Friday, June 6, 2008

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Design a Kleenex



Yep. We are officially in an era of full CPG utilization of Web 2.0.

I love this. The price is right, too! Kudos to this brand, that has also been pushing the envelope on TV.



And o' course the spoof. Which I will not run here because it is a bit... Don't hurt yourself typing Youtube.com too fast. ;-)

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Shout it out with Gleeson

This is a link you need to click.

From the man with wit that is outshined only by his spark and intellect.

Though I daresay he should have made a link to this blog by now.

Hint Hint. Day 79 without a reciprocal link. Renny, if you won't do it for me, do it for Sleepy.



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Poor Beaumont, TX



Usually it's fun to live in a test market town. You get to try bizarre new gel laundry detergents, or peculiar fried things from snack companies trying to break out of the potato and corn chip rut. My personal favorite test market story: a paper company testing a new compact tissue product in a town in Colorado. Only to find out that high altitudes and the associated thin air made the boxes rupture on the shelf.

But Beaumont TX is now about to experience an unpleasant test market, and I hope they complain to all get out.

Comcast is testing a bandwidth cap there that limits the amount of bandwidth any person can consumer before getting charged for per gigabyte overages. You remember Comcast, the company that was caught slowing downloads for file sharers, which BTW are piping a lot more than illegal music around the world.

According to CNET, in this post, :

The company said earlier this week that it will begin testing a new metering system in Beaumont, Texas.The way it works is that subscribers who go over their limit for uploading and downloading material will be charged $1 per gigabyte. The test will only apply to new customers in the test region. The tiered pricing will work this way for the Internet portion of subscription packages that also include phone or video use: At the low end, users will pay $29.95 per month for service at a speed of 768 kilobits per second, with a 5GB monthly cap. At the high end, users will pay $54.90 per month for service at 15 megabits per second, with a 40GB cap.

They say 5% of their users are consuming 50% of bandwidth.

But that 5 gig cap...correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that a couple of streaming movies? Which is a service that Comcast actually advertises as a benefit to having broadband.

Hmm. Sounds like a price increase to me. Not a rationalization of bandwidth issues.

And as long as I am being a crankyparker, BTW CNET, people who use the net heavily are not "bandwidth hogs", but rather "heavy users." And I will wager those heavy users were the innovators and early adopters that got Comcast started in the damned high speed Internet business.

So poo to you Comcast, and...well...I really like CNET, so I am just going to give you an eye roll. But it is an ICY one. That chill you feel in your spines is the result. Feel my wrath! Err...mild CNET disappointment.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks Part 8: Jitterfingers

As always, I want to disclose the Jitterfingers was a client of Catalyst:SF, so take the rest of this post for what you will.

As a childless person, I am not always aware of the number of challenges having an Internet pipe into a house creates for families. If you have sons, there's that everpresent threat of porn exposure, and for either gender there are the potential issues of child predators, cyberbullying, and kids putting TMI onto MySpace et al.

But the challenge must be even bigger for mothers and fathers of daughters. The web has so much great content, but corners of it are also repositories of misogyny, sexism, and the like. Throw the predator risk on top of that and I gotta believe that there are plenty of parents who have nagging concerns.

Enter Jitterfingers, a social network designed for tween and teen girls. The Jitterfingers model is based around circles of girls - friend circles. It is NOT a place where any Tanya, Dick or Harry can trawl profiles -- communicating on Jitterfingers is by invitation only, meaning that the girls know each other before they link. A circle of girls is 8, because that's about how many real friends the typical girl has.



They present the site as a collection of clubs rather than a mass friending universe.

They also have a number of added features designed for young women -- fashion and celeb news and ratings, polls, photo sharing, and a robust platform of communications tools.

JF is in beta, and driving traffic virally. It's an interesting model and a great place for a particularly UGC-shy brand to dip its toe in social media. Check it out. Or rather, have your daughter do so!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks Part 7: Hoovers Connect



A big part of sales is about leveraging who you know. As a tool to bring networking for sales to a truly higher level, Hoovers has launched Hoovers Connect, a tool that helps sales and BD people connect with the people they want to reach through real, proven relationships in your network.

You join, and then give Hoover's permission to scan your emails, IMs etc. to count the number and depth of communications you have with people. Based upon this arms length assessment, the system has a precise picture of what kind of relationship you have with someone.



