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.

Spigit.com: Entrepeneur Challenge

2007-11-29T21:02:00.000+01:00

iliketotallyloveit was chosen to take part in this interesting competition. You can find our profile here. So please help us out and vote for us!

Here’s their press release that explains the event:

Entrepreneur Challenge Launches, Web 2.0 Platform to Help Start-Ups Gain Funding

Competition sponsored by Keiretsu Forum SoCal, Sun Microsystems, Mashable and Southwest Airlines

As global communication accelerates, entrepreneurs and investors are seeking new ways to connect with potential investors. spigit, inc. the smart, social collaboration platform, today announced the official start of the Entrepreneur Challenge, a competition to discover tomorrow's best innovative ideas and startups. Premier sponsor Keiretsu Forum SoCal and co-sponsors Sun Microsystems, Mashable and Southwest Airlines, will contribute prizes and support for contest winners. Additional sponsors include Lithespeed, Killer Startups, LaunchSquad and Multilingual Eyes.

"The landscape for startup investments is rapidly changing as the Web makes it possible to discover pockets of innovation around the world. Our intention is to provide angel investors with a structured community for innovation and investment deal flow," said Chip Parker, Keiretsu Forum SoCal Chapter President.

The Entrepreneur Challenge invites entrepreneurs to showcase their start- ups on the website, develop ideas, business plans and leadership teams, and connect with industry leaders and investors worldwide utilizing the spigit platform. Some 1,000 companies registered for the competition and 130 have been chosen at this point to participate on spigit's platform for innovation, which incorporates a market-tested, seven-step process where entrepreneurs build their reputation based on the quality of their ideas and contributions to the ideas of others, earn badges and expert approval, and finally, launch their company on a virtual stock market.

"Today, we're opening the doors for the new era of Funding 2.0 with the launch of our Entrepreneur Challenge. spigit combines prediction markets, advanced reputation algorithms and collaboration tools to vastly extend the reach and relevancy of each participant's connections, pulling investors and innovators close together from around the world to make real investments and build real companies," said Paul Pluschkell, spigit CEO.

The top six startups will be awarded prizes by industry leaders to help make their dream a reality: Keiretsu Forum SoCal, one of the nation's leading angel investment communities and premier sponsor, will offer the opportunity to present live in front of the forum; Sun Microsystems will supply hardware; Southwest Airlines will provide nationwide air travel; and Mashable, the popular social networking news site, will publish live, on-going coverage of the event and its winners.

The Innovation Challenge for Entrepreneurs is now live at: http://innovation.spigit.com/

"spigit's Entrepreneur Challenge is the first online platform competition that will truly give an insider's view on the funding process. The capabilities of outsiders, insiders and experts to engage in discussion and push one company ahead of another is the true meaning of Web 2.0 technology at work. The opportunity for the participants is not only measurable by their success throughout the competition, but the buzz that is generated from the platform," said Adam Hirsch, Mashable Community & Marketing Director.

Alarm:Clock Euro Article

2007-11-29T14:18:00.000+01:00

Valerie Thompson of Alarm:Clock Euro was so kind to write something about iliketotallyloveit. The piece on us can be found here, but if you are interested in finding out more about two of our investors, Stephan Schambach and Karsten Schneider, you can do that by checking out Alarm:Clock's article about them: Intershop's Founders' New Ventures.

Video featuring social commerce sites

2007-11-21T19:07:00.001+01:00

Adblock

This video was posted on Exciting Commerce a while ago and I meant to post it back then. I stumbled upon it again today and thought I'd share it with you. The best thing about it is that we have the most screentime and we are the last site that is being featured. Enjoy.

iliketotallyloveit on Facebook

2007-11-16T20:31:00.000+01:00

So, click on the icon to get the iliketotallyloveit profile and become a fan!

Oh, and there still is our profile on MySpace. Remember MySpace?

We are on KillerStartups.com

2007-11-13T19:58:00.000+01:00

Click on the button and help us out with your vote.

What is KillerStartups.com?

