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”

Six months have gone by and now we are back with great news for you!

Our tagging tool has had a makeover! Besides a clean new look, it is now even easier to test tags, chose stores and apply the boo-box links. And now our users will each have a boo-box account with password, which will allow us, in the near future, to offer even more new functionalities (such as boo-shop). Come see what we’re talking about on the installation page of our new tagging tool.

Now it’s become even easier to apply boo-box links in images and videos. The links are applied in semi-automatic fashion using WordPress plugins. Go to this page to install.

» Continue reading “boo-box News”

So, how did you do on the test?

What this video really demonstrates is how we tend to not pay attention to secondary matters when our attention is focused on one main subject.

Online advertising has been increasingly treated as a ‘secondary matter’ that has to vie with specific content to grab users’ attention. Flashy banners, pop-ups that block content, sponsored links, such as AdSense; all try to guess what the user is searching for, all vying for space and attention with the content of your web site.

It is inevitable that, just like in the video, these ‘secondary objects’ will be overlooked by the majority of people, or that, in those cases where they do manage to grab attention, they tear the focus away from what’s truly drawing the user: content. (If you had been paying attention to the “moonwalking bear” you probably would have missed the number of passes!)

» Continue reading “Banners, pop-ups, AdSense, SEO and your content”

• boo-box in video, changing the way to market in on-line videos
• Platform portability, expanding content monetization boundaries
• Now offers can be sent to e-mail
• New partner programs

boo-box in video launched on November 10th

boo-box in video enables anyone to monetize embedded YouTube videos using partner affiliate programs. It is an easy and fast 4 step process:

1. Select the embedding code or the URL of the video.
2. Click on the boo-box icon on Firefox (or bookmarklet for IE, Safari and Opera and everything else)
   
3. Type a tag and test it
   
4. Apply or copy into your platform (blog, site, social network profile, e-mail…)

Our solution was developed with 3 things in mind:

1. Minimize interruption of the video: the recommendations are displayed only if the audience chooses. The video continues playing while the audience is browsing the recommendations.
2. Monetize the distribution: the publisher keeps all the money from the affiliate commission/fee.
3. Make marketing really relevant: the publisher chooses what is going to be displayed.

» Continue reading “News from boo-box team”

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.