During the last couple of years, a series of architectural patterns for web design software have consolidated and become popular through frameworks , which facilitate the development and maintenance of these systems. Simultaneously, servers had increased accessibility and reduced costs. Creating a web project became a far easier, faster and cheaper thing to do. However, for the project to succeed, there is still one obstacle that is not easy to overcome: scalability.

boo-box has successfully conquered this obstacle and currently has its infrastructure set up in layers capable of being interwoven horizontally, and that are sufficiently robust to serve thousands of requests per minute. Throughout this post we will present some of the practices currently in use to guarantee a good performance from Communications Systems for Social Media such as Ruby, MERB, CouchDB, Thin, Nginx, Beanstalkd.

» Continue reading “boo-box system’s web server infrastructure”

boo-box has been cited in several publications as an example of successful entrepreneurship that is increasingly conquering more and more devotees around the globe each day.

One of the first magazines to mention boo-box was Webdesign. In an interview with them, Marco Gomes outlined his reasons for leaving behind a successful career at AgênciaClick to invest in boo-box, launching a new phase in his own career. As a good entrepreneur, he states:

(…) I was seeking new challenges. When the boo-box project began to gain momentum, I began to understand the scope of what we could really do based on the concepts we had created, and I was really, really excited by the prospect. I wanted to dedicate myself full time to the project.” The rest of the interview goes on to detail the company’s first steps, seeking out the investment partner Monashees, and following through to the goals and dreams boo-box foresees in its future.

» Continue reading “boo-box, an example of successful business entrepreneurship!”

The nearest mankind has got to an oracle these days are the search engines. They know everything, they answer everything, and if they don’t, it is because the question was not properly formed. Thanks to this unheard of capability, a lot of people use search engines as their start point (pt-pt); therefore, the bulk of internet traffic comes from them. The greatest generator of traffic to blogs, are for instance, search engines.

There is a whole economy that was created around content search engines, and a lot of second-generation Brazilian web startups are dependent on them to create revenue streams. A classic example occurs when content index services from other websites create optimized pages for searches; place ads around the content; and wait for traffic to come from search engines, when the so called “keyword droppers” are going to click unwittingly at ads, generating revenues.

The problem with this business model is that if the search engines change any parameter in its relevance algorithm, the traffic to the service can be severely affected, and the startup can agonize to death. As any beginner knows, it is dangerous to build a business that relies on a company that is not yours.

» Continue reading “Good content need not fear search engines”

boo-box was conceived to change the way marketing is done today. We want to make marketing more meaningful and elegant and less disruptive and obtrusive. We believe that by empowering publishers we will enable better environment for audience’s and will make marketing a relevant part of content experience.

In order to do that we found out that we needed to go in a different direction than other marketing companies.

For us, real contextual marketing is the one that is deeply co-related with the content it is displayed with, and today, to achieve that level of relevance the only way to go was to adopt natural intelligence in the contextualization process. That’s why we aim at developing the easiest to use tools and procedures that allow publishers to control what is marketed with(in) his content, instead of investing our intelligences in developing algorithms that would try to identify context.

» Continue reading “Relevant marketing”

SAO PAULO, SP – BRAZIL (July, 2007) – boo-box, a contextual marketing company announced today a US$ 300k seed round financing deal lead by Monashees Capital, an early-stage Venture Capital firm. The funds will be used for expenses associated with the start up of the company and expansion of product line. boo-box is the first Brazilian web 2.0 internet venture with global ambitions to announce a seed round investment from a VC firm. Since the launch of its beta version in January boo-box has been featured as an innovative contextual marketing solution on several respected websites including a thumbs up appraisal by renowned technology blog TechCrunch.

About boo-box

boo-box intends to revolutionize the way publishers monetize their content, offering technological solutions that link websites content elements to marketing material and sales offers, using natural intelligence in the contextualization process.

boo-box team is composed of enthusiastic high level professionals lead by founder and CTO Marco Gomes and CEO Marcos Tanaka. Marco Gomes is an experienced programmer and former interface programming team leader for a global player in the internet advertising industy. Marcos Tanaka is a strategist having worked as a business consultant for the executive teams of some of the largest companies in Brazil.

Visit boo-box at: www.boo-box.com

About Monashees Capital

Monashees Capital (MC+) is an early-stage and growth Venture Capital firm focused on the creation of high-growth businesses, powered by innovative technologies, content or processes.With a particular interest in media & entertainment, education, life sciences and cleantech, MC+ works with long-term vision, autonomy, agility and focus on adding value to portfolio companies and its goal is to build companies that revolutionize markets, through long-term partnerships with outstanding entrepreneurs.