This is a distinct advantage over the LinkedIn platform. I say that because I have about 270 first connections in Linked In, but they are of wildly different depths, and that system doesn't make that clear. As a result, I am freuqntly asked to make intros to people that I have tangential relationships with. This does no one any good. With the Hoovers Connect system, my relationships are quantified by the extent to which I have digital communications with them. This seems a great surrogate for the strength of my relationships -- in this day and age.

When you ID someone you want to talk to, the system shows you multiple paths to reaching them, and you can see how strong the paths are and choose.

I love this system. I think it is an absolutely huge concept both as a tool in itself and as a tool to get more people to use Hoover's as a foundation to find the names and roles of people that constitute your best prospects.

Bravo Hoovers!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks Post 6: Ning



No discussion of niche social networks should take place without a discussion of Ning, a platform that lets you create YOUR OWN social network about anything you choose.

This is truly a mindbender site. I sought to find out how deep it goes, and so typed in ferrets to see if there was a network about them. You know ferrets, the magnificent, squirmy, eminently lovable (if stinky) pets. So was there a ferret network? No. There were 28.



Twenty Eight Ferret Networks!

I could tell you the results of my random typings -- suffice it to say that very few of the esoteric things I thought of were without a readymade community.

The tool itself gives you lots of options to customize your community, and members get to create profiles with a similar feature set to the broadbased SNs. Here are a few screens:







When you create an ID for Ning, you can then join (or apply to join...) any of the networks on the site. No need to retype the basic info, and an opportunity to customize your profile to each community.

Not all communities are public. There is, for example, a community about parents of children with lice looking for a miracle cure. I understand the desire for discretion there. ;0

So Ning, the ultimate network of niche networks. Interesting model -- it will presumably be supported via ads and sponsorship. Such a model will also allow some pretty precise contextual targeting. Which is great.

Somening's happening there! Ouch, sorry for the pun.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks Post 5: Olinda???



Ordinarily I don't write about things that don't really exist in a mainstream way yet, but I heard about BBC/Schulze and Webb's collaboration on the concept of a new social home radio.

Called the Olinda and pictured above, the idea of Olinda is to offer an advanced featured radio with Wifi that uploads your playlists and preferences to a website. Using the web site, you can see and hear what your friends are listening to. It has a lot of other bells and whistles like grabbing songs you like, and expansion slots for new accessories.

It's a concept radio, not in production.

Having the BBC commission such a project is a fascinating thing. And the radio itself is remarkable. http://schulzeandwebb.com/blog/2007/08/20/bbc-olinda-digital-radio-social-hardware/

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks: Post 4: A Small World - I'd Tell You More But...



That famous Woody Allen movie comes to mind when I think about A Small World, a highly exclusive social net for rich folks:

"I'd never join a club that would have me as a member."



A Small World is an invitation only social net that really and truly is closed to the great unwashed like me. That sounded like a shot, but I don't mean it that way. A Small World has a niche, I'm just not relevant to that niche.

But I think it's worthy of our attention because they have apparently attracted a variety of very exclusive advertisers and sponsors including (according to this article in the Wapo) Burberry, Cartier, Land Rover, and Remy Martin. WaPo reports that Remy threw a party for the members and served $1800 a bottle hooch. That IS a special audience, and one I don't belong in.

So A Small World is relevant both as proof that niche social can attract big spending marketers in ways that FB and MySpace are struggling to do. And if you are a marketer of this sort of high end good, it's probably a place for you to crack.

I bet it's pretty in there as well. But I'll never know (sniff...) ;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks: Post 3: Dogster



While not a giant community yet, it's tough to describe the zeal with which Dogster members support this community. When I joined with my pup Sleepy, he was immediately welcomed by dozens of members. While that attention has ebbed, that's really because I am not sending virtual bones and the like around. So my dog's lack of enduring popularity is emphatically my fault.

It sure couldn't be because of his looks:







Let's be frank, this is not a beautiful site, but that just shows how its concept is so ripe with potential. That people will spend untold hours wandering around this nav is a scosh remarkable. A UI person could have a field day redoing the interfaces. But that seemingly mean shot is not intended to be. Dogster's community energy really is remarkable IN SPITE of the site design, which underscores the massive potential for this community.

There are a lot of people dog blogging, and most of the profiles have the 'how we adopted' story. Lots of in memoriam pages for dogs which are really quite touching and melancholy. Functions wise, it offers all of the features you would expect from a social media community, with an emphasis on the cute.

And hey, there's also a Catster, though I am sure those people are all crazy from the cat-pee-induced Alzheimer's. Sorry, cat people. I was just kidding. I am sure Catster is very nice as well.

