21st Aug 2011

42 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed


The weekly roundup is back and, as usual, Mashable has been working hard compiling the latest features and news analysis to fuel your social and techie adventures.

Whet your appetite with a list of Google’s top 10 most expensive acquisitions. Move onto an appetizer of MySpace memories. Have a second helping of back to school iOS apps. Finally, satiate your sweet tooth with a history of online activism. And be sure to come back for seconds next week!

Editors’ Picks

Social Media

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31st Jul 2011

Inside Sports Illustrated: Building a Magazine for the Digital Age


Among magazines, Sports Illustrated has emerged as a leader in the digital age.

In addition to its print edition, the title has produced a tablet edition for the iPad every week since it debuted last June and more recently added to its roster weekly editions for Android and webOS tablets. Sports Illustrated also produces daily content for SI.com, highlights 10 sports photos every day on its Chrome web app, and offers more content on special cross-channel packages, including Swimsuit.

The numbers support the digital push. Sports Illustrated‘s digital revenue was up 22% between 2009 and 2010, and it is on track for double-digit growth again this year, says Scott Novak, VP of communications at Sports Illustrated Group.

Curious to know how and why the team could keep this pace, we visited editors, producers and operations managers as they put together a special double issue over a seven-day period.

It became clear that Sports Illustrated has alighted upon the best model for a print magazine in the digital age, not only in terms of content and design (i.e. the product itself), but also in the way the publication has organized its staff and workflow to produce consistently top-tier products across multiple platforms. Here’s why.

There Is No “Digital Department”

If you walk into the offices of almost any major print magazine, you’ll inevitably find a corner housing the so-called “digital department.” The staff there will be diligently putting together a website that is sometimes only loosely tied to the print title. These departments are byproducts of the early days of the Internet when publishers weren’t sure if a web edition had long-term potential. Magazine websites were treated like side projects rather than core parts of business and distribution strategies. The tablet edition usually ranks even lower on the priority scale.

Having a separate — and sometimes marginalized — digital department often leads to a discrepancy between the quality of the print product and the web product. Fewer resources are allotted to digital, in part because digital advertising revenues are far less than print.

This discrepancy is most apparent in women’s lifestyle magazines. Glamour and Lucky run thinly staffed, independent web operations that churn out upward of 50 pieces of original content per day. These are short, image-heavy pieces that have proven successful on the web. Both launched “blogger networks” earlier this year, an advertising play that allows the publications to sell ads across a network of content, namely pictures of the bloggers wearing different outfits.

Although the blogger partnerships enable the publications to bolster their advertising revenues in the short term and broaden their readership, there’s little sense that the content on these sites is curated. Rather, they feel like content farms licensed under the Glamour and Lucky banners.

At Sports Illustrated, by contrast, web and print are divided mainly by article length: the web is for shorter, newsier hits and print is a repository for long-form journalism. Quality is consistent largely because most of Sports Illustrated‘s staff touch every extension of the brand. Nearly all the writers (95%) produce content for both the web and print, filing short news pieces for the web while building out longer, weekly pieces for the print and tablet editions.

As a result, Sports Illustrated‘s brand and voice are consistently strong across platforms. But how do they do it and without substantially expanding or changing staff?

Producing More With the Same

It’s surprising how long most Sports Illustrated editors have been on board. Most digitally savvy media companies (The Huffington Post and Gawker Media, for example) are relatively young, or many of the older companies have brought in younger staff to turn things over (both The New York Observer and The Atlantic Wire are run by thirty-somethings who got their start at Gawker Media).

Take Assistant Managing Editor Chris Stone, for instance, who is tasked with overseeing the development of Sports Illustrated on multiple tablets each week. He has been with the magazine since 1992. The pace of the production was much different in the “pre-web” days,when he focused on the production of one to two stories per week as the baseball editor.

“Once upon a time you had a few ideas in the course of a week and they held up. If something happened six days before close, well, it was six days before close,” he recalls. “Now we deal with new ideas and three to four different ways to present a story every day.”

SEE ALSO: Tablet Publishing: Why Sports Illustrated Is Looking Beyond the iPad

Stories are assigned for print, tablets and the web by the same vertical editors in conjunction with SI.com Managing Editor Paul Fichtenbaum and are then optimized for their respective platforms. When a large story breaks, for example, separate angles are developed for the web, for Sports Illustrated‘s social channels, as well as for print.