KillerStartups.com is a user driven internet startups community. Entrepreneurs, investors, and bloggers are staying informed on up-and-coming internet startups using our blog platform, where internet entrepreneurs submit their startup to see what others think about it. (...)

A Roundup

2007-11-13T09:45:00.000+01:00

Once again, not blogging doesn’t mean nothing happens. Actually it was the other way around. After our press release a lot of interesting articles have been published about us. Here are two examples:

I also attended the Insight E-Commerce last week. Before you leave for a conference you always ask yourself if it’s really worth missing the time at your desk, but it usually turns out to be really worth it. (Good thing we had to pass on the Web2.0 Expo in Berlin since it got really bad reviews.) Always good to get out, meet people, and get some live feedback – and the venue was also quite impressive. The conference was held in the former Intershop Tower which recently has been renamed to JenTower. Not too bad to dine on the top floor of the tallest building of the former-East Germany.

Business Angel Round

2007-11-05T15:05:00.000+01:00

This is the big news I announced last week. Today we sent out a press release saying that we got our first round of financing from three business angels. We are very proud and excited about this, because we found investors that have lots of experience in ecommerce in particular, as well as the high-tech industry in general. We hope to continue to grow and reach all the goals we set for the near future.

You can read the press release here.

No Web2.0 Expo! Yes Insight E-Commerce!

2007-11-01T21:58:00.000+01:00

We intended on sending one of us to the Web2.0 Expo in Berlin next week, but unfortunately we will not be able to make it. Bureaucracy came in the way, BUT I will be attending the Insight E-Commerce conference in Jena, (Germany) next Wednesday and Thursday. I was invited to be part of a discussion called “Second Hype?” I will blog about that once I’m back.

PS: I promised the next time I’ll blog it would be about some big news. Well, the big news will come after the weekend. And that is a promise.

No more blogging?

2007-10-29T11:54:00.000+01:00

Some of you might be wondering why we haven’t really blogged for quite a while? Well, I could just quote Dan Lyons aka the Fake Steve Jobs and say:

"If you're a CEO and you have time to write a blog, then what the fuck are you doing? Dude, you're supposed to be running a company." [via Valleywag]

But we should have used this outlet a little more often. We do have a lot to tell you about and will be blogging way more frequently from now on. It will start with big news in a few days. So stay tuned...

Neighbors

2007-08-08T19:15:00.000+01:00

I've just uploaded a new feature: Neighbors. Just like e.g. last.fm we use incredible AI algorithms ... yeah right ... to match our dear users with users who have a similar taste in ... well ... stuff.

The purpose obviously is to add another way of exploring iliketotallyloveit.com. Enjoy.

Webquartett: Startup card game including iliketotallyloveit.com

2007-08-08T16:30:00.000+01:00

We just got our Webquartett set. What is a webquartett? Well, it is comparable to the game Go Fish, but since the people over at blognation already did the job of summing it up so nicely I let them do the talking:

“Webquartett.de is a fun idea: play a real life card game and let your startup beat others!
You can compile and buy a card game for 8 Euro by selecting 32 companies out of a pool of 53 German startups. Recently the option to create a card from the scratch if a company is not listed has been added. If you don’t know which companies to choose, the site presents you with some preset selections or you can browse the selections other customers have made. Each startup is represented on a playing card and is ranked in 5 categories: date of launch, number of founders, age of the youngest founder, authority at Technorati and originality of the concept. Once you have come to an agreement on how to interpret the criteria you can start playing.
The rules are simple: There are two players, each player gets 16 cards. The starting player picks a category and the values of the topmost cards of both players are compared. The player with the better value wins the card of the other player and places both cards at the bottom of his pile and chooses the category for the next round. If one player has all cards he has won the game.”

If you like the idea check out the product page to the webquartett on iliketotallyloveit.com and maybe vote for it.

Etsy

2007-07-30T15:05:00.000+01:00

In case somebody is still reading this blog, I got a question for you. Somewhere in the ETSY forums somebody must have mentioned iliketotallyloveit.com as an advertising plattform. Consequently, many ETSY artists/producers started using our site, so far so excellent.

