Girls In Tech

Girls in Tech San Francisco chapter Managing Director, Laura Slezinger was party to an exciting launch at Web 2.0 this week. Slezinger, and Girls in Tech are early adapters and on the forefront of new technology and tools. Girls in Tech San Francisco launched its new Facebook Page to be part of a beta testing round prior to the launch of Roost’s Social Marketing Platform. Slezinger, along with Star Varga of Vega Star Productions, and Restaurant owner Joe Hargrave of Tacolicious answered questions on a panel conducted by Chris Brubaker, VP of Marketing for Roost.

Press Release Follows:

ROOST REDUCES TIME SINK AND STRESS CAUSED BY SOCIAL MEDIA WITH NEW SOCIAL MARKETING PLATFORM FOR SMB

Free Social Marketing Tool for Individual Professionals and Small Businesses

First of its Kind Product, Solves the Biggest Headaches: What to Post and When

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – WEB 2.0 EXPO – March 29, 2011 – Roost (www.roost.com, @roost), a technology company committed to helping small business go social, announced its new social marketing platform for Facebook and Twitter at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today. The Roost freemium productivity tool helps businesses who rely heavily on word of mouth and referrals tap into the power of the social Web more efficiently and more effectively.

Roost solves the nagging problem all business owners face when thinking about social marketing, “what do I post and when do I post it?” To alleviate the stress and time-sink often caused by social media, Roost developed the Campaign Creator which helps professionals plan their social marketing activities in 20 minutes per week. With the Campaign Creator, a user can set the duration and content types (post, link, quote, etc.) for each campaign. Roost automatically provides customized recommendations on post type and frequency to match the length of the campaign and to deliver a variety of content for higher audience engagement.

In addition, Roost’s suggested content feature, a first in this category, solves the problem of what to post with direct access to articles, blogs, quotes and other original content. With the suggested content feature, Roost users can easily queue up content on a daily or weekly basis by accessing a dynamic library of content related to the user’s specific occupational sector and interests. Campaign Creator is also designed to build relationships and attract more business with The Roost Bar. When friends, fans or followers view a shared link, a small, branded bar appears above the article and allows audiences to immediately “like” the user’s Facebook Page.

“Roost Campaigns are critical to disseminating strategic content in an efficient and timely manner to our various Facebook Pages, Groups, and Twitter accounts,” said Laura Slezinger, Managing Director, San Francisco Girls in Tech. “And Roost Circles allows us to connect to our dozens of national and international chapters without having to coordinate manually for each post.”

Unlike existing publishing tools for social networks, Roost is inherently social. Roost Circles, announced today in Beta mode, is a way for SMBs and individual pros to band together with their closest business associates, and by request, share each other’s posts, providing branding and engagement opportunities across each other’s networks. Whether the circle includes employees, favorite customers or vendors, the technology capitalizes on the economically relevant concept that rising tides lift all boats.

“Roost was built for the restaurant, CPA or Realtor, who doesn’t want to spend 10 hours per week on online marketing. They know they need to be on Facebook and Twitter, but they aren’t sure what to do or how to start,” said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost. “Roost is a product for real people who have little to no time, aren’t fully up to speed on all the nuances of social marketing and live and die by referral business. And best of all, it’s free.”

To create real social marketing campaigns, stay top of mind with your existing customers, find new customers and grow your social network for free, sign up at www.roost.com.

Tags: facebook, laura slezinger, roost, roost marketing, San Francisco, Terra Khachooni, web 2.0 expo
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Female vs Male Marketing

Social media is quickly becoming extremely important when it comes to the success or failure of a business. Even so, the field is still very fresh, and a comprehensive understanding of how best to take advantage of social media has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. It is already quite clear that ideas which spread rapidly through social media can be used in order to promote a business, a particular organization or certain ideals. At the same time, it is not as easy to identify which ideas will spread rapidly through a group, and to what extent it is possible to facilitate this process. I am fairly new in my position as site manager for just 2 months. Nevertheless, in my field as a web hosting reseller it is certainly worth asking these questions. One question that certainly comes into mind for me lately is the question of how gender relates to social media. Are women more productive with social media than men are?

