"Yay."
That's one of the colorful and energetic buzzwords that Moo.com, a U.K. company mostly known for its whimsical user-generated business cards, has used to get people excited about its products.
And now, it might well be the grateful word coming out of the mouths of its American customers--who make up about half of the company's sales--because Moo.com has finally decided to open a U.S. operations center.
Later this year, Moo.com plans to open a U.S. operations center, a move that will allow it to serve its American customers much more quickly.
(Credit: Moo.com)Until now, those of us on the western side of the Atlantic ordering Moo cards, as they're known, have had to wait, sometimes for up to two weeks, to take delivery. That's fine if you don't have any kind of time crunch, but one way that many people use Moo cards is to quickly order up a set to take with them to an event. If, like me and a few people I know, you're not always on top of your to-do list, this often didn't work because the cards wouldn't arrive from Moo's London facility until it was too late.
With the opening of its operations center in Providence, R.I., however, Moo should be able to get cards into U.S. customers' hands much quicker, something that should help keep customers happy and returning again and again.
The decision is also a good sign for Moo--and perhaps for other companies that focus on so-called "people-powered" products--since putting resources into a U.S. expansion shows that it is doing well enough during the recession to warrant crossing the ocean.
The company said it will open the center sometime during the first half of 2009. Until that happens, however, plan well ahead for any kind of Moo cards you might want to order. And if you want some for South by Southwest, which is coming up in less than three weeks, you'd better move fast.
(Credit:
Moo Print)
Web-savvy printing company Moo.com has finally buckled from the requests of customers and is launching full-size business cards. The new offering will be available in the next few days.
Card design will still use the same Web-based editor that's been available for Moo's other products, although users will be getting more than twice the size they're used to with Moo's flagship mini cards. There's also a selection of design templates for the front side of the card that will contain all the contact information, which can now be slurped up right from LinkedIn.
For the back side of the card, users can grab up to 50 different photos from popular hosts like Flickr, Facebook, Bebo, and others and get them printed out for $21.99. However, users who sign up to be part of Moo's mailing list can get 20 percent off, bringing the price down to $17.60.
For the environmentally conscious, the new cards also come in two different stocks: the original stock used in the mini cards and a new "green" stock made from 100 percent recycled paper.
A promo video for the new cards is below.
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These Moo notecards are an example of the kinds of products being sold by companies whose users do all the creation and design of the things they buy.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)AUSTIN, Texas--Why invent the wheel by yourself if you can turn instead to a group of peers and solve it together?
That was the premise of a gathering here of executives from most of the leading companies in what might be called the "people-powered" industry.
These are companies like CafePress, Moo, Etsy, and 8020 Publishing whose business is manufacturing physical products designed by customers. CafePress, for example, makes T-shirts, coffee mugs, hats, and many other products emblazoned with logos and designs uploaded by users. Moo makes business and greeting cards adorned with users' own photos and images, and 8020 publishes photo and travel magazines full of readers' work.
But each of these outfits has until now had to solve a set of problems unique to this nascent industry--legal issues, community management processes, and even questions of nomenclature.
So as many of the people behind these companies prepared to go to Austin for this year's South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival, Moo CEO Richard Moross decided that maybe this would be a good time and place to get everyone together and discuss whether a cooperative investigation and search for solutions to common problems would be a good thing for everyone involved.
After all, there's strength in numbers, right?
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Viral marketing be damned, sometimes time spent searching the depths of the Internet for small, tucked-away items can be fun. Especially when you're rewarded from your efforts.
Web-printing company Moo is running its own Easter egg scavenger hunt in conjunction with several other hip online companies like Etsy, Blurb, Ponoko, and Picnik. People are supposed to hunt down small Easter eggs on the various services and claim them. Moo is also bundling some of the eggs in products sent to customers in the next week. Meanwhile, the company keeps track of who has found what, and awards various prizes from the partnered sites.
In addition to the Easter eggs found online, Moo is also venturing out into the real world (which it calls the "great outdoors") starting on Saturday. Real world eggs will be placed around cities with special codes people can claim, and hints are provided in the form of poems on Moo's blog (complete with rhyming couplets).
I've seen a lot of viral campaigns in my day, including one from Nick.com that was previewed a couple of weeks ago at Adobe's Engage event. None of them really seem to offer much in the way of user benefit--besides the potential of a prize or hidden piece of content that's usually been leaked elsewhere or is too inconsequential to warrant the time and effort spent. In this case, Moo's gone the route of tying together a small band of blogs and services its demographic is likely to enjoy using.
The rules are simple. Finding the hidden mystery eggs may not be, however.
(Credit: Moo Print LTD. )
In late May, Facebook posted some stats about adoption rates, and usage of their photo service. The numbers were pretty staggering for a social network, and as it currently stands, more than 14 million photos uploaded to the service every day. To take advantage of all those shots, the folks at Moo.com, makers of all sorts of Web integrated print items have added a link to Facebook photos for use in their entire product line.
If you're a Facebook user, you can pull in photos from any of your albums, or browse by the people that you've tagged. Linking up the two services involves authenticating Moo, which is as simple as clicking a button once you're logged in.
Also interesting is Moo's movement into designer graphics. The site is offering a slew of ready-made card designs in case you're not the type to use your own art of photography on business cards or their stickers products.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
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