The good thing IMHO about out submit forms is that it grabs everything it can from the linked-to webpage. The bad thing IMHO about our submit forms is that it grabs everything it can from the linked-to webpage. As a consequence we now have plenty of products starting with "Etsy :: ". So, here is the question: Would it be okay if we had fixed those titles (i.e. altered stories others put up) or would that be too intrusive? I honestly don't know, you tell me.

Video interview

2007-06-12T13:06:00.001+01:00

Well, here is the video interview (in German) Andreas of Easn did with me.

BarCamp Hamburg 2007

2007-06-10T19:02:00.000+01:00

Till and I are on our way home from what seemed to be the hottest place on earth this weekend: BarCamp Hamburg. It was at least 33°C/ 91°F and most rooms did not have an AC. Besides that it was really great to meet so many other founders in person. All the sessions we attended were also very interesting.

I gave a little video interview for Andreas for his blog easn - everything a StartUp needs - which should be available on his blog in a little while and I will, of course, post the link here once he uploaded it; even though I’m really not used to seeing myself on video. Does anyone like to see him or herself on video or is it just me? Anyways, it was fun.

We really want to thank all the people who organized the camp, all the sponsors (well, Frosta’s catering wasn’t exactly what my stomach wanted this weekend judging by the cramps I had today), all the bloggers who wrote about it, took pictures, and also made videos, as well as everyone who held one of the interesting sessions.

I’m sure we will head to Cologne for the BarCamp coming up in August.

German ‘Wirtschaftswoche’ on Social Commerce … and us

2007-06-05T08:47:00.000+01:00

The German business weekly ‘Wirtschaftswoche’ covers social commerce in its current issue and calls it “the hottest trend.” Iliketotallyloveit.com is also being mentioned: “In the US the company is deemed as one of the hottest internet newcomers.” Well, we definitely wouldn’t mind that! :-)

Updates

2007-06-04T19:40:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we went online with a couple of new features. Maybe the first things you will notice are that Silke did an amazing job in improving the design and that there is now a feedback system on our site. Feel free to drop us a line on what you think about the the update, how we should improve the site or what you like best.

But most important is the the new posting system which automatically grabs the image from the product-page itself instead of asking you to upload an image. Which was - I admit it - annoying at best. Aside from the image-grabbing the new system also suggests the title, category and price-range for a product, shows you a live preview of the product and finally, there is no step 3 anymore.
Just in case you think that even two steps are overkill you better get the updated bookmarklet which reduces the whole posting posting process to a single step. In case you bookmarked it before yesterday go and get the new version which fills marked text from the original product page into our description field.

Last but not least we added a new dynamic LoveIt-button to our tools section which you can integrate in your site. The dynamic button shows the actual number votes that a product received directly on your site.

Spiegel Online

2007-05-25T11:43:00.000+01:00

"Der Spiegel" one of Germany's biggest magazines also has an online version called "Spiegel Online" which also happens to be one of the biggest online news sources in Germany. So what the fuss? In a just published articel (www.spiegel.de) on DIY on the internet they briefly mention our service and quote our front-man Malte: "The internet has become a niche market where every product, regardless how absurd it is, can be found and ordered". Maybe that quote is not that groundbreaking, but hey, we finally made it into "Spiegel Online".

And another interview

2007-05-22T13:22:00.000+01:00

The German blog zweinull.cc talked to us this week. In case you know some German and are interested: Vier Bremer Studenten und der amerikanische Traum - Malte Gösche von iliketotallyloveit.com im Interview.

Interview

2007-05-17T10:57:00.000+01:00

We met Stefan Wolk of shoppingzweinull.de last week for an interview. In case you speak German you can check it out here: iliketotallyloveit.com - i like it.
There are also two older interviews that shouldn't stay unmentioned. One with interview-blog.de and one with foerderland.de (both in German as well).

