The commercial real estate business is traditionally a bit of an old boys network, with giant international brokerages controlling most of the choice stuff.
Rofo << it stands for Right of First Offer >> is out to level the playing field with an online search tool and community that helps people find real estate faster and at a better value.
The "community" aspect of this product comes in the form of ratings and reviews of spaces, and through an ability to compare your rent to others in the same building or area.
Another interesting aspect of this is that companies can post their space needs and gather "bids" or proposals anonymously. So, in effect, spaces come to you instead of the other way around.
They make their money from the space owners, by charging $20 for a tour request -- it's a heckuvalot cheaper than a commission!
I conducted a few searches on Rofo, and it appears that they have good levels of inventory, at least in major markets.
For start-ups looking for space, it seems to make good economic and time management sense to give them a try. You can at least narrow your choices without schlepping from one end of creation to another.
The worst kept secret in the world is that airline prices are constantly fluctuating, with the result that someone paying $1500 for a round trip could be sitting next to someone paying $350.
What you may not know is that airlines may issue you a credit if fares go down after you buy a ticket. Now, this relates only to certain ticket classes, and there may also be rebooking fees to consider. But millions and millions go unclaimed here because people don't keep track of prices after the sale.
Naturally, the airlines hope you do not avail yourself of the rebates. They'd like to keep your cash, thank you very much, and hope to the heavens that you'll lose interest in ticket prices after you click BUY.
But Yapta never loses interest, and that is how it has gathered such a devoted following. When you book a ticket through Yapta, the system automatically keeps checking after you buy to ensure you can get what;s coming to you. It even considers the change fees so you know when there is a real cash opp out there for you.
When you receive a Yapta alert, you have the choice of following up yourself (in which case the serice is free) or paying $15 and having Yapta do it for you. I'm guessing most people will do the latter. Can you imagine what the wait times must be on customer service to the rebate department?
Yapta does more than just enable arbitrage -- it also can alert you when an airfare has dropped to a price you want to pay.
Their model includes advertising, so travel marketers may do well to consider this compelling new offering.
I love this deck from a firm called Ethos3 that helps companies make better presentations. Don't click through the slides, press play and it auto runs. Three minutes of your life that may well make your future presentations the sort that motivate your audience and change the way people think.
I have bored all of the Catalystas with my beliefs about how a preso is like a story told around the campfire 25,000 years ago in a Neanderthal village. This preso is a much more complete view on the topic, though I think the analogy still applies. As humans we like stories -- it's engrained in us and it's the best way to communicate to us and get us to remember.
When I get worked up over silly little setbacks in my career of pushing electrons around, I try to take a moment to check out what's important -- what people are doing that is important. This here is an excellent example. It helps me calm down and recognize what matters from what will be forgotten in 24 or so hours.
This is a really interesting doc on how to create online communities. While the content is especially geared to online newspapers, I think there is a ton of info that applies to any business or organization that wants to build that network of connections online. It's quite long, but you can hop around in it if you are not working for an online newspaper.
Scribd registration is required to download a pdf. but you can view it tight here without registering. But you should register anyway if you don't have a free memebrship already. Good stuff free for the taking over there...
Note: check the page count before you hit Control-P.
Hitwise always puts out a good white paper, and this one, on the state of the online news media sector, is no exception. Download it over at emarketingpapers. Registration is required.
Second Life Second Life Second Life. Remember when that was all everyone was talking about? Well, there are lots of other virtual world communities out there, and one of the largest collections of these is Habbo, a virtual world expressly for Teens.
As you can imagine, you join, customize an avatar, and then get wandering and chatting. You can meet people, have chats in private rooms, and all the sorts of things you would expect from a virtual world.
So let's talk stats for a mo', then show you a screen shot.
(stats from their website) 32 local communities Registered users: 103,000,000 Unique visitors: 9,500,000 / month Page impressions: 990,000,000 / month Age distribution: 90 % between 13-18 years old Average visit: 36 minutes / session
Graphically, Habbo is less ambitious than Second Life, and I think that is a good iea given that they are trying to create a community across national borders and one which is far more focused on conversations and relationships than looks. It's appearance is akin to Disney's penguin world.
