iliketotallyblogit

We’ve Moved; Please Stop by our New Home

2008-10-13T21:26:00.005+01:00

The i like totally love it blog has evolved and is now at http://blog.iliketotallyloveit.com.

If you've subscribed to this blog please subscribe to our new rss feed here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/iliketotallyloveit.

So much is going on here expect to see more posts in the near future.

Image: ahhyeah

Problems with email verification

2008-08-26T17:59:00.001+01:00

It came to our attention that some people have had some problems with signing up for iliketotallyloveit.com. The verification email didn't show up in some people's inbox. Please make sure that you also check your junk or spam folders. We are working on fixing the problem and hopefully our emails will be going straight to your inbox where they belong.

“Most Important German Web Founders”

2008-08-26T17:54:00.003+01:00

Deutsche-Startups, the biggest blog about internet startups based in Germany, had a poll to find the most important German founders and, to my surprise, I made the top 50. And there is even more. In the category “internationality” I landed on the 12th rank. Thanks!

Since we are already talking about top 50s.... All-Things-Internet included us in their list of "50 Successful Social Media Sites You've Never Heard Of." I hope we won't be unheard of in their eyes for too long.

Polyvore or iliketotallyloveit.com? Who Would Kick Ass?

2008-08-04T18:24:00.002+01:00

Did you ever hear about WhoWouldKickAss.com? We didn't either until today when we learned that they put us in a match against Polyvore.

In case you would like to vote:

Who do I think would kick ass?
"Iliketotallyloveit.com"

Created by Datepad

iliketotallyloveit.com on Lifestream.fm

2008-07-04T19:48:00.004+01:00

Are you into the new thing called lifestreaming (aka social aggregators)? Well, the German startup Lifestream.fm offers such a service (don’t worry, they do have an English version). You can publish your activity from all your favorites services there. It also let’s you display your favorite items from iliketotallyloveit.com.

Go check it out! It’s fun. I just played around with it and you can check out my page here and follow me.

A review on Geeksugar.com

2008-06-20T16:57:00.005+01:00

The very cool blog GeekSugar wrote a nice review about us. Here is what they say:

What would you get if Digg and SugarLoving fell madly in love with ShopStyle and they got married and had babies? You'd get I Like Totally Love It, which uses a Digg-like interface to display the weird and awesome products found by its users.

These are not just sort-of-cool tchotchkes that make OK eye candy, this is a nuts display of material — check out these Gangly Black Gloves and the Cupcake Necklace that were just waiting for me on the homepage. Filter through the categories to check out things the Internet hasn't shown you yet, and vote them up like you would on SugarLoving.

And what about that name? I like totally love it!

(I had to say it.)

Thanks so much. Another review can be found on NextGreatThing.com.

iliketotallyloveit makes Time's Top 50 List

2008-06-17T17:27:00.004+01:00

StumbleUpon did it. LinkedIn did it. Lala, Twitter and Yapta did it. ImTooYoungForThis did it, too. They all made Time's Top 50 list last year. But that was then, and this is now. And now it's our turn: For 2008, Time picked www.iliketotallyloveit.com as one of the coolest 50 Web sites. We are pleased, we are flattered, and we love the company of sites like Gasbuddy, Omiru, WikiTravel, YahooAnswers, or Zeer in our category (Advice & Facts).

Time calls it

...our best and most comprehensive [list] yet ... that will ... keep you up to date with what matters.

Thanks for the kudos. It feels good to matter. Says Time:

Social shopping is a buzz phrase you'll be hearing a lot about soon. To see it in action, head to www.iliketotallyloveit.com.

Check out the listing on Time.com.

And don't forget to put in your vote.

Update

2008-06-14T22:41:00.001+01:00

You will have noticed a few small changes on the site.

The profile pages have been completely redone with bigger pictures, new ways to share what you love and more. You can edit and update your profile.

Now when you are posting a product, you can also list the exact prices as well as give kudos to the blog where you stumbled across the product, if that's the case. Go ahead and check it out while posting something.

