One Day, One Job » community manager

Know Your Meme

Willy Franzen — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:00:22 +0000

Today’s post came from a reader recommendation (thanks Derek!), which is awesome because I was on the company’s site a few days ago and never would have imagined that they offer jobs (or even considered them a company as opposed to a website). The reason that I was on the site was that I was reading the story of Epic Beard Man (it is tagged NSFW), which is another one of those ridiculous things that has become popular on the Internet. The term that many use to describe these phenomena is meme. Know Your Meme is a website that organizes all of the world’s memes. Let’s say that you’re looking for the story behind Rickroll because you have no idea why people think it’s so funny. Know Your Meme, which is based in New York City, will not only explain the meme to you, but it will also detail the history of how the meme became popular and how it evolved. To some Know Your Meme may seem frivolous, but in many ways it’s the Historical Society of the Interwebs.

Know Your Job

If you’re still not sure what a meme is, then use Know Your Meme’s Random Meme Generator. Try it a few times and you should get the hang of it. You may recognize some famous memes from the Weezer Pork And Beans video, the South Park episode Meet the Internet Stars, or that Super Bowl commercial that had some Internet stars in it. My favorite meme of all time has to be Numa Numa guy. Yes, this may all seem idiotic, but Know Your Meme is building a business off of Internet celebrities. In addition to the advertising angle, they are also selling meme merchandise. It must be working, because Know Your Meme is hiring. If you check out their Jobs page, you’ll see that they’re looking for a Rails Developer and a Junior Web Developer. I know that most of you aren’t developers (so far the survey results are telling me that I cover too many technical jobs—even if that’s where the action is in this economy), so you should take note that Know Your Meme’s internships are in Community Management, Merchandise, Research, and Writing. These are all areas where Know Your Meme might be hiring in the future, and if you push them enough, they might even be hiring right now. You just need to reach out to them at forthelulz@knowyourmeme.com with “any resumes, writing samples, portfolios in the body of the email or linked to file-hosting sites.”

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

What’s your favorite meme?

Experience Project

Willy Franzen — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:56:40 +0000

Check out this week’s sponsor, New York City Teaching Fellows. They’re seeking new grads with no prior teaching experience or background in education to help make a difference in NYC’s public schools.

Do you have a secret? An embarrassing story? Maybe you have a real problem (like not having a job) or a health issue. It could just be something that you’re passionate about. If you have experiences that you want to share or you want to read about the experiences of other people, then Experience Project is the site for you. It’s a free web site that allows people across the world to share their experiences. It all started when Armen Berjikly, Experience Project’s founder, was inspired by a friend to build a support community for multiple sclerosis patients. It was so successful that Armen decided to expand the project so that it could serve everyone—it’s now “the first social network based upon who you are and not who you know.” The company is based in San Francisco, and according to their data and the data on Compete.com, they’re doing some pretty serious traffic.

Gain Some Experience at Experience Project

When I first discovered Experience Project, I instantly wondered what the business model was. After doing a little investigating, I realized how powerful targeted advertising to specific verticals can be. Even though users are able to maintain their anonymity on Experience Project, contextual advertising that matches up with a given Experience Project group should be extremely effective. I can’t say whether it is, but Experience Project’s Advertising page provides some more insight into what kind of advertising opportunities the site offers. If you’re intrigued by Experience Project’s different take on social networking, then you’ll want to check out their Jobs page. They have opportunities available in Business Development & Sales, Product Marketing (SEO and Analytics), Engineering & Product / Web Development, and Marketing & Community Management. They don’t go into too much depth about what kind of experience they’re looking for (despite their name), so I’d imagine it’s wide open for new grads to apply for these positions. To do that you should send “a cover letter specific to your arena of interest, your current résumé and up to three relevant work samples and / or links to portfolio work” to team@experienceproject.com.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you shared anything on Experience Project?

Thumbtack

Willy Franzen — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:00:01 +0000

I’m sure that many of you use Craigslist to find job opportunities. As much as it can be a great resource for job seekers, I have to say that I find it weird that people looking for jobs and people looking for “casual encounters” are using the same website. There’s just something sketchy about Craigslist. That probably explains why many people are reluctant to use the site to find local service providers. Can you trust a plumber, tutor, masseuse, or pool guy if you find him or her on Craigslist. Maybe. But how will you know for sure? That’s where Thumbtack comes in. They’re a San Francisco based startup that is taking a page out of Angie’s List’s book (maybe they should have “list” in their name) by providing an online marketplace for local service providers, but they’re doing it for free. Free is great, but the real key feature on Thumbtack is the fact that they provide “twelve ways to verify the identity and reputation of every provider.” That way you don’t have to worry about your plumber getting his house calls and his casual encounters mixed up.

