ZocDoc is very easy to use. You select your insurance provider, location and specialty (dentist, psychiatrist, derm, etc.) and ZocDoc spits back a list of available appointment times. For me it’s saved a ton of time calling around to find available appointments that match both my insurance provider and my availability. ZocDoc notes that they have over 21,000 listed appointments in the D.C. area. In NYC ZocDoc has over 300,000 available appointments and the company notes that over 90,000 people use the service each month.

It’s great to see a NY-based startup expanding to another east-coast city.

Check out all of our ZocDoc coverage including my real-world test of the service. ZocDoc team members are also looking to meet with Senator Olympia Snowe around health-care reform, something I’ve written about previously and still believe we are doing it all wrong.

There’s good news as NY-based doctor appointment service ZocDoc has announced that their service now works with psychiatrists. Perhaps a few visits to a shrink will help return those we have lost back to full sanity. Couple of those happy pills will help just about anyone! The ZocDoc service is free to use as they get paid by the listed doctors after an appointment has been scheduled.

ZocDoc lets you review your doctors after the appointments have concluded – it will be interesting to read the reviews of the listed psychiatrists.

Check out my real world review of ZocDoc when I attempted to go to the dentist.

NY-based ZocDoc has just announced that they have added allergists to the lineup of doctors and specialists you can book online. The list now includes: allergists, primary care doctors, dentists, dermatologists, OBGYN, ENT and orthopedic surgeons. Assuming their business model is still the same, all of the listed doctors pay a fee to ZocDoc when an appointment is made except for primary care doctors.

Apparently booking an allergist appointment can take up to three weeks. The real benefit of ZocDoc is that everyone wins… the doctor wins because he/she can fill up their openings, the patient wins because they can get in straight away and ZocDoc wins because they get paid on completed visits.

Check out my real world review of ZocDoc when I attempted to go to the dentist.

Early this morning I headed down to the Financial District are of Manhattan to meet my new dentist. I found him on ZocDoc and while he had no reviews, he had a few openings and accepted my insurance. I entered the dentist office 10 minutes before my appointment to fill out the silly paperwork. I sat and waited 25 minutes, finally get called, sit down in the chair and then learned that they had no one to perform the services I specifically requested on the ZocDoc site. Not one apology except to tell me that if I was willing to sit out in the waiting room for "hours", maybe they could fit me in. I lost three hours when I could have been writing startup reviews! I told the office manager that their first review on ZocDoc wouldn’t be pretty.

So you are wondering why in the heck I am telling you about my dentist appointment. Here’s why…

I arrived back home and within minutes the phone rang. Karsten from ZocDoc called me to apologize for what happened this morning. I told him that it wasn’t ZocDoc’s fault. We spoke for about ten minutes and he offered me an Amazon gift card for the trouble. I couldn’t take the card as it wasn’t their fault but very much appreciated the offer. I hung up the phone and smiled – not a form email but a personal call to tell me they were sorry for what happened. Remember that ZocDoc is basically a marketplace service.

Have you planned out what your support strategy will look like? Do you have processes in place to monitor and report on your support inquiries? It does not mean you need to go out and buy an expensive package but having a way to classify and categorize your support inquiries will give you an eye into the business.

Isn’t it amazing that so many of us running web service startups are willing to help our customers and potential customers at any time of the day or night but those in the real world can get away with horrible service? It’s almost where if we don’t reply to an email, Facebook message, Tweet, etc. in minutes at any hour of the day or night, people wonder.

Last week I commented on another blog that what we write is what the new crop of developers think about and build. I don’t think enough bloggers think about this when they write. And I believe that it’s services like ZocDoc that developers should be looking at for inspiration in process and details (concept will be different) rather than wondering how to build the next Fart app or Twitdock.

KickApps

KickApps announced today that they have hired David Lapter as Chief Financial Officer and Tom Gaffney to head up the company’s expanding Customer Success division. Apparently the Customer Success division works on strategy and creative services.I’ve never heard of a Customer Success division but I like the idea! Check out all of our KickApps coverage.

Outbrain

Outbrain launched an update to their widget this week called the "Link Zapper". We run the Outbrain recommendations widget on CN (you can see it at the end of this post). The widget recommends other posts both from CN and from our whitelist of partner sites. The Link Zapper allows us to easily remove a link that might not be a good fit for the source story. It’s a very manual process and while I am hoping for some automated tools in the future, it’s a good start. Check out all of our Outbrain coverage.

ZocDoc

We’ve covered ZocDoc extensively on CN and I believe it could be the breakout star of 2009. ZocDoc provides online management for doctor, dentist and other healthcare practitioners. Forbes magazine named ZocDoc the winner of their small business contest. The announcement came this week and ZocDoc won $100,000 to further develop and expand their service.

Magnify.net

Earlier this week Magnify.net announced the launch of Thwoop.com, an online community for featured entertainment content and user-contributed videos. The concept for Thwoop.com came from children’s toy e-tailer Brand Performance and the site will be powered by Magnify.net. Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage.

ZocDoc is also announcing the launch of three new specialties today: ophthalmologists, orthopedists and ENT (ear, nose, and throat) doctors. The ZocDoc business model is based on charging specialist practitioners. Primary care physicians are not charged for appointment listings. ZocDoc noted that they had 20,000 available appointments listed this month. Appointments can also be made via their new Facebook application. ZocDoc is still only available in the NYC region so move here if you want to use it or wait until they roll it out in your city.

If you are new to ZocDoc, check out the company’s video demo from the NY Tech Meetup and check out my real world experience using ZocDoc.