A straightforward, cut and dry answer to this question is probably impossible. Nevertheless, there is certainly some evidence to suggest that this might be the case. More than half of adult women participate in social media on a regular basis. A study conducted by RescueTime found that women spend about 6.43% of their time on social networks, while men spend about 3.96%. This would tend to indicate that women would, if nothing else, have more experience with the social networking interface.

Additionally, while men tend to outnumber women in some of the more obscure social media sites, and are tied with YouTube, they outnumber men on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Tagged. The fact that women tend to frequent the more commonly used social networking sites while men tend to use the more obscure ones might say something about how men and women interact. Men might be more likely to specialize and obsess over specific fields of interest, where women are more interested in general human discussion.

Young women can be expected to be especially fluent in the “language” of social media. Seventy-three percent of women in the “millennial” generation (currently aged 18 to 26), frequent social media at least twice a week. Only 62% of women in “Generation X” can say the same. Only 46% of baby boomers and 30% of the elderly visit social media over twice a week. The top three niche that women thrive in as social media influencers are entertainment, food, health and wellness. The vast majority of them use it for personal relationships (75%) and communication.

What all of this says about productivity is hard to identify. But in our commission model, it is fairly obvious that the topic in question could have a significant effect on whether women would tend to be more effective than men. Businesses hoping to spread awareness or commercialize a product would probably do better working with more women than men.

It might be fair to say that while men may be more likely to be able to identify the best web hosts, women are far more likely to understand how to spread the news and sell it. The evidence seems to suggest that women are generally more skilled at contacting people, communicating with them, and spreading messages than men. It should go without saying, of course, that the skills any given individual has should be evaluated on a person by person basis, rather than on the basis of the performance of the group.

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Yesterday at  Web 2.0′s  Startup Showcase, we caught up with the winner of our Girls in Tech/Vator.tv AMPLIFY pitch competition, Tripping.  They had a strong showing at their demo table, where Jen O’Neal, the co-founder and CEO, was present to give visitors an overview of their wonderful service.

Tripping is “a global network of travelers who believe cultural exchange makes the world a better place.”  Their members connect with each other to get travel tips, shared cups of coffee and even home stays, or exchanges as Ms. O’Neal calls them. Tripping is safe, free and good for the world.  Having done a remarkable 200 exchanges herself (yes, I said 200!), she has been on both sides of the exchange model, so knows first-hand how beneficial it can be.  Formerly living in London, she recounted how hosting several German colleagues gave her an increased awareness and perspective on how her German counterparts conduct business.

Another exciting option on Tripping.com which is in the works is their Travel Center.  Yet to be unveiled, this will be a place on their website where travelers will be able to do everything from book their next home stay to finding information about a new location to buying a much-needed backpack while at their new host country.

We encourage you to keep checking back at their website for this and other exciting new happenings at Tripping!  (P.S. And, yes, they are hiring!)

Other companies participating in the Startup Showcase, (just to name a few), included:

Ifeelgoods.com

The Email Game

Keepsy

Sparkbuy

Project Noah

SpeakerText

And, the winner of the Audience Choice First Place Award:

Room 77

Tags: Startup Showcase, Tripping, web 2.0
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Today, CapLinked, the social platform for private investing, has announced exponential growth of its platform with over $1 billion now available in potential investment activity. In addition, the company has seen a 160% increase in users since Jan 1 2011, with a total of 5,500 dealmakers, investors and entrepreneurs now on the platform. This news comes on the heels of CapLinked’s angel funding totaling $900k, led by PayPal alums Peter Thiel, Dave McClure, Joe Lonsdale and Aman Verjee as well as David Anderson of 7th Rig.

Caplinked is LinkedIn-meets-Salesforce for private investment. When it comes to connecting companies, advisors, and investors, CapLinked performs like LinkedIn by tapping the power of the expanded social graph to make it easier, safer, and more efficient for people to find each other and build relationships.  When it comes to making private investments, CapLinked functions like Salesforce to securely manage the process of capital raising, due diligence, closings, and company reporting.

“This rapid growth shows that investors and businesses need a platform to connect – and it is happening now on CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-Salesforce for private investing,” said Eric Jackson, CEO of CapLinked and former PayPal Vice President. “In addition, our new CRM tools will help identify potential deals, share information and get the right deals done faster.”

