Honk (website): Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 21:50, 29 July 2010
| File:HonkFinalLogo.jpg | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1 January 2009 21 January 2014  |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA |
Key people | Tom Taira, Co-Founder and CEO Stephanie LaCrosse, Co-Founder & SVP, Product & Partner Management |
| Website | www.Honk.com |
Honk is a Web 2.0 company that operates Honk.com, a social shopping platform for car buying. The free service features user-generated car reviews, new car pricing information, and several social shopping features. [1] A beta version of Honk.com was launched in November of 2009. [2]
Company Founders
Honk was founded by Tom Taira and Stephanie LaCrosse in 2009 and has offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Honk is the third automotive website founded by Taira. The first was Zag, a car-buying service where consumers are offered pre-negotiated prices on new cars from automobile dealerships in their area. The second site was Truecar, which compiles anonymous transaction data from new car purchases and then reports the data and makes recommendations as to how much a consumer should pay for a similar new car in their area. [3] [4]
Prior, Taira held several business strategy positions with Toyota Motor Sales, USA and was a consultant for various automotive industry clients. [5]
Before founding Honk, Stephanie LaCrosse held engineering and business strategy positions at several major automobile manufacturers. She engineered electrical systems for Ford Motor Company, developed technology and multimedia strategies for Hyundai-Kia Advanced Technical Center, USA, and managed advanced planning and product strategy at Nissan North America .
LaCrosse has also worked for two San Francisco-based start-up companies, Model E (which later became BTO Automotive) and Televoke (which merged with deCarta in 2003).
Social Recommendation Engine and Search Tools
Honk’s “social recommendation engine” is a social search tool that can suggest car models for a user to explore based on demographic and psychographic data. [6]
The Honk user can input their age, gender, favorite hobbies, etc. and the social recommendation engine then looks to see which car models are most preferred by other people with the same characteristics. The Honk database features anonymous data from several hundred thousand automobile shoppers and buyers in the United States. [7] [8]
Honk users can also search for cars and filter results based on product attributes like price, monthly payment, body style, brand, seating configuration, towing capacity, and MPG.
User Reviews
The Honk website features user-generated reviews on new and late-model automobiles. Any registered Honk user may write a review, though reviewers must explain their familiarity with the vehicle, give the vehicle a letter grade, and meet minimum length standards before the review can be published.
Honk encourages reviewers to also grade the vehicle based on exterior styling, interior styling, thoughtful engineering, value for the money, safety of the vehicle, and environmental friendliness. [9]
Blog
Honk also operates a blog that publishes news and stories about car shopping and the auto industry. [10]
References
- ^ Thrillist, 2009-11-20, Honk: Using who you are to pick your next car, Retrieved 2010-07-28
- ^ Linda Roeder, About.com, 2009-11-18, Tell Your Car Stories on Facebook, Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ Cynopsis, 2009-11-13, Innovators & Start-Ups, Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ FHM.com, 2010-02, Honk.com helps us decode women, Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ Honk, 2010-07 Honk About Us, Retrieved 2010-07-28
- ^ Roger H, Killer Startups, 2009-11, Honk.com – Finding the Right Car for You, Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ Christina Warren, Mashable, 2009-12-02, Honk: Car Shopping with a Social Twist,Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ Mary Fetzer, SheKnows.com, 2010-05, Top 21 Best Cars for Teens, Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ Jim Motavalli, Mother Nature Networkd, 2010-03-19, Networking on wheels: Honk.com, the car shopping site for Facebook fans, Retrieved 2010-07-19
- ^ Honk, 2009, The Honk Blog, Retrieved 2010-07-28