GigaOM » thrillist

Content and commerce: is Etsy an outlier?

Jeff John Roberts — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:48:15 +0000

Etsy is best known as an online marketplace for artsy people, but the seven year old company also publishes a popular blog about the pretty things that appear in its store and elsewhere. It’s one of the rare companies that is good at both commerce and content — but can its playbook work for others?

Speaking at a Q&A in New York this week, editor-in-chief Alison Feldmann explained that the main goal of the blog is not to attract new customers but instead to boost engagement with Etsy’s existing fans. It appears to be working. Feldmann said many blogs posts attract more than 100 comments, nearly all of them friendly and positive (if only it were the same for those who write in the tech trenches).

The Etsy blog posts themselves, which offer pretty pictures and tales from artisans (not to be confused with Regretsy), do indeed drive sales but it’s hard to say how many. Feldmann says Etsy has only anecdotal evidence at the moment will soon use data to quantify the relationship between the store and the blog. But even without data, it’s fair to say Etsy has created a virtuous loop between content and buying — one that will hold up on mobile devices, which Feldmann says account for one fifth of sales.

Etsy’s success with content, and that of other retail sites like Birchbox and Thrillist, may tempt more retailers to hire editors of their own. For those who do, Feldmann has some advice.

“Identify what the brand stands for and build out that tone,” she said. “No one wants to read too much about [your brand] … The goal is to take it to a more human level.”

Unfortunately, it may not be that easy. Craft sites like Etsy may be outliers because they offer myriad unique products, most of which come with a personal story that the buyer wants to hear about. Most merchants aren’t in the same position since they offer more commoditized, corporate-produced goods. Event host Erin Griffith of Pando Daily warned that using content can even backfire for some brands — leading them to end up on the Condescending Corporate Brand Page.

Feldmann spoke at Content Conversations, an ongoing series hosted by content discovery platform, Outbrain.

(Image by Karen Nicol via Etsy)

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MongoDB or MySQL? Why not both?

Barb Darrow — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:48:21 +0000

Thrillist CTO Mark O’Neill

Someone please tell me we’ve gotten past the either-or debate over NoSQL and relational databases.

While NoSQL databases are foundational technologies for web startups — with most of these young companies opting for MongoDB, Cassandra, CouchDB or something else to fulfill their database needs — they might be better served going a hybrid route instead. There’s always room for a good, old-fashioned relational database — especially if they want to conduct and store financial transactions.

Just ask Mark O’Neill, CTO of Thrillist, a New York City-based media company that fields e-commerce and consumer recommendation services. Thrillist uses the NoSQL MongoDB to track and store tons of data about user interactions, but it’s MySQL all the way when it comes to bread-and-butter transactions and financial data that runs the company.

There’s a reason for that, O’Neill said. As great as MongoDB (or Cassandra or CouchDB or insert your favorite NoSQL entry here) may be, they’re still relatively immature compared to their SQL forebears. The ancillary tools aren’t as robust and it’s hard to find NoSQL talent.

“Skillsets around NoSQL are lacking and SQL [as a language] is relatively simple to learn — writing queries in SQL is not so bad. With NoSQL, the tools are less robust and the barrier to entry is much higher,” O’Neill told me in an interview.

Thrillist, founded in 2005, looked at several NoSQL options but went with MongoDB over the NoSQL alternatives because at the time it was more stable, had a larger community around it and better tools than the others, O’Neill said.

Make no mistake: MongoDB is great for handling all the critical social interactions that take place. “For each action taken by a user, you want to know what the user’s friends were doing and you want to pull all that data out from a single location. Say you take an action on Meet Up, it will update your user references and update all your friends. Non-relational stores are really good at that and you can afford to keep that data in multiple places — we use Mongo for that,” O’Neill said.