There has also been an another nice review of iliketotallyloveit.com on orangeinks.com.
Besides this you might want to check our blog again on Monday, because we have pretty cool news coming up.

Mashable is starting to really like our name!

2008-06-04T22:41:00.004+01:00

A little longer than a year ago we were on Mashable.com for the first time and Pete Cashmore wasn’t to fond of our name (and our site):

I’m unimpressed, and that ridiculous name doesn’t help.

We liked our name and so did others.

Kristen Nicole wrote about us late last year, but didn’t share her thaughts about our name.

Today Alana Taylor wrote a post about us and is now officially iliketotallyloveit.com’s favorite Mashable editor. Why? She gets the name (as well as the service) and why it’s good:

What sets ILikeTotallyLoveIt apart from all the various shopping social networks, such as ThisNext and DealBundle, is not only its catchy domain name but the fact that it is not constrained by rigid labels.

Thanks, Alana! We finally feel understood.

Blacklisted by Digg!

2008-05-08T11:00:00.004+01:00

We, iliketotallyloveit.com, now carry the dubious distinction of being blocked, banned and blacklisted by Digg. The verdict? Spam, dammit! As a social shopping site with a growing community behind us, we are acutely aware of this problem, so we take the allegation seriously and apologize to Digg users who might have been inconvenienced.

However, we also think that Digg’s approach to this issue is heavy handed (c’mon, a brief note to our tech. support could have resolved this with dignity) and reveals cognitive dissonances between the claims of online democracy and the decidedly more dictatorial reality.

We inquired with Digg Support and share their reply with a few thoughts and annotations. (Digg’s statement and passages from their FAQ and ToS in italics.)

Why?

The [iliketotallyloveit.com] domain has been consistently reported by the Digg community as a spam site and a news middle man site.

What do you consider “spam” and a “news middleman”?

When submitting content to Digg, please link directly to the originating source of that content. Blog posts are fine, as long as they're not plagiarized and don't just summarize the content. However, if any URL within Digg is consistently flagged as spam by the Digg community, that URL may be blocked from future submissions.

Yes, iliketotallyloveit.com links to online merchandisers who sell the products that users post on our site with their own reviews, comments and notes, thus adding value to the original source. If this qualifies as spam, Digg would need to shut out thousands of other sites, otherwise blackballing iliketotallyloveit would look arbitrary, right?

We didn’t think they’d be so rude, so we submitted postings from Reddit, del.icio.us, buzz.yahoo.com, mister-wong.com, lifestream.fm, twitter.com, netvibes.com, mixx.com, popurls.com, stumbleupon.com and from social shopping sites like buzzillions.com, crowdstorm.com, epinions.com, kaboodle.com, osoyou.com, shopstyle.com, stylefeeder.com, stylehive.com, thisnext.com, wishpot.com, zebo.com, wists.com. It worked every time, so our originating sources can’t be the reason for the ban.

Could it be voting envy?

Another reason might be that we too allow users to vote for their favorite products. In our early days we were often labeled a Digg clone, which didn’t thrill us, because it dismisses our focus on community-driven online shopping. Again, we gave them the benefit of the doubt and submitted content to Digg from other services that at one time or another were anointed Digg clones like sk-rt.com, meneame.net, bringr.com, videobomb.com, diglog.com, yigg.de, dzone.com, sportsflip.com, hugg.com, sphinn.com, deals.com, newsheat.com, agentb.com, dealigg.com, pixelgroovy.com, scoreguru.com, videosift.com, urlbump.com, tubigg.com, vroomr.net, playgroundbaby.com. And none of these sites appeared to be blocked.

What constitutes “abuse”?

Reading Digg’s FAQ stokes the suspicion that it is ridiculously easy to report anything or anyone as offensive or abusive.

If you encounter abuse, please email us at abuse@digg.com. Please be sure to include the URL of the page where you found the … abuse occurring and any other pertinent details.

For the past 12+ months we tracked 60 submissions to Digg from our domain. That works out to approximately five per month, on average. If that qualifies as abuse, you probably haven’t opened your inbox in a while.

So who’s calling the shots?