“Print is no longer separate,” Stone says. “We’re able to see the good idea that might just work better on the web because of the urgency of that story.” When stories are conceived, the editors think how to enhance them for the web and tablets, sometimes by including multimedia like audio interviews, galleries or video.

Social media is included in the ideation process. During a Monday morning run-through of the print edition set to close that evening, editors debated what to do with an extra Charlie Sheen interview that would not make the print edition before it closed later that night. Should they release it as a web exclusive, or perhaps as a bonus for tablet readers?

They elected to publish it on both, accompanied by a series of 10 tweets titled “10 Pieces of Wisdom from Charlie Sheen.” Although the print issue was the focus of the meeting, staff discussed the entire integrated publication: print, tablets, the web and social media.

Design is integrated as well. The design staff formats print and multiple tablet editions simultaneously, closing print Monday night, the iPad and HP TouchPad editions on Tuesday, and Android versions on Wednesday. The spacing in deadlines prevents designers from having to prioritize one version over another.

Editorial Workflow

“It became clear to us pretty early on that we needed to establish processes well beyond what we had in place for the print magazine,” says Bob Kanell, director of operations. Kanell has been working at Sports Illustrated for 17 years, long before it started to make its digital shift.

The week now starts Thursday morning. “That’s when we solidify what is going to be in the next particular issue. There are long-term stories that are in the works that we know we are going to run at some point, and our editors will decide when it is the right time to run that story,” he says.

The editorial team meets again Fridays and Sundays to discuss the issue, which evolves over the course of the week as major events occur. Saturday is the one day the entire editorial staff has off. Each editorial member works four full days each week and takes their remaining off-time on different days so that the issue doesn’t grind to a halt on weekends.

On Monday mornings and afternoons, the editorial team meets again to run through the print issue before it closes that same night. The issue is roughly 80% complete by the 9 a.m. meeting Monday, during which time Editor in Chief Terry McDonell runs through the entire issue on a large screen. He poses questions to Creative Director Chris Hercik about various design decisions and ensures that editorial layouts are properly differentiated from the ads.

The editorial team meets again Monday afternoon to review the edited copy and debate final photo selections. As articles are reviewed, McDonell inquires where add-ons for the tablet editions will appear.

At around noon on Tuesday, a mix of editors, designers and producers crowd around a single Mac in the production studio and walk through the nearly complete weekly editions for the iPad and HP TouchPad, both of which are formatted at a 16:9 ratio. Editors view the issues both on the devices themselves and using simulation software on the Mac, checking each button and function for potential bugs.

The same crew gathers again around 4 p.m. for the final review. The completed issue, once approved by Director of Imaging Geoffrey Michaud, is shipped to Apple’s and HP’s respective app stores around midnight.

At noon on Wednesday, the team runs through the weekly edition for two Android tablets, the Galaxy Tab and Motorola Xoom. Although the devices are different sizes, they run apps at the same 4:3 ratio, so there’s no need to format separate versions. The final run-through for Android occurs at 3 p.m. The completed issue hits the Android app store around midnight.

Design Workflow

Although Sports Illustrated‘s editorial team had to adjust to meet the magazine’s new digital demands, Kanell says the biggest adjustments occurred in the design department.

Designers must now reformat the issue in two different orientations — horizontal and vertical — for the iPad, plus a version for Android. (The iPad’s vertical layout is also used for the HP TouchPad.)

Sports Illustrated uses a software program called WoodWing, which allows designers to lay out the issue in multiple formats (both print and tablets) simultaneously. If a change to the copy is made in the print version, for instance, those changes will be automatically replicated in the different tablet versions.


Side by side: The same elements rendered for print (left), iPad (center) and Galaxy Tab (right).

“Everything still starts with print,” says Hercik, who has worked in the creative department of the Sports Illustrated Group for nearly a decade. “You work from scratch on every [layout] you do. There’s few layouts where it feels like you plug in images and text.”

Those problems are felt across the department. “Nothing that we do converts easily one from the next,” Senior Editor Stephen Cannella explains. “Even after the iPad, you have to tackle a whole different aspect ratio with the Galaxy and Xoom,” noting that tablet layouts also have to accommodate multimedia add-ons.

SEE ALSO: A Sneak Peek at Version 2.0 of Sports Illustrated’s iPad App [PICS]

The design team is always conscious of file size when including additional images, videos and audio in the issue. Larger file sizes will take readers more time to download and will occupy a larger portion of their device’s storage space.

