30% of Facebook users are from the United States. 8% of Americans are on Twitter. Lets not forget all the niche social networking sites, including those for DJs, food bloggers, movie lovers and so on. Across all social media channels, Americans are the second most active.
Think for a moment about how many social networks you belong to. Two? Five? Ten? How do you manage the URLs of them all? Now look at your business card. Does it have at least two links to your social profiles? What if there was a solution to manage all your networks and their URLs in one place, leaving you just one simple URL to remember and share with others?
Thankfully, Eddie Inserra of ItsMYUrls.com had the vision of solving this problem after seeing many colleagues struggling with managing all their accounts. Boston-based ItsMYUrls is a website where you connect all your social networks under one platform and generate one unique URL to use across all social sites. When clicked, this URL will bring you to the suite of social networks to which you belong, allowing anyone to connect with you anywhere on the web in one place.
Inserra first realized there was a market opportunity for a business like this when he was out in L.A. while doing marketing for a small record label. “A few people gave me their business cards and one had seven to ten links to his social media profiles. I looked at it and thought, ‘it’s so overwhelming, I don’t want to go to all these links. There’s got to be a better way.' Then a light bulb popped in my head,” explained Inserra.
The concept is simple. One link, one click and one QR code scan which can connect you with someone’s complete online profile.
The idea to implement a QR code to compliment the single ItsMYUrls URL was the brainchild of Inserra during a Mashable event in New York City a few years back. Inserra was connecting with so many people, all of which had a presence on multiple social networks. He brainstormed the idea of allowing each person who became a member of ItsMYUrls to have a QR code, which would be easily scannable, to connect people instantaneously online. The QR code has proven to be very useful for those including DJs and musicians.
As you probably know, social networking sites come and go almost every day. Naturally, I had to ask Inserra how he planned for his company to grow with the evolving social atmosphere.
“Everyone talks about the major social sites. A majority of people also have links to smaller niche sites. There’s a niche for everybody. We built this to create, on the most basic level, a go-to site to site online. It’s based on the simplest way to connect from one site to another.”
ItsMYUrls can easily grow and scale with the dynamic social web. For example, almost immediately after Apple launched their social network, Ping, people updated their profiles with their new Ping URLs.
How is this possible?
ItsMYUrls doesn’t work with any site’s API. It takes no engineering effort on the company’s end to begin supporting a new social site. “With so many sites being created and dying every day, ItsMYUrls can grow quickly and easily with the social networking world,” Inserra explained. Users can adapt to the changes by simply removing their old links from their profile.
You may or may not have heard about this company, but regardless, they’re doing some pretty innovative things when it comes to marketing. According to Inserra, they’ve done everything from guerilla marketing, PPC advertising, implementing viral share buttons, and word of mouth.
An intriguing marketing campaign they did was an instance where another co-founder wore an iPad which was playing a demo video of their company around his neck at an event . This made people think: “Is he really wearing his iPad as a necklace?” Then people came up to him and began a conversation.
They’ve also had the luxury of having many celebrities use their site. Inserra and his team have worked to build relationships with people around Hollywood – from A-list actors to directors and DJs.
It seems that Inserra and his team really have a compelling idea here. “We’re happy it’s going well and hopefully we will be expanding with more social networks and the social media space. It’s a simple concept - we don’t want it to be flashy, we don’t want any distractions like other similar sites have. “