There are actually lots of Habbos, each assigned to a different country. And it is quite a country collection. 32 localized online destinations.
Argentina Australia Austria Belgium Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Denmark Ecuador Finland France Germany Ireland Italy Japan Malaysia Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Norway Peru Portugal Russia Singapore Spain Sweden Switzerland UK USA Venezuela Morocco
From a revenue perspective they have a premium services membership system, a paid credits system with which you buy outfits and possessions to customize your room, as well as a very friendly attitude toward advertisers. In addition to traditional banners, you can have products and experiences integrated into their realms.
I poked around in Habbo and was impressed by the level of activity and also with the fact that I could move around in it would bumping into columns and houses and trees like I did in SL because my computer couldn't quite handle the graphics.
If you have a teen targeted brand, and especially if you have an international reach, check out Habbo as a cool venue for your marketing efforts!
Awesome viral vid from the folks at JiBJab entitled "It's time for some campaignin'." I love the part with Barack making a rainbow while riding a unicorn.
What's eleven times cooler is that you can go to jibjab.com and actually put your face in the vid -- a sort of Hussein McSame Personal mashup.
The folks at JibJab have delightful bad taste and the good sense to make their marvelous format interactive!
For entertainment value alone, you need to get those two coveted eyeballs of yours over to IBeatYou to see the world's largest gladiator arena. IBeatYou is a community where you post challenges and people submit videos, photos, and if they are boring and want to lose...text, competing for the title of best..., most... etc.
You join, get a profile, and either post challenges or hunt them down and give them your best shot. The videos and snaps are absolutely astounding. I could lose about 4 hours this afternoon watching clip after clip. But for you, dear reader, I will simply continue to type.
Since I now have the pleasure of working with the competition-mad Catalystas, it's easy to see why this site is really taking off.
Check out htis one for "Worst Job Application Video":
Here's an entry for best Sparta spoof pic:
You get ranked by event, by level of participation, by number of comments, by number of wins, by number of entries, you name it. Whatever you could possibly count and score, they do.
I am guessing the model will be ad-based, but I am not sure. What I am sure about it this is going to be a huge source of time wastage for me this weekend.
No that is not a joke. I heard about this on the blog DoshDosh and had to tell you about it. There are now billboards courtesy of a company called Quividi. DoshDosh references an article in The London Times which I will excerpt here:
Whereas advertisers were once happy simply to place posters for doughnuts near police stations, they now insist on knowing who is viewing their adverts. Companies such as Quividi, a French marketing technology firm, are happy to oblige.
Quividi installs camera systems in billboards and a computer analyses passers-by. “We know this many people have walked in front of the screen, how many turned to face the ad, and how long they looked at it,” says Paolo Prandoni, Quividi’s chief scientific officer. “We can even tell their gender with an accuracy of 85% and measure who approaches to find out more.”
Quividi has digital adverts that change depending on whether a man or woman is watching and is working on upgrading its system to detect different ages and even family groups. The company insists no data are permanently recorded.
There's a video that dramatizes the recognition technology here. Quividi's core business is in outdoor audience measurement.
Dosh Dosh reports that the Quividi gender identifier is 85% accurate, proving that Pat has struck again...
Another company profiled was Holosonic, which is a US outfit that beams sound into a small area from 60 feet away.
Interesting illustration, though I would imagine that one more then one occasion this technology will result in corpses in the sound zone, dead from fright. And dead people cannot buy Cokes.
The effect, the company claims, is to “startle and entertain” pedestrians without being audible to anyone outside the zone.
The concept of the power of collective recommendations and wisdom is at the center of 11870, a site that allows users and businesses to share information about locations, services, and other interesting things in a people-powered environment.
11870 describes itself as "a real life Delicious," which is also a pleasing analogy.
I think of it as Yelp with a far greater range of media opps -- photos, videos, sounds, and more. Not that there aren't photos on Yelp, but on 11870, media is the virtual star of the recommendation show.
