Category Archives: Web 2.0

BoomVote

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Lets see, lets pay people to use our site.  What a novel idea! Thus is the premise of Boomvote.Boomvote awards cash and prizes to the most frequent voters and vote recipients. They also  award cash for random reasons like the best video, most viewed, lowest votes, and best picture of BoomVote wear.

 According to the site, all you have to do is register. Once you are registered and your profile is approved, you can start getting credit for votes and voting for other members. They claim to offer variety of contests each month as well, to keep you coming back of course.

Every month BoomVote awards $500 to $1,000 in cash and prizes through many fun and random contests. Past contests include: “Most Interesting Essay,” “Cool CollegeGuy/Girl,” “Best Sporty Photo,” “Hip High School Guy/Girl,” “Hot Young Professional” and “Best Newcomer.” Coming soon, BoomVote will reward a $1,000 cash prize to the member with the most Boom Votes on January 31st.

 The more you vote, the more you increase your chances of winning. They award cash  based on votes given and votes received.  In order to win, you have to check the site each day and look for their Win/Win day promotion in which they give you a vote for each vote you give to another member.

BoomVote is quickly growing, and estimates active membership to reach 1 million by the end of 2008.

GodTube

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It’s official, social networking has got religion. GodTube the website which set the record as the #1 fastest growing website in the U.S. according to ComScore during its first official launch month, continues to break new ground by announcing an innovative new partnership which, for the first time in history, brings together 50 diverse, faith-based organizations that span across the wide array of denominations, ranging from Protestant to Catholic.

These Ministry Partners will join with GodTube.com to extend the website’s reach to 300,000 out of the 360,000 US churches and a global/domestic audience of more than 1.2 Billion. Thomas Nelson Publishers, American Bible Society, Liberty University and the Crystal Cathedral are among the initial leaders on this distinguished roster which
includes some of the most respected and renowned faith-based organizations in the world.

The website has attracted 4 Million visitors per month, and is currently on track to attract 5-7 Million unique visitors per month for the month of November. GodTube.com recently launched its Social Network and already has over 200,000 registered users and approximately 25,000 churches with active profiles.

With more than 38,000 videos representing over 800,000 hours of footage offering a wide array of content and its live and interactive technology, GodTube.com provides users face-to-face interaction in virtual Bible studies, chats, and live broadcasts, as well as opportunities to connect through messaging, email, and video blogs.

So social networks have now reached into the US churches and can now connect with its flock on a more one to one level.   We wonder how open the door is to other religious beliefs? Only time will tell, but could this end up being the largest social network on the planet? If it makes the world a more peaceful place then bring it on.

Google Magazine; Another off-road attempt.

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Google filed a patent back in May of 2006. The patent essentially says that Google wants to give users the ability to search and browse their own content, and receive an electronic or hard copy version of the final product. And that final product will include advertisements highly relevant to the user.

…the customer interface documents may be provided via a kiosk. For example, kiosks containing the customer interface documents may be provided in stores (e.g., Target, supermarkets, retail stores, etc.) in a similar way as picture kiosks are currently provided in such stores.

So instead of buying your current niche based magazine, which I thought was fairly targeted. Google thinks that they can provide a publication that is so targeted that advertisers and readers will stumble over each other to advertise and buy it respectively.

So  Mens Health, Cosmo, Road and Track, Playboy, etc etc. are essentially missing the boat according to Google. But what I am not sure of is, how does Google plan on carrying this out? Do I go to a Google Kiosk and instead of grabbing the magazine of choice, I go to a screen pick out the articles that interest me and print? And with that, I get a very targeted group of advertisers geared right towards my articles’ subject matter and my general interests? How long would this take? What if I have to grab a train?

In theory I can understand it, because in most magazines, very seldom does the publication meet the complete needs and the criteria of the reader. Now some may read it cover to cover, but for the most part we thumb through the ads (some of which may not be geared towards you) and we go to the articles that interest us. Can you imagine? Our own personal magazines with all the content developed for us and by us and packaged by Google; with advertisers using a Google interface selling the things that would totally interest us and us only? All I can think is a) freaky scarry and b) cool.

