Archive for Сентябрь, 2011
It’s not a surprise for anyone that a number of female users on Web are growing day by day: women are considered to be the most important audience online across the world. They make many if not most household purchase decisions and are generally more responsible for word of mouth and social network sharing than men. There is no doubt in the fact that women are more integrated in social media life than men as they’re more interested in sharing and exchanging the information with each other concerning its feelings, occasions, news, products, brands and etc. Comscore says women are the majority of users of social networking sites and spend 30% more time on these sites than men. Aileen Lee shares her vision and latest figures on presence and female users’ activities they undertake in Web.
Russian female audience is also taking over web-spaces and already exceeds male audience. According to the latest marketing research conducted by RUmetrika, a number of female users has doubled for the last two years, while the female audience of glossy-online sites has increased up to 85% for the last year, and up 11% — for the last half-year. Besides it’s also well-researched that female’s online purchasing behavior has its significant differences from male’s intentions as we use Internet in our own way and can afford to make spontaneous purchases or simply perceive online-shopping is a kind of entertainment and the most interesting online-activity. According to the same research women are keen on buying online books, cosmetics, apparel and kid’s clothes.
A fresh version of StarLook is an updated service of online shopping community that accumulates all latest glamorous fashion trends, brands and responds to emerged women requirements and needs that they might have faced during a usual online-shopping process. As mostly women are interested in online-activities due to the possibilities it offers for communication we offer them to feel free and to be integrated into a variety of activities: starting from searching what other users or experts say about a particular apparel brand or other item to creating the content about this brand, including fashion looks for various occasions (that we call sets, video content and blog posts). Thus, such communication is an efficient tool for fashion and beauty brands to trace what was written, what kind of brand image and associations do consumers have in mind about these brands. It’s the easiest and effective approach for brands to work directly with female consumers and respond to emerging challenges or requests.
Such new approach underlies that we’ve very timely decided to transform and alter the concept and business model of Starlook.ru in order to improve the service and overcome the challenges. If earlier this project was mainly user-oriented and intended to establish a connection between professional models, photographers, stylists and brands as the last thing, a updated service represents profoundly distinctive approach – now Starlook.ru has become a brand-oriented project and that’s why we’re keep on going while other online-imitators are left behind. We can proudly say that we are first on the Russian market in the niche of social shopping, at the same time we could admit that StarLook has similar things with the largest Western shopping communities that are designed by Kaboodle and Polyvore. continue reading
Such announcement was made by Robert Shlegel’ – Member of Information Policy Chamber — who also proclaimed that a new means of providing the feedback would be firstly, tested on the web-site of the chamber and only after that on the State Duma website. Boris Grizlov, a current speaker of Russian’s State Duma considers that such initiate allows attracting a sufficient number of experts to the discussion process that would positively affect the quality of legislations. “We’re looking for public discussions and polls on federal, regional and local levels”, — the speaker stated.
Lately more and more government organizations and ministries have been established contacts with ordinary people via Web 2.0. Public audience has already criticized “Police” and “Education” bills, although experts admit that authorities hardly took into account people’s opinions and voice.
The idea of eGov Live project has emerged due to an enormous number of comments that were addressed to me: could you deliver the information about variety and locations of public services in a simple way? How does society itself benefit from these projects? Why is everything concerning public services so complicated? Why isn’t that clear what kind of public services do exist in different regions? These and others types of questions stuck into my mind and encouraged me to create a project that would be able to find answers for almost questions.
What’s new and interesting we’ve got in eGov Live? First and furthermost, we’ve made a map, where everyone is welcomed to evaluate the public services’ level (that differs in colors) in various Russian regions. This option was made to achieve two objectives: firstly, to capture the objective image of public services and secondly, to have an understanding what kind of services are already used by the society, which of them are the socially demanded.
Our second feature is providence of people’s rating system that represents a subjective evaluation of service quality made by each individually. We’ve decided to create a map in two modes to provide us with both data official version and people’s insight .
We also propose a useful service called «Officials in social network», where we’re collecting all social accounts and profiles of officials on Twitter, Facebook and others to facilitate information search of a particular officer in a region or according to its specialization. A wide list of civilian projects that was being collected in framework of Gov2People.ru is also introduced in our new project as well as we include all media stories that have connection to government presence in the Web. Within the framework of the project we’re going to conduct round tables and video conferences that would be open and free for everyone.
The most important project’s objective is to establish stable work and relations with regions and its ministries. We see eGov Live to become an integrated resource that will be the first to let people know about how e-government develops in this or that regions. Thus, the purpose of the project – to produce an efficient two-way communication tool that would be useful for both sides: those who develops eGov and those people who consume these services (the society).
At this stage we very appreciate your comments and feedback. We want to improve the level of eGov development in our country, so we rely on your support and knowledge. Share your opinion about this project. Thanks!!!
Anna Chebotareva (A.Ch.) My name is Anna Chebotareva and this is a program “Have an idea”. Today we are going to speak on how to present your startup to VC. My guest is Alena Popova. It’s difficult to count the amount of areas she is operating in, so it would be better for Alena to introduce herself.
Alena Popova (A.P.) My main project now is StartupAfisha – a single project to unite all of the startup-community. Starlook.ru project – a social shopping-platform – leader in that niche. We are going to update it soon and I’m really glad about it. Charityfair project – a charity project for children and positive news in that area. Gov2project.ru – a single entry point for eGov startups. And a list of other services. Now I’m positioning myself as an entrepreneur (doing my business by myself) but I’m not a CEO of that services. I travel a lot looking for startups, doing public announcments and developing Gov2Project, eGovernment and eDiplomacy and eOfficial areas.
A.Ch.: I believe that none of our audience will not have doubts that with such a large amount of projects Alena is a perfect candidate to answer the “How to present your startup to VC’s” question. You are saying that you are not in charge of managing your projects…
A.P. I’m managing financial and law objects but I’m not in charge of personnel and tactical tasks.
A.Ch. I’m sure that successful entrepreneur who “has grown” to a VC or an Angel had his own list of mistakes that could be avoided by young entrepreneurs.
A.P. I’m presenting a lot of projects to investors (as an entrepreneur) and most of mistakes are always the same. You shouldn’t say that your project is the best because it’s not true. You need to talk more general– that your project addresses specific problem. That your project responds to marketing challenges. You should know the market capital capacity and opportunities. When you are asked on the market you’d like to occupy you should answer in values but not in the market percentage. For example you know that cosmetics market worth $6mln and you should say that you want to occupy the share of 10% which is $600000. So the investors would understand that you are serious about your startup. continue reading
As you already know, I’m concerned with women entrepreneurship and interested in its development in our country. Recently I’ve shared my views and thoughts on this topis with Moder Russian resource.
Full article devoted to Russian women in business is available here. Your opinions, ideas on what perspectives women entrepreneurship has in your or our country are welcomed.