Stephanie Liu

Track Packages in Transit With Twitter

The holidays are just around the corner and soon the malls will be packed with eager shoppers and hopefully a lot of deals. Unfortunately, during this time of year, parking gets rough at the malls and the lines are ridiculous. If you’re not a big fan of the long lines like me, you’ll most likely be shopping online and taking advantage of free shipping from multiple online retailers.

For online shoppers, you can take advantage of TrackThis to receive updates on the location of your package(s) via Twitter, SMS, or email. In the event that your orders are being delivered by multiple delivery services, you can still count on TrackThis to have you covered—TrackThis supports tracking codes for DHL, UPS, USPS, and FedEx.

To start tracking your packages on Twitter follow these simple steps:

1. Go to twitter.com/trackthis and click on the follow button. TrackThis will follow you automatically which will enable you to send direct messages.

2. Send a direct message to TrackThis with your package’s tracking code (must be a tracking code from FedEx/UPS/USPS/DHL) first then a short description or title of your package.

For example: 123456789987 Flip Ultra Video

3. Finally, an update on your package will be sent to you as a direct message within twenty minutes. Afterwards, you’ll continue to receive updates each time the location of your package changes.

Now wasn’t that easy?

What holiday shopping tips do you have?

Stephanie Liu

Capital One Wants to Get Personal

This is fake.

I stumbled across Kristen Nicole’s article on Mashable titled, “Use Flickr for Custom Capital One Cards” and thought it was a great campaign for several personal reasons.

First, Capital One makes it simple to create a personalized credit card. I already have a Capital One card but now I can select a photo that’s already hosted on my Flickr account or simply upload a jpeg from my PC and make it more fun. See upload guidelines here.

Second, by using a personal photo I’m creating an emotional attachment with my credit card. When I’m in the middle of a transaction, do I whip out my boring debit card or use my fancy customized Capital One card? Chances are, I’m going to whip out the Capital One card then chat with the clerk on how fun it was customizing my credit card and tell her where she can go online to create her own!

It would have also been interesting to see what would happen if the Capital One Image Card promotion ran a user-generated contest around the campaign. Let people create their custom Capital One card with their favorite photo then offer a prize (i.e. a $150 Capital One Gas Card) for the best design in a photo category (i.e. Family, Best Friends, Graduation, etc.).

People can engage longer with the promotion and check out what other people have designed and leave comments if they want to. And if they’re not interested in other people’s creations, they can still order their new card. That’s a great way of building brand awareness in my opinion, what do you think?

Create your own personalized Capital One credit card now.

(Avatar Credit: PosePrints.com)

(Photo Credit: CapitalOne)

Stephanie Liu

Polyvore – A Revolution in Online Shopping

Polyvore is an amazing website that’s revolutionizing the way we shop online. Their web-based application is user-friendly making it easy for you to import images from any online store and create a virtual ensemble in your browser. Each item used within a set will link back to the online store where it’s available for purchase. This makes it easy for you to track where you found the item or if you’re like me, discover new retailers from sets created by other Polyvore addicts.

One you publish a set, you can share it with your friends online to get their opinions. You can even print it out as a shopping guide or save your sets as a part of your fashion wish-list (that’s what I do).

Here’s a favorite of mine by Meg:

For an interesting post on how retailers can leverage Polyvore’s platform, read “Why should retailers pay more attention to social shopping on Polyvore?” by Sarah Simmons.

A couple of improvements I’d like to see on Polyvore is 1) the ability to move the clipper box when adding tags – it appears in the upper right hand corner and blocks my view of the products details. And 2) enable right-click so instead of having to go to my toolbar, I can right click an image directly to Polyvore.