FeedMagnet Turns One!

A year ago, FeedMagnet was just a concept with a lot of potential, but nothing to show for it. We've come a long way since then, and we thought we should mark the moment by bringing everyone up to speed on the whirlwind that has been this past year for us.

by Jason Ford on Sep. 13, 2010

Social Commerce Summit 2010

About a week before this year's Social Commerce Summit, we got a call from Bazaarvoice wanting to use FeedMagnet at the event. The Social Commerce Summit is an event geared toward the marketing and social media leaders of the top companies in the world. It is put on by Bazaarvoice, and most - but not all - of the attendees are their clients.

The theme of the conference is using social interactions to help sell products. It's a great fit for Bazaarvoice, since their products are about capturing and displaying user generated ratings, reviews, stories, and other interactions. It's also a great fit for FeedMagnet since our product does a very similar thing - the difference being that we gather existing content from social networks as opposed to soliciting users to write content directly on the commerce site.

by Jason Ford on Apr. 23, 2010

Crayons & Aspirin

I attended a half-day seminar by Mike McDerment, the CEO of FreshBooks, yesterday. One of the things he talked about was crayons and aspirin. He says that every good web app is either a crayon, helping you create something new or increasing revenue, or an aspirin, relieving pain by making things easier or saving time. I think he is spot on.

FreshBooks is an aspirin. It takes the pain out of invoicing. SalesForce.com is a crayon. It provides tools that help do more with your business and increase sales and revenue. Both are great web apps.

by Jason Ford on Mar. 12, 2010

10 free tools every small business should be using

I think most people are aware by now that the world of software is changing - moving from expensive applications that you purchase for each of your computers to online "software as a service" that you pay for monthly. FeedMagnet itself falls in this category of new software. And and as a part of us eating our own dog food, we are running pretty much every aspect of our business with other software-as-a-service apps.

One of the by-products of this new model for software is a plethora of free services that small and startup business can benefit from. Most of these new tools have a "fremium" monetization model - providing a free version of the product and then selling premium features at a monthly cost (this is our plan for FeedMagnet, btw). As a result, there are a number of products that can be used to power your business for free - at least until you grow to the point where you need the more advanced features.

There are a ton of these apps available, but in this post, I'll cover a handful of the ones that are particularly useful for small businesses.

by Jason Ford on Nov. 4, 2009

Well hello. Thanks for checking us out.

We're just getting started building FeedMagnet and we're super excited about it. FeedMagnet is a new web app that helps businesses harness social media - and do it in a responsible way. We'll be using this blog to let you know about new features we're rolling out, provide a behind-the-scenes look at our development process, and share some of our ideas about the Web in general.

by Jason Ford on Oct. 29, 2009