Social Media Management for Dummies: Crowdbooster Tells You What to Do

WHAT: Crowdbooster does the "listening" for social media managers by determining the best time to tweet or post and suggests content for followers in addition to tracking the stream. Receive notifications when influencers, based on their Klout score, follow the company/brand so you don't miss engagement opportunities.

LAUNCHERS: Stanford science and computer science grads Ricky Yean (CEO), David Tran, Mark Linsey.

WHY: Dashboards don't provide enough guidance and can be overwhelming. Social media moves so fast that a social media manager doesn't have time to make sense of everything and can miss things. Companies spend $4B on social media tools.

WHEN/WHERE: 2011 / Palo Alto.

BACKSTORY: Ricky and David had been building projects on Twitter for years before they met Mark, who joined their team in 2010. None of their projects gained traction, so...

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Shortlist's Pitch to Event Organizers: Use Our App for Smarter Networking at Your Conference

[ Shortlist founders Gretchen and Jason Goodrich. ]

Editor's Note: See all our Excelerate Labs coverage here.

WHAT: Allows conference organizers to create an online and mobile app that recommends sessions to attendees and people to meet. Meant to be used before and during an event.

App integrates with registration sites like Eventbrite; that data becomes the basis for Shortlist profiles of every attendee. Exhibitors can use Shortlist to offer deals to attendees. Users can sync their Shortlist profile with other social networks to see if anyone they already know is attending the conference. 

LAUNCHERS: Gretchen Goodrich, COO. Jason Goodrich, CEO. 

WHY: It's hard to track down the people you actually want to meet at big conferences. Networking should start before the event. Conference organizers want people to network, but connecting like-minded attendees isn't their first priority. The conference space has massive inefficiencies that has attracted other startups [ see our profiles of Balloon and Welcu ].

WHEN/WHERE: 2011 / Chicago.

BACKSTORY: Gretchen and Jason attended SXSW in 2010 with the goal of making connections. They realized...

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Facebook's "Like" Extension for Chrome Less Popular than Google +1 Extension

Facebook quietly released a Like button extension for Google Chrome in early July -- but nobody had picked up on it until today, just two days after Google's +1 extension for Chrome. 

The Like extension lets users like, recommend and share content directly from any website as well as right-click on a page and select a sharing option [ see below]. While the +1 extension has racked up 14K downloads, the Like extension has just...

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Compare Rates and Change Electricity Supplier with Power2Switch

Editor's Note: See all our Excelerate Labs coverage here.

WHAT: Lets consumers and businesses compare rates from electricity suppliers and switch to one that's cheaper or greener. Most who use the service save between 7% and 19% on their electric bills.

To reduce consumption, Power2Switch also lets consumers monitor their electricity usage and compare it to others.

Service only available in Illinois right now, but Power2Switch has a contract with a supplier that will bring the company into all 17 U.S. states with deregulated utilities.

LAUNCHERS: Seyi Fabode, who worked in the utilities industry in the U.K., and Phil Nevels, who has biz-dev experience at startups.

WHY: Consumers don't know much about their energy options or their usage. People like saving money. Lead generation is a lucrative business model.

WHEN/WHERE: 2008 / Chicago.

BACKSTORY: Seyi and Phil met at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Seyi started the company in fall 2008, and Phil joined him in 2009.

Seyi's experience in the U.K. utility industry...

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Coming Soon: Get Obama's Attention with a Petition to the White House

The White House plans to launch a tool so U.S. citizens can directly petition the Obama administration to take action on issues they care about -- as long as they have an email address and can get at least 5K signatures. Naturally, the administration wants people to use social media to get support for their petitions.

In a mass email, senior adviser to the president David Plouffe framed "We the People" as an initiative in line with the country's founding documents (the First Amendment guarantees the right to petition government, notes the official website ). To get you really excited, Plouffe writes, "President Obama will even answer a few himself."

Macon Phillips, the White House new media director, noted in a tweet that the system does not have a way to...

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