After Cyber Monday’s success (and the subsequent Cyber Week), it’s evident that the web is the hot channel for shopping this holiday season. However, knowing which option is best when sorting through countless sources can be overwhelming to indecisive consumers. To streamline the process, shoppers are beginning to look to curated retail newsfeeds for recommendations.
Lyst: Fashion startup Lyst is a website that aggregates products from multiple retailers into a Twitter-like feed. Users can ‘follow’ friends, stylists, designers, stores and trendsetters to gain real-time insight into the most desired items of the moment. Once compiled, the “lyst” can function as a shopping cart, eliminating the hassle of purchasing from various websites. Also, the stream can be used as a notification system for when an item goes on sale or popular runway attire becomes available for in-store purchase. Shunning algorithmic recommendations, the Twitter-inspired format provides a personalized platform for shoppers to create their own customized content while discovering new brands and products.
While many men are happily surrendering control of their wardrobes, they’re making up for it with more strident points of view in other areas. This is in evidence with the rise of personal advice columns and guides, an area historically dominated by women created by men. Here are three examples of where new sources of counsel reflecting the male perspective are finding a niche in modern media.
The Man’s Guide to Love: Everyone assumes that most men would rather swim cage-free with a Great White shark than share their feelings. But responses have been plentiful since The Man’s Guide to Love website posed the question, “If you had one piece of advice that you’d give another man about love, what would it be?” Hundreds of men of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds have imparted their replies in brief video segments that range from cynical to poignant. Yet, a common thread of naked honesty binds each posting, giving not only their fellow males but also members of the fairer sex a glimpse into the deepest reaches of the male psyche.
With airlines being fined for price fixing and the cost of gas on the rise, the travel industry has become undeniably more challenging to navigate. While travel sites like Orbitz, Expedia and Kayak have long offered easily navigable ways to find a good deal, the latest entries to the category are offering globetrotters innovative new ways to maximize their vacation dollars.
Hipmunk: The biggest challenge in planning a trip might be finding flights that leave one neither broke nor stranded in an airport. Instead of overwhelming site visitors with countless pages of options, Hipmunk delivers search results in a visually striking grid. An “agony” filter ranks flights based on an algorithm that places the least painful flight options at the top and hides results that the average person would never choose. (Who would really book a flight with a six-hour layover when a direct option is available for relatively the same cost?) Hipmunk recently added an app and visual hotel search, the latter of which flaunts an “ecstasy” filter that ranks rooms—including Airbnb options—based on price, amenities and reviews.
Restaurant and recipe recommendations were once the province of iconic (yet shadowy) critics like Mimi Sheraton. But along came Zagat, and then Yelp, and what was once a field dictated by experts is now a relative buffet of culinary insights and opinions offered up by amateur foodies. Several new online services are extending that noble mission: to let home cooks educate each other while advancing discourse about food and rewarding users with personal exposure. Now, everyone’s a critic, and it’s never tasted better.
Foodspotting: Foodspotting just celebrated its one-year anniversary, but it already has 550,000 iPhone users eating out of the palm of its hand. The platform, founded in San Francisco, is a global database of user-uploaded food photos cross-referenced by restaurant, location and dish name. Users can stand on any street corner and open up the app (available for the iPhone and in beta on Android) to immediately discover the most highly rated “spots” in the area. In founder Alexa Andrzejewski’s words, “It’s like “Pandora for food.” Having already acquired Eat.ly, scored partners like Zagat, The Travel Channel and Tasting Table, and received $3.75 million in initial funding, Foodspotting seems well poised to lead the way in democratizing dining, one picture at a time.
The web has become a game-changing driver of modern visual culture. While many net denizens have long preferred to communicate online via text-based correspondence, it’s now common to see entire ‘conversations’ on Facebook walls featuring only photos. Similarly, while essay-length blog posts used to be the norm, we’ve seen a shift toward image-based storytelling on platforms like Tumblr. As such, a number of new forums and services created with the sole intent of sharing visuals have cropped up.
Dump.fm: Anyone who’s ever participated in message board culture is well-versed in the art of visual conversation. But since Xanga and LiveJournal are no longer the stalwarts they once were, a void has been left in the online landscape. Enter Dump.fm, a provocative (as in, you may not want to check it out at the office) image-only chat room where thousands of members post found visuals, Photoshopped pictures, webcam shots, and animated gifs. According to one of the site’s creators, Ryder Ripps (Internet Archaeology), Dump.fm was conceived as “a place where content is hyper-transient and used to facilitate connections and induce creativity.” Along with collaborators Scott Ostler (MIT Exhibit) and Tim Baker (Delicious), Ripps’ creation of a forum intended solely for visual dialogue may be reinventing the chat room in a more meaningful way than didChatroulette.