According to Alexa and Quantcast, traffic for Dogster is and has been flat for a little while. It's definitely due to the clunky site design. Fix that and watch this site skyrocket. And while they're wating for that, dog product marketers should be on this site right now.

So if you have a dog, give it a check-out, and while you are at it, friend Sleepy, because he's glaring at me a lot lately for not filling his virtual dance card.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks Post 2: Moli


So the first niche social network I'd like to point out is Moli, a community that allows users to create multiple profiles for business, personal, and family life. You can control the profiles from one place and determine who sees which and what they see on each.

So, frinstance, if you HAVE to show your friends your drunk self with a lampshade on your head, but would prefer that your interviewer at Goldman Sachs not see the same snap, you just parse out the content to the appropriate profile(s), and classify them as public, private, or hidden.

I learned about Moli from this post by Jason Lee Miller on WebProNews. It intrigued me because of this tiny sentence...

I'm part of the Moli target market: 30-something, upwardly mobile, not interested in throwing imaginary food at my digital friends.

As someone who generally eschews vampires and virtual cream pies, this was music to my ears. I am not in my 30s, but there you go. ;-)

The earth shatterer feature is the ability to create a compact online store on your profile and make money from your way cool profile. Wait, that's wrong. Make money on your tasteful, adult person's profile. The store costs you $4, works with PayPal, and they DON'T take a cut of your sales.



They can afford not to take a cut because they have a number of business models. You pay for multiple profiles and a few other features.

Profiles look very nice, which is my personal beef with Rupert's place. Have a look at a sample profile featured on the day I was checking out the site.



So how's traffic? Growing nicely. Not huge, but the curve is pointed in decidedly the right direction.



It's an intriguing model, and their success in the revenue game will be important given the monetization troubles of the big guys.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Niche Social Networks: Post 1: There. I Said It. Small May Be Better.

As in virtually every digital category, bigger is a hard fought over selling point in social media. Who's winning the race? Who has the most monthly uniques. Well, of course that is MySpace.com, and here's the top ten, according to Nielsen, as reported in this post on Social Media Today.



But is this really the big story (arr arr) in social? Lately I've been thinking that it is in the little social sites focused on specific demos and targets.

Part of the reason for my new interest in the small fry i open social and open id, which would appear to hold the promise of making it easier for users to choose to participate in small, niche sites that truly deliver on their passions. If you have to reregister 25 times to participate in a host of social communities, you're not going to do it, at least if you are not monumentally bored or a freak.

But the advent of open id and open social, we'll be able to participate in these communities far more easily. And what I think THAT means is that over time people will be spending more and more time in passion communities. Whether that is at the expense of the biggies is something I cannot predict. But Niche Social, one of the voices of the genre, says in this post that it already is.

I think this because we ALL have those sorts of interests that really tickle us. Each of my business partners have them. John D's is wine, Cory's is music especially Pearl Jam, Chris, Kevin, and Adam are very passionate about pro soccer. Among other things. And for me it's collecting communist party propaganda. Not, I hasten to add, because I AM a communist (Hello! I work in advertising, which must be the antithesis of communism in about 25 ways...) but rather because I just like them.

Who knows why some of us will travel 4000 miles to watch storks nest, or buy hundreds of first editions of books, or spend $20,000 souping up a $13,000 car.

I had a friend in college who collected power line insulators. I pooh poohed his interest until I learned that there are dozens of organizations for this particular passion. And they actually are kinda pretty.

We also all know that it's a big world out there, and there are likely thousands of others who share our passions and are ITCHING -- ITCHING -- to talk about this stuff. So today I am going to be posting snippets about some of the niche social communities online that I think are over the top full of marketing and economic potential. Regrettably, I have not found a social network for communist party propaganda collectors (could we call it Redstr.com?.) But I did find some cool ones, so please read on...

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Special Primary Election Edition of Lip Synch Friday: Our Trio's Down to Two!

Classifieds by Smiley



Look who's in the classifieds business! Wal*Mart has sort of quietly added classified ads to its site, presumably to drive page views and ad impressions.

But saying Wal*Mart does anything quietly? It's as if 5,000 foghorns blast, instead of 5,000,000.

I'm not a big Walmart.com visitor, but saw the info about Walmart classifieds on Ars Technica, and decided to do a little exploring. Powered by the Oodle.com classified engine (an aside: isn't Oodle the absolute bestest possible name for a classified service?) Walmart has tens of thousands of ads now, all organized by city and product type. House foreclosures, pets, vacation rentals, beanie babies, it's all there for sale or for free.

