One of the great speakers, or swimmers, from the Audience Conference was Melanie Notkin. She is the founder of Savvy Auntie. A website dedicated to the “cool aunts, great aunts, great mothers and all women who love kids,” with a special focus on those that don’t have children themselves.

Before this event I hadn’t ever come across the site and it was missing  from the conversations that I have those that needed a good shave. The niche that Notkin built her site for was the driven career woman that loves her neices and nephews but, like her core demo, she had no idea who Dora, Diego or Yo Gaba Gaba were. She was missing a connection with the little ones that she loved dearly. She decided to fix this, not only for herself but for all women.

The site that Melanie Notkin launched, Savvy Auntie, is more of a portal than a traditional informational website. It allows users to enter channels for general  information, activities, shopping and social. Each channel delivering a similar experience to the next while allowing the users to find there way back to a central point to try another channel.

General Information

This channel has information regarding nutrition, books. learning, health and more. Two interesting components of this channel are the Auntipedia and the Q&A section called Dear Savvy Auntie. The Auntipedia is, well, pretty much what the name implies. It is a knowledge base that can actually get an aunt up and running in the areas most pertinent to being a prime caregiver to the little ones.

Activities

This channel provides a ton of useful and engaging activities that can keep you on the go with the kids. From crafts all the way to family reunion activities there is something here for every type of auntie. It is such a robust list, I’ll be coming back to it on my own as a bearded one with two kids of my own. I’ll also be recommending it to my friends with children and without.

Shopping

That is pretty straight forward. However, the Savvy Auntie has a hook that you can’t deny. It is brilliant and creative marketing that most bloggers couldn’t pull off – Savvy Auntie 2009 Coolest Toy Awards. With great graphic design and a clean user interface it is easy to see toys that will make you cool with the tiny set. My only gripe with this area of the site is that many functions are tab related and triggered with JavaScript interactions that don’t allow for direct linking within the site or to these specific sections.

Social

I’ve seen this quite a bit more lately on the sites that I review. Social is becoming a larger part of sites as they try to become a destination for their faithful. In the past it was forum or comment based. Today, sites like Savvy Auntie are working to create a community of like-minded individuals that want to share their experiences as Aunties by Relation or Aunties by Choice.

These social components can be a huge success for creating loyalty and brand evangelists. They often need constant grooming but can pay huge dividends. From what I can see on Savvy Auntie, not only is it an active community but there are new sections of it under work – that grooming component.

What I would love to see on Savvy Auntie is Facebook integration like StyleCaster. Holy smokes. I was effusive in my praise of StyleCaster for doing this and thing that with the power of the biggest social network behind the Savvy community it would be major growth area. One key to this growth being Facebook integration and the other being the ability to still host it on SavvyAuntie.com.

If you are looking for some inspiration on how to get a startup off the ground you need to look no further than Notkin’s Savvy Auntie. This is how execution of a great idea gets done.

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Savvy Auntie For The Holidays is a post from: TechStartups.com

Can’t make it to SoHo anytime soon or in this lifetime? Then you should head over to StyleCaster to get a sense of what ambitious, smart fashion is walking the streets of NYC South of Houston. New York is teeming with this apparel and footwear clacking away to catch a cab.

StyleCaster is most definitely a Big Apple property, which is only to its benefit as they grow their site. The city is a fashion and media capital.

With the new boom of startup activity on the East Coast they find themselves in a great position to gain users, make partnerships (both tech savvy and with traditional media) and to be in the epicenter of the next fashion trends. Think what Portfolio.com used to be, but for fashion.

Fashion sites often suffer from a lack of depth, see content, or lack of tech to make them accessible. They often rely heavily on motion graphics in Flash and a business model based on revenue from affiliate sales. Not StyleCaster. They have mixed all the ingredients and a some other special sauce to create a complete user experience.

It would be hard to write this review if I didn’t break their site down from the beginning. StyleCaster is three distinct properties that have been plied together with one smaller cousin: Fashion Recommendations, Social Network, News/Blog and Shopping (the smaller cousin).

Fashion Recommendations

This is the core value proposition for StyleCaster. They deliver a tailored interface for weather and season with 360 degree model views.

Earlier this summer they took this concept and created an iPhone app that was just as robust as their site. The experience that they are able to deliver with their Daily Looks section should make retailers jealous. They have merged seamless cross-selling with the common sense that your friend might recommend and item to you.

Social Network

Everyone wants on this bandwagon for many reasons and the number one being to get funded. I’m not sure if this is what got StyleCaster $4 million but this is how it is done right, in case you were wondering.

They first look to a larger network, in this case Facebook, and integrate with their API through Connect. Second, they take this data and create an onsite profile each registrant. Third, and final in this process of hooking user into their community, they make it drop dead simple to engage with other users based on contributor types, cities, at random and a 15 minutes of fame section. A simple horizontal navigation that tracks users onsite fashionista moves.

News/Blog

Fashion Recommendations might be the awesome wow factor that you need to attract the fashion forward and a Social Network to get users connected and spending time on your site but the most impressive feature of this site isn’t really a feature. The Newsroom and Blog sections of StyleCaster are destinations for an insiders perspective on fashion. This is where the magic of this site is made.

This is content that matches the ambition and smarts of the fashion they follow . . . delivers and then some. My only gripe is that the IA and taxonomy is lacking lacking and it can be difficult to find much of the great content that is buried in the site.

StyleCaster’s headlines can be seen on other fashion/celeb sites around the net but smart money would probably say that there are more partnerships in the works to deliver full content. I’m not smart money, so I can’t say for sure.

Shopping

Well, what would a fashion site be without shopping? I called this the ‘one smaller cousin’  and I mean it. Simply put, the focus of this site is obviously to build a company and a brand based on high quality content, technology and a great user experience. It wasn’t built with shopping at its core. And that is awesome! There is a solid enough foundation in place that if StyleCaster went down this road they would find success but not as much as they will find by having all of other components in place.

I’ve gushed quite a bit here over what is just another startup. They are just another startup that needs to prove itself in the marketplace. I believe they will. And even if they don’t, this business, with any one of the three aforementioned sections would make any entrepreneur very happy with the traffic they could bring. Kudos to the team that are making this happen. They’re getting done the right way.

It wouldn’t be right to do a post about a fashion startup without some snark, now would it?

If you have ever wanted to release that inner hater, head to The Daily Looks section and spin them tall skinny models round and round until your petty little heart is content. Not that I did or would want to do this.

Tip if you do: Play house music to make it a party. Remember, you can’t do this in SoHo!

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

StyleCaster Is Your SoHo Connection is a post from: TechStartups.com