Iliketotallyloveit.com at the ad:tech Hamburg

2007-05-16T21:48:00.000+01:00

Till and I will be attending the ad:tech in Hamburg next week. Unfortunately only on Wednesday, but we still hope to be able to meet a lot of people.

The ‘Long Tail’ on Iliketotallyloveit.com

2007-05-13T20:45:00.000+01:00

Jens of the Australian site BlogCampaigning.com wrote this interesting story about us and Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson’s theory about “The Long Tail“:

"This confusing internet: Not only defies it traditional marketing approaches but it also leads to the slow and inevitable death of blockbusters. Instead we can witness a fragmentation of tastes that justifies the existence of services like ebay (and pretty every other successful website of the last ten years or so. . . ). […]
In his classic The Long Tail, Chris Anderson argues that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. […]
Combine this thought with social bookmarking and you have the German start-up iliketotallyloveit.com."
blogcampaigning.com

So we sat down and had a look at our statistics to check if he is right. Well, he is in some ways. The most loved products are largely blockbuster products, but the following diagram illustrates that outgoing links are more evenly distributed. A lot of people are voting for the MacBook Pro, but don’t click on the link to the shop. It is the niche products that have the same number of outgoing links as the big company’s goods (and it’s not that no one clicks on the links to the shop for any product ;-)).

Iliketotallyloveit.com does proof Anderson’s theory right.

BarCamp Hamburg 07 (June 9th and 10th)

2007-05-09T09:29:00.000+01:00

We just attended our first Web Monday and are now looking forward to visiting the BarCamp Hamburg 07. In case you don’t know what a BarCamp is: “BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols. The name is a playful allusion to its origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off from Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only unconference hosted by open source publishing luminary, Tim O'Reilly.” (Wikipedia) Unfortunately, iliketotallyloveit.com is not a confirmed attendant yet, because we signed up to late and it’s limited to 150 participants. We are number 158 and are positive that it works out somehow.

Iliketotallyloveit.com at ‘Webmontag’ (Web Monday) in Bremen

2007-05-08T15:18:00.000+01:00

Last night we had our first public presentation of our project:
The ‘Webmontag’ takes place bimonthly in Bremen (Germany) and “connects users, developers, founders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, web pioneers, bloggers, podcasters, designers and other folks interested in Web 2.0 topics (in the broadest sense).”
It was just a short presentation, but an interesting experience and it’s always good to get some feedback and input from others on what you’re doing. You can find some comments (in German) and pictures on the wevent-page to the event.

StartUp 2.0 – European Web 2.0 competition

2007-04-26T08:54:00.000+01:00

They called for entries and we followed that call. We are taking part in our first competition:

“StartUp 2.0 is a competition of European web 2.0 sites whose objectives are to promote and reward the European startups (either created or willing to do so in the future) that work in the field of 2.0 technologies.”

In case you want to check out our entry: http://promote.startup2.eu/story.php?title=iliketotallyloveit.com+-+Germany

Stating the Obvious

2007-04-24T08:44:00.000+01:00

well, we uploaded a new "release" yesterday, in case you didn't notice. Most notably we introduced iliketotallyloveit.com sidebars/widgets and buttons. This, by itself, might not be worth blogging about, but I want to draw the readers attention to the fact that we are not using JavaScript to get our sidebar included, but the plain old iframe tag (which we might replace by an object tag in the future to be compliant with XHTML 1.0 Strict). For the rationale behind this move see "TechCrunch Down. I’m Pissed." and "JavaScript Badges and Widgets Considered Harmful". Basically, the idea is: If we screw up, our badge/sidebar goes down, not your site.

Actually, we didn't implement Jeremy Zawodny's suggestion yet: "For every badge/widget/gadget out there, I'd like to see a discoverable API that allows me to get the same data via a simple REST based API that emits RSS (with extensions where it makes sense). The link to get that data should be rendered on the badge. Think of it as a 'View Source' for badges." If there is real demand for this, let us know.