When submitted domains are consistently reported as spam, the domain is blocked from further submission. Unblocking the domain is not in line with the interests of the Digg community.

Really? Listen up, community: Digg knows best what’s in line with your interests. But then again, they don’t really need your interests and complaints to block domains, remove content or whole accounts. From the ToS:

Digg may remove any Content and Digg accounts at any time for any reason (including, but not limited to, upon receipt of claims or allegations from third parties or authorities relating to such Content), or for no reason at all.

To circle back to the beginning, a quote from How Digg Works:

Digg is democratizing digital media. As a user, you participate in determining all site content by discovering, selecting, sharing, and discussing the news, videos, and podcasts that appeal to you.

Reviewing the facts, as they are known to us, we cannot help but think that Digg is slightly disingenuous with their claims and handles complaints arbitrarily, thus undermining the community concept and their own credibility.

But that’s just us. What do you think?

A Tweet

2008-05-07T13:53:00.002+01:00

We couldn't have said it any better!

Not blocked in China ... yet.

2008-04-27T14:20:00.001+01:00

While we are doing some spring cleaning here at iliketotallyloveit.com (changes coming soon) Martin is in Beijing, China attending the First International Conference on Symbolic Computation and Cryptography. Why am I mentioning this? Well, he just sent me a message saying that iliketotallyloveit.com is NOT blocked in China. I guess that is a good thing, right?

San Francisco: Pretty, Pricey

2008-03-31T23:11:00.007+01:00

The steep hills of San Francisco aren’t just challenging for parking, they are synonymous for the steep climb start-up companies are facing in a place that’s perfect for surfing and riding bicycles and, as we have learned, for growing a business. Fellow entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, industry analysts, social events, conferences, it all happens in this neighborhood. However, there are many competitors in the race for funds, so you have to run fast to get there first. And while you do that as a frugal startup artist, you’ll be spending some bucks.

Rents are outrageous. $3,000 for a two-bedroom apartment in a decent area of the city is the norm. Service providers like PR agencies are plenty, but most of them aren’t looking for cash-strapped clients. If you have budget, you’re OK, but if your prescribed monthly burn rate for the entire operation is $10,000, you better get used to the thought of raising more cash or sending out press releases yourself.

Clocks are ticking faster, too. Not just those of the old-fashioned parking meters, where a quarter of an hour seems to have only 12 minutes, but also the clock that determines the cycle of cool new business models. You have to be alert and proactive or you look old in a hurry. The fact that your site offers social networking hardly getting you attention, because a lot of others are doing it, too. Here, a good idea never lives underground for long. And once others see the merit, they take it, they shake it, they spin it and tweak it to make it into the next big thing. Invigorating and challenging.

Luckily, there are escapes. At the bar of the posh St. Regis Hotel, next door to the Museum of Modern Art, we connected with David Silverman, a colleague from the early days of electronic commerce at Intershop, who now is with Aggregate Knowledge, a company that connects consumers to hot products, interesting content and cool items. Joining us was Michelle Gildersleeve, who also worked at Intershop and now is with a small outfit called Oracle;-)

For some exercise we climbed the steps from Levis Plaza, the home of the original 501 to the urban oasis of Telegraph Hill and descended down the west side into North Beach http://www.sfnorthbeach.org/index.html, San Francisco’s Little Italy, right next to Chinatown. It’s a Bohemian and touristy part of the City, which at one point or another served as a hangout for Marilyn Monroe and Joe Di Maggio, and of course, the titan of the Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac.

It was here that Kerouac got inspired for his seminal novel On the Road, which he wrote in 1951, in only three weeks, typing it out on a 120-foot scroll. Caffé Trieste, City Lights Books and the colorful corner of Grant and Green–not just a tribute to the famous jazz guitarist–are a few other places you should keep on your short list next time you visit.

As for us, we will be back soon.

Fishin' For Funds

2008-03-25T01:27:00.007+01:00

After so much education it was time to get the lay of the land. Beginning in the 1960s, the orchards of Santa Clara Valley morphed into Silicon Valley–into office buildings, strip malls, and parking lots. In other words: a concrete jungle. But when you drive by Apple, Google, Yahoo, Cisco, or HP, it is easy to feel the rush by thinking about the possibilities. Steve, Sergey & Larry, or Jerry, they all once were in our shoes. Consequently, every other person you encounter on the street is, was, or will be involved in a startup.

