterparts.
• 5 Essential Business Collaboration Apps for iPad
  There are a handful of iPad apps that jump to the forefront of any discussion on business collaboration tools.

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