Author Archive for Zack Unkenholz

Angelo Sotira – DeviantArt

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Back in the early days of the internet, a young business man named Angelo Sotira started one of the first social media sites that allowed artists to come together to upload and present people’s art. That site is DeviantArt.

Angelo Sotira is an American entrepreneur most well known for the creation of DeviantArt, but he was doing some big things even before that. At the age of 15 he created a music file sharing site called Dimension Music. Dimension Music was bought by Michael Ovits, the previous president of the Walt Disney Company. After Sotira had sold Dimension Music, at the age of 19 Sotira went on to create DeviantArt with Matthew Stephens and Scott Jarkoff. The three of them created DevientArt for people to share their photography, digital art, traditional art, literature, and filmmaking with a community of other artists.

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 DeviantArt is the 13th largest social network with over 28 million members who have posted over 265 million images. The site is sent around 140,000 submissions a day! To this day DeviantArt is still the largest internet art platform.

Through DeviantArt, Angelo Sotira has made over 75 million dollars. The website continues to thrive as more and more artists want to express themselves and get feedback from other artists. Sotira reached out to a market that had not yet been given attention on the internet, and it proved to be a worthy market to enter.

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Snapchat: The “Peek-a-boo” Social App.

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One day while Evan Spiegel was in a product design class at Stanford University, he came up with an idea for an app that would allow people to send pictures that could only be seen for a limited period of time. He used the idea for his final project in the class and his fellow students loved it. Spiegel teamed up with his  friend Reggie Brown to work on the app. Brown designed the ghost logo of the company and together they came up with the name “Picaboo” because the picture would be seen for a few seconds and disappear just like a person’s face in a game of peek-a-boo. Later on they brought in Bobby Murphy, a fraternity brother of Spiegel. Together, the three of them left college and launched their app under the name “Picaboo”, but later changed it to “Snapchat” and relaunched the app. Changing the name made it easier for people to understand exactly what the app was, and it proved to be a wise choice.

Snapchat has done extremely well and is used to send more than 500 million pictures and videos a day!  Facebook saw the threat of Snapchat as the number of people in the same demographic as Snapchat users was going down that they needed to put a stop to it. Facebook offered Spiegel 3 BILLION DOLARS to sell his company to them, but he refused like a boss. It was a smart choice, because snapchat is now valued at over 10 billion dollars!

Although the company has had many lawsuits against it and there has been a lot of controversy surrounding image retrieval and where all the pictures go, the company continues to grow and Spiegel has done a great job of making the right decisions and keeping everything under control. It will be interesting to see what he will be doing with the company in the future as he tries to make new improvements to stay in the battle of the best social app.

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Khoa Phan: 6 Seconds of Fame

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Khoa Phan is an artist who started using the app “Vine” in 2013. At the age of 23 he started using the app to market his own skills and sell himself to marketing companies and advertising agencies.

Vine is a video making/social media app that allows people to take and upload 6 second videos to their accounts. Vine videos can be sent through sites like Facebook and twitter.  Much like youtube, Vine has made a few people a lot of money. Many people have been found through Vine and some have been hired to be in movies and commercials. Khoa became an internet sensation with his stop-motion videos, a series of many extremely short clips or pictures put together to create one video. Using his artistic abilities, Khoa made a name for himself in the Vine community. Many big name companies approached Khoa for artistic ability and his internet fame to create commercials and ideas for how their companies could use vine to sell their products.

Khoa was named Mashable’s “Vine’s most creative stop-motion video maker” and named Forbes’ 30 under 30 for marketing and advertising.

Khoa has worked with big name companies like Snapple, Coke, MTV, UNICEF, HBO and even Peanuts to create stop-motion videos of Charlie Brown and Snoopy the Dog. This freelance Vine editor has made a name for himself, not just in the online community, but also in the big time marketing community. It will be interesting to see where he takes his stop-motion art and creative advertising next.

Here is a link to one of his videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhB_whIDwwQ

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Toby Turner: A Youtube Legend

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Toby Turner (Tobuscus) is your typical goofball who makes cheesy videos with his friends, but when he started uploading videos to youtube, he never imagined that it would make him a millionaire.

Toby started making videos for Youtube in 2006. On his first channel, “Tobuscus”, he made spoofs of popular movies, funny commercials, and did crazy things with his friends. He soon became one of the most subscribed to channels on youtube. Toby realized quickly that he could make a lot of money from youtube and became one of the first youtube millionaires by getting sponsors, allowing commercials at the beginning of his videos, and by selling merchandise.