“If an add-on is really important to the experience, like a video cover, we’ll embed it,” says Hercik, but otherwise the team will opt to stream large files, like video, to minimize the issue size.

Hercik says the tablet versions are complete when they achieve a certain flow. “You want to interact on every page or every other page. If you go through a story and you haven’t had any interaction, you feel something is missing.”

Room for Improvement

Although Sports Illustrated‘s tablet editions are strong by design and engagement standards, the editors have not yet examined any reader usage data.

Examining usage statistics would enable them to understand, for the first time, which weekly sections and stories are most popular, how long readers spend reading certain articles compared to others, and what multimedia additions get the most attention. For now, editors have depended on a mix of feedback from focus groups and the comments left in various app stores to help them improve their tablet editions.

Going Forward

Sports Illustrated has emerged as a leader among magazine publications because it doesn’t think of itself as a magazine, but as a sports media company. “We don’t compete with magazines, we compete with networks,” says McDonell.

It’s sentiment shared by Mark Ford, president of Sports Illustrated Group. “We think of ourselves as a sports media company, number one,” he says. “We believe that we have got to reach our audiences and our fans wherever and whenever they’re consuming content on sports, and that means making content available on whatever device they use. Hopefully that extends to TV at some point.”

In fact, Sports Illustrated‘s video operation has already proved profitable, bringing in $3 million in incremental revenue in its first six months, says McDonell.

It’s a mindset that other magazines would do well do emulate. Any publication, whether its roots are in the web, on TV, in print or even on tablets, is truly a media company. Any platform their audience is using should be treated as a crucial distribution outlet.

And that means dissolving those sideline digital departments and refiguring digital — and every other medium — as a priority on par with print.

More About: android, galaxy tab, hearst, hp touchpad, iOS, ipad, magazines, media, motorola xoom, Sports illustrated, Tablet, terry mcdonell, webOS

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20th Jul 2011

Turntable.fm Is Now Licensed by ASCAP, Will It Come Out of Beta Soon?


Still-in-beta interactive music startup Turntable.fm has taken another step toward going mainstream Tuesday. It has just become licensed by ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), a performing rights organization which licenses and collects royalties for performances.

Turntable.fm has been taking the web by storm of late, amassing around 300,000 users and more than its share of buzz. However, many have wondered if the site is wholly legal. Basically, it’s a series of musical chatrooms in which five DJs can spin tracks on demand via Medianet or by uploading their own music. The site even shut down international usage recently in an effort to stay Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)-compliant (the DMCA is U.S.-only).

Still, myriad musicians (and music industry types) have flocked to the site, and we have yet to see any significant backlash against it. However, Turntable.fm is still in beta and is invite-only (if you have a Facebook friend on there, though, you can get access), so it’s still a bit under the radar in the mainstream sphere.

The fact that the site is still in its infancy makes the ASCAP license an interesting milestone (Spotify secured its license when it launched in the U.S. last week). “It’s great to see a tech start-up securing an ASCAP license from the outset, ensuring that songwriters, composers and publishers will be paid fairly if the site succeeds,” said Jon Bahr, director of marketing for ASCAP, in a statement.

Perhaps we could be seeing Turntable.fm coming out of beta soon.

We’ve contacted the team for comment.

More About: ASCAP, music, startup, turntable.fm

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22nd Jun 2011

5 More Handy Web Apps to Save You Time at Work


This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Web apps are a friend to all who mash the keyboard from nine to five. They live in the cloud, are accessible from any Internet connection and are great for chopping those mundane work tasks off at the knees.

We’ve previously highlighted a batch of web apps that reduce the headaches and keystrokes associated with common tech chores, and after receiving some great feedback from readers, we thought it only right to hunt down a few more worthy bookmarkables.

See below for five more picks, and remember to leave your own time-saving web ditties in the comments.


1. PrintFriendly




While we all strive to live in a paperless world, sometimes you've just got to ruthlessly murder some innocent trees. Does that make you a bad person? Probably.

The next time you need to print something from the web, stop over at PrintFriendly first. It's a ridiculously simple way to distill nearly any web content down to a clean, ad-free document suitable for paper. And the best part? You can also generate beautiful PDFs that retain links and other formatting.

Goodbye, extra pages that are mostly empty space except for one banner ad and a URL at the bottom!