And no, Walmart.com doesn't take a cut.

I guess they saw the Pennysavers and CarTraders flying out the door every day, and thought, hmmmm, let's get in on the act!

Good idea, Bentonville!

Thanks for reading and don't forget to write.

Holla Atya PB



According to this post by Michael Estrin on iMedia Connection, the Vatican is going Mobile!

I'm thinking this is a sign that more brands should be getting involved in Mobile. And Catholics, if you get IMed by pBsIxTeEn n rOmA answer it.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Excellent White Paper On B2B Marketing Trends

A study conducted by Marketing Profs and Forrester, and sponsored by Citrix Online is available at FindWhitePapers.com (reg required.) The report details what vehicles are proving most effective, trends in budgets and allocations, acceptance of new media options, and the like. Great fodder for understanding -- our your next B2B pitch. Thanks to all that were involved in producing this fascinating and insightful report.

Head on over and use this as your search term:

B-2-B Marketing in 2008: Trends in Strategies and Spending

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Be Kind to LifeLock. It's Been a Tough Week

The ad campaign was one of the most memorable of the past couple of years -- a CEO with the temerity or stupidity to buy TV radio, and Outdoor listing his real social security number. So sure was he of the success of his service that he dared the world to try and beat it.

They also offer to spend up to $1MM to restore your credit if things go wrong. Apparently, 105 customers have had to invoke this, according to this article from the Phoenix Business Journal.

Hey, it worked on me. I had been a customer of one of the $6 a month notification services that tells you when new items appear on your credit. Though the problem with THAT is that the damage is done by the time you know.

So after I heard the ads a few times on GREEN 960 in SF, I went and signed up.

As I understand it the service automatically sends quarterly alerts to Trans Union, Equifax and Experian telling them to tell creditors to exercise caution on your account. It means they scrutinize the request for credit more thorough, greatly reducing the odds of someone opening a Platinum Amex and charging $125,000 before you even know what's happening. Here's how the Chicago Tribune describes it, in this article:

LifeLock arranges it so that you are notified for your approval if you or someone else is trying to open a new credit card, equity line, cell-phone contract, etc. It does this by putting "fraud alerts" on all your accounts, which have to be renewed every 90 days, and then monitoring them for any suspicious activity.

But as I said, it HAS been a bad week for LifeLock, because it was revealed that someone actually opened a loan for $500 using the CEO's social number. The press had a field day, saying that this was proof that the claim was BS.

There are two class action suits filed against the company essentially because their service is not perfect. Also, Experian is suing LifeLock because of the model that keeps a permanent fraud alert on your account. I would imagine that this is somewhat of a nuisance for them. To which I retort, 'well there'd be no need for the permanent fraud alert if the credit reporting agencies and the companies that buy their data exercised reasonable security measures. But they clearly DON'T!'

And a closer examination of the specific identity theft I mentioned above reveals that what happened was that the loan was opened by an org that did not check credit.

So LifeLock wasn't foiled -- at least in my view -- because the guy's credit is still AOK. I don't much care if some creditor is out $500 because they didn't bother to do a credit check. What I care about is whether something will cause my next mortgage rate to be 9 3/4% instead of 5 3/4% because my credit scores are shattered by the fraud.

So there you go. My two cents. I am still a happy customer of LifeLock. Though I will refrain from leaving my social here. Lifelock says that there were 88 fraud attempts on their CEO since the campaign began. One was successful, and this was because the lender didn't check credit.

Not too bad a record, at least in my book.

Linkstorm Redux

Those who are regular readers of this blog know I am a big fan of Linkstorm, and the recent interview of David Sidman, their CEO, had an interesting new take on the company -- at least it was new to me. In the interview, conducted by Phil Leggiere and still available on MediaPost, Sidman posits that their product is a different take on BT. Their DHTML banner product lets consumers find what they want rather than us trying to surmise their wants via past/predictive behavior. (The interview is from April, but in case you didn't see it, give that link a click.)

Wait, that is in incorrect simplification of their view. Not only does he communicate that their menu banners are a form of BT, but also he explains that they can be a complement to BT. Rather than me paraphrasng the content, here's an interview excerpt:

So, to use a football analogy, behavioral targeting will get you into the red zone — but no farther. We don't do our own ad placement. However, if a customer already using BT has the data to know you are a certain profile, we can take that data and further customize the way menus are structured. If you know from their browsing that a customer, let's say, is a bargain hunter, then you can organize your different offers by price range.

Nice POV.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Oldie But Goodie

Mind Boggling Brand Message

You Got The Time? Toggl does!