Using this system you can also keep track of goings on in places that interest you, whether that place is Italy or the Upper West Side. A Frappr like map shows you all the latest places and services people have rated in your chosen area.
Businesses can also use it. They can sign up for a free account and tell the world about themselves.
There's something very addicting about this highly visual and interactive community.
BTW, the name comes from 118, which is the Spanish equivalent of 411. Here, let them explain it:
Why the name? Well, nobody wants to be just a number, but where we come from, telephone information services start with 118 and have a bad rep. We think it's because their true potential has not been fully realized. And, even though ours is a 100% web-based service, we do have a license to provide information through a 118 phone service. This service is only available in Spain, sorry. (by the way, it's pronounced eleven-eight-seventy.com!)
It'll be interesting to see the rev streams - ads, CPC (a la CitySearch) or whatever else they come up with. They've got a lot to start with in making a profitable place online.
One of the most interesting models I have seen in a while is MatchMine, a company that helps consumers discover media like music, movies, and video by aggregating preferences across sites, platforms, and devices.
Media sites join MatchKey and agree to share their consumer data with other sites in the network, so that all can develop a deeper and more complete perspective on that individual.
Consumers make a MatchKey, and then use it across their site experiences, much like the one profile concept of OpenSocial! Privacy is retained, however, because one's matchkey is anonymous.
The list of partners at the moment is modest but growing, and if this model succeeds in imrproving discovery and recommendations as much as they think, I would imagine that bigger fish will join the school.
I started a subscription to Politics, the magazine arm of campaignsandelections.com. Or perhaps it is the other way around. I am a political junkie, and one of the reasons I started the sub was to get a look inside how political campaigns are using and viewing the web.
The first first conclusion I reached, and I could do this without cracking open the pub, is TV TV TV. Take a look:
The mag and site are for campaign professionals and consultants, and by saying TV TV TV I am not making a criticism that is also not valid for many brands in that most consultants, like most old school marketers, would prefer to conduct campaigns by TV rather than in participatory environments online because:
1. As we all know, it's a lot easier to make money off TV buying.
2. TV ads are 100% controllable. By contrast, remember the macaca story that brought down George Allen with taped evidence of the not-even-veiled racist message. One of the positive and constructive messages Allen promised in this clip. When he welcomes a citizen of the US to America.
3. TV is better understood in DC, by consultants and of course candidates, who tend not to have an intuitive understanding of the YouTubes.
4. Did I mention you can make more money on TV ads?
So much of the content is about TV -- ads, how to be a pundit, that sort of stuff. But there are a couple of articles on the Internets, and I am struck by how similar are the challenges facing campaigns to those that face brands.
There is a big article about how The Twitter and the Tubes and the FaceBooks and the MySpaces are going to transform both the speed and the range of opinions out there about the goings on at the conventions. This poses challenges for both parties:
For Dems, it'll make it tough to put that unity veneer on a party that LOOOOVES to squabble and argue over issues both large and minuscule. And fringier bloggers and attendees disrupting the effort to appear more centrist that it did in the Primaries.
For Repubs, I think the big risk is in unfriendly bloggers exposing the rather monochrome and male and elderly composition of attendees. And friendly bloggers deviating from the party's message of centrism when sitting among a group of singularly pro-life, pro Iraq war party footsoldiers. On the plus side, I am expecting lots of good viral photos of those elephant hats GOP women make.
For candidates, the challenge is that one cannot do the ole "I never said that" when someone with a Chocolate or an iPhone is there taping their messages to the hard core bases. Or the danger of embellishing one's record when it's all out there on tape. Remember this?
And if I may get on my soapbox for a moment, what is all this "I am saddened" crap. Sad: I am sad. Not saddened. I now see people-on-the-street in interviews on the news saying it. YOU are responsible for this, Washington! But anyway.
Well, I'm glad Twitterers and Bloggers and Camera Phoners are asking for some truth from both orgs and from both sets of candidates.
There are also bright spots in that article -- the opp for attendees to the conventions to give their citizen journalism coverage a focus on issues that matter to people in states, counties, and towns back home.
