Everybody Helps

Please Meet Ashley Coffey - A CrossLoop Scholar

We started from day one with a very basic philosophy - we believe everyone helps and we want to make sure we enable that. The business around it is our super simple, award-winning software and a marketplace of over 14,000 Helpers for those who do not have a friend or family to help but we wanted to keep doing things that live that philosophy apart from the business.

So in that spirit, we asked ourselves how we can enable anyone who is helping ... independent of business, independent of computers and empower them.

So it gives us great pleasure to introduce Ashley Coffey, a student at Oregon State University, who is probably now in Namibia, Africa for an internship to conserve the Acinonyx Jubatus...um the Cheetahs. She is headed to the Cheetah Conservation Fund as a 'CrossLoop Scholar'

If you are curious to learn whether you can outrun a cheetah or not or where you can go to pet them, here are some neat facts about them

We wish her the best and look forward to her updates.

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!

CrossLoop Helpathon Winners

As you aware we were running our Helpathon contest.

It gives me immense pleasure to celebrate and congratulate our winners:

Kenny S for wins the grand prize of a Dell Netbook

   

You can contact Kenny for computer help on his profile here
Notice here how his customers are raving about his service on Twitter- and Yes, Kenny is on Twitter.

[Note: If you are not on Twitter, I highly recommend it. You can follow me here so that I can promote you and here are some suggested posts on our blog that will help you get started - here and here]

The other prize winners are:

Nick Lockard with the iPod Touch. Contact Nick on his profile here

Frank Zabroski with a Logitech Headset Contact Frank on his profile here

So again - a HUGE Congratulations from all of us to the three above!

Our next Helpathon will launch in April and if you want to participate, follow these two steps:

• Email us at helpathon@crossloop.com and put 'notify me' in the subject line
• Place your username in the body of that same email

Good Morning and Good Luck!

CrossLoop's Growth and PC Shipments in 2009

On Techmeme today, I caught a forecast by Gartner: PC Industry Will Suffer Sharpest unit Decline in History in 2009.

Paraphrased, its important to note that the slowdown is in emerging as well as mature markets with a decline of 10.4% and 13% respectively. Fortunately, some of that will be buffered by growth in mobile PC shipments with the unexpected growth in netbooks (one of which we are giving one away in our Helpathon).

What really caught my eye was this following paragraph from their press release with that which I have made bold below:

"Slower GDP growth will generally weaken demand and slow new penetration, lengthening PC lifetimes will reduce replacements, and supplier caution will keep inventories at historic lows until confidence in a recovery eventually firms,” Mr. Shiffler said. “The impact of reduced replacements will be especially acute in mature markets, where replacements are estimated to account for around 80 percent of shipments.”

The behavior above, namely lengthening PC lifetimes, is well reflected in my prior post looking back at CrossLoop's 2008. We have seen a very robust growth in the increased traction of our software and service with screen sharing sessions:

Total Cummulative Sessions

2007: 1.04M

2008: 3.98M

Growth: 382%

Total Help Minutes

2007: 17.73M Minutes

2008: 75.31M Minutes

Growth: 425%

These align well with what Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst at Parks Associates, a technology consulting firm, said in The San Jose Mercury News "With the economy (in recession), consumers will choose first to look at fixing their computer problem or optimizing the performance of their PC before buying a new computer"
 
With an award winning and nationally recognized free software for consumers to get computer support from their friends and family and a massive network of over 15,000 expert Helpers, we do hope to help those who need to cut costs and come out stronger at the end.

Further in that same spirit, we are offering:
1. 20% discount on pre-paid coupons technical support and training services.
2. $10 in Free Help Bucks when one creates an account that can be used against any service with over $30 in charges

You think you know someone who might leap with joy with a faster computer or say needs training on social media for continuous education? - Get them into the loop!

 

Good Afternoon and Good Luck!