#smashsummit

A few weeks ago I attended Smash Summit in NYC held at Microsoft and produced by 500 startups, with .CO as one of the main sponsors. The one-day conference featured top startups with speakers discussing platform strategies, tactics, and tips on attracting customers. Although I missed the morning sessions featuring executives from Youtube, Foursquare, Facebook and others, I came across other companies and took home some great advice:   Billy Chasen, Founder and CEO of Turntable.fm noted that the best way to acquire users is through the product itself. As the first truly social music network with over 625,000 users in over three months, the CEO admit that it was all due to word of mouth publicity, not your typical press release pitch. Turntable wanted to first target the community that loves music before anyone else; Chasen advised that you need to find the right crowd for your product at the right time. If you treat your core product as always evolving, there’s no such thing as the product “getting old.” Keep it fresh, add some features if you need and stay true to making a better user experience. Stew Langille, CEO of Visual.ly expressed that in social media, people look for the stuff they want to share with friends, and infographics are a great way to do that. Publishers have grown 12% using visualizations compared to 1% of those who have not. You can use infographics for company presentations, to drive page views on your personal blog, impress clients and educate people, and of course don’t forget to give credit where it’s due! Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP, talked about customer acquisition through gamification. Gamification is a huge trend, from the foursquare badges to the various leaderboards on Facebook and smart phones. A few key takeaways:

Guide the user- having an instruction that says “Click the tile” vs. “Click the tile (with picture of an arrow pointing to the tile)” showed that users were more engaged with the latter. EX) Turbotax deconstructs and walks you through filling out your taxes quickly and efficiently.

Think in loops- sites like Autocorrect, Twitter and Formspring are examples of sites that loop information back.

Create friendly competition- Linkedin, for example, shows users how many connections they have made (similar to how many Facebook friends one has), but rather than having it be a popularity contest, the site makes it so that users who rack up over 500 connections are all equally classified as “500+” so that everyone is happy.

Make things fun- post interesting and relevant content on your company’s Facebook page, make your product appealing and competitive in some form so that users will be more included to engage.

Overall there were some great tips to take away for one’s own company and product. The night ended with an inspiring speech from .CO’s very own Vice President, Lori Anne Wardi, who discussed .CO’s emerging influence in the domain world in spite of ICANN’s recent announcement to release all domains to the public. The night ended on a fun note with an after party hosted by .CO at INC lounge; one lucky person won an iPod shuffle and 50% off a .co name.

Shira Palka