Apollo 13 put Blockbuster out of business and landed Nextflix on the moon: “Blockbuster, We Have a Problem.” In 2000, Netflix CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings approached Blockbuster about a partnership. Unfortunately for Blockbuster, their CEO just smiled and laughed at him. In fact, Blockbuster even had a chance to purchase Netflix for $50 million. Netflix…
Did you know the Oxford Dictionary named “Selfie” as the 2013 word of the year? Instant messaging technology has changed the way we communicate. It’s efficient, but there is nothing unique about it about it anymore. When things get boring, they receive less attention, which opens up doors for new companies to steal marketshare. Not by…
Fun fact: Yang and Filo added the exclamation point to the end of Yahoo! because “Yahoo” was already trademarked by a company that produced BBQ sauce. Yahoo!, a public company (YHOO) that was founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and later incorporated in March 1995 (that’s four years before Google was…
Yelp, a publicly traded company (YELP) was founded by Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons in 2004. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Yelp aims to help consumers connect with local businesses. The company’s rating system (5 star reviews) and filtering options make it easy for consumers to find the perfect place to eat…
Did you know there is an official foursquare day? It’s celebrated every year on April 16th (4^2 = 16). Get it? Ever curious why they called it foursquare and not third or fifth square? foursquare is a location-based social networking app for mobile devices. Users can browse nearby locations by: best nearby, specials, food, nightlife, coffee, shopping, outdoors…
From dispatch software to podcasts to Larry the bird. Twitter (TWTR), founded in March 2006, is a an online social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send “tweets” that are limited to 140 characters, including hashtags (#). The company went public on November 6, 2013 at $26.00 on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Even…
Who was the most popular male artist(s) on Spotify in 2013? Before you read this post, think back to how you used to listen to music. Now think, how you used to run with your tunes – skip, skip, skip. Spotify is a commercial music streaming service that was founded in Stockholm, Sweden by Daniel…
Google, the worlds largest search engine, was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998 while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. The company later went public in August 2004. From the beginning, their mission statement was to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. In December 2013, Alexa…
Consumers can now discover homes instantly, even before their agent. Zillow is an online real estate company that was founded in 2005 by Rich Barton (founder of Expedia & co founder of glassdoor and Lloyd Frink in Seattle, Washington. The company is currently CEO’d by Spencer Rascoff.. Zillow makes it easy for house hunters and renters…
Most people are familiar with the brand Godaddy, but few could actually describe what the company does. Their evolution from just a domain registrar, combined with their “what the heck” marketing philosphy has left many of us scratching our heads. Blake Irving, GoDaddy’s CEO, admits, “never has a company had as big a gap between what the…