But, for transactions? Well, “Mongo doesn’t really have transactions. If I write [data] in multiple places and want to check all that in at one time, Mongo can’t do that,” O’Neill said. When someone buys something at Thrillist’s Jackthreads site, the system must record their order and all the items associated with that order, or nothing works. “It all gets written or none of it does. Mongo is not good at that,” said O’Neill.

So a word to the wise web startup: NoSQL — in this case MongoDB — is great for what it does, but for your financial transactions stick with SQL.

For more discussion about the technologies — NoSQL or not — powering the web sites and mobile applications we all use, come check out GigaOM’s Structure conference next month.

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr user takomabibelot

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InsideHook Targets Successful Dude Demographic

Jeff John Roberts — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 19:38:38 +0000

There are guide sites aplenty for college guys or for men in their 20′s. But what happens when one-time keg guzzlers and adrenaline junkies hit an age when they want something more refined?

Veterans of the dude space think they have an answer. InsideHook is a daily guide site that offers activities befitting of discerning guys 35 and up — a personal sommelier, a weightless flight over New York City, a chance to eat a whole pig in a private eating club.

“There’s nothing out there for guys who are successful but have little time. No one is helping them to find the most interesting things,” said CEO Jonathan Keidan.

The format for InsideHook is straightforward — a daily, punchy email that offers a single tip about what to do in the city. If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

InsideHook is co-founded by Andy Russell and is backed by his new fund, Trigger Media. Russell is also a partner at Pilot Group, whose portfolio included DailyCandy and still includes Thrillist, an email site that targets men in their 20′s.

“It’s the same as Thrillist but a different demographic. One email a day with editorial recommendations,” said executive editor and former Thrillist New York editor Steve Bryant.

The business plan is also familiar — a New York roll-out followed by a national edition and expansion to other cities over a two to three year period. Keidan says InsideHook will be monetized right away and that the company closed its first ad deal last week. He expects the venture to attract 150,000 subs within a year.

Based on the success of Thrillist, the new project would seem to be a slam-dunk, especially if an older, richer audience can command higher ad rates.

One wild card — and this is just speculation — is whether a decline in email use and the rise of mobile (where a successful ad format is still a puzzle) will pose a challenge to repeating the Thrillist formula.

Keidan is confident the formula is still viable. “Email is still the best best way to reach an audience and get readers to lean forward.”

(Note: This story has been updated to clarify Andy Russell’s role in the venture).

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Silicon Valley Taunts NYC Over Tech Aspirations

Jeff John Roberts — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:17:11 +0000

It looks like Silicon Alley has a way to go before it’s taken seriously by its west coast counterpart. This weekend, the San Jose Mercury News published a piece of snark ridiculing New York City’s would-be role as tech usurper.

The dressing down came in response to “Only In the Alley,” a glossy calendar of New York tech types strutting beside their company names. Or, in the words of the Merc News, a confirmation of the city’s reputation for “flashy, soulless advertising.”

The calendar, created by the heads of app developer SNAP Interactive and entertainment site Hotlist, features companies like Livestream, Thrillist and Mashable.

But the west coast is not exactly shaking in its boots.

After issuing a challenge in the introduction — “Bring it on, Silicon Valley” — the calendar offers fashion-shoot-like photos of tech entrepreneurs in New York City, highlighting ideas such as online dating, a database of local doctors, a daily-deals site and an online beauty-products store.

How innovative!

How could analysts think Facebook will have 2012′s biggest IPO when these companies are around? [...]

And feel free to contact IA with ideas about a Silicon Valley response for 2013. Maybe just pictures of the headquarters of the biggest tech companies in the world? They’re all here

Ouch. But then again, if the calendar gambit was intended as a publicity stunt, Silicon Valley’s paper of record took the bait.

More seriously, it’s starting to feel that there may be more at stake in the east-west tech dispute than idle bragging rights.

Recall that Mayor Mike Bloomberg, as part of a bid to make New York a “technology capital,” opened the year promising to learn coding while San Francisco’s mayor last week announced a scheme to bring the tech community directly inside city government.