The next time you need to print something from the web, stop over at PrintFriendly first. It’s a ridiculously simple way to distill nearly any web content down to a clean, ad-free document suitable for paper. And the best part? You can also generate beautiful PDFs that retain links and other formatting.

Goodbye, extra pages that are mostly empty space except for one banner ad and a URL at the bottom!


2. Vector Magic




Imagine this crazy scenario: The boss needs you to print up event flyers, but all she has is a tiny 100 pixel logo from the corporate website. (I warned you this was going to get crazy.)

Resizing this graphic with standard imaging software will render it pixelated and unprofessional. What you need is a vector asset — a mathematical representation of the logo that a graphic designer would use to scale the image at any size without sacrificing quality.

Vector Magic is a remarkable little app that translates standard web images (JPG, GIF, PNG, etc.) into scalable vector art. We gave it a shot with Mashable’s logo, and the results were impressive and crisp. Mileage may vary depending on the complexity of the image, but even small, multicolored icons made great vectors in our testing. Photographs might get dicey, but it’s worth a shot.

Vector Magic packs a bit too much power to be totally free, but you get the first two vectors on the house, and a basic account is only $7.95 per month for unlimited use — well worth it, especially if you’re making a lot of PowerPoint presentations or websites.


3. Dummy Image




Speaking of images, are you ever building a presentation or website and find yourself in need of a visual placeholder? You you’ve got a killer stock handshake photo coming, but right now you’re just getting your layout down, and the measurements need to be precise.

You could fire up ol’ MS Paint, slice out a 600 by 300 pixel box, color it red, save it to your computer, open PowerPoint, import the image, what did I name the image?, I swear I just saved the image, is it in My Pictures?, I can’t find the image, seriously where is this thing, restart MS Paint, ad infinitum.

Or, you could snag Dummy Image from your bookmarks bar, type in your dimensions and drag the graphic onto your slide.

I think we’re done here.


4. SimplyNoise




Let’s face it: Your coworkers are annoying and their incessant chatter makes it hard to focus on anything but cat pictures. Sure, Keith from accounting is a nice guy, but enough about Idol already, you’re a grown man for God’s sake.

We kindly recommend SimplyNoise, a white noise generator you can fire up with one click, should the office get rowdy during crunch time. In actuality, the app can generate three different kinds of static noise: white, pink and brown. If you’re looking for warmer, less grating frequencies (like those found in a waterfall or an ocean), go with brown. The app even remembers your volume preferences.

Headphones sold separately.


5. ShowMeWhatsWrong.com




If you’ve ever provided tech support over the phone to a coworker (or a friend or family member, for that matter), you’ve probably already killed yourself, so no need to read any further.

If you are alive, and foresee this being an issue in the future, you’ve got to check out ShowMeWhatsWrong.com. It’s a dead-simple way to share screencasts with a tech-troubled colleague.

There’s no account to create, but you’ll need to provide your email address so the app can share confirmations with you. Send a link to your coworker where he can record up to five minutes of his on-screen troubles. When he hits “stop,” the app uploads and processes the video, and shoots a private URL back to you. View the screencast almost instantly, diagnose the problem (likely that the printer was not, in fact, plugged in), and be heralded as office hero. The videos are lightweight, smooth and expire after a week.

Considering how frustrating it can be to reliably capture on-screen video for other purposes, the ease of this web-based solution is pretty refreshing.

If you aren’t fist pumping at your desk right now over these life-changing websites, there’s probably little hope for you. Did we miss one that you can’t get through the day without? Share and share alike in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, kemie

More About: apps, business, List, Lists, productivity, small business, web apps

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13th Jun 2011

LIVE BLOG: The 2011 Webby Awards


The 2011 Webby Awards are about to swing into action. Who’s going to be taking home the awards for the best of the web?

We’re live from New York, where Friends, Bandslam and P.S. I Love You star Lisa Kudrow is hosting the festivities for the 15th annual Webby Awards show.

The nominees were announced back in April and include such entities as the Old Spice Guy, Angry Birds, Justin Bieber and the YouTube hit, “Bed Intruder Song,” featuring Antoine Dodson.

Mashable is at the event, and we’re going to live blog the whole thing. Check out our commentary below:

More About: 2011 webbys, internet, live, live blog, Webby, webby awards, webbys

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07th Jun 2011

WordPress.com Comments Gain Support for Facebook & Twitter Logins

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Visitors to WordPress.com blogs can now leave comments with their Twitter or Facebook accounts.

