Rather than focusing on extreme discounts, the San Francisco company has decided to offer extreme adventures.

Today, it is launching Zozi Guru, which sells high-end adventures taught and organized by professional athletes.

For example, you can go skiing with Olympic gold-medal skier Jonny Moseley, or go running with barefoot runner Eric Orton, or learn to kayak with Tao Berman, a three-time world-record holder for extreme whitewater kayaking.

Unlike typical daily deals, these offers are full price, and the merchants and celebrities involved will surely make money, which is in steep contrast to lots of sites that blast emails out to a list of subscribers on a daily basis.

“We don’t want to be a deals site. You won’t hear us use the word ‘deal.’ It’s all about experiences. We try to offer the best prices, but it’s about the adventure and exploration component,” said TJ Sassani, Zozi’s CEO and founder.

That hasn’t always been the case for Zozi.

It started off as a daily deals site, selling international trips in 2008. But Sassani said the opportunity wasn’t as big as the company had hoped, and Zozi shifted to local adventures. Intially, it used the Groupon model to grow membership, but now that it has some scale, it is shifting to full price.

Typical offers on the site range from bungee-jumping sessions to kiteboarding lessons, but Sassani said the business won’t ever reach Groupon’s scale. He said he definitely doesn’t aspire to have an initial public offering; however, he does believe that it could be a $1 billion to $2 billion opportunity.

So far, Zozi has signed up close to one million subscribers and is in 20 cities, up from only one market in 2010. It has just started moving into Canada, and other locations are coming soon.

“Groupon is much more like Wal-Mart, where they offer low-cost, low-quality items to discount seekers,” Sassani said. “But our average purchase price ($60) is more than double Groupon’s, and we target someone who would shop at REI. It’s a sophisticated customer, who is less price-sensitive.”

To help with the rollout of Zozi Guru, the company raised a small undisclosed inside round with investors last week. Previously, it had raised $10 million from Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Launch Capital, ZIG Capital and others.

This week, Zozi is launching the new service with six celebrity athletes, but Sassani said the company has signed deals with 20 to 30 people, who will do a combination of 100 programs over the next year.

Sticking with its goal of offering premium experiences, the programs start at $1,000, and can go as high as $10,000, depending on the celebrity’s status and the event, which could include luxurious accommodations — one example might be a five-night visit to Hawaii, where you would learn how to surf from a professional, and stay at the Four Seasons.

With that in mind, the always-sophisticated Journal sports section recently bandied around this question: What could famous athletes like LeBron James be writing about that’s so fascinating to more than 2.1 million followers? To calm our inquiring minds, we read nearly 2,000 tweets written by the five active athletes with the most followers in the four major sports (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL) and analyzed their content.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The real Charlie Sheen joined Twitter on March 1. Prior to that, an imposter or “squatter,” as Twitter refers to those tweeting under a false name, had secured the handle @charliesheen. The faux Sheen was quickly removed and the former “Two and a Half Men” star slipped into the handle with a “verified” blue check on his account. He now has more than two million followers.

Twitter has 175 million users and counting and only select, mostly high-profile people are granted “verified” status. How are verified users vetted? Twitter refused to explain the process, saying via e-mail, “we continue to very selectively verify accounts most at risk for impersonation on a one-off and highly irregular basis.”

But what does that actually mean?

Read the rest of this post on the original site

That is a violation of Olympics rules, which say advertisers that don’t pay the tens of millions of dollars an official sponsorship costs may not associate themselves with the Games or the athletes during the events or the weeks surrounding them.

“RT @henryyamamoto: Here’s an idea for next Winter Olympics: Get @RedBull to produce it instead of some ‘committee’ or NBC Sports #olympics,” Red Bull posted to Twitter last Wednesday, retweeting the post of another Twitterer.

“We’re rooting for you @LindseyVonn @Shaun_White @GregBretzz and @Drahlves in the 2010 Winter #Olympics!” Red Bull posted the previous week, cheering on the U.S. ski and snowboard athletes it endorses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

According to this article in the Vail Daily, the cowbell tradition began when Alpine herders took bells ordinarily worn by their animals and incorporated them into cheers for skiers. It’s tough to clap loudly when you’re wearing mittens, so the cowbells caught on. The virtual version of the cowbell adds a couple of 21st-century features to the tradition: A Twitter feed follows hundreds of athletes who are tweeting from the games, and a Facebook-style wall lets users post photos and text to share with other app users or Facebook friends. Users can decorate their bell with one of 35 flags provided on the app, and a schedule of events and medal count also are available.

Read the rest of this post on the original site