A local startup has launched a social shopping site in beta. Unlike its competitors, Strongbark allows users to pass along deals to their friend networks privately, without spammers, internet marketers, or data miners souring the experience.
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Strongbark was founded by two venture capitalists, David Beazely and Les Teichner. Unlike larger sites of its kind, it promises significant exclusivity and privacy protection. It promotes deal-sharing as an opportunity to build trust among acquaintences, rather than to risk losing it.
“We thought that people’s online shopping and sharing experiences were being compromised,” Beazely said in a VentureBeat interview. “For people that were just [on a site] to browse and then have these things [such as ads] follow you was creepy.”
Thus, Strongbark is a 'walled garden' of sorts, safe from the data scrapers, analytics, and impersonal commercialism that haunt its larger kin. It offers an obvious boon to small businesses, but not in exactly the way they might have come to expect.
With its system of loyalty points, Strongbark rewards its dedicated users for spreading deals and discount codes within their circles.
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“On Strongbark,” says the site, “friends follow friends for the strong relationships they have, and the relevant barks they share. On your homepage, where you follow your friends mybarkpages (also known as Collars™), you scroll, screen and select the offers you want to redeem and simultaneously elevate the Bark Score™ of the friend who recommended that offer.”
It pledges to weed out any ads, spam, or other unfriendly irritations that may appear, replacing 'brand ambassadors' with 'Friend Ambassadors.' “A Friend Ambassador is a Strongbark user who is celebrated, revered and rewarded for the relevant offers they share and recommend to just the right friends; in contrast, a brand ambassador is a paid endorser who pushes stuff to friends on social networks, invariably adding to the spam, clutter and irrelevant content felt all over the web.”
Aside from its catchy internal lingo, Strongbark boasts $700,000 in funding from family and friends and about 500 users. As it grows, it plans to offer more than 75,000 daily deals from over 2,500 businesses, big dogs and little dogs alike.
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