It’s a small new feature on the surface, but it opens up a lot more commenting opportunities for WordPress.com blogs. Third-party commenting systems such as Disqus and Echo have allowed users to authenticate with their Twitter or Facebook accounts for quite some time, but this is a big move for the hosted blogging platform.

In the blog entry announcing the new feature, WordPress.com’s Scott Berkun points out a nice feature of the new login system: Users can stay logged in to multiple services at the same time. This is especially handy for users that might want to comment using Twitter or Facebook on some sites but want to use their WordPress.com account for others.

Comments from Twitter or Facebook accounts aren’t pumped back into those social services, though. Instead, the logins simply act as a way to authenticate users. In the future, WordPress.com might work toward also giving users the option to publish or share comments back on Facebook or Twitter.

For self-hosted WordPress.org users, comments suggest that Facebook and Twitter comment authentication might be coming via a future update to the JetPack plugin developed by Automattic.

More About: comment systems, facebook, twitter, WordPress, WordPress.com

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05th Jun 2011

Kids’ Online Game Moshi Monsters Hits 50 Million Registered Users


Two-year old online game Moshi Monsters has just reached a sizable milestone: 50 million registered users.

Moshi Monsters is a social online game/community that allows kids 6 to 12 to adopt virtual pets, tool around a virtual land called Monstro City, play games to earn virtual currency and communicate with other kids in a moderated, safe environment. The franchise also includes toys (coming soon), books, video games, trading cards and a Moshi magazine. Moshi will also soon begin its foray into music, live tours, a TV platform and film.

Moshi, founded by London-based startup Mind Candy, also reports that it has more than 15 million registered users (out of the total 50 million) in North America. Apparently, the game gets one signup per second.

Fifty million is a pretty hefty community, but it makes sense considering the rise of the digital native we have been privy to lately. In October, a study conducted by Internet security firm AVG found that 92% of children in the U.S. have an online presence by the time they are two, compared to 73% in western Europe.

More About: Children, mind-candy, moshi-monsters, social media

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04th Jun 2011

4 Fresh Apps For Your Weekend Enjoyment


The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Each weekend, Mashable hand-picks a few startups that we think are building interesting, unique or niche products. Here we’re featuring a collection of applications that might come in handy this weekend depending on your mood.

If you’re in a playful state of mind, Shnap for iPhone will command your attention and challenge you to an intricate game of rating and producing stylized photos. Trust us, it’s more fun than it sounds. For the bargain hunter with an iPhone or Android device, there’s Social Listing, an app that could help you discover the hidden treasures your neighbors are ready to part with.

Self-promoters can occupy their free time by creating a shareable social calendar of their upcoming events and appearances using Simply Events. And if you’re in the mood to be generous, but in an obvious sort of way, Givey will let you make a donation and share it with your followers on Twitter, all with a single tweet.

Shnap: Are Your Stylized Photos Cool or Meh?

Quick Pitch: Shnap [iTunes link] is a social iPhone game where Hot or Not meets Instagram.

Genius Idea: Using game mechanics to make applying filters and effects more addicting than it already is.

Mashable’s Take: Not yet sold on the mobile and filtered photo sharing craze? Perhaps the competitive nature of Shnap will change your mind. The iPhone application invites you to rate users’ stylized photos, or “Shnaps” as they’re called in the app, by selecting one of five ratings: LOL, Meh, WTF, Cool or Wow.

Of course, the flip side is that app users can also rate and comment on your Shnaps. The application incentivizes behavior with Shnap bucks — you earn bucks for each rating — and a level system. Level 1 noobs have limited access to effects, but those who level up will unlock higher-quality photo filter options.

“Instead of passively browsing a grid of photos, users are shown one photo at a time and encouraged to rate it,” Shnap creator and ex-Googler Kuan Yong tells Mashable. “There is a scoring system for posting and rating shnaps, and a complete social network where users can establish friend relationships, message one another and post shnaps to other social networks.”

The application experience is super slick and quite fun — what Shnap lacks in meaningful purpose it more than makes up for in style. Still, we’d love actual Instagram integration and more convenient options for finding and adding friends.

Givey: Give & Tweet at the Same Time

Quick Pitch: Givey allows user to make tax-efficient, secure donations to charity by tweeting or sending an SMS.

Genius Idea: Instant and social donations.

Mashable’s Take: By encouraging $10 text message donations in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, the Red Cross raised millions and proved that people will donate if they have a fast and simple way to do so. Givey, a UK fundraising startup that launched in late May, is taking this fast and simple donation model and making it more social and personal.

