2-9-10 ZooLoo
Highlights: ZooLoo offers individuals, small businesses and non-profits a one-stop shop to get an online presence and manage social media interactions. ZooLoo offers domain name registration, web site creation, blogging platform, and SEO tools, privacy controls, storage, tools to connect across social networking sites–and a personal dashboard to manage all of it. Aaron Baer from ZooLoo provided us with a demo—it’s easy to use, with a familiar Facebook-like look and feel. Some tools, such as Graffiti, a blogging platform that lets you easily share posts across your social networks, are free. ZooLoo charges for other things, such as domain registration, web sites and privacy controls. Once you decide you want more than the free services, ZooLoo offers three packages that range in price from $1.99 to $9.99 per month.
Quick Takeaways: ZooLoo 50,000+ beta users told the vendor early on that they were somewhat overwhelmed and wanted a more streamlined, simplified approach. In response, ZooLoo has slimmed down to focus on helping users establish an online publishing presence and plug into their social networks. By sticking with a “more is less” mantra, ZooLoo can make this process less overwhelming for mere mortals that don’t have unlimited time to play around with features. ZooLoo’s business model is also interesting. The company doesn’t charge for things that people can get elsewhere for free (such as blogs) but does intend to monetize the stuff that people are using to paying for—such as domain name registration and SEO. Start-ups and small businesses operating on a shoestring budget will find ZooLoo’s mix of free and low price, micropayment offerings provide surprisingly affordable gateway to market their businesses online.