Thumbs Up for Thumbtack

I could keep doing my best to describe Thumbtack to you, but I might as well let them do it through their 90 second elevator pitch on YouTube (e-mail readers click through to watch).

Now that you have an idea of what Thumbtack is all about, let’s talk about their jobs. They don’t have much posted on their Jobs page, but their co-founder Jonathan Swanson did send me a note about an unlisted position that they’re hiring for.

Exciting Early-Stage Web Startup Seeks Community Manager

Compensation: Salary + Equity + Meals

We’re looking for an energetic, upbeat person to serve as Thumbtack’s Community Manager. Your main responsibilities will include managing the Thumbtack office (paying bills, coordinating meals, etc) and managing customer service (answering calls and emails, directing our outsourced team, etc). Responsibilities can grow for talented individuals. Must be extremely organized, friendly, and hard working.
Thumbtack is a well-funded, energetic, young start up located in San Francisco. We have a great office with views of the Bay and a private chef schooled at Le Cordon Bleu cooks most of our meals at the office.

For more information about us, please check out thumbtack [dot] com. In your email, please tell us why you’re interested in working at a startup. careers [at] thumbtack [dot] com.

The company sounds pretty cool, so give them a look. Maybe you’ll be enjoying meals cooked by their private chef next year.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you tried Thumbtack?

Weebly

Willy Franzen — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:53:34 +0000

I’ve been building websites since 1998 (I think). Even back then, there were online services that made it easy to build a web site without any knowledge of HTML. The difference is that now there are services that enable you to make a website that looks good with no HTML knowledge. These website builders are extremely powerful, and server the purposes of most people who want a relatively simple website. Weebly is a company that offers the ability to create a free website and/or blog. They’re based in San Francisco, and they were named one of TIME’s 50 Best Websites of 2007. Weebly has some of the best names in the Venture Capital world behind them, and they’re actually profitable (based on the freemium model).

Be Part of the We in Weebly

Weebly now has more than 2 million users, which means they’re a dominant player in their market. They seem pretty focused on keeping things lean, which means that they’ve been able to achieve these results without having to take on a huge amount of capital. It’s hard to say where the personal website creation market will go in the future, but for now it seems as though Weebly has a strong hold on moving users from their free service to their paid service. They sound like a pretty cool company, and you can get a better feel for them by checking out the company blog or Founder David Rusenko’s blog. If you like what you see, then you should take a look at jobs at Weebly. Right now they have only one position available and it’s does require some experience, but I think that there are plenty of new college grads who would be a good fit as their Head of Customer Satisfaction (Community Manager). You can apply online for the job, and I think that you should probably build a Weebly site as part of your application.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you built your own Weebly site?

Slide

Willy Franzen — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:39:03 +0000

It looks like Yahoo! Finance has taken a page out of my book and used Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list to highlight some companies that are hiring. I found the link on Twitter, and was pleased to see that I had already featured a number of the companies. One that I haven’t yet featured (and don’t remember hearing about before) is Slide. They’re a San Francisco based startup that claims to be “the world’s leading social entertainment company.” I think that’s a bit of a stretch, but they do make social networks more fun for hundreds of millions of people. Their 40 Under 40 CEO is Max Levchin, who co-founded PayPal (which was sold for $1.5 billion to eBay). He is apparently well on his way to having built another billion dollar company, considering the fact that Slide was valued at $550 million last time that they took money.