When you load the ZocDoc page, you can select which type of doctor you want to see, ZIP code, and type of service (general appointment, botox, enlargements, reductions, etc.). You can also enter your insurance information and then ZocDoc returns doctors who accept your insurance first. This is a huge timesaver over calling doctor after doctor to find one that accepts my insurance plan.

The next screen displays the doctors that match your selected criteria. Open appointment slots are displayed so you can easily find a doctor that meets your schedule. Each doctor has a page that displays their training and education, any customer reviews, languages spoken, board certifications, etc. Reviews only come from patients who used ZocDoc so you know the reviews are real (or as real as they can be).

After selecting the appointment time, you are asked to login or create an account. The account creation process is similar to any other ecommerce system though ZocDoc does ask for more personally identifyable information than other systems. I don’t think they really need my birthdate or social security number so I entered fake info. I knew that I would still need to fill in the forms at the doctor’s office anyway.

Once you complete the signup, finalizing the appointment requires a telephone call in which a recorded message provides you with a code you must enter on the ZocDoc page. I think you can get the code by SMS too.

That’s all there was to it. You get an email confirmation plus a reminder the day before the appointment. After the appointment, ZocDoc sent me an email to provide a review of the Doctor. I was treated like any other patient at the actual doctor’s office.

At the end of the day, ZocDoc made it simple and easy to find a doctor that matched my schedule and insurance and took care of booking the appointment. I had to make a followup appointment which the doctor made directly at the office. ZocDoc should work on figuring out how to integrate that into their system as well.

I still hope they put up a pricing chart so you can get a basic idea for charges that are outside an insurance plan. They should also look at a reminder service for scheduled checkups.

Check out the ZocDoc founders demo’ing the service at a recent NY tech meetup.

ZocDoc helps you book doctor appointments online and find immediate openings. You can also check out Yelp-style doctor reviews. The service is currently only available in NYC but the founders say San Francisco is coming in 2009. Check out our ZocDoc coverage including video demo, launch of dermatologists, What I’d like to see is pricing information when services are outside an insurance plan.

While ZocDoc isn’t as "sexy" as some of the other startups out there, it is one of the most useful out there today. I continue to be impressed with the service and how they are expanding into more healthcare practices. Last week I booked my first doctor appointment using ZocDoc and will have a full review after my appointment tomorrow.

Dermatologists are an important part of the ZocDoc system because this is one of the areas they are monetizing. They don’t charge any fees for primary care doctors, only for specialists. Some of the services include: skin cancer examinations, acne treatment, mole inspections, and laser hair removal as well as Botox and collagen injections.

When I signed up for the Freelancer’s Union insurance recently, I used ZocDoc to help me pick a primary care doctor. The reviews are really solid and I feel more confident with them since the reviews come from actual patients so there’s no padding. If you are new to ZocDoc, check out their video demo below.

Each listed provider displays their current open appointments along with their education and experience. After you visit with the provider, ZocDoc sends you a survey and the results are displayed on the provider’s page. Currently ZocDoc is available in NYC and offers both dentists and primary care doctor information. Cyrus explained that the real power of the ZocDoc system is in the ability to find a practitioner who serves your insurance provider.

There is no charge to book an appointment using ZocDoc and ZocDoc currently does not charge any fees to the primary care doctors in their system. They noted that PCPs generate less revenue than specialists.

Yesterday they announced the launch of their new API which allows developers to build upon their technology. To kick off the development, they are offering a Macbook Air to the best implementation.

ZocDoc is another one of those unsexy apps — there’s no facebook poke functionality — but it’s a very useful service and could change the way appointments are booked with medical care nationwide. Currently they are looking to expand in 2009 either in Washington or San Francisco – number of votes will determine where they expand next.

ZocDoc

What’s great about ZocDoc is that you can book appointments online and get reminders. You can also find immediate availability across the network should an emergency arise. The system also understands a variety of insurance plans and can recommend a doctor or dentist based on your plan.

Our man on the street headed into the "other" boroughs to find out what people there think about ZocDoc’s expansion into Brooklyn. An unidentified woman in Forest Hills said, "Why Brooklyn? Haven’t you seen the teeth of the people around here, we need ZocDoc way more than those people". In Riverdale, "Tom" said, "This certainly is disappointing, we are always left for last."

Spottt

• It’s linkexchange.com for 2007
• they have a cute fake dog as their mascot
• 1-1 for swap, they will incur all costs for the first year
• this is owned by adbrite
• Blog and Myspace compatible

Clickable

• announces a relationship with adbrite – hrm
• and launches public beta
• johnathan miller joins board of directors
• 30 employees in nyc
• jason wanted this company in the list
• lots of ajax – its a reporting tool for using google adwords, yahoo advertising and now adbrite
• they talk about threats to spending on ads

GotStatus

• as good as google analytics is – it only runs on the browser
• I have to tell you – I am completely lost in this demo – I am sorry. No further notes on this demo will be provided. :(

PubMatic

• make more money from your blog or web site
• i saw a demo of this last week and was very impressed overall – needs some touchups on the corners, but it has potential
• What pubmatic does is simple – you can merge in your various online ad networks (google, yahoo, valueclick, blue lithium) and it decides which ads to show in which locations based on the best paying ad network
• they can also change color combos on the fly to maximize
• 106% increase for one site and a 90% increase for sportsvite

ZocDoc

• it’s like 1800dentists for the web
• they have 2% of dentists in the system
• they show a search of upper west side of manhattan but the results are all upper east side!
• has dentist ratings but charges dentists to list – conflict of interest?

Expert Panel Discussion

• Reolef – i like clickable and pubmatic, the challenge for clickable is there is a lot of competition
• Guy – I like Spott, it was the only one I could truly understand, I like it as a blogger because I understand the pain you are solving
• Esther – I don’t get Spott’s business model – I would go with clickable –