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Posts Tagged ‘billshrink’

BillShrink, the startup that looks to help users save money across verticals including cell phones, credit cards, and savings accounts, has just announced that it has grown to 1 million members since its launch in April 2008. Alongside the milestone, the site is also announcing that it has found “$1 billion in savings on everyday bills”.

That second statistic is a little confusing. BillShrink basically means that if its users had signed up for the top matches generated by its cost cutting tools, they would have saved a total of $1 billion. Of course, not everyone who uses the service decides to change their cell phone carrier or credit card, so the total amount of money saved isn’t that high. That said, this is the first time BillShrink has disclosed the size of its userbase, and it’s clear that the site is getting some solid traction.

BillShrink has been gradually rolling out its cost saving services in new verticals over the last year and a half. The site kicked off with support for finding the cheapest cell phone plan in 2008. Since then it has expanded to include a service for picking the best credit card, saving money on gas, and choosing the best saving account or CD. Most users are interested in the wireless service though, in part because of a marketing push from T-Mobile, and also because dealing with hellish cell phone carriers is something nearly everyone has to do.

BillShrink is able to expand to new verticals relatively quickly because of the technology that’s working in the background. The site is essentially taking unstructured data from across the web and converting it into searchable structured data. That’s a feat that’s harder than it sounds — Google is trying it with Google Squared with mixed results. Granted, BillShrink is dealing with a smaller set of data than a search engine that can query any term, but the site’s backend is more tech-heavy than you might think.

Looking forward, CEO Peter Pham says that the site will be launching some new verticals next year, some of which will include major new partners. Pham says that BillShrink will likely be exploring the ‘Triple Play’ deals offered by cable companies for internet/cable/phone service, as well as a service looking at mortgages (a space that Google has recently entered).

Image by Don Hankins

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We all like the idea of setting aside a nice chunk of money in a savings account and putting it to work for us, but it’s a bit easier said than done — if you want the best rates, you have to choose from one of hundreds of CDs and savings account products offered by various banks, each of which has its own rates and restrictions. BillShrink, the startup that targets a variety of verticals to help users save money, is launching a new service today that looks to help make this decision much easier.

If you’ve used any of BillShrink’s other services before — which include cost cutters for cell phone plans, gas stations, and credit cards — you’ll be right at home here. To get started, BillShrink asks you where you’re currently keeping your money, as well as the amount that’s in your account. It doesn’t ask for your bank credentials (people tend to be far more hestitant to give these up than they are for their phone bills), but it does automatically look up details like your current APY which isn’t unique to the user. Hit submit, and BillShrink will present a list of its top matches, taking into account each product’s interest rates and any restrictions that might be involved.

And BillShrink goes far beyond just a basic listing. You can futher refine your results by specifying which features you want (for example, you might want to be able to withdraw money at ATMs, or get paper statements without an extra fee). You can also specify how long you’re willing to keep your money in an illiquid state, and if you enter your employer and region you can turn up special offers from smaller banks and credit unions.

As with BillShrink’s other services, the new savings feature has a clean, intuitive interface. That said there is still some room for improvement — I think the site could do a better job at holding the user’s hand through the process. While BillShrink does a good job offering contextual explanations (say, how it calculated the fees associated with a given product), it doesn’t attempt to educate the user, so there’s a chance some users won’t know what some of the terms mean.

BillShrink isn’t the first player here — BankRate.com has been a leader for quite a while, and Mint also offers a savings component that looks at savings accounts and CDs. But co-founder Samir Kothari says that BillShrink differs in a few key respects. For one, the site doesn’t offer any sponsored listings (both Mint and BankRate always show their sponsored products at the very top of the list, so you may not immediately notice the products that would give you the best returns). He also says that BillShrink’s customization options are more precise than what you’ll find on the other sites.

BillShrink has been having a very strong year, with 1000% growth since the beginning of the year (they’re now up to over 650,000 monthly visitors) and some major marketing love from T-Mobile).

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As always, Billshrink breaks it all down for us. Anyone want to guess how much cheaper the Pre is compared to the upcoming 3G S? Hit the jump to find out

Read more:
Billshrink: iPhone 3G S vs Palm Pre vs T-Mobile G1

Suggesting queries is becoming a pretty standard practice on search engines these days. You know, those drop-down menus that are populated as you type with things you likely mean. They’re useful, but Google just made them more useful.