So it’s not too far off now in the sense that our social bookmarks are essentially the content that we like, or the sites that we like, ordered, and condensed and available to us 24/7/365. Taking this to the next level would be creating a hard-copy of  your social bookmarks; that would NOT require a reader or a laptop or a PDA.

Amazingly enough, doesn’t this sort of fly in the face of technology in that we are reverting back to paper environment? In a time when newspapers are folding and consolidating, and magazines are relying more and more on advertisers to stay alive,  perhaps this is the type of lifeline that they have needed all along. Though the final iteration will not be close to what we’re talking about here, it seems certain that something, to the extent that you will  build your own “magazine”, seems right around the corner. Your content and your advertisers. And why not? If someone asked you to name the type of products you wanted to be pitched on, you could do it. It happens all the time now with cross promotional items and websites and double opt-ins and every other piece of online marketing out there. The more they know about you, the more targeted the offer!

Chew on that for a bit. Building you own magazine with your own preferred content and your own preferred advertisers. The only thing standing in the way is speed and ease of use. I sense another slipstream opportunity here for the remora like companies who build their products on the basis of other companies products. So let’s just see what happens. Either way, Google is certainly keeping it interesting.

Lemonade.com and Affiliate Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

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I came across this site just recently, Lemonade and a couple of things came to mind. The first of which is that essentially any name can be turned into a website anymore. Oh to have cybersquatted on hundreds of generic terms back in the early 90’s! My second thought was though at first a novel idea, Lemonade has highlighted a nagging pet-peeve of mine and that is the assumption or ascension of affiliate marketing as the way to go in regards to making money online. It may have worked for Amazon and for a handful of others but to me it just seems like a tough road to hoe for the average site owner.

 I suppose that the efforts made by the Advertiser is nill and equally as such for the Publisher, bearing in mind that it really is the strength of the network that makes it work, along with price, quality and payout…(lots of intangibles there don’t you think?) but to have it as the sole business model for your site to make money, just seems to be looking at the world wide web through rose colored glasses.

The first and foremost issue with most affilate programs is that they don’t pay. If you are looking to join an affiliate program you need to know that you are not likely to have a huge sales volume.  The problem lies in the fact that any affiliate marketing system you do use needs to get good results for both the advertiser and the affiliate. So You have to  identify sites that target similar audiences and have traffic.  But  here’s the kicker: You have to make sure you pay them enough to make it worth their while.” There is a but here, but wait there’s more…

Even for for the serious players, affiliate marketing should be looked at as a way to market products and services without utilizing the reseller channel. The affiliate’s job is simply to generate qualified leads, in the case of Lemonade, they are looking at affiliates to push the products of the participants in its network. So really no sweat equity for them. The serious “Playa’s” can save money on marketing, increase branding to core audiences, broaden the reach of current marketing campaigns, decrease dependance on resellers and increase the amount of leads flowing to the sales team, and or flat out, sales.

So does it work? yes and no. If you have the product, then yes it can work. If you have the traffic, yes it can work. If you have one without the other, it will not work.  But the product has to fit the type of traffic you’re getting. If I have a knitting website and I’m trying to push printer toner, what do you think will be the result?

One other thing, like MLM’s, what works best is an awsome affiliate, someone who has the viral capability to make your product fly off the shelves. Pay them well, and they will evangelize the hell out of your product to their network.  But these are few and far between.

 So will Lemonade work? In this Web 2.0 world it’s hard to say. I suppose it’s a matter of how many widgets can your site, blog, page sustain? With some affiliates or folks who have the right trafffic and are selling the right product, they might be able to hit the ball out of the park. For others, go ahead and put up your Lemonade stand and watch the lemons whither.

Web 2.0 was NEVER a Business Strategy(con’t)

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I came across this post in David Dalka’s blog today and was really impressed with this individuals response to Davids’ post: I’m enclosing the link but here is the gist:
“You saw the craze. People built up Web 2.0. It’s frequently a term that people used to avoid business principles and focus entirely on technology without any end goal. I have always disdain it. Many folks surprisingly jumped in with funding for some of these ideas, likely more due to existing dot bomb relationships that business principle.

