Corrosive Online: Articles - ZooLoo Site Review and Interview

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Do You Zooloo? A Review of Brand New Website ZooLoo and an Interview With CEO and Founder Jeff Herzog

ZooLoo is a brand new website. Launched on July 8th 2009, ZooLoo promises to revolutionise the way we use the internet. The concept is a simple one; all your favourite places on the web, under one website. I managed to grab a quick interview with CEO and Founder, Jeff Herzog (pictured right) and, in this article, will also give a brief run down of what you can expect from a ZooLoo account.

History

Jeff, a visionary and entrepreneur, prior to beginning ZooLoo, is recognized as the Founder and CEO of iCrossing, which he began in 1998. In 10 years, Jeff took the company that he created from an inspired idea and turned it into one of the leading digital marketing companies in the world with annual revenues greater than $100M. Jeff also acquired five companies across North America and Europe, built a client roster of more than forty Fortune 500 companies, employed more than six hundred, and worked alongside investors including Goldman Sachs, Oak Investment Partners and RRE Ventures. Jeff has received several awards, including the New York Ten Awards and B2B Magazine's "Who's Who" in Business. He was named to the Executive Council of New York's list of the "10 Most Prominent Innovators," and was a finalist for the Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. A native of New Jersey, Jeff received a B.A. from the American University. He now resides in Scottsdale, Arizona with his family and dogs (he is especially fond of his Bernese Mountain Dog Rufus).

I started by asking Jeff about himself and the history behind ZooLoo;

"Prior to launching ZooLoo, I was the founder and CEO of iCrossing, now one of the world's largest digital marketing companies. I spent 10 years building that business from the ground up, and I have taken that experience and built a really cool company, ZooLoo. ZooLoo started as an official company in June 2008, but the idea was brewing long before that. It was started by me (CEO & Founder Jeff Herzog) along with a team of talented developers, engineers and marketers. Check out this page for more details about the founders: http://www.zooloo.com/AboutUs/index"

So, what was the inspiration behind creating the website?

"Basically, the idea for ZooLoo came about when my wife (and co-founder) Jill Miles and I were talking about how impersonal the Internet has become, and how everyday there seemed to be more and more information overload. Jill really wanted a place where she could connect to her family and the people who mattered most to her, where she had control over the information she shared. I wanted a place where I could manage all of my favorite stuff in one place (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, eBay, LinkedIn, blog and news feeds, shopping, travel planning tools, restaurant reservations, etc.). We both thought it would be great to have all those features under your own domain name, essentially making it your home on the Web. Thus, the concept of ZooLoo was born: Your Name, Your Domain, Your Life."

How long has ZooLoo been in the making?

"We launched in Beta on July 8, 2009 after 13 months of development (including 6 months of private Alpha testing)."

I went on to talk to Jeff about what some people might see as a 'crowded market' as far as Social Networking goes;

"ZooLoo is not a social network. We do have a social component that users can choose to use, but we don't expect our users to get up and leave Facebook or Twitter, so we integrated them into ZooLoo. We actually encourage users to use Facebook and Twitter and other social sites, ON ZooLoo as widgets on their personal web dashboard. We're a complete online environment for today's Internet, which of course includes social networking sites, but that isn't our focus."

Design

The interface for ZooLoo is, quite frankly, stunning. I think that it is head and shoulders above most other websites out there. The 'Drag and Drop' environment makes it so easy to customise and navigate your favourite websites into one manageable area that I can hardly see any reason to go anywhere else. I asked Jeff about the look, feel and functionality of ZooLoo;

"The visual design was the result of trying to set a new standard in interfaces. Having it customizable was paramount. And, of course, being in alpha and then beta, we wanted to try this new paradigm of site layout. We're not opposed to simpler designs; we needed facback on this one. It's visually stunning, and functional."

The Technology

For those 'techy' folks who like to look into the heart of a website to see how it ticks there is a lot to get excited about in the development of ZooLoo. I decided to quiz Jeff about the technology that lies at the heart of ZooLoo;

"The ZooLoo product itself is entirely our own creation. But, behind the product we use a combination of jQuery, PHP via the Symfony framework and PostgreSQL as our database. Other technologies use are memcached, pgpool and of course, Linux (Ubuntu Server)."

Security

Online security of personal information is an on-going issue for all websites that collect personal data. Both Facebook and, more recently, Twitter have come under attack for allegedly not protecting their user's personal data enough. This issue is even more important when there may be young or vulnerable people involved. I wanted to get an insight into the security features of ZooLoo;

"We use typical security measures (sign-in is done over encrypted connections, for example). However, where we really stand apart is in our Privacy Manager. Unlike other sites (social and otherwise), we allow people to control specifically who gets to see what content on a page or album basis. For young people, this allows them to explicitly control who sees what in a simple to use interface. Other sites offer all or nothing. Our patent-pending Privacy Manager gives great control over a user's own content. It allows for a nice division of their site. Close friends can see those more personal pages, and co-workers or colleagues can have access to more benign content."

Customisation

ZooLoo is very easy to customise any way you want. You don't need to know anything about website design to have your own website pages that reflect your personality, hobbies or interests or even your favourite football team. Some basic knowledge of hex values and maybe a smattering of Photoshop skill will enable users to have exactly the look and layout they want. To make the process even simpler there is a wide-ranging gallery of custom themes already available at ZooLoo.

