If you have inquiries about TechStars or TechStars Boston, try this link

More new stuff coming next week!

-Team Libboo

——————
For more Libboo news, you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook or add us to your Google+circles.

We’ve got a new front page!

We’ve been doing some super secret work at Libboo HQ to make the site even awesomer, and we’ve finally got some stuff to show you. First off, we’ve got a new snazzy-looking front page, complete with virtual bookshelf:

We’ve also got a few new features for authors and promoters. As an author, you can now see who your best promoters are, instead of only being able to see who’s promoting a specific Libbook.

Once you click “See All,” you get a list view of all of the people that are promoting your Libbooks and how well they’re doing.

As a promoter, you now have the ability to see how many more hits you need on a particular Libbook before receiving a badge.

Other awesomeness:

-Libboo is no longer taking 15% of the royalties you receive from storefronts such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Our aim has always been to help authors, and as such, we’ve decided to lower this to 5%, and will soon update our pricing page to reflect this change.

-You can now add a link to your site on your bio. We think this will be especially great for illustrators, since now they can link to their online portfolios and show off their skillz.

-Improvements to the book discovery page are coming soon!

-Team Libboo

——————
For more Libboo news, you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook or add us to your Google+circles.

Thank you to Bing for throwing this awesome party for us and the super cool folks at MassChallenge, Vsnap, Tap Lab and RelayRides.

If you’d like to see more pictures from the party, click here.

-Team Libboo

——————
For more Libboo news, you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook or add us to your Google+ circles.

Also thanks Guy for the mention in your interview in Social Media Examiner. We had a great time seeing you (and hearing you speak) at SXSW!

Here’s a little bit of the interview to get you interested.

Sock Puppet Made by Colleen Brady (@cbrady77586) of Sprouting Startups (@startupsprout).

Things got a bit crazy at South by Southwest, and we didn’t really have a chance to update you guys on our road trip, but we’re heading back to Boston now and have some awesome stuff to share. Our Twitter campaign to raise money for the National Literacy Trust went really well, so we’ve decided to extend it to March 19th. We even got Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble and Laura Fitton to join in.



How can you participate?

Step one: Follow us (@libboo) on Twitter.

Step two: Retweet any tweet that has a picture of a sock puppet and the #LibbooSXSW hashtag.

or

Make your own sock puppet at home and tweet a picture of yourself with it and the above hashtag.

No Twitter? No problem!

-You can also like us on Facebook and post your picture on our page.

For every tweet with a picture and the #LibbooSXSW hashtag we’ll donate $1 to the National Literacy Trust and an extra $1 for every retweet. We’ll also donate $1 if you post your picture on our Facebook page with the hashtag.

We want to make a massive donation to the National Literacy Trust, so help us out by sending in your best sock puppet pictures.

Silliness:

Days 3 and 4 on the road:

We won’t be filming the return trip to Boston since Po had to fly back early, but we will be posting a few more videos of our journey to Austin.

-Team Libboo

There are many events, parties, meetings, even conventional talks and lectures going on for VIP’s only.  If you paid to get into SXSW and you’re not famous or connected enough to get into the hidden conference, you are attending a completely different conference.

The social media folks who give great advice and charge high prices to teach you to connect with “the community” don’t really want to do that themselves.  Ironic isn’t it?  They sell social media wares by day, but party away far from “the community” at night.  Social media stars now live in a gated community where the little people can’t touch them.

This makes for a pretty lousy conference, and certainly one that is not true to the spirit of the original event.

To be fair, there are a few places where this attitude has been resisted — in particular the great Samsung Blogger Lounge hosted by TechSet (Brian Solis and Stephanie Agresta) where they have made sure than new social media enthusiasts and stars can hang out together.  It matters.  In fact, I thought that was the whole idea … community.

We finally arrived in New Orleans around 8pm and had a chance to shower for the first time since we left. Team Libboo is no longer Team Stinky!

Team Libboo reunited in New Orleans! Top row (from left to right): Fernando, Halley and Louise. Middle: Katherine, Po and Chris. Bottom: Richard.

Po shows us where we are on the map.

After dinner, Richard, Louise and I took a streetcar to the French Quarter for a night out on the town. It wasn’t long before the streetcar had to stop. The doors wouldn’t close, and for a second time that day we were stuck. Luckily, this time we didn’t have to wait an hour before things got moving again. About 20 minutes into our wait, another streetcar came by and we eventually made it to the French Quarter. We had a great time, but very little sleep since we had to wake up at 6am today.

If you’ve seen any of the sock puppet videos, you might be asking yourself what they’re all about, and today we’re finally going to explain that. At South by Southwest, we’ll be passing around some of the Libboo puppets and we’ll be donating $1 to the National Literacy Trust every time someone tweets a picture of themselves with one of our sock puppets and includes the message “The @libboo sock puppet and I just donated $1 to the National Literacy Trust #LibbooSXSW.” If your tweet gets retweeted, we’ll donate another $1 for every retweet.

What are the rules?
-You have to follow @libboo on Twitter.
-The message may vary a bit, but you have to include the #LibbooSXSW hashtag (it just makes it a lot easier for us to find your tweets).

Can’t make it to SXSW?
You can still donate by making your own sock puppet at home and tweeting a picture of it with the above message. The sillier the puppet, the better.

Why sock puppets?
I dunno. They’re just fun to make.

We’d love to donate $1,000 to the National Literacy Trust, so please start sending in your pictures!

More sock puppet videos:

Day 2 on the road:

Apart from thanking her for letting us use her WiFi, we also have to thank Maureen for the absolutely delicious meal she cooked for us. It was amazing, particularly that “best ever” pecan pie that could give anyone a sugar shock (thanks for sharing the recipe!).

Best Pecan Pie. Ever.

Maureen graciously took us into her home, fed us wonderful food, let us stay the night in her driveway, and even let us turn her dinner table into a crafts station.

Sock Puppet Time!

Richard really enjoys making sock puppets.

And have we mentioned that Maureen got us a ridiculously cool present?

As promised, here’s a video from our first day on the road:

Want more on-the-road updates? Follow the #LibbooSXSW hashtag on Twitter.

-Team Libboo

———————-
Ways to connect: Facebook, Twitter, Google+.

That’s right. We’ve packed up our things, rented an RV and are on the way to Austin for South by Southwest (SXSW).  Since we asked you to submit your best “Vacation and Holiday Mayhem” stories, we thought it was only fair that we share our road trip mayhem with you, so we’re documenting our journey. We will be posting videos and photos for you to see right here in our blog. And it seems like the mayhem has already begun: there are six of us in the RV and it has been winterized, meaning that we don’t have any running water and can’t use the bathroom, shower or sinks. It’s bad enough sharing a tiny bathroom with that many people, but now we’ll have to cope with not having a bathroom at all! However, we’re still super excited about this trip and we think it’s going to be absolutely awesome.

Richard got the first driving shift.

Apart from our videos from the road, we’ll also be posting a series of videos featuring the new Libboo sock puppets. Here are the first two videos:

For more road trip updates, follow us on Twitter and look for the #LibbooSXSW hashtag.

-Team Libboo

—————————————

We’ve got a brand spankin’ new Google+ page,  so now you can add us to your circles or give us a +1.  Of course, we’ve still got our Facebook page, if you’d rather follow us there.