The mag also talks about a new multicandidate donor destination app. Choose all the campaigns you want to support and with one click the money goes out. Orgs like Emily's List, which supports campaigns of female and female-issue-friendly candidates, is just one of the orgs using it. So there it is, Open ID of a sort in the world of yard signs and :30s.
Another piece focuses on a hand held printer, which reveals both the arrival of advanced technologies geared to campaigns and the continued focus on printing despite the increasingly digital world.
The other major story is about brand - err, candidate -- reputation online. They do a piece in consultation with a company called International Reputation Management that focuses in part on keeping unwanted negativity off the first page or two of Google search results for a candidates or issue.
Phase one of their strategy consists of creating multiple web sites in a candidate's name. "Having one official campaign site is no longer enough, according to the experts. Candidates need to own their own name. That means registering for as many blogging and social networking sites as possible and filling them with useful content - before someone takes them first."
Truer words were never spoken.
The next step, according to the piece, is driving traffic to all these web presences so they are the ones that appear on top in search. They point out that the results for Obama include the official campaign site, his Twitter page, his Linked In profile, and his MySpace page. That's four slots on page one checked off the list. Actually, when I checked the page, the other slots were news of his Afghanistan trip, a YouTube channel controlled by the campaign, a WaPo campaign profile, and an MSNBC profile. Nothing unfriendly or ranty there. If you are the Obama campaign that means that there is nothing nasty on page one.
Blogger outreach is the third strategy. And they wisely point out that this is a long term effort, not a one time full court press. They also point out that bloggers don't want the same nonstories that the mainstream outlets want. Seen the below:
They want tailored info, and more specifics. They also state that threatening legal action against negative blog entries will only begat more.
Creating and maintaining your own Wikipedia entries is also on the checklist. Another wise move brands would be smart to follow.
So now onto the ads I found in the pub. Most are for Republican consultants, with several promising to "bag donkeys." One from The Traz Group even features donkey heads as animal trophies -- I suppose there are relatively few Repub candidates that are also PETA activists, so Traz is probably safe there. ;-)
Direct mail houses abound, with some also offering email lists of people with high giving propensities.
In sum, it appears as if there are a few orgs that "get" and embrace digital, and a lot being dragged kicking and screaming into it by...consumer eyeballs and dollars. Just like the brand world!!!
Book trailers are becoming quite common and I love them loads. Here's an example of one for a book that I really enjoyed, not least because I am on Atkins at the mo'. 12 pounds in two weeks - not bad...
Anyway...check out this new tool for book marketing, buy the book Such a Pretty Fat (I GARONTEE you'll laugh out loud on the BART, MARTA, Orange Line, SEPTA, or IRT, whichever is relevant,)and also check out author Jen Lancaster's blog, Jennsylvania,a must for any dude who wants to understand the other side of the Mars Venus equation. Fathoming the Crocs shrine is an example of what you need to know. ;-)
The intersection of code and cork: check out John Durham's blog for the best in oeno/digital convergence. John is a fella that can find synergy between a Pinot and The History of Advertising.
I'm no great fan of Elizabeth, but I admire her for speaking her mind. She just sticks to her guns.
More importantly, The View always amazes me -- 5 women talk simultaneously and the viewers at home (the women anyway) can tell you what each one said. Mars and venus indeed.
What does all this have to do with digital? Well, this video is viraling the crrrazy. And it is another reminder that we need to have empathy in order to reach and connect with any audience.
If you need more reinforcement on this score, just listen to where Whoopi is coming from.
Is it possible to adore a deck? Not if it is this simple, succinct explanation of what Open ID is, how it works, who is behind it, who uses it, and its future prospects. I really do adore it.
Written by David Recordon at Verisign, this doc cleared up all the fuzz in my head about exactly how OPEN ID works. Take 3 minutes to read it and you'll feel a lot more secure when the topic comes up.
Big(gish) news. Apparently Microsoft is testing self serve ad buying on its sites, in the manner of Ad Sense And Y! Publisher Network. Sales begin today.
