Sawhorse Event Recap

Sawhorse Media

3/21/11

Main Point

When we think of marketing, we often think of creating marketing plans and positioning the product to

be sold. But times are changing and there are a new generation of firms that focus on offering products

in such a way that other people and entities automatically market for them. This can be achieved if

there is incentive and a way for people to pursue their own pursuits (star vehicle).

Background

- Sawhorse Media founded by Greg Galant

- Started first business in high school: helping businesses close by plan and create websites

- Continued to work on different projects and internships during college e.g. CNN

- He then started Venture Voice, which is a podcast that discusses how entrepreneurs build their

businesses.

- He created News Groper, a network of blogs by humor writers to imitate or fake the blogs

from celebrities. However the company faced the problem of getting to the next level because

resources were low and only the staff is trying to promote it. Celebrities also did not like the

idea.

Shorty Awards

- An award ceremony for Twitter – for people who create the best tweets.

- Within 24 hours there were a lot of posts on Twitter about it. Within 2 days they were getting a

lot of media coverage as a lot of journalists and media are on Twitter

- Realized that they have created a platform to showcase talents of others. Since a lot of people

wanted to get onto this platform, they were marketing for the awards. E.g. Suze Orman CNBC

humor video.

Sawhorse Media’s Other Social Media Platforms

- Muck Rack – list journalists by publication so people can search them up on Twitter and follow

them. Started with 100 journalists but soon others were asking to be listed on the website.

- Globalquad- lists Twitter users of a list of universities so it is possible to follow them.

- Listorious – search engine for people on Twitter. People requested to be listed on it and this

process helped to market the website.

Q&A

The platforms Sawhorse Media creates are mostly for Twitter, are they considering other social media

sites?

- Shorty Awards never called “Twitter Awards” to not discriminate.

- Current Shorty Awards has added non-Twitter awards e.g. Tumbler or Foursquare

- Facebook is mostly private and therefore hard to achieve

How did Listorious become popular?

- Launched the same day as Twitter Lists. People told their friends about Twitter Lists and must

therefore also tell them where to find these lists.

- Partnership with Twitter- leveraged Shorty Awards relationship to help partnership for Listorious

- Listed 10 different domain names to ensure it will be found

What is it like working with the Twitter Platform?

- Compared to others, API easy to use

You majored in Philosophy; how helpful was it for his career?

- He started by majoring in business but it felt it didn’t feel it is that practical

- He found it helpful when in the selling and marketing stage because there are no scientific

empirical evidence, have to rely on other skills to push an idea

Some people criticize Twitter because of the low quality of tweet content and more people post only

to get more followers. How does this impact his operations?

- This is both problem and opportunity

- Problem because people pay to get nominations so there is more pressure to anticipate these

issues and use algorithms to combat it

- But opportunity – more noise means it is more meaningful finding the “best of” of the content