Showing posts with label offers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label offers. Show all posts

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Textbook Rental giant Chegg HTML5 now offers digital books; Buys online learning student services of Fortune

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school of the Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead efforts for advocacy and community relationships Congressman Carloyn Maloney in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003 where it was ... ? Read More

chegg

As college students in the country beginning section back to dormitories and purchase their books per semester, textbooks car rental giant Chegg makes major waves in space with a number of new announcements. Firstly, Chegg finally going digital, and will steadily rolling e tutorials on it's platform to provide millions of print books and textbooks for students by the end of the year. Secondly Chegg has partnered with a number of publishers (including four of the five leading educational publishers) to propose to his students, such as Cengage Learning, Elsevier, f.a. Davis, Macmillan, Mcfarland, McGraw-Hill, Oxford University Press, Rowman Littlefield &, Taylor and Francis and Wiley e-books.

Chegg's background was founded in 2007 and became the largest giant Rent textbooks for students. In fact, millions of students through 7000 campuses use Chegg in rent. But in space, with a number of other competitors, such as CampusBookRentals and BookRenter, eCampus and others; The company has expanded its strategy beyond just rent to compete in space.

During the past year, acquired the Chegg CourseRank and Cramster, which help students to select courses and learn from them. Notehall services guide also picked up a study the company recently.

The company just announced that it has acquired a Fortune online guide marketplace for those who need help, or help others with homework. Student destiny, which was founded in 2005, allows students to ask questions or post tutorials on a wide range of issues. Students may submit a question, which is then sent to the network of student Fortune experts, which in turn writes tutorial which helps answer the question for a fee. Students can also serve as experts, to earn money for writing textbooks. The service is already used by more than 300 000 students.

Director Dan Rosensweig said simply – if the Facebook for your social graph, and LinkedIn for your professional graph, Chegg wants to be a centralized platform for the chart. It basically turns into a one-stop-shop (the site was also modified in the light of this new strategy) for students to search for educational resources and services, ranging from tutorials, tips, to commemorate the adoption. As explains Rosensweig, "we want students to use Chegg 300 days a year rather than before each semester.

Of course we all know, digital textbooks are the future of large and small companies throwing their hats into the ring. Amazon now offering digital books to Kindle. And Kno (which was actually founded by Osman Rashid, Chegg co-founder) also plays in space, as a hint. But one thing that Chegg in his favour to millions of students who already know the brand as textbook Rental giant.

With the digital book, offering students can download HTML5 formatted, browser based e-textbooks that may be available on any device, including the iPad. Each book will come with one-click theme navigation and include the ability to select, take notes and search directly in the workbook. Besides offering e tutorial will include the tool read in standby mode ", where students can access their textbooks online while they wait for their printed textbook to arrive. This is a very useful feature for those who wait until the last minute to order textbooks (I know that I did back in college and grad school). You can also rent or buy e-books.

Rosensweig said that the release of digital versions of textbooks will be a gradual process and already have tens of thousands of digital books on the site. At the end of the year, the goal is to make the digital book, offering one of our two search on the site. And he adds that he is a priority for the Chegg to offer digital versions of popular books that people want (i.e. necessary textbooks).

Clearly Rosensweig has an ambitious plan to Chegg, and obviously, telling him that he is very optimistic that the company will be the go-to educational resources and a platform for students and beyond. Income, according to our calculations in January was about $ 150 million, and probably this number has grown since then. Rosensweig confirms that the income is growing nicely, "especially now, when the company added new revenue streams with daily transactions and through premium services company acquired technologies. In fact, he said that all the channels available has increased.

Beyond just income there are these rumors of planned IPO to Chegg. Rosensweig said this public offering: if it makes sense, we will consider it. Right now, we are witnessing a very rapid growth and a good amount of funding. Chegg raises $ 219 million to date, most recently Adding $ 75 million in its coffers last fall.

I have a feeling that we will see more aggressive movies from Chegg in the near future.