The first wave of deals are now beginning to close on CapLinked. Web startup CritiqueIt and film production firm Peninsula Entertainment are among the first companies to raise capital on the platform.

“We started CapLinked because private investing is a trillion dollar a year business that is still using old, inefficient technology. Private companies have been stuck in the 1995 email-and-spreadsheet mindset for too long,” said CapLinked COO Christopher Grey. “Our mission is to bring innovation in the form of social, cloud based, secure software to the world of private investment. We want to give investors, advisors, and companies the tools they need to better manage making connections and handling deal flow, due diligence, closings, and company reporting.”

Today, CapLinked also debuts its new CRM (customer relationship management) tools to make it easier for companies and investors to share private deals and company updates with key contacts. Key upgrades include:

• Importing and tagging contacts for sharing deals and sending company updates
• Creating user-defined tags (e.g., “tech angels” or “bio-tech investors”) for contacts and notes that make it easier to manage sharing private deals  and company updates
• Syncing with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail
• Searching and browsing companies and people on CapLinked by industry, role (e.g. investors, advisor, company officer), name, or key word

For more information about CapLinked and the new deal-sharing tools, visit www.caplinked.com. Also, please make sure to check out CapLinked’s blog where you will find articles discussing due diligence, leveraging your network and raising capital.

Follow me @AlliStrouse

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In a discussion revolving around passion for innovation, Mark Zuckerberg was asked several questions by Sen. Orrin Hatch in front of a crowd at the Brigham Young campus — all questions which had been submitted via the BYU Facebook page.   Specifically, the theme was based on having a passion for your product which allows businesses to succeed.

One of the questions provoked a discussion on which climates or environments promote said innovation.  To this, Zuckerberg replied:

“…we believe there will be much better services for all the people who use Facebook if millions of people around the world can develop those services.” This ties to many of the company’s efforts to facilitate experimentation on the Platform, such as its Girls in Tech developer garage and college hackathons, and his own commitment to improving math, sciences, and technology education.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Thanks for the shout-out, Mark & Josh!

(quote via: insidefacebook.com)

Tags: Developers, facebook, innovation, Mark Zuckerberg, passion
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Girls in Tech, San Francisco is migrating their Facebook presence from Groups to Pages. As early adapters, Girls In Tech was first to join Facebook anduse social media in a real way to grow their network and online presence. Facebook has made some changes (and continues to make changes) and it is important to fall in line with where Facebook and social media is taking us. Please follow us on www.facebook.com/GirlsInTech.SanFrancisco as we will have great content for you to pull from for you Pages and of course, stay updated with Events. Groups will still be a place to connect and is a wonderful arena to have private interaction with your members, however as Facebook focuses on building out Pages, it is essential to understand the importance of have a robust Facebook Page.

In reading Mashable’s article how Social is Turning Search on its Head, I realized that although many of us are on Facebook, we may still need to understand how powerful of a tool it can be. And, with all of the changes Facebook makes, it can be hard to keep up.

Reasons why to have a Facebook Page:

• Facebook Pages are indexed by Google (among other engines)
• Pages are Public, anyone can “like” your Page and follow you without adding as a friend
• It is easier to get someone to “like” a Page than to “join” a Group (joining sounds much more like a commitment)
• You don’t have to accept a friendship to have fans or followers, they can feel connected to you through Pages
• Pages are crawled as a stand alone website, sites with engagement receives a higher value and will rise to the top of Search Engines over static sites
• Everyone should have a Page, there are people who are looking for jobs and are using Pages as a way to showcase themselves, independent contractors, social media consultants, as well as restaurants, boutiques, nail salons, bars, etc. Companies are using Pages for brand and image (ex. pictures of non profit work, creating an identity through personal interaction, etc.)
• Savvy social marketers understand that followers do not want to be “broadcast at” but are engaged in a dialogue with people
• Facebook is building out it’s analytics for Pages, including Insights and Feedback
• Pages are cross marketing with each other and growing their reach
• Facebook is investing heavily to make Pages the best business presence on the web

