Business

Rip Empson is a writer and rabble-rouser at TechCrunch. He covers startups, music, social, mobile, health, and education. You can reach him at rip[at]techcrunch[dot]com ? Learn More Pinterest has been growing fast and furiously, and as a result, many retailers have been rushing to add “Pin It” buttons to their social sharing options. A few months back, flash sales giant Gilt City got some buzz for becoming one of the first to incentivize “pinning,” allowing users to unlock special deals on Gilt by re-pinning certain items. In other words, after a product was pinned, say, 50 times, the pin would link to a hidden sale on Gilt where users could purchase that special, discounted item. Gilt’s clever move was further evidence that retailers are starting to understand the inherent value of Pinterest as a marketing platform. Seeing a growing demand among brands for better ways to incentivize their users to socially engage with their products (especially via Pinterest), Splurgy is today relea...

Google’s Project Glass made quite a splash at I/O last month. Besides stunning the audience with a skydiving demo of Glass, Google also allowed those developers who attended the company’s annual developer conference to exclusively pre-order the $1,500 Google Glass Explorer Edition. These first alpha versions of Glass are only scheduled to ship early next year, but according to an email the Project Glass team just sent to everybody who pre-ordered the devices, the company plans to involve this early tester community before the devices ship as well. Google, the email says, will post exclusive content for those with pre-orders on Google+ and also invite them to special events and Google+ Hangouts with the Glass Team. Here is the email: In the first of these private posts on Google+, Google co-founder Sergey Brin notes that he looks forward to ” to hearing about your magical moments with Glass.” He also shared that he is currently testing “a new mode of Glass which automatically takes a ...