Meet TAG's Business Launch Semi-Finalists

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Soket and TripLingo

Community Guest Blog post by By Katie Sewell

TAG would like to introduce you to a few of our Business Launch semi-finalists. The GRA/TAG Business Launch 2011 invited entries in the area of internet technologies. This included software and hardware companies that are developing products, online services, or backened technologies which extend the reach, flexibility and ease of the internet.

Soket

Soket is a command center for online promotions. Providing a single place for local organizations to orchestrate their efforts, Soket simplifies the management of their web presence while improving effectiveness and building customer loyalty.

Last year, SMBs spent $21.7 billion trying to reach their audiences online, and the number of channels to make these connections are proliferating and growing increasingly complex. With this growth comes the challenge of determining what works… and what doesn’t.

As more businesses supplement promotions through their websites with tools like Facebook and Twitter, they struggle to keep their various online footprints up-to-date and quickly realize success requires more than just publishing content. They have to monitor and take action on the torrent of incoming information from these multiple channels as well as news posts, blogs, and reviews.

Being successful managing this flood of information can help mitigate the comments of a disgruntled customer and turn casual customers into passionate patrons. However, these are not big companies with teams of online experts. They are small business owners who struggle with how to effectively use these sometimes-confusing tools, determine if their efforts are working, and find time to manage it all. In fact, 37% of local businesses cite lack of time to manage promotions as their biggest marketing challenge.

Soket is designed specifically for the needs of local organizations, with functionality that helps add order to this chaos.

Content Creation and Publishing - Soket centralizes the creation and management of content (events, images, status updates, etc.) and then pushes that information to the places they want to promote.
Online Conversations and Social Listening -Organizations can consolidate the management of patron interactions from social networks like Facebook and Twitter while monitoring what’s being said on the web related to their brand, industry, or even competition.
Measuring Success - Soket Analytics makes sense of it all by identifying effective behavior so organizations can do a better job of reaching their audience with the best ROI.

Soket’s founders, Marcel Crudele and Mark Tran, have over 25 years combined technology and business experience and began development of Soket in March 2010. Soket reached a revenue event within 9 ½ months and is currently used by 30 organizations, including the Georgia Department of Economic Development, MIT Enterprise Forum of Atlanta, and Steel Restaurant in midtown Atlanta.

TripLingo

TripLingo provides international travelers a customized application containing the language and culture tailored to their unique needs fortheir trip. Unlike unwieldy phrasebooks with out-of-date information orcomplex, boring software focused on fluency and phrases you’ll neveruse, TripLingo creates a tailor-made experience just for your travels. Via app stores or the web, TripLingo equips travelers with all the slang, culture and context they would ever need to practice at home oruse while traveling. Fun, clear, concise, even flirty, TripLingo helps you communicate with the locals in the way they speak, masterpronunciation with audio clips in articulated or conversational speeds,and memorize a set of phrases with intelligent flash cards all fromyour phone on the go even without a network connection. TripLingo is there when you need it; accessed via the web and through nativeiPhone, Android, and Windows mobile devices. Make the most of your travels and go from boorish to sophisticated in minutes with TripLingo. Find out more about the company at TripLingo.com or on the TripLingo Blog!

Founder and CEO Jesse Maddox spent 2009 and 2010 living and working in 10 different countries throughout Asia. Firsthand he felt the pain of wanting to be able to communicate with the people and share their culture as he traveled, but existing language learning tools proved useless. He returned to Atlanta having spent the previous 6 months developing the idea for TripLingo. He brought the idea to StartAtlanta, where the TripLingo team took first place, and with it, an entry to Startup Riot. A little more than 2 weeks later, TripLingo took first place again at Startup Riot, this time against 49 other competitors.

TripLingo officially launches on Cinco de Mayo with Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, and French. Other languages are in the pipeline, and will be released monthly, including Columbian Spanish, Turkish, Polish, Dutch, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as multiple Asian langauges.
TripLingo is designed to be there when you need it; accessed via the web and through native iPhone, Android, and Windows mobile devices. Make the most of your travels and go from boorish to sophisticated in minutes with TripLingo. Find out more about the company at TripLingo.com or on the TripLingo Blog!