To all Girls In Tech Groups, it is worth your while to start focusing efforts to Pages. Social Media Examiner recently talks about How to Optimize your Facebook Page and discusses Why Most Businesses Get Facebook Wrong. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. Facebook used to offer a way to migrate to your Page, but it seems they have stopped this option. If anyone knows of a way to migrate a Group to a Page, please let us know! And don’t forget to connect your Facebook account to your Twitter account so you can further your reach. Roost.com makes it easy for you to post once to multiple pages and multiple accounts. – Terra Khachooni

Tags: facebook, laura slezinger, Pages, roost, San Francisco, Terra Khachooni
Posted in Girls In Tech | 1 Comment »

Well, when our founder sent me the link to this infographic there was only one word in my mind …Finally!  Positive proof (which we all already knew )  that the female in tech ratios are changing for the better!  We wanted to share it with you, and welcome your comments :: Please feel free to leave one below — Especially want to hear from any men in our audience.  What do you think?  Good representation of the facts?  We want to hear it –  Go ahead; congratulate us!  Seriously, though, what I love about this it is shows progress.  Also, serious congratulations to Socialcast for putting this together.  Please read on.  And click here for their original post.

(infographic/photo credit: Socialcast®, used with permission)

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Editor’s Note:  We’re so glad to call her one of our own:  Formerly of our Austin Girls in Tech chapter, SXSW also brought the revealing of the exciting Startup Visa, chronicled here in our Guest post by Kristine Gloria.

Start Up Visa Revamped

By Kristine Gloria

Amidst the start-up chatter, the Girls in Tech party and the Mashable 2011 SXSWi House, emails were also buzzing back and forth as U.S. legislators Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) & Sen. Richard Lugar (R – Ind.) reintroduced legislation to revive the Startup Visa Act last week. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D – NY) introduced a companion legislation to the House on March 21, 2011.

Yes, while everyone celebrated the intersection of technology, new media, booze and entrepreneurship in Austin, Texas, D.C. tied one on with a revised version of the Act.

The bill is designed to encourage partnerships between U.S. investors and immigrants; benefiting the national economy by attracting (and in some cases retaining) innovators to the country. Key points to the bill include:

• A foreign national living abroad will be given a startup visa if he can raise $100,000 from a U.S. investor to start a business. Two years later, the startup must have created five new American jobs and either have raised over $500,000 in financing or be generating more than $500,000 in yearly revenue.
• Resident immigrants already in the country via an employer-sponsored H-1B visa or a recent graduate from a U.S. university in math or science, and has an annual income of at least $60,000 along with $20,000 from a U.S. investor
• Foreign entrepreneurs whose business has generated at least $100,000 in sales from the U.S.  Two years later, the startup must have created three new American jobs and either have raised over $100,000 in financing or be generating more than $100,000 in yearly revenue.

Investors must be a qualified venture capitalist, a “super angel” or a qualified government entity. Backers of this bill include Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Dave McClure etc.

So, why is this important to you?

The bill affects the entire start-up ecosystem from entrepreneur, to business owner to investor.

If you’re a woman entrepreneur, this type of legislation opens up the opportunity to expand your workforce and to seek yet another avenue for investment. For graduate students and foreign entrepreneurs, the bill affords you the chance to remain within the U.S. and to potentially start your own business. Qualified woman investors may also find this bill helpful when seeking new start-ups and/or retaining current talent.

Women-owned businesses now total more than 10.1 million firms and employ more than 13 million people. This bill only encourages further growth for women if taken advantage of appropriately.

For further information, feel free to check out the following posts in TechCrunch, the WSJ and or Reuters.

More importantly, if you are an entrepreneur, business owner and/or, please visit the Start Up Visa Tumblr and tell us what you think.

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I came across Aileen Lee’s recent article in Tech Crunch, Why Women Rule the Internet, and I was so happy to see that someone has brought together the facts that prove that women do rule the internet.

