In addition to the very nice recognition we just received from AlwaysOn, TurnTo has been nominated for the Silicon Alley Awards in the “Most Loved Product” category. If you like what we’re doing - or even if you just appreciate the potential - please vote for us. It’ll only take a moment.
Thank you thank you!
There are many stellar businesses on this list. We’re honored to be included in their company.
The AlwaysOn East 100 Award is given to private, emerging technology companies creating new business opportunities in high-growth markets. TurnTo was selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team based on demonstration of growth, market opportunity, quality of innovation and customer traction.
“It’s no secret that technology and innovation are vital to bringing our country out of economic recession,” said Tony Perkins, founder and editor of AlwaysOn. “The companies on this year’s list have not only created innovative technologies that solve real business problems, but have stimulated economic growth through the generation of new jobs. I congratulate every winner selected for this year’s award and wish them all tremendous success in the future.”
You can read more about the award here: The AlwaysOn East 100.
We’re looking forward to the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTEN) this Sunday - Tuesday in San Francisco. If you’re there, please come by and see us in Booth #42.
And on that topic: here’s a link to a press release Earthwatch just put out on their expanding use of TurnTo to increase volunteer recruitment though their website. We’re thrilled, since Earthwatch provided the inspiration that led to TurnTo.
Here’s our second presentation from day 2 at the OnMedia conference. This one is a straight-up product demo and company backgrounder without the “theory” from yesterday. The TurnTo part runs from min. 36-46. (As with yesterday’s, we’ll swap in the individual video once we get it from the conference.)
Always nice to be recognized, particularly in such good company. Thank you to AlwaysOn for the honor. (Sounds like a long list, but we are one of just a few in the social commerce area.)
The full announcement and list.
Plus, we’ll be speaking at the OnMedia conference on February 3rd at 3:00pm here in NYC. Agenda.
We’re out at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego. Our official launch announcement went out yesterday morning, but I thought I’d wait until after our stage presentation this morning to post. You can watch it here - it’s about 5 minutes long. We’ve had some nice press coverage already.
We’re also excited to announce that we are live on two more great partner sites. CompSource is an electronics site and a member of the Internet Retailer 500. You can find TurnTo at the top of their pages under the search box. And Teavana is a specialty tea merchant. They’re using TurnTo on their individual product pages - scroll down a bit to see it.
With thanks to our core engineering team, Eric Pederson, John Rauchenberger, and Jan Vejsada, it gives me great pleasure to announce that TurnTo is live!
It’s also particularly great that our first partner is the Earthwatch Institute, where special thanks are due to Kathy Santos and John Jorgenson for making it happen.
It was about 10 months ago that I had some time on my hands and offered to design social features for the Earthwatch site. Earthwatch is a fabulous organization that enables regular folks to assist environmental scientists with their field research. After 37 years, Earthwatch has brought about 90,000 people on many hundreds of different research expeditions. And I cooked up a variety of site features to connect these people with each other. What proved harder was figuring out how to activate this group to promote Earthwatch to those who were thinking about an expedition but were not yet part of the community - and do this not on other sites, but on Earthwatch’s own site.
I was struck by how often, when I mentioned Earthwatch to people, they’d say, “I’ve been thinking about going on one of their expeditions for ages. What’s it like?” Turns out, lots of my friends - people I’d known for a long time - were interested in Earthwatch and just didn’t know that I was a potential source of information until I brought it up. That’s when the first light bulb went off: what Earthwatch needed was a way to tell prospective volunteers who among their friends are past volunteers. Then they’d naturally reach out and ask all those nagging questions. (Was the work hard? Were the crocodiles dangerous? Did you get to shower?…) If we could make that connection happen at just the right moment - when the prospect was considering an expedition - we could have a big, positive impact on conversion rates.
The second light bulb followed soon after: Earthwatch isn’t the only organization that can use this - it’s every organization where word-of-mouth plays a role in sales (i.e. just about every one!). And, in fact, if it’s structured as a unified network, the more organizations that use it, the more valuable it becomes for each of them. Therefore it made much more sense to approach this as an ASP offering that Earthwatch and others could all subscribe to than to build a one-off, silo’d application just for Earthwatch.
So, since they provided the initial spark that led to TurnTo, it’s particularly satisfying and appropriate that Earthwatch should be our first live partner. Thanks to Earthwatch, and Happy Birthday TurnTo!
