New Video Interview about Buzzr from Gotham Media
Gordon Platt of Gotham Media came by our office yesterday and interviewed me about what's going on at Buzzr.
Here's the tape: http://blog.gothammediaventures.com/?p=621
Good interview. But I need to remember to sit up straight!
Buzzr Sets Up Shop at NYC Incubator
We're pleased to have been accepted by the NYU/Poly Incubator, sponsored by the NYC Economic Development Corporation.
The incubator has been getting a lot of press lately, including stories in the New York Times, http://bit.ly/7qWatZ and BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8290555.stm
A few hundred applied and about 30 were accepted.
Aside from a fairly swank office in downtown NYC, we're happy to be surrounded by a couple of dozen other entrepreneurs -- from one person start ups to 10-person early stage companies.
CMS Wire Update on Buzzr.com Highlights Benefits of our Drupal UX layer
Great update on Buzzr from Dee-Ann LeBlanc of CMS Wure: http://bit.ly/LdDcF
First time we make the analogy that Buzzr is the "automatic transmission" to Drupal's "clutch" -- a lot more people can drive an automatic, even as sports car enthusiasts wouldn't want to give up the power of the clutch.
More highlights:
Ten of Thousands of Websites Are Using Buzzr Software Before We’re Even in Public Alpha. What’s the Deal?
Buzzr, our platform for simplifying the creation of sophisticated websites, has been in development for more than a year now. Yet even though we aren’t public yet, tens of thousands of sites have already adopted software from the project. More than 100,000 sites, we estimate. How? Open Source.
For this of you not too familiar with open source technology projects, a word of explanation is necessary. Strange as it may seem, we’ve released, free of charge, interesting parts of our work (“modules”) well before we were ready to release it on our own site. We’ve also contributed extensive work we’ve done on existing modules to make them much better.
The work ranges from making it easier for website visitors to vote on content they like, to making it easier to create a custom form, to making it easier to configure a website to begin with.
Press Coverage of Tipzu Acquisition
Nice piece by Rafat Ali, editor of PaidContent.org: http://bit.ly/3pywsN
And a smart post by Geoff Spick of CMS Wire: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/drupal-cms-buzzr-snatches-ecommerce-s...
Buzzr.com Acquires e-Commerce Site Tipzu.com
(New York, NY, August 5th, 2009) --
Web publishing platform Buzzr.com has acquired Tipzu, which allows users to launch and manage e-commerce sites based on their hobbies and interests.
Buzzr.com, now in a private alpha, enables ordinary people and businesses to create highly sophisticated websites, deeply integrated with social media, without the need for professional developers.
“Buzzr and Tipzu have a shared vision of creating the next generation of social commerce,” said Edward Sussman, Buzzr.com’s CEO and co-founder. “The blended content and e-commerce approach of Tipzu is very innovative.”
“The Buzzr team has the technical expertise and passion to take Tipzu and bring it to the next level,” said Tipzu founder Chad Gracia. “I’m delighted to be staying on as a board member and business development partner.” Tipzu’s current sites – which range from crocheting to meditation, acting and gardening – will continue to function and ultimately be folded into the Buzzr.com platform.
Guess Who's Buzzed?
Everybody.
On April 13, a little over two weeks ago, we released a demo video and blog post about our new business, Buzzr.com. The demo, which is kind of wonky, is aimed at the crowd of developers who live and breathe Drupal, the publishing platform underlying the new business I co-founded with Lullabot and Bond Art & Science. About 10,000 geeks have come to check out the blog so far. Our ultimate audience will be more ordinary people who run businesses, write blogs, publish online newspapers and magazines, operate non-profits and just want to create cool, great websites. We should have something ready for them to play with before too long.
What's In a Name? Buzzr Unveiled
On Monday we released the first public demo of a product I’ve been working on for almost a year. It’s great to be able to show people that you’re not just imagining the company you started.
The release create a mini-twitter storm because of it could lead to a dramatic improvements to the open source platform Drupal. It’s also the foundation of my business – a hosted platform that makes it easy for ordinary people to create dynamic, cutting edge websites. Good stuff.
Even more fun for me, though, was the unveiling of our name: Buzzr.
Improving the Drupal Admin Interface
Be careful what you wish for — good advice! In working with various content management systems, I've always wanted the chance to improve the user experience. But actually getting the opportunity to do so uncovered much more complexity than I'd even dreamed.
For me, the biggest challenge was in bridging the gap between what the users of Buzzr would expect to do, and how the Drupal admin interface actually works. It's possible to do so much in Drupal if you're a trained professional -- but is it possible to enable ordinary people to take advantage of what Drupal has to offer?
The three areas of greatest conceptual difficulty for the user (from my perspective) are:
The Buzzr Demo Video - Making Drupal Usable
A few weeks ago, I put together an April Fool's Day post about a bunch of usability work that Lullabot had been doing with Drupal. My favorite April 1 posts are usually heavily based in reality, and, as we've mentioned previously, Lullabot has, in fact, been doing a lot of work trying to create a streamlined version of Drupal.
We started our project about a year ago, working with Karen McGrane from Bond Art + Science heading up our user experience work and Ed Sussman coordinating all of the business aspects of the project. We spent about 8 months building a prototype and started fund raising a little over 4 months ago. Having done all of this work on spec, and since it's still in flux, we were hesitant to share it publicly during our ongoing V.C. meetings.
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For more information, please contact ed@lullabot.com
Custom Sites
We are currently working with a limited number of clients to create custom designed sites using Buzzr's highly social publishing platform. Please drop Ed Sussman a note at ed@lullabot.com if you'd like to know more.