And it’s still unclear what led Silicon Valley’s intellectual jewel, Stanford University, to abruptly pull out of a contest to install a science graduate school near the Upper East Side (New Yorkers had for months assumed Stanford was the default winner but the school bailed in December and Cornell was selected instead).

It looks like the Silicon Valley vs. Silicon Alley story is far from finished but, on this bitter winter day in New York, the west coast sure looks more appealing for technology companies (and everyone else).

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Thrillist Moves Beyond Email to Video

Liz Shannon Miller — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:00:59 +0000

Mega email mailing list Thrillist began the first steps towards moving into the online video world today, soft-launching a series of short videos that will eventually document local venues in all 15 Thrillist markets. Los Angeles and Chicago are the first Thrillist cities to get video content, which was created to accompany daily Thrillist emails about cool bars, clubs and restaurants to check out locally. Video for all markets will roll out over the next four weeks, with the goal of creating a new video for each city every week.

src=”http://www.thrillist.com/sites/all/modules/custom/thrillist_video/jwplayer/PlayerThrillist.swf”
quality=”high”
allowfullscreen=”false”
allowscriptaccess=”always”
allownetworking=”all”
flashvars=”playlistfile=http://www.thrillist.com/jwplaylist/119276/116293&autostart=false&repeat=list&fullscreen=false&stretching=fill&logo.position=right&skin=http://www.thrillist.com/sites/all/modules/custom/thrillist_video/jwplayer/skins/beelden/beelden.xml&imgLftTtl=Lasagna Sushi&imgLftUrl=http://www.thrillist.com/los-angeles/lasagna-sushi&imgLftImgUrl=http://www.thrillist.com/files/images/LA_LasagnaSushi_Thumb.jpg&imgCtrTtl=Plancha&imgCtrUrl=http://www.thrillist.com/los-angeles/plancha&imgCtrImgUrl=http://www.thrillist.com/files/images/LA_Plancha_Thumb.jpg&imgRgtTtl=Proper Barbershop&imgRgtUrl=http://www.thrillist.com/los-angeles/proper-barbershop&imgRgtImgUrl=http://www.thrillist.com/files/images/LA_ProperBarber_Thumb.jpg”
height=”305″
width=”500″
wmode=”transparent” >

The footage for each short video, ranging from 30-45 seconds each, is shot by Thrillist editors and then uploaded to the New York office, where a dedicated full-time editor works with the senior editorial team to craft the voice of the content. So far, each video consists of silent footage overlaid with fast music and somewhat snarky title cards — according to Thrillist founder Ben Lerer, with whom we spoke via phone, the plan is to “give a visual representation of what we just wrote about.”

Thrillist developed an in-house player and management system for the videos, taking a do-it-yourself approach instead of utilizing a video distribution platform like Brightcove or Ooyala. “Everything we were looking at off the shelf was either too simple or too robust for our needs,” Lerer said. Thrillist is currently using the Mirror Image CDN to deliver video, though Lerer says that could change.

Currently, the emails only link to the video content as hosted on thrillist.com, though though by partnering with Goodmail, videos may soon be playable in the body of the email. Video also opens up new sponsorship opportunities for the brand, both in terms of sponsored shorts and more advertorial content.

All that said, Lerer says that Thrillist’s approach to video is a cautious one: “We’re just dipping our toe in, because we want to make sure that our audience wants it.” However, they have committed to bringing on a full-time editor and training their editorial team to shoot the videos, and eventually will build out the site to spotlight the video content.

Right now, though, the video pieces simply add some extra detail to its venue profiles. Lerer said that “It’s one thing to read about a place, it’s another thing to actually see [it]. Even if a restaurant sounds delicious, you don’t know if you want to take a date or your family there until you see it. Video stood out as something that would work most naturally with our content, and would bring those experiences to life.”

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