Yet Internet startups who focus on the following business issues closely will always have a good chance at succeeding:

1. Have a clear value proposition that meets some area of unmet need: Something that says, “We provide a first in industry solution to the problem of blah, blah, blah”. Not “This is kinda like part Digg, Youtube with a bit of Facebook – just way better”. I meet lots of people that say this stuff in the second category, I cringe when I hear it.

2. Realize that Internet companies are marketing companies first and technology companies second: I can’t tell you how many startups I see who hire a programmer, program something and then go hire a salesperson. They go through the whole process without a well crafted, customer focused value proposition.

3 . Have a clear data model that focuses on data integrity and creating a monetizable store of value:
Does your Internet startup attempt to focus on data integrity issues? Will it eventually create a monetizable store of value? I ask this question in the startups that I’ve assisted. It comes from my background in financial services where not having accurate information can cost you millions in an instant, the true Internet time.

4. Have a business model for the company as a stand alone entity. Key partners invested in your outcome? Good.

5. Have people that have worked in high performance startup cultures on your team who understand that real-time iteration of your offerings are critical to your success!

6. Look at and study the history of business and technology innovation. Then use it in your transactions and execution.

These are the five that are most critical, though I’m sure you can think of more critical drivers. Please join the conversation. I can also think of several blogs that focus on buzzwords instead of business principles that are now more than a bit obsolete. It’s time to focus on business success principles at the party. it’s a smaller party, but one that will drive hundreds of new Internet startups for years and years.”

Now here is Rod’s response:

It’s [web 2.0] frequently a term that people used [sic] to avoid business principles and focus entirely on technology without any end goal.

By “technology” here you imply “product.” Would that belief then also apply to financial institutions? Organizations that “… focus entirely on (finance) without any end goal.” The bigger question is what is the “end goal” of a business? Web 2.0 has nothing to do with it whatsoever. The principles are universal or not. In fact, you too are using Web 2.0 as a buzz word. What I assume you are really suggesting here is that the end goal of a business is some type of increased profitability. Put another way, it’s about revenue. If not, perhaps you could define what is the proper “end goal” of a business. Would your theory hold to the political enterprise of Ron Paul, or Steve Jobs’ initial Apple start-up, or even something more basic as WordPress?

How would your argument apply to the arts or arts as a business? Whatever that might mean. Is profitability the end goal of artists or even a museum? Almost never. They are almost always subsidized. This is a struggle that artists have faced for generations. Is it always necessary to have such an end goal? For some, it is “intrinsically” valuable to simply create even at a loss. Do not free-ware an open source developers do this every day? My experience is that many in the Web 2.0 space are moved by artistic, creative, innovative and utilitarian expressions often beyond their desire for wealth or sustainability. For many, their “product” may reap only minor profits and non-sustainable ones and they are more than happy to accept that outcome.

Some theorists emphasize sustainability or longevity as the end goal measurement (Jim Collins). Tom Peters has been stressing the role of design as the ultimate competitive advantage and has little interest in sustainability, but instead nimble businesses that grow and die intentionally and predictably. Still, others like Stephen Covey believe that businesses exist to increase all stake-holders value (i.e. community, employees, shareholders and customers). Each hold the end goal differently. Consequently, each emphasize different measurements as well. It is possible that each may be correct when applied to the proper context.

To your second point:

Realize that Internet companies are marketing companies first and technology companies second.

Are you actually arguing that a company that has this “elusive” “undefined” “end goal” hire sales people before they develop a product or service? This is putting the cart before the horse don’t you think? When Peter Drucker argued that businesses have two major “functions” being marketing and innovation he was not suggesting that they were the end goal or the “purpose” of a business. Instead, they were the means by which a business served its product or service. The end goal as defined by Drucker is what the benefit obtained from the product, service or technology is! That he understood this so well is what allowed him to be such a powerful voice in the non-profit sector. Facebook, Digg, YouTube, WordPress and the like have created value for consumers even if their “end goal” is not clearly understood, defined or even sustainable. If marketing people came first, there often would be no technology nor the product.

