The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Quick Pitch: BO.LT is a platform that allows anyone to copy, edit, comment on, endorse, share and socialize any webpage.
Genius Idea: Add your own personal touch to the webpages you share.
Great applications and services make people feel more powerful. Such is the belief of Jamie Roche, one half of the fraternal twosome behind BO.LT, a startup that exited invite-only stage one week ago.
BO.LT empowers its users by letting them remix any webpage and do so anonymously, should they so desire.
Here’s how te service works: Enter a URL, just as you would on any URL shortening service, and BO.LT creates an exact replica of the page, storing the copy on BO.LT’s custom-built network. You can then annotate the page, alter it as you see fit and share the end result with friends or followers. BO.LT tracks views and clicks, along with where — mobile, Facebook or Google — visitors come from.
BO.LT’s page-editing options are quite sophisticated and allow for adding links, deleting chunks of page content and replacing webpage images with your own. Simply mouse over a section to select it, and then choose from the available options.
With BO.LT, you become the new owner of the web content you want to share. As Roche sees it, that’s an incredibly empowering value proposition.
“The days of building a beautiful website and having people come to it are long gone,” Roche says on his power-to-the-web-consumer stance. He believes that BO.LT can help publishers reach wider audiences by encouraging visitors to mix-and-match publisher content with their own personal content.
In addition to web-browsing consumers, the tool is also meant to appeal to marketers. For instance, Rickshaw Bagworks, a built-to-order bag maker in San Francisco, uses BO.LT to market bags fresh off the production line. A team member takes an iPhone photo of the bag, emails the photo into a custom BO.LT template and then tweets the BO.LT-enhanced page to @Rickshawbags account followers.
In response to the question of who the product is best-suited for, Roche says that BO.LT “has two audiences and is actively serving both,” adding that, “the distinction between a marketer and consumer has blurred.”
Ultimately, Roche sees the startup as a content-delivery platform that will compete directly with large internet infrastructure companies such as Akamai or Amazon.
BO.LT was founded in 2010 and secured $5 million in funding from Benchmark Capital. The startup launched in invite-only stage in April, opened its doors to the public last week and is said to have tens of thousands of users. Roche expects BO.LT to serve one billion pageviews before the end of the year.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark</p>
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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