science

Hometalk

Hometalk is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hometalk rather than just read about it. In short: Hometalk is an online platform that enables people to improve their living spaces through DIY. Founded in 2011 and based in New York City, Hometalk has over 17 million registered users and 23 million monthly visits.

Key takeaways

Hometalk belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hometalk to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hometalk from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hometalk is an online platform that enables people to improve their living spaces through DIY. Founded in 2011 and based in New York City, Hometalk has over 17 million registered users and 23 million monthly visits. There are over 140,000 home improvement tutorials on the site (which have collectively been viewed over 1 billion times), sorted in categories such as kitchen design, gardening, and bedroom ideas.

Company Hometalk was founded by Yaron Ben Shaul, Miriam Illions and Celeste Kumelos in 2011. In 2012, the company relaunched the Hometalk website with several new features resulting in the acquisition of more than 100,000 members and 400,000 Facebook fans. Hometalk was listed among The Next Web's “ten of the best apps for home and work from 2012", and by the end of 2013, site visits increased from 2 million to over 4 million. In February, 2014, Hometalk members co-hosted live Pinterest parties at 100 Michael's stores throughout the United States, and then, two months later, Hometalk was listed as a Webby Award Honoree in the 18th annual Webby Awards. In 2016, Hometalk was voted #1 in The Next Web's list of "60 of the fastest growing companies in tech". Also in 2016, Hometalk made its first big push into Facebook video. The Wall Street Journal then featured the company's surge in video virality, citing its eco-friendly oven-cleaning video that garnered 38 million views in under three weeks. In October, another video surpassed 55 million views, and The Next Web cited a reason for the video's virality: "Perhaps the video embodies the very ethos of Hometalk: People empower and teach each other to make their homes better (without spending more money!)." Hometalk partnered with a talented group of video creators who have successfully driven well over a billion Facebook video views to over a thousand videos. (Hometalk's most popular video has 112 million views.) Hometalk has been monetizing its platform through programmatic advertising. But as for its future, Hometalk's then-CEO Ben Shaul explained: “Our mission is to become the end-to-end DIY destination, whereby we not only inspire people with awesome content, but we also empower them to do the projects themselves. This includes the ability to teach Hometalkers more DIY skills, to get them the relevant materials, and to connect them with each other to DIY together. Each of these initiatives has strong business components, too, which would enable us to diversify from our current revenue source - programmatic ads.”

Community Hometalk's attracts a targeted userbase of home and garden consumers: 95% are female, 94% are over the age of 35, and 85% reside in the USA. Hometalk has built a social network for DIYers. Unlike instructional videos on YouTube or the one-way communication on many how-to sites, Hometalk is a community where members can ask questions about projects and get responses within minutes.

Media Hometalk is often featured across various media outlets, such as Huffington Post, Country Living, Fox & Friends, NBC, and The Today Show.

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hometalk

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hometalk claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hometalk before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hometalk ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hometalk

In research: Hometalk appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hometalk in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hometalk is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American educational websites, How-to websites, Urban agriculture, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hometalk outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hometalk in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hometalk means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hometalk out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hometalk in simple terms?

Why does Hometalk matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hometalk?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hometalk.