So, the scourge of my existence has always been time sheets. As a strategist in digital, the financial realities of the industry mean that I have, in the past, had to serve enormous numbers of companies in the same week. My record was spending at least 15 minutes each on 19 clients in one week.

When you have a schedule like that, time sheets are more than a drag.

Then there was the fact that many time systems require log-in, then selection of one of typically over 100 jobs that I was on, then inputting the time. Which would just be a drag except that the log-in on these systems often times out, meaning that I was (or would have been, of this more later) logging in 12 times a day.

The other problem, and this is a personal defect, is that I hate having more than two open windows. That is absurd, I know, but I am a Baby Boomer, with the commensurate characteristics of an enormous capacity for focus and an inability to work amid distractions.

So my "solution" was to bill clients paying based upon time spent by the minute -- meaning an extremely exact accounting because I owed them that -- but billing all retainer jobs by guestimating my daily minutes used. And doing so once a week in the 5 minutes before the weekly deadline. Meaning that the info I provided the agency on ITS profitability by job was wildly inaccurate.

Thing is, I know that accurate accounting of hours is an important internal control. But something had to give.

So when a friend told me to check out Toggl, a web based time tracking and collaboration system, my stomach audibly turned. Oh great I thought, I get all the joy of time sheets with Internet page load delay!

And the reality is I have used several web based versions -- an improvement over ones where I had to use a limited seat network solution, but not exactly a joy to use.



But now I am smiling about a time tracking system. Because Toggl is pretty nifty. The feature set can be summarized as follows:

* Web based real time tracking
* Collaborative work spaces
* Platform that allows you to customize views
* Prefab customizable job, client, and company wide reports
* Easy ways to form team and invite participants

And the magical widget -- Toggl Desktop -- that lets you input your hours by job in a unit without opening a browser and having a window open all the time.



One thing I liked a lot is that you choose a job BEFORE you do the work, and a timer records your time spent rather than you having to remember after the fact. That is tasty!

There's a free version with a reasonable feature set. To get nice prefab reports and an ability to add in billable rates, you pay $19 per seat. Cards on the table that is a chunk MORE than most of these small business oriented soltuions charge, but I found it far easier to use than the cheaper web based things I have used before. And being easier to use makes up for the cost difference in my book because the reports generated might actually be accurate. I'm guessing $19 a seat a little pricey for enterprise, but I am also guessing (so no guarantee on this) that if GE wanted to put its 316,000 employees on it, they'd work out a discount. ;-)

Toggl is developed by an Estonian company called Apprise. You can tell from the website that these are developery people, and I mean that in a very positive way. One of the things I noticed on the site was their blog, which eschews the typical SV puffery in favor of just the facts Ma'am info.

I liked it and them. I suggest you check it out! Only you can decide if the cost differential would be worth it for you.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

NOTE: AFTER I POSTED THIS, TOGGL WROTE TO TELL ME THAT THERE IS AN ERROR IN THE INFO ABOVE. THE COST OF THE PREMIUM SERVICE IS $19 A TEAM, NOT A SEAT. I REGRET THE ERROR.

Is That a Desktop In Your Pocket, Or Are You Happy To See Me?

Forgive the silly title, but how else do I introduce you to a service that makes all the files on your Internet-connected PC available via cellphone? Actually it makes all files on ANY PC you have access to available on your phone.

It's called Soonr, and my guess is Soonr or later we'll all be availing ourselves of this kind of service. Soonr works on a variety of platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and advanced versions of Mac OS X.

They're not brand spanking new -- Business 2.0 says they have more than a quarter million customers. A visit to their website seems to indicate their target is enterprise, but nothing stays that way for long in digital. PC based remote access to desktops started enterprise, but now is a SOHO staple.

Also, their sales strategy appears to be white label/reseller based, which is intriguing. Certainly a bunch cheaper to get going than building a sales force in THIS market.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

It's 10PM: Do You Know Where Your Friends Are?

You will with Loopt, a GPS and mapping based service that lets friends track eachother and alerts you when your BFF is nearby.



This is probably millions of people's dream app. Track your pals, share snapshots of what you're seeing and doing, review locations and share them geographically, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It's also turn offable, if you want to be all incognito.

While this app is so not for me (someone who wouldn't have a cell if it wasn't necessary today,) I see its enormous potential and applaud the concept.

It currently works on Sprint, Nextel, and Boost, and supports a variety of GPS enabled phones.

Exhibitionism has a new toy! Is it time for you to get into the Loopt?

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.