Again, by “marketing” you meant no doubt sales. By which you imply again “some type of sustained revenue.” Yet, marketing, technically, is not sales and so you confuse the two. Nevertheless, one can neither market nor sell what doesn’t exist. I suspect Dave you are tying to argue that the marketing function is to demonstrate that any given business enterprise must first prove its financial viability before building the product. That is a good goal. And perhaps for VCs this is a solid requirement, but obviously it hasn’t been. But more to the point, if we were to apply your argument across the board then Ron Paul’s investors would be throwing their money to the wind, Steve Jobs would have closed down Apple a decade ago and the blogging software you use here would not even exist.

I ask you this: When your daughter has a lemon stand outside the house what was the end-goal? Was is profitable? Certainly not. It was entirely subsidized by mom. But a lesson was learned and skills were gained perhaps for another day and another enterprise. That is valuable. That is a good end goal. But even more, it was enjoyable to the child. It holds intrinsically its own end goal that has nothing to do with marketing. Many of these businesses you are chiding live in a similar world. Thank God for them.

Thank God some people believe in having audacious goals that move forward with a zeal that do not necessarily make financial or other rational sense. Thank God there are people willing to challenge the status quo and start a revolution in audio, video, publishing or politics when number crunching nay sayers argue it isn’t viable or possible. Thank God there are some politicians like Ron Paul, no matter how much I may despise some of his policies nor want him elected, that challenge the notion that we should do something “with a clear value proposition” as an end goal.

Your final argument that we should look at “history of business and technology” as a role model is an excellent one. Unfortunately, I am afraid you haven’t. Most of the radical innovations that we rely upon each day came about from those bold, radical, free thinking, passionately absurd people who chose to do what their hearts desire led them to regardless of a clear value proposition.

A Great great response to a sometimes complicated and complex issue. Kudos to the otherwise unknown Rod.  David shouldn’t you reply?

The Top 30 Social Network Sites for Baby Boomers

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 With Baby Boomers and Generation Jones (the long-lost generation between the Boomers and Xers, born 1954-1965, 26% of all U.S. adults) receiving huge media attention in Western Europe, and now increasingly in the U.S.  It has only been natural that marketers flock to them like moths to a flame.

Boomers and Jonesers were both born during the post-WWII 20-year boom in births, but they were raised with very different experiences, which is why so many credible organizations and individuals have been validating the GenJones concept, and spending big chunks of cash targeting Jonesers and Boomers.

Now that they have reached the pinnacle of their spending capabilities, social networks and their advertisers are now trying to seperate them from their cash with the premise that they should connect, explore and share with other likeminded Boomers.

Having said that, we have compiled a somewhat uptodate list of sites.  A quick glance through of all the sites and we noticed that some had obviously have been well-funded and designed, and that others looked more like those old subdomain tripod/earthlink/geocities sites. The top three that caught our eye were reZOOM, BOOMj and BoomerGirl.  They had clean layouts,  and yet were  visually interesting and inviting. It made you want to drill down a little further.

http://www.myboomerplace.com/
http://www.e-seniors-village.com/
http://www.boomersint.org/
http://www.babyboomerpeoplemeet.com/
http://www.bbhq.com/
http://www.babyboomers.org/
http://www.grandtimes.com/index.html

http://www.eons.com

http://www.boomj.com

http://www.myplanafter50.com/

www.topretirements.com

www.boomertowne.com

http://www.mycircles.com

http://www.genbb.com/

reZOOM.com

Boomer Girl

eldr

Redwood Age
eGenerations.com
Boomer Time
Growing Bolder
Boomer Living

TeeBeeDee
Life Two

My Boomer Place

My Primetime
Second Prime Time
Maple and Leek (UK)
GrownUps (NZ)

Wanobe.com (UK)

The top 10 Social Music Widgets

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In an effort to help you streamline your ability to find and listen to and share the music you want, we are including some widgets that may help you:
Mercora Music Matrix-This widget allows you to select nine (9) artists to be displayed in the matrix. Each artist image is linked to a biography type information page with links to their music and other useful information.

Pandora Widget-Stream Pandora from your desktop. Pandora is a pretty nice app. The music is free and is tailored towards your tastes. Just hope that Congress eases up on them.