Aileen Lee writes why Women Rule the Internet

As we’re witnessing a generation of consumer web companies growing at an unprecedented rate in terms of both user adoption and revenue, we are learning that it is the women who are driving the adoption numbers. Some quick facts for you:

• Comscore says women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men
• Mobile social network usage is 55% female according to Nielsen.
• According to Gilt Groupe, women are 70% of the customer base and they drive 74% of revenue.
• 77% of Groupon’s customers are female according to their site.
• According to the US Census Bureau, women oversee over 80% of consumer spending, or about $5 trillion dollars annually.
• Women control the purse strings when it comes to disposable income.
• Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, has talked about how women are not only the majority of its users, but drive 62% of activity in terms of messages, updates and comments, and 71% of thedaily fan activity.
• Women have 8% more Facebook friends on average than men, and spend more time on the site.
• According to an early Facebook team member, women played a key role in the early days by adopting three core activities—posting to walls, adding photos and joining groups—at a much higher rate than males.
• The titan of social gaming,Zynga, says 60% of players are female.
• According to Yelp, while half of their traffic is male, the majority of contributors and ecommerce purchasers are female.

The list of stats could go on and on, but I think you get the picture!

This reminded me of my current work with Technovation where we take 50 girls from high schools in SF and expose them to the Computer Science field. They will eventually develop their own App and pitch it to Venture Capitalists. The fearless leader and teacher of Technolovation is Omoju Miller, a Phd student at UC Berkely and a Graduate Researcher at Berkeley Expert Systems Technology Lab. Since day one of class at Technovation, Omoju has stressed that women need to be behind technology because we know what women want. The facts shown above prove Omoju’s point.  One class, Omoju pointed out all of the different apps that women want to have – how to get dressed, what makeup to wear – do we want a man designing this? No. Would you have a guy do your makeup? We need women in technology so women can get the products they need.

Lee’s article started me day off right because it made me feel just good for being of the female gender. Lee writes: “Women are thought to be more social, more interested in relationships and connections, better at multi-tasking…The theoretical limit of how many people with whom one can maintain stable relationships (thought to be 150).  But Dunbar’s most recent research shows there are different numbers for women than men—that women are able to maintain quantitatively more relationships within every ring of closeness than men.  Knowing that is an important factor if you want to build and stoke social network effects.  More female users will likely help your company grow faster.”

Great, so we are more social, interesting, better mutli-taskers, and can hold more relationships at the same level of closeness than men. When I think about this, it all seems to be spot on. I know so many women who are able to have a job, two kids and still post photos and send status updates on Facebook. I know tons of successful women who shop on Gilt and take a few minutes to send an email to friends “Herve Leger on sale at Gilt today – don’t’ miss it!”  It seems to me that my girlfriends don’t mind “liking” a ton of my photos on Facebook — we are women, we “like” things, a.k.a. We think they are cute or they make us go “ahhh, so adorable!”…..men, they are more black and white.

In addition to a laundry list of accomplishments, Lee is an investor in early stage consumer internet. As she states in the article, “Do you have women in key positions? If you’re planning on targeting female customers, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to have great women on your team.”  Yes, now we know that the VCs are looking for women when they consider and investment because we all know that we market best to a demographic that we belong to. It is articles like Lee’s and organizations like Technovation where we are able to spread the word that Women in Technology is not only a great concept but it is a necessary reality.

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Today is World Water Day!  So, we thought, what better time to announce our San Francisco Bay-based project.  In our ongoing efforts to volunteer our time in the Bay Area, (and for those who were unable to join our March event), GIT Gives Back in April will take us outdoors for Earth Day!

Please Join Girls in Tech SF for:

CSPF’s 14^th Annual Earth Day Restoration and Cleanup

Earth Day 2011, April 16th – Candlestick Point Park

What we will be doing:

We’ll be participating in one or more of the following:

• In Community Garden: gopher-proof garden boxes and rehab older boxes with new redwood boards.
• Wind screen painting and graffiti removal
• Install native plants in Day Use Area
• Spread decomposed granite on foot trails in day use area.
• Clean up shoreline

So, please come out and join us as we help restore one of the areas most prominent park landmarks — We hope to see you there!

To Register: email:  sanfrancisco@girlsintech.net or Laura@girlsintech.net

[Car pools will be organized.   Please let us know if you would like to participate in one when you register.]

Posted in San Francisco, santa cruz, Silicon Valley | 1 Comment »