Slide into a New Job

The basic premise behind slide is that social networks are better when you can bring outside content in—whether it’s sharing something that you’ve made like a slideshow or using an application that allows you to throw sheep. People want customization, yet they don’t have the web development skills to do it on their own. They need help, and that’s where Slide comes in. Monetizing social network traffic isn’t necessarily easy, but Slide seems to be heading in the right direction when it comes to turning their massive traffic into revenue. Not only do their investors believe in them, but so do advertisers like Starbucks, Sunkist, Activision, AT&T Wireless, Discovery Channel, Estee Lauder, McDonald’s, Lionsgate Films, Universal Pictures, and Paramount Pictures. I guess 5 million sheep thrown a day is worth more than I thought it was. Slide is very clearly growing, and as I mentioned in the opening of this post, they’re hiring. Their Jobs page shows more than a dozen open positions, and a bunch of those are suitable for new grads. These include Product Manager, Community Manager, Flash Animator/Illustrator, Flash Social Game Engineer, Graphic Designer, Junior QA Engineer, Linux Server Engineer, OO Javascript/Front-end Engineer, Python Web Developer, and Community Support Representative. You can apply online directly from these links, so give Slide a look.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Do you use Slide?

Slickdeals

Willy Franzen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:43:02 +0000

We all learn at an early age that we can’t have our cake and eat it too. Everything has a trade off. You can have money or you can have stuff. You can’t have both. Right? Wrong. Since 1999 Las Vegas based Slickdeals has been proving that you can have your cake and eat it too. Or as they put it, “Slickdeals.net is a free, user-driven deal sharing site with a mission to provide consumers an avenue to collaborate and share information in order to make the best shopping decisions.” That’s a fancy way of saying that they are a community of people who help each other find the best deals, so you can buy stuff and have some money left over. In fact, a lot of Slickdeals users find deals so good that they get paid to buy something (after rebate). Seriously. It’s all about free and open sharing of information, and it’s amazingly powerful. The amount of money that people have saved through Slickdeals has to be staggering.

Are You Slick Enough?

Slickdeals doesn’t have a monopoly on “community driven bargain hunting,” but their “thousands of free discounts, promo codes, reviews and price comparisons” have resulted in an insanely successful website and business. From what I can tell, most of Slickdeals’ revenue comes through advertising and affiliate links. They’ve found that giving away a lot of high quality free content can be very profitable. Maybe newspapers could learn a thing or two from Slickdeals. Even though Slickdeals is all about being cheap and frugal, they appear to be willing to spend some of their profits on hiring top talent. Their Jobs page shows a number of listings that include potential entry level positions like Creative Web Developer, Community Relations Manager, Business Development Manager, and Blog Columnist. The application instructions vary, so be sure to check out the specific postings for all of the details. And be sure to enjoy the “employee discount” that is being allowed to read Slickdeals at work.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you used Slickdeals beore?

Vann’s

Willy Franzen — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:18:38 +0000

If you thought that we were going to be talking about skater shoes today, they you might be a little disappointed, but I think you’ll enjoy hearing about Vann’s with two n’s and an apostrophe. They are a Missoula, MT based electronics and appliances retailer that does most of its business online. Now, you may think that Missoula, MT (the setting of A River Runs Through It—my favorite book and movie) is a strange place to locate a major e-commerce outlet, but there’s a good story behind why Vann’s is located where it is. It all started with Pete Vann aka “Montana’s Last Great Cowboy.” He was the grandfather of the Pete Vann who founded Vann’s. After a family history of cowboying, ranching, and farming, Pete Vann took a job keeping an appliance store clean. It doesn’t sound like much, but within 11 years Pete owned the store that he used to keep clean. In 1996 he decided to give up some of his ownership to share it with the employees who helped him build the business to what it is today.

Become a Part of the Vann’s Story

The Vann’s story is pretty cool, but what brought them to my attention was the hiring process that they’re using to find a Community Manager. We’ll get to that in a second, but first I want to mention two more things that impressed me about Vann’s. First is their devotion to customer service. They make it very obvious on their website that they’re customer focused, and beyond that, a quick Internet search will turn up lots of great customer reviews. Second, they’re an Inc. 5000 company, which means that they’re experiencing fantastic growth. Those are both great signs for prospective employees. Now, let’s talk about this Community Manager position. It’s not definitively entry level, but that doesn’t matter. If you follow the instructions and are what they’re looking for, then you’ve got a shot. You’ll have until Friday, August 28, 2009 to flex your social media muscles and show why you’re best for the job.

Additionally, Vann’s has a more standard Jobs page that includes positions like Product Advisor (also see here and here), Java Developer, and Sales Consultant. Vann’s also has locations in Helena, Kalispell, Bozeman, Helena, Billings and Hamilton. Vann’s looks like an awesome place to work, and that Montana location really pays off for people who love the outdoors and want a great career in a less urban setting.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever bought anything from Vann’s?