We had a few more meetings on the calendar that day, so we hit El Camino south to Mountain View, to look around (and dream big). Gas was cheap – by European standards – and roads were wide, but not necessarily pristine. Some stretches along the freeways were filthy with garbage and often the pavement was loose or rutted from years of relentless traffic. To avoid the sticky spots, log on to Metropolitan Transport Commission or call 5-1-1 for free, real-time traffic updates. Inevitably, the road took us past the Postal Annex, a place that is useful in more than one way, as Malte found out.

Later, on the campus of San Jose State, we met Jan Beckers, a German Web entrepreneur, who despite his youth already has founded several, businesses. Jan is spending a few months in the area to get inspired for his next venture before he is moving to Shanghai, “to connect the dots, from Germany, to Silicon Valley, to China.”

As we worked our way back toward San Francisco we also met a funding consultant – @ Starbucks, of course. It was a nice and informal conversation, a friendly ping-pong of questions and answers. There were no commitments or promises, however a few days later we received a retainer agreement for the consultant’s services during completion of seed, Series A and Series B funding, which included a three-day coaching session, set-up of investor meetings and assistance with term sheet and close.

This retainer was followed by a warrant to buy shares of common stock in iliketotallyloveit.com, which turned out invalid for our current form of corporation. This can get really confusing, really fast. How do you value shares in your own company? How many shares would you even want to sell at such an early stage? There are no patent answers, but a mistake here will get expensive later on. Click around to get an idea about the issues and know where you can call for advice before the dance gets hot.

It was a long day and we were in no mood for commute traffic, so we picked Tandoori Oven, an Indian fast-food joint in P.A. to unwind. Little did Malte know that the hardest piece of work was still ahead of him: Parking on Russian Hill, one of the steeper inclines in all of San Francisco. It’s like parking in Paris, except that you can’t push the cars in front or behind you to make more room, because all drivers in this town curb their wheels. Religiously. How did he do? See below (photographed with a spy cam). If you are a sucker for tight-parking videos, here is your fix.

In the final instalment of this four-part blog series you'll learn about wild parrots and Kerouac’s old haunts, plus you'll meet some Valley veterans with ties to a company that started more than online shopping.

Left Coast Journey

2008-03-14T20:00:00.011+01:00

Downtown San Francisco, 7 a.m. on a Tuesday in March. What a grand time to see the city, stretching, yawning, waking up. The streets were empty, the parking was plenty and the meters did not yet scream for money. The weather was clear and the sun was not just an option. Winter as you know it simply doesn’t happen here. By noon we’d be in shirtsleeves.

Only the early birds in need of their Java drifted into Café Algiers on Beale, arguably the best café and coffee in this part of town. I was standing at the curb, sipping cappuccino and waiting for Malte in his little red rental. Up to that point we were “digital” colleagues, who had worked together across nine time zones. Now we were about to find out how closely photos match reality. A red Versa zipped by, but it didn’t pull over. Then the phone rang. “Uhm, I think I just passed you…” Yes, you did.

But streets in grid patterns don’t require GPS navigation, so a minute later we shook hands and hit 101 South, heading to Palo Alto, for our first meeting in the Valley. Although the notorious commute traffic wasn’t bad, we decided to take 280 to avoid the slow patches around SFO. Malte showed some German driving finesse while getting the hang of operating a car that has no clutch pedal.

Except for a dead Daimler on the off-ramp at Page Mill Road, there was nothing to slow us down. Hence we showed up early for the OpenCoffee Meetup at Deuce France, a French bakery near the Stanford campus. College kids behind MacBooks, moms behind strollers … nobody looked like they were looking for investors. Could it be that we were we the only ones?