Chegg, online textbook rental company, was inspired by Osman Rashid and Aayush Phumbhra frustration with the policies and procedures of their own University Bookstore. Osman and Aayush knew ...

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Sunday, August 21, 2011

DuoDater wants to make online dating more social and less uncomfortable (offers here)

RIP Empson-writer at TechCrunch. He did not find friends here, he is here to win and you don't forget it. You can contact him at rip [at] techcrunch [dot] com ? more

Screen shot 2011-08-08 at 1.46.21 AM

Last month, Nick Paumgarten penned a lengthy article for The New Yorker detailing the growth of online dating and the impact it had on Web culture. Among other things Paumgarten implies some eye-opening statistics on the industry, including the fact that paid dating sites have become collectively, billion-dollar industry that "one of the six new marriages is the result of meetings on Internet dating site", and that online dating is now the third most common way for people to meet.

While most early blush (or stamp) around using an online platform for continuing relations wear, some friction, which has always been there still exist: from awkwardness in online networks, the potential risk of meeting eStranger, relying on algorithms to find your "compliant", etc. and more ironic for the interaction between intermediaries, most online dating sites to connect users with new people, while remaining detached from their actual social life. As Paumgarten, online dating is still remains inherently isolated.

Michael wig and Andrew Flachner, founders of the new dating site called DuoDater, agree that there are still some very fundamental problems with the current approaches to online dating (and, well, dating in General). The creation of an online dating profile can be difficult; It's hard to find the correct thing to say about yourself that will help site, either algorithmically or not, will help to pick the right person said the co-sponsors. Not to mention the facts that messaging stranger may be somewhat arduous process, and meet them in person without much background, awkward and sometimes unsafe.

Thus, the San Francisco startup offers a platform that aims to be a bit more social and less intimidating, that model championed by current dating sites: double date. DuoDater is aimed at men and women in their 20s and 30s who want to communicate and meet new people with the co-pilot. The co-founders, think that by allowing users to have a friend with their parties on the date, the interaction may be more natural and (we hope) a less awkward way to communicate and make friends.

DuoDater also built in such a way as to make a dating profile less nerve-racking process. The site offers "profile", the Duo only requires users to write a few sentences about myself individually, to the main attraction is included for creating joint description of steam daters can work together to fill. Flachner said that, so far, DuoDater in users find this less problematic and easy approach to dating profiles.

The founders also think their model provides a higher level of accountability than is generally characteristic of Individual dating, as users are less inclined to use a trick photo corners and exaggerated or romanticized descriptions of when they know, a close friend will see it and can call them on it.

DuoDater also adds a "featured Topic" idea, so new users can get up and running more easily and get out there and test the model.

When I asked whether they had considered the founders dating option group, they said that their market research and due diligence have shown that users prefer double dating with the latter because it still provides a level of intimacy that makes the experience feel like a real date, not the packages (PA) with handle, social gathering.

The founders said that, although there are several successful group, dating sites, profile group to take attention away from individuals and organizations access to a large group of people can be a hassle is that many are familiar with.

Of course the inherent risk to DuoDater in the model is one of the major players in the online dating space, like Match.com, PlentyOfFish and eHarmony, OK Cupid, you can create your own double-dating service and quickly have run to beat in terms of user base. But Flachner said that he thinks DuoDater is well positioned as an alternative, because it focuses on the casual atmosphere of double dating and centered around the events and experiences, instead of relying on algorithmic models (potentially less "human" approach) to connect to specific people.

DuoDater offers an interesting spin on traditional dating model and, indeed, it is surprising that this model is not something that is done on a large scale. Of course, this may be justified; without a paid model this is hard to learn to make money and double dating organically bring their own problems. DuoDater is currently free to use, and start the initialization of at this point, it will draw on its beta version to test the waters of whether this approach truly viable and scalable. Fee-based premium service may be at its future road map, too.

For readers who want to do some early test double dating platform click over to DuoDater.com and enter code "techcrunch" invite for access.

Let us know what you think.


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