The idea: Allow people to donate between £1and £500 via Twitter or SMS whenever they want — to the charity of their choosing. Givey partners with PayPal and MissionFish for the payments components so that once a user registers, all he needs to do is a select a charity and tweet or text his donation.

Givey is currently only available to UK tax payers, but the startup is planning a U.S. launch for later this year.

Simply Events: Create & Share Your Social Agenda

Quick Pitch: Add your future social activities and events to your calendar to share with friends and family.

Genius Idea: A simple way to promote and share your appearances, speaking engagements or activities in a single place.

Mashable’s Take: You can use Simply Events as way to keep friends, family members or even strangers in the know about your social agenda. The tool seems best suited for public speakers, authors, uber-social types or anyone looking to promote their own appearances or agenda.

Friends can use it privately to coordinate get-togethers, organizations can use it to promote their events and public figures can “shout” their appearances while also posting to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

With so many calendaring and event apps — Plancast, Lanyrd and Facebook come to mind — Simply Events needs to do a better job at answering the “Why should I use the app?” question. It’s also in dire need of deeper Facebook integration.

Social Listing: Mobile & Local Classified Ads

Quick Pitch: Social Listing is a simple and fast mobile app that connects local buyers to sellers.

Genius Idea: Classifieds reinvented for Android and iPhone.

Mashable’s Take: iPhone and Android users looking for a more mobile way to browse or post classified ads might consider using Social Listing.

The application does not have anywhere near the quantity of ads or audience as Craigslist, but it does make it easy to scroll through and checkout nearby for-sale items. Sellers can use the app to snap a photo, name a price and send the listing to nearby Social Listing users, Facebook or Twitter.

Try as they might, classifieds startups have yet to knock Craigslist off its almighty throne. Social Listing will need much more than mobile appeal to beat the staunch incumbent of online classifieds.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, catscandotcom

Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark

Microsoft BizSpark

The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

More About: bizspark, charity, Givey, Shnap, Simply Events, Social Listing, spark-of-genius

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22nd May 2011

38 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed

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Mashable has finally returned from Disney World (also known as the happiest place on earth) with the conclusion of Connect. Since returning, we’ve have no time to slump, turning out another great week of tools and resources for your social media pleasure.

Read on for some great stories about how to use Gmail Labs to boost your productivity, 13 alternative ways to get your news online, and a ton of resource roundups for developers, designers, and small businesses alike.

Looking for even more social media resources? This guide appears every weekend, and you can check out all the lists-gone-by here any time.

Editors’ Picks

Social Media

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business & Marketing

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Image courtesy of Dawghouse Design Studio

More About: business, facebook, Features Week In Review, gadgets, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, social good, social media, tech, technology, twitter

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20th May 2011

BankSimple Issues First Cards, Looks to Change Banking Industry


BankSimple, an ambitious startup looking to reinvent banking online, is opening its online branch to employees and issuing its first bank cards for testing in New York, Portland and San Francisco.

The newly issued cards, which double as ATM and credit cards, represent an important milestone in BankSimple’s cautious maturation process.

BankSimple is not a bank. Rather, FDIC-insured banks manage the money. But BankSimple is a hybrid provider of online and social banking services and a distributer of physical bank cards for purchases and ATM withdrawals.

Founded in 2009, the startup has remained relatively stealthy. Mashable got an inside look at the startup’s plans in July 2010. Co-founder Alex Payne, an early Twitter employee, told us at the time that the startup’s focus was on “worry-free” money management and unrivaled customer service.

When it opens to bankers, likely sometime later this year, BankSimple’s draw will be fee-free ATM withdrawals, predictive money management, Zappos-style customer support and simplified money transfers between you and your social network friends.

“While we are thrilled to have our cards in-hand, we will be taking the necessary time to ensure that our systems are rock-solid and that our card fulfillment operations can handle the demand,” BankSimple VP of product marketing Adam Erlebacher says. “It is critical that we get this right from the very beginning.”

Some 50,000 people have already requested to join BankSimple’s bank of the future. They’ll have to wait a bit longer, as friends and family will get priority access after the employee-testing phase is completed.

“The last many months have taught us greater patience,” Erlebacher says. “It is difficult to change an industry. But we’re leaning into it and can’t wait to show you what we’re building.”

More About: alex payne, banksimple, online banking, startup

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