Time to get your ‘Zoo’ on

By Len Gutman on July 7th, 2009 In Social Media

zoolooscreen

A few months ago Linda VandeVrede told us about a Scottsdale start-up called ZooLoo that was getting ready to launch. Well, according to TechCrunch it looks like today is the big day for ZooLoo, although I wouldn’t say the tech blog is overly optimistic about the chances for ZooLoo’s success:

“The problem with that for ZooLoo is that Facebook has about a 200 million user head start on their social graph. For a service like this, that is all that really matters. That’s not to say that ZooLoo can’t woo some of those users with some nice features, but it’s hard to teach 200 million users new tricks.”

It looks like ZooLoo is esentially a social media start page along the lines of iGoogle or MyYahoo but really focused on organizing all your social apps on one “home” page. The screen shots on the TechCrunch story look really sweet as well.

From what I can tell ZooLoo looks like a really interesting site with lots of upside, and I am definitely going to give it a try once it’s live. We’ve gotta support our local companies and our fellow local PR practitioners!

On the downside, it would have been nice if the TechCrunch story came out after ZooLoo went live so that folks who read about the launch could have gone to the site to see it for themselves and sign up. I’m sure that wasn’t how the ZooLoo team planned it, but as we all know you can’t control the timing of the media.

Time to get your ‘Zoo’ on

Comments

Dan Wool Says:
July 7th, 2009 at 10:09 am

You can absolutely control timing when you launch and the resulting media coverage – your assumption is incorrect Len.

This is a very likely a perfect example. I think (hope) they *did* plan this. Looks to me like Zooloo gave TechCrunch an exclusive. That will enable them to get mainstream media attention when they do indeed launch and for bloggers like us to chatter about it and keep the hype alive.

I agree that the product should be live or have some way catch the readers clicking over from TechCrunch.

That said, it’s clear Zooloo’s PR is closely tied with operations. Hope they can deliver with a great product.

Dave Says:
July 7th, 2009 at 10:25 am

Maybe ZooLoo should’ve heeded the advice in the Sunday NY Times piece and skipped TechCrunch for the exclusive. :-)

francine hardaway Says:
July 7th, 2009 at 6:00 pm

I think they weren’t read to go live, and you ought to be live softly for a few days before sending out your press release.

However, the more important thing is that I saw a post about Facebook, saying that its growth among high school age people was dropping. THis means they’re looking for somewhere to go where they won’t meet ME. So maybe there’s a place for a niche, or a nextgen product

Perri Says:
July 8th, 2009 at 10:39 am

Wow, Francine, that was good insight! I’m also gonna check ‘em out when they go live.

Samantha Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

ZooLoo officially launched yesterday. There’s quite a bit more too ZooLoo than what was reported from TechCrunch. So if you want to see what ZooLoo is all about go to http://www.ZooLoo.com.

You can also read more about it on BizJournals.com at http://twurl.nl/3qmvil and grab a copy of USA Today and the Scottsdale Republic tomorrow.

Thanks for all of the local support. We hope to see you on ZooLoo!

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