Also, bug reports are very welcome, we had to change quite a bit of internals for this one, so things might be broken.

one.com took us offline

2007-04-03T22:50:00.000+01:00

Our host http://www.one.com just "suspended" our site because they claim we caused too much load for the database server. Please note, that there was never a single warning from them and that their action violates their end of the contract. They do not face technical difficulties but deliberately decided to take us offline without even a single warning.

Right now, there is nothing we can do, as we cannot really reach them, it is night in Europe.

character encoding and rss

2007-03-28T20:37:00.000+01:00

Today we made minor changes to the rss feed to keep it usable for our english customers. Unfortunately this destroys rendering of japanese entries. We know of the problem (thanks Marenco), we don't consider the actual situation to be satisfying and we will find a real fix real soon.

Interview

2007-03-21T21:20:00.000+01:00

Just a short note: We gave an interview for interview-blog.de the other day and you can read it here (German).

Yet Another Bugfix Release

2007-03-12T17:47:00.000+01:00

As you might have noticed we have been working on http://www.iliketotallyloveit.com. I hope we have worked around that database limitation well enough to provide a pleasant surfing experience ... well, that sounded lame, let's say to "not totally suck surfing-wise."

A bit more controversial than fixing bugs might be that we changed liveloveit and the RSS feed. As usual, this is the place to complain, yell, praise, etc.

Wired!

2007-02-27T09:55:00.000+01:00

Okay, okay, it has been a bit quite around here, but check this:

iliketotallyloveit.com It’s Digg for the shopping set. Aping the same popularity-contest scheme as the news aggregator, users submit links to products, and if enough people like totally love it, the lustworthy object lands on the front page. You won’t find mainstream goods here — mostly doodads you didn’t know you wanted but suddenly like totally need - Wired.

Privacy

2007-01-15T21:18:00.000+01:00

We received some feedback some time ago stating that our service was doomed because it is not useful for a single user but becomes more and more useful the more people use it. Thus the critical number of users would never be reached. Counter arguments that immediately come to mind are of course: MySpace, digg.com, ebay.com, ... . Also, mixing private and public use might not always be desired.

I deleted my last.fm account two days ago and created a new one using a random (seriously, I used a random number generator) username. I did it because I was fed up with my buddies judging my taste in music, like: "Uh, I saw you listened to ... today, how come?" etc. To emphasize the point I want to make: I know someone who listens to music knowing that it shows up on last.fm to make his profile look cooler.

Don't get me wrong: I love last.fm, I like their radio, their recommendation system, the ability to meet people with a similar taste in music. It is not last.fm's fault that I told my real world friends about my virtual profile. However, once I did this, my privacy was massively invaded as the border of my private room where I listen to absurd music from time to time and a brutally transparent profile on last.fm vanished. I think this was because I was not really aware that my player sent all my tracks to last.fm even though I configured it to do so. I think del.icio.us faces a similar problem, as it is useful both privately (accessing my bookmarks everywhere) and publically (finding bookmarks many people like).

The point I am trying to make is: I think to some extend our service may have a similar problem: You provide heaps of personal data if you use it a lot like I do. So if you don't want anybody to judge you by your shopping desires: Use a handle which cannot be traced back to you. Cheers.

Kick & Push

2007-01-08T00:33:00.000+01:00

I just pushed our last changes online and hope it all works out for everyone. We didn't implement any fancy new features so far, so this update focuses on bugfixes. Please, let us know if anything stopped working, still sucks, could be better ... well, you get the idea.

Updates & Bug Fixing

2007-01-07T15:12:00.000+01:00

After having received such an exciting amount of feedback, we spent the last days with some much needed bug fixing and functionality enhancement. Also, today this site will receive a design update so check back later this day.

2006-12-19T22:14:00.000+01:00

Online for almost a week now. Things are getting more and more exciting. More soon.

Rush

2006-12-19T22:13:00.000+01:00

I was planing to have a pretty nice article here as the first article, which covers everybody who wrote about our site in the last week. But DB bottlenecks force me to take a shortcut. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do right now. We are trying to sort this out with our provider.