Once again, we’re looking to expand the Traackr team.  We’ve recently added a couple of key players to our back-end team who are already making some amazing things happen for what we call the Traackr “core.”  Now we’re looking to add to our front end team a strong lead developer who can manage the development of our existing (and ever expanding) business interface.

This is a very, very important hire for us — not only because our business is expanding quickly and we simply need “more hands” to help us keep the application on pace with our growth, but also because we are still in the infancy of what Traackr can and will become and we want to bring someone on now who will help us define the future of the Traackr offering(s).  In short, we are looking to bring someone on now who will be with us for a long time to come…

What we’re looking for

At the very basic level, we’re looking for someone with groundbreaking technical chops.  Specifically, we are looking for someone with the following technical skills:

• BSCS, MSCS or equivalent
• Experience in Web application architecturing & development
• Experience in building advanced Web-based UI
• Expert in PHP5, Javascript, HTML and CSS
• Experience with MVC frameworks like CakePHP or similar
• Strong database knowledge (MySQL or similar)
• Experience with Ajax and Object Oriented Javascript programming

Why you will want to work with Traackr

Traackr is a great place to be for anyone interested in working in a very flexible, but demanding, start-up environment.  Some of the reasons you will love working at Traackr (if you are the right person) include:

• We are a small, scrappy start-up which has completely funded itself through revenue so far
• But we’re not going to be small forever…we have big goals for Traackr and are on our way to achieve them
• We are working on something big here at Traackr (some of which we can’t talk about here) but in short, it’s our aim to be the ultimate source for Online Influencer Analysis — something that will become even more important and valuable as the social media landscape develops.
• We have a clear vision and great management.  Unlike many start-ups, at Traackr you have both a clear vision for your role and where we are heading as well as the flexibility to shape and define your work.
• We have an awesome office in Cambridge
• We drink beer on friday afternoons…as a rule.

Inquire about this job

If you are interested in working with Traackr, you can let us know by sending a link to your LinkedIn profile (don’t bother cleaning up a resume, just update your LinkedIn profile) and a note to MGRAVE @ TRAACKR DOT COM with “Sr. Front End” in the subject line.

Thanks — looking forward to meeting you!

After reading Seth Godin’s latest post, Quid pro quo (santa math), I feel compelled to react.

In his blog post Seth Godin advocates that blogging makes no sense economically because it defies the basic logic of trade: this for that. There is no such exchange in blogging. In his words:

I think it’s more like Santa math. Santa flies around the world, giving stuff away, and for what? He earns gratitude, trust and friendship, that’s what. Sure, one day he might decide to license his image or try to sell you something. But right here, right now, gratitude, trust and friendship are plenty. Especially if you enjoy doing what you’re doing. Quid, no quo.

So, Seth’s advice is: go ahead and blog but don’t expect to get anything back.

In my humble opinion, Mr. Godin is dead wrong on this. This is a gross generalization of a very rich media that can be used for so many different purposes that inferring where bloggers see value in their activity (i.e. selling their products or services) is very limiting. Many people blog, participate in forums, tweet to build communities, share knowledge, assert an expertise, or many other value-creating reasons.

Now, if we limit the activity of blogging to those indeed interested in boosting their sales, Seth Godin is right that drawing a correlation between a blog post and sales leads is not an easy thing to do, though I’d argue not impossible at all, as Hubspot‘s success has proven. They even coined the term inbound marketing to describe this activity. And here is the real quid pro quo (read misunderstanding): in this respect, blogs are marketing tools, not sales tools, and the ROI of blogging in such case has to use marketing metrics to assess success.

Not to point out the obvious, but this is exactly how Seth Godin himself very skillfully uses his blog…Go figure…

If you haven’t noticed (and we hope you have), we’ve turned up our blogging a notch over the past month and we’re now back on the band-wagon for our monthly segment – Influencer of the Month. For April we decided to take a closer look at the subject of one of our earlier posts – YouTube sensation JuicyStar07.

Who is JuicyStar07?

Dubbed JuicyStar07 almost two years ago, Blair Fowler is a happy-go-lucky 17-year-old from northeast Tennessee. She is best known for her YouTube beauty and review channel, which currently has more than 16 million channel views and 300,000 subscribers. That’s quite the reach for someone who hasn’t even graduated high school yet – and has only been in the game for two years!

In addition to her main YouTube channel, Blair currently has three blogs, two Twitter accounts, another YouTube account, and a Facebook fan page. (By the way, you can check out JUICYSTAR07′S TRAACKR PROFILE here). One interesting note is that her blogs are rarely updated and she isn’t as active on her additional social media platforms as she is on her YouTube channel. Maybe it is because they all lack the personal and lively touch that appeals to her video subscribers…or maybe she’s just too busy trying out all those beauty products and shopping!

Blair’s inspiration behind her videos actually came from her older sister, Elle, otherwise known as AllThatGlitters21, who already had her own YouTube make-up reviews and tips channel. Although it seems like they have highly competitive channels, they seem to maintain a good relationship – personally and professionally. In this Good Morning America interview, the sisters were featured shopping at Forever 21 together.

Labeled as a “Tween Tycoon,” Blair has already hired a Hollywood agent, secured a YouTube partnership to pocket a cut of her channel’s ad revenue AND appeared in Seventeen magazine. Now if that doesn’t scream influence, think about this: Blair and her YouTube channel have become so popular, she left high school and is finishing her remaining time of high school at home so she can devote more time to her show!

Even with all of this attention and fortune, the coolest part about Blair is probably that at such a young age she truly seems to understand the power of her influence and where it comes from – her fans. She pledges to only talk about products that she would spend her own money on and always abides by FCC laws, letting everyone know when she is engaging in a paid sponsorship.

So what’s next for Blair and her sister? We’re not sure, but we do know to keep a look-out for their seven-year-old sister who could be next up in the Fowler beauty review force!

While sitting on the dentist chair last week, I received a 101 lesson on influence marketing.

My dentist looked at her file on me and congratulated me for having referred 5 patients to her over the years. I know I like my dentist and I dropped her name a few times to friends and colleagues in search of good dental care. I really had no idea some of these people ended up patients of hers.

So I asked her how she knew and she explained to me she simply asks every new patient how they heard about her practice and if this was from a patient, who that patient was. I then recalled that I first heard about her from a colleague of mine at the time so I asked how many referrals he had made. She didn’t need to look up her records to answer: over 25.

I had in front of me a very talented marketer:

1- very aware of who matters most to her business

2- skillful and subtle in her way of recognizing contributions

3- driven to set up a process to collect data and measure performance

As for my former colleague who referred over 25 new patients there, probably resulting in another over 100 new patients through people like me, my guess is that he’s as clueless as I was about how important he’s been to this small business owner.

This is a great reminder to me and the Traackr team that influencers we find online are not the product of social media, they have been around us all along. The social web has simply made it possible for them to express themselves in new and more powerful ways, and for us to find them as a result.