Qloud– This one is going to have some steam behind it. The Qloud My Music application is a revolutionary music service that delivers online music to users how they want it – legal, cost-free, on-demand and linked to their personal music libraries – and where they want it – inside social networks where they can share music with and discover it through their friends. By supporting OpenSocial, Qloud will dramatically expand its availability on social platforms and accelerate adoption of its popular music service.

Qloud delivers free, on-demand music directly from a web browser, leveraging an iTunes plug-in to connect users to others in the community with similar musical tastes, and provides a Qloud Facebook application for sharing music with friends. The company’s investors and directors include Revolution Chairman and CEO Steve Case and former AOL, Yahoo!, Warner Music Group, EMI Music, and Island Records music executives.

Mini Streampad Music Player for your blog-The Streampad Player Widget allows you to put a mini Streampad player right on your blog. All you have to do is put the url of your blog and it will find any mp3 files you have posted.

Sonific-Dive in! Find the music you like, create your playlists, make your widgets, grab the code and add it to your profile page, site, blog or photo album. Artists, Labels and Producers can also add their own music to sonific’s catalog.

Tourb.us-Ever find out the day after one of your favorite bands played a show you didn’t know about? We’ve had that happen too often and we hate it. Now you can find out ahead of time so you’ll be laughing at your friends when they find out the show is sold out. Every fan gets their own custom RSS feed for all the shows they’re attending. And every band and venue has their own feed for all of their upcoming shows.

LastFM  Share your music anywhere, Last.fm widgets for MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, your Blog, a website, the possbilities are endless!

Seeqpod-Currently in Beta, SeeqPod’s first consumer site empowers users by allowing them to search and discover music and video all over the Web. Our intelligent software robots work with targeted crawling systems to auto-submit content to the site. This, combined with user submissions, results in a large and rich search and discovery index. This process can be viewed in real-time via the PodCrawler.

Yourspins-YourSpins is a new kind of music community for fans who want to immerse themselves in world of remixes. Within YourSpins, you’ll be able to share your mixes of top songs with others, rate and comment on other mixes – and chat, mail and IM other people too. Plus you can make your own unique ringtones to be sent to your phone. Each user gets their own homepage, with all their mixes and ringtones listed. Soon, we’ll introduce blogs for each user, but for now, all mixes can be exported to your own blog by pressing ‘Blog this mix’ on the mixpage.

Snocap We love the premise of this site. SNOCAP’s products include:

  • SNOCAP MyStore – allows “stores” to be embedded anywhere on the Internet where html can be edited
  • SNOCAP Linx – a flexible solution for those who wish to seamlessly integrate content sales into a website
  • P2P Plug-in – allows P2P technology to be used in a copyright respecting manner

Lastly, we realize that the likelihood that every social music site may have a widget, it takes a while to review them. So Just crunch on these for awhile and let us know about some that you think we need to check out.
 

Social Retailing. Going to the mall with all my social networking friends.

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So you really thought that this social networking thing might not catch on in the mainstream? Well guess what? Why don’t we mash the mall with Facebook or Myspace and see what we get? Social Retailing.

A New York-based designer has come up with a mirror equipped with infrared technology that sends a live video feed to any cell phone, e-mail account or personal digital assistant device selected by a shopper. OMG u looook so goood!

Christopher Enright, chief technology officer for digital design company IconNicholson, said putting these mirrors outside store fitting rooms meant women could go shopping with their friends — remotely.

Essentially, you can be anywhere in the world and your friends or relatives can be elsewhere and yet you can all talk, and view what you are trying on.

Using the interactive mirror, a shopper’s friends can then text message back with comments about the outfit IconNicolson  which has rolled out this  “social retailing” vision, has mashed up social networking and bleeding edge communication technologies with youth shopping habits – to target young adult shoppers. In part, the interactive mirror can send a live video feed to any cell phone or e-mail account selected by  the shopper.

Shopping will now take on new meaning. But the question is, isn’t part of the fun of shopping at the mall, travelling in large packs, hanging out in the food court, and essentially buying nothing? Time will tell, but at the least, we can add anew term to the ever-growing lexicon of social media terms.