Having attempted to style Myspace layouts in the past I am pleased to see that easy customisation of a user’s public and private spaces is a key feature of ZooLoo. I asked Jeff if there are any plans for themes galleries and if ZooLoo will support external designers expanding the theme options?

"We will open an area for user-generated themes. Expect to see libraries of user-generated content that is accessible to all ZooLoo members in the near future."

Once you have customised your blog area you are able to publish it to whoever you choose should be able to view it.

Your Media

ZooLoo gives users plenty of space to store photos and videos that you may want to share with others. The upload area is simple to operate and you can have your items stored and displayed in no time. ZooLoo even offers a service called 'zPrints' where you can turn your photos into greeting cards, calendars, mousemats, high-end canvas prints and much, much more.

Shopping and Entertainment

First up is the Shopping Area or 'zShopping'. As with the rest of ZooLoo, this area can be customised to suit the account owner. There are already a large number of famous brands and stores to choose from. You are able to select or hide each section of your online 'Mall' and also control which stores appear in these sections. Another useful feature is the 'zButton'. This places a link into your favourites or browser bar so that, when you are on other websites, and you see something you would like to put on your shopping list (probably to wait until payday!), you can click the 'zButton' and ZooLoo will automatically place the item in your 'Shopping Wishlist'. If, like I do, you spend a lot of time shopping for the best products or deals on the web then the 'zButton' is a must have tool.

The Entertainment Area offers a range of web video channels to choose from including; YouTube, CNN, ESPN, College Humour and ZooLoo TV. ZooLoo also incorporates popular music sites such as 'streaming' services LastFM and AOL Radio, along with the obligatory iTunes to purchase your favourite songs. If you fancy getting out from behind your computer screen there is also an option to purchase tickets to see the latest movies from fandango.com. I think this covers pretty much everything you might need in the way of entertainment from the web.

International Appeal

The shopping and entertainment area are currently centred around the US market. Being in the UK I would like to see my favourite stores and local cinemas on the website. I asked Jeff how the plans are coming along to make this section of the site a truly global shopping and entertainment experience;

"From the start, internationalizing ZooLoo has been a priority for us. Our team is very culturally diverse, and we want to incorporate that into the site. We're already working hard on international partnerships as well as finding ways to offer ZooLoo in multiple languages. As soon as that happens, you will see many more culturally-specific offerings throughout the entire ZooLoo environment."

The 'ZooLoo Plus' Option

There is a ‘paid for’ option with ZooLoo costing $29.99 per year. This is a first for Social Networking sites as far as I know. So, does Jeff think that this is a bit of a risk and how many users do ZooLoo envisage paying for the upgraded version?

"As we said before, we're not a social networking site, so this is a little bit different. ZooLoo is, first and foremost, a place where you get your own domain name, and you can build your own website (your home on the Web). That means for $29.99 a year that a ZooLoo Plus account costs, you get a domain name, hosting and a website builder along with easy access to SEO tools and privacy controls. So really, that's a significant savings from what you'd pay for each of those services through an outside company. The other parts of ZooLoo, the personal web dashboard, the social environment, the media storage for photos and videos, on-demand entertainment center, personal shopping mall and life management tools, are added benefits to what you get full access to, no matter if you have a ZooLoo Free or a ZooLoo Plus account. A user who signs up for a ZooLoo Free account would still have a great ZooLoo experience, but they would get a .ZooLoo domain name (ex: yourname.zooloo.com) rather than a personal domain name at a .com, .net, .info or .me. A Plus account user also gets additional storage, unlimited personal website pages and access to our advanced website builder tools."

The Future

New websites may be seen as a craze or a ‘flash in the pan’. Based on my first impressions I hope to see ZooLoo around for a long time to come but I had to ask Jeff how the team plan to ensure the longevity of ZooLoo?

"Our goal is really to be everyone's home on the Web. We see our product as continuously evolving. We know that the best thing we can do to make ZooLoo successful is to give our users what they want, so we take all of our user feedback and we incorporate it into our future development plans. We see ZooLoo growing and changing as our user's needs grow and change."

So can we get a sneaky peek at any future development plans for ZooLoo?

"Yes, we'll soon have an iPhone application, an enhanced entertainment center and of course, an extensive international offering. We're also making some structural and visual changes to the site based on all of the excellent beta feedback we've received."

The sheer size and multitude of options available with ZooLoo makes it unique in the web marketplace. From having all your Social Networking accounts in one easy-to-reach place, through having your own personal corner of the world-wide web, to getting the best shopping and entertainment on the internet, a ZooLoo account is the only option for me. The slick presentation and ease of use makes it attractive and accessible to even the most novice surfer. I am sure that usage will continue to grow over the coming few months making ZooLoo an essential part of on-line life and the first website that many people will open as soon as they log-on.

I would really like to thank Jeff for letting me have some of his precious time to answer my questions. With a potential 'monster' website on his hands he must be working all hours on the project. I would also like to thank Marketing/PR Director, Melissa Rzeppa for organising the interview. I wish the ZooLoo team every success in the future. If you haven't already, you can try all that ZooLoo has to offer by visiting zooloo.com.

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