Toby had an eye for what youtube trends were coming. He created a second channel simply called “TobyTurner” when vlogs(video blogs) were becoming popular. People tune in daily to see his vlogs and it brings in a lot more revenue. Toby was also one of the first Youtubers to see a big shift in what videos people were starting to watch. Watching people play video games on Youtube was just starting to become a huge trend on the internet. Toby saw the opportunity and created a third channel called “TobyGames”. TobyGames has over 6 million subscribers and has an average of 200,000 views a day. Combined, Toby has over 15 million subscribers and more than 3.2 BILLION youtube views on his 3 channels.

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Besides being an entrepreneurial wiz on Youtube, Toby has used his internet fame to earn him appearances in commercials for Cartoon Network, have two big films roles in the movies “New Low” and “Smiley”, and earn a spot as a series regular in the TV show “Annoying Orange”. He has also started writing a book series based on his popular show on the internet; “Tobuscus Adventures”.

Like many other youtube stars, Toby Turner has found his passion in video making. He continues to look for future trends and is always looking for new ways to please his fans, make a profit, and have fun at the same.

Pentatonix: The A Capella Entrepreneurs

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Pentatonix is a group of five a cappella singers that came together to perform on NBC’s “The Sing Off”. The group originated with Kirstie Maldonaldo, Mitch Grassi and Scott Hoying. The three were friends in high school and sang at different local events. The three of them loved “The Sing Off” and wanted to compete in the show,m but in order to try out they needed at least two more people. They found Avi Kaplan, a well known bass singer in the a capella community, and Kevin Olusola, a beat-boxer that had become famous from a youtube video. They all met each other one day before trying out for the show, and they got in. What made the group so special was their ability to reimagine songs and create some amazing sounds only using their voices. When they first appeared on The Sing Off people could hardly believe they were actually signing. With a sound like no other the group won “The Sing Off” and with the title of Sing Off Champions they were also given $200,000 and a recording contract from Sony.

Pentatonix was very successful with their first two albums, but the contract from Sony was only for two albums, a regular album and a christmas album. The group was then on their own. When the record company left them, Pentatonix turned to social media and Youtube. They are now the 13th most subscribed to music channel on youtube beating out Beyonce, Lady Gaga and Avicii. When no recording company would take them, they made music on the Mac application “Garage Band”. They have made millions of dollars and their most recent album, “That’s Christmas to Me”, was No. 2 on the Billboard 200 only being beaten by Taylor Swift’s new album. The group has recently signed a record deal with “RCA Records” and will make albums with them. Their Youtube page continues to do amazingly with over 728 million views.

I have been a big fan of Pentatonix ever since they gave their first performance on “The Sing Off” and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

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Aaron Firestein – Bucketfeet

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Aaron Firestein(28)  loved to draw designs on converse and other kinds of shoes. He would take out some sharpies and draw designs on shoes and sell them to his friends. After he graduated he took his sharpie collection and went to Argentina to learn spanish. While there, he met Raaja Nemani, a man who graduated as an economics major. They met while volunteering at a children’s home in Argentina. Firestein sold Nemani a pair of his custom designed shoes, a pair of hand-drawn shoes that would be the beginning of an amazing business. One year later in the city of Chicago they officially started “Bucketfeet.”

Bucketfeet is a business that sells shoes with designs made by street artists from all around the world. Each artist is payed $250 for their design and receives a royalty of $1 for each pair sold. The business helps artists to showcase their art to the world and to allow them to keep doing what they love. One artists from Brazil said “It is amazing to think that my artwork is being worn around the world. There are over 50 people in Japan wearing my design right now.”

Bucketfeet’s philosophy is that art is expression and that everyone deserves to express themselves in their own way. They believe art breaks cultural barriers, brings people together, and that it tells a story. The company shares the stories of their artists and encourage their consumers to find an artist that that they can connect with.  People can express themselves through the designs created by the artists. Firestein and Nemani also donate a portion of their profits to children’s shelters around the world because children have always been important to them and because that was were there both met.

What started as a small college business has become something global because of Firestein’s love for art and culture. The business he started really expresses the idea that art is for everyone. He and Nemani have empowered artist everywhere to show the world what they can do. The business started in 2011 and in the year 2013 sales totaled about $1 million. The business is growing immensely now that they are being sold in Nordstrom stores across the United States.

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