Previously, when you types a query into Google’s search box, the menu would drop down giving you a range of possible search terms and how many results each would return if you select that one. Clicking on any of those would take you to a results page. Starting today, when you start typing in the search box, the suggest drop down is populated with a number of interesting things including direct links to pages, personalized results and even sponsored ads.

For example, if you start typing “TechCrunch” into Google with this feature enabled, you’ll see the first result in the drop-down menu is an actual link to our site. That cuts out the results page middle-man and saves time. There won’t be hyperlinks populated for all queries, but ones where Google is pretty sure they know what you’re looking for, you should see them on, we’re told.

That’s a great feature — but it also opens the door for Google to do something potentially much more interesting. With hyperlinks now in Suggest results, Google can also start serving ads in the results drop-down. And it’s already experimenting with it for a limited number of sponsored links.

This is Google serving you ads before you’ve even done a full query — just based on what you’re typing. And it’s pretty genius because presumably, companies would bid to get placed in these drop-downs just as they do for search result pages. And the click-through on these things must be massive.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Google is very much downplaying that aspect right now, only saying that its experimenting with a limited number of sponsored links and that the feature is not open to new advertisers at this time. But you can bet it will be one day, and it can do nothing but help Google’s ad click-through rates.

[Above: What Suggest previously looked like.]

Another nice feature new to the drop-downs is personalized results. If you use Google’s history feature, you can see sites or results that you’ve used in the past get populated at the top of the drop-down. And if those aren’t actually relevant to what you’re looking for, there’s a “Remove” link to kill them.

Something else useful that Google is doing with Suggest is that even when you’re on a search results page now, you can use Suggest to further tailor a search. What I mean by this is, say your first search was for “roller coaster,” when you get to the results page, if you start typing in the search box again, you’ll get results based around that original query. So if you were to type “biggest,” Suggest would give you a drop down with “biggest roller coasters” suggested. It’s a subtle feature, but nice.

A final small feature is that the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons have been placed in the drop down as well. Previously, the drop down obscured the view of these. And as you’ll notice in the screenshots, Google removed those silly tallies telling you how many results each query had. Most people were just confused by them, and it’s not like they helped rank the results in the drop down, Google says.

Yesterday, I gave Yahoo some grief over their search product on the consumer end after a lackluster state of search event. This is the type of stuff I like to see — just small, little useful features. They don’t necessarily have to be game-changers — at least not until Google starts selling those sponsored links in the drop-downs.

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Mozilla has unveiled a new project from its Labs division called Jetpack that gives us a taste of how Firefox might begin extending web functionality in years to come. While the project is still quite early in development, it seems to be taking the form of a streamlined extension system, allowing web developers to introduce new features to the Firefox browser using web-based tools and requiring only a minimal amount of effort on the user’s part.

Firefox extensions have long been one of the best parts of the browser, allowing users to add and remove features to suit their needs. But while the user experience of installing these has been relatively straightforward, it still requires a browser reboot, which can be frustrating when you’re in the middle of something. With Jetpack, this isn’t an issue - you click install and you’re done, with the new widget or application installed a few seconds later.

Jetpack is being described as “an exploration in using Web technologies to enhance the browser (e.g. HTML, CSS and Javascript), with the goal of allowing anyone who can build a Web site to participate in making the Web a better place to work, communicate and play.” In other words, if you know how to develop for the web, you should be able to build a Jetpack app. Developers can write code using Mozilla’s web-based Bespin environment and the popular Firebug extension. For an idea of how easy it is to build these applications, check out the video below.

At this point there aren’t many demo apps available, but you can try them out for yourself by going to the Jetpack homepage and installing the Jetpack 0.1 extension (you’ll have to reboot your browser to get it working). From there you can find demos here and here, with available applications including a weather forecaster, Delicious Notifier, and an Ad blocker (there’s also an app that will mix up the images seen in your open browser tabs, if you’re looking for something truly useless).

Because Jetpack is still in very early stages it’s tough to tell just how powerful it will eventually become, and if it could ever replace the current extension model. Looking beyond traditional extensions, the new project could potentially allow trusted websites to customize the browser experience on a site-by-site basis, which could prove quite useful (or annoying, depending how it works out).

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