Finally we found the meetings’ host, Keith Teare, sitting outside, by himself, quite casual. We introduced ourselves and business cards changed hands. Indeed, iliketotallyloveit was the only outfit present, so finally, we were in the spotlight;-) Then it was time to sit still and listen to a serial entrepreneur who started in the UK with cScape in the 1980s and never stopped. Among many other ventures he was also involved with VeriSign, edgeio, and Techcrunch. Currently he’s president at fotonauts, a new company he declined to discuss in detail, except that it was founded by Jean-Marie Hullot, a French computer scientist, who had worked at Apple and NeXT Software.

Keith knows a thing or two about fundraising, getting companies off the ground, and getting prepped for investor meetings. Good thing we brought note pads and a pencil sharpener. He offered many useful thoughts, but only one message: Think Big. To paraphrase: “This is Silicon Valley, where dreams are huge and competition is fierce. Nobody wants to waste time with peanuts.”

We were lucky to get his undivided attention, because normally he is surrounded by half a dozen (or more) budding entrepreneurs. When we walked away, we didn’t feel stupid, but thought we had learned a few things that might prove helpful as we work to grow iliketotallyloveit into the Next Big Thing. Beside the balmy noontime temperature in Silicon Valley we had other reasons to roll up those shirtsleeves….

Up next: Scouting locations, a German Web entrepreneur, and an angel investor at Starbucks.

Postponed. Canceled. Delayed.

2008-03-13T10:01:00.002+01:00

No matter what they tell you, finding cash to run the show is not a cakewalk. This dawned on me during my last US trip, long before I ever talked to potential investors. My main enemy? Winter. On my way over to NYC with Con Air, the pilot had to pit in Newfoundland to refuel. Their math was off, because they “did not anticipate such strong headwinds.” Whaaat?

Then I wondered what else they might miscalculate. Takeoff speed? Runway length? Crosswinds? My confidence was in the toilet, and the fact that there would be more trips with them on this trip didn’t help. Also wondered if Zen was available as a pill, and if it could kill Prozac.

Finally Newark, with an epic delay. I switch on my phone, more bad news: Mashable’s Mashmeet Remix NY postponed. Great. At least I wasn’t late. But my lousy luck would hold. China Town Bus to Boston. Another call. Another canceled meeting. Snow, blah, blah, blah. Note to self: Must look into mashing up good weather forecasts with good social networking apps.

That left some time to browse an Apple Store in Beantown and confirm the myth about people working there, but not for Apple. I felt like Hank, the protagonist in Californication, who wrote an editorial at the Apple Store in Santa Monica.

Camouflaged by European tourists who were flush with cash (easy when 1 Euro equals $1.50) and kept milling around to buy more gadgets, I commandeered a MacBook Air and got a lot of work done. Thanks, Steve. You saved me from god awful Starbucks and having to hack their WiFi access …

Stay tuned for the next adventure.
Off to the West Coast.

Lussorian reviews iliketotallyloveit.com

2008-02-21T14:56:00.006+01:00

Lussorian, a good resource for finding "the most luxurious private residences and accessories on the planet," took a look at our site. Below is an excerpt and the whole review can be found here.

"If you want to add a sprinkle of social networking to your shopping experience - take a look at iliketotallyloveit. This rather elegant concept incorporates a giant collection of mainly interesting and weird stuff from all over the web that people can buy.”

iliketotallyloveit.com in the Financial Times!

2008-02-18T13:26:00.003+01:00

Now this is something! We are featured in today's issue of the Financial Times (well, it won't be in the US issue until tomorrow). Of course, we are really excited (I myself hate the picture, but I was in a rush and ...).

Read for yourself:

wel.come future award 2007 - We won!! Well, sort of…

2008-02-05T13:35:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday the “wel.come future awards” were held for the first time in Bremen, Germany. We were awarded as well. We didn’t get the first, second or third prize, but the “special award”. This might be due to the fact that we are way too web2.0 for their view on business ideas.

The interesting part was that there was a major mix-up and someone else received the award in our name. Nevertheless, an award is always nice (yes, we did end up getting it) and there was free food, which is always welcome. The venue was very cool, too, as you can see in the picture below. I also wanted to post a picture of us there, but Till threatened me. So in order to see us there you need to click this link ... :-)

"The World in 2008"

2008-01-16T11:45:00.000+01:00

The England-based, but worldwide read weekly magazine The Economist, which focuses mostly on news, politics and business, has an article in its latest issue that introduces some developments for the year 2008. The followin excerpt lists iliketotallyloveit.com as an example:

Vicarious consumption, a term coined a century ago by an economist, Thorstein Veblen, to describe the thrill rich people get when they buy their butler a lovely new uniform, is making a comeback in a new form, according to Amsterdam-based Trendwatching. It involves services for telling consumers “exactly what other consumers are enjoying and valuing most”—websites such as iliketotallyloveit.com [...] are part of the trend.

"Vicarious consumption" is an interesting term which we'll do some thinking on :-)

Winter

2007-12-21T22:45:00.000+01:00

Just wanted to share with you what we saw today when we looked out our office window. Snow in Bremen, Germany just before Christmas!? Sweet timing, but I'm sure it'll be gone by tomorrow. Anyways, happy holiday to you and yours.

The Guardian

2007-12-19T12:47:00.000+01:00

James Harkin wrote an interesting article about future trends called The Shape of Things to Come for the English daily newspaper The Guardian. Very interesting article, especially the bit where he mentions iliketotallyloveit.com:

The new vicarious consumption

Ambitious futurologists need credible buzzwords, but good ones are in perilously short supply. One option is to take an old trend off the peg, dust it down a bit and give it a whole new twist. The idea of "vicarious consumption" was first coined 100 years ago by the economist Thorstein Veblen to describe the thrill rich people get when they buy their butler a lovely new uniform. Nowadays, reckons Evers, it is making a comeback in a whole new form. Just as book reviews have become a substitute among many of us for reading books, Evers says, our enthusiasm for endless product reviews is becoming a way through which we can vicariously experience almost anything through the eyes (and sometimes ears) of people who have already been there. Sites dedicated to reading reviews on other people's experiences, such as iliketotallyloveit.com and ballofdirt.com, offer a heady mixture of entertainment, voyeurism and exhibitionism, and are already quietly attracting millions on the web.

Thanks a lot James for thinking of us.

Please help and vote

2007-12-13T08:48:00.000+01:00

Please help us out, click on the link above and vote as often as you like for iliketotallyoveit.com until 11:59pm PST on Sunday, December 16th.

You don't need to sign up. Just two clicks.

If you feel like it let other people know about it, too.

Thanks so much!

iliketotallyloveit on the 2nd position in Germany

2007-12-10T13:53:00.000+01:00

Jochen Krisch of the German ecommerce blog Exciting Commerce took Blognation's Markus Spath's article "The 100 Most Popular Web 2.0 Sites From Germany" and used it to compile a list of Germany's most successful (social) shopping sites. It turns out that we are on the 2nd rank right behind the world-famous Spreadshirt. Pretty nice to look at, but it's only based on how often a service has been bookmarked on del.icio.us. Spath says

(...) it is hard to find significant metrics for measuring the popularity of sites, it’s even harder to access reliable data for any metric for all sites. Going with del.icio.us is straightforward, but not necessarily an indicator for a large number of active users, traffic or economic potential.

Sites which are available in English do have a competitive advantage at del.icio.us compared to sites which are in German only. Sites which have been around for a while have an advantage compared to services which launched this year or a few weeks ago. A few of the most popular sites in this list are useful and focused but rather smallish tools which attracted a lot of bookmarks because they made it on del.icio.us’ hotlist. The list misses a few popular or interesting services, but overall the heuristics works fine.

You can always argue what statistics like this are good for - check Read/Write Web's write-up on the statistic - but at least they help you to get of your bed on a gloomy morning like the one we had today.

We moved!!

2007-12-04T12:09:00.000+01:00

We moved into our new office yesterday. You will get a tour in a little while, but until then you can check out the very nice location just outside the historic district of Bremen:

View Larger Map

And of course we didn't miss out on celebrating the move last night. On the following pictures you can see how that looked like --- it might actually be the first picture of all the founders published in this blog.