COD IS MOVING STARTING MONDAY

Starting on Monday, COD moves to the ad:tech blog, and changes its name to Start-Up Watch Company of the Day! Same questionable opinions, shiny new venue!

I'd like to tell you it feels melancholy, but with 30X the audience, nothing melancholy about it. The new venue: ad:tech Blog

STARTING MONDAY!!!

Please click early and click often.

Teaser: What's Next for COD?

COD: Bartab means virtual gifts that are anything but virtual (hic!)

The integration of digital into brick and mortar business is proceeding quickly, and one of the msot intriguing expressions of this trend is Bartab.com, an SF-based startup that lets you send and receive $1 drinks with your Facebook friends.

It's quite ingenious, and like the best ingenious things, dead simple.

1. Join
2. Choose a bar from the list of participating bars
3. Choose a drink from the bar's list of promoted drinks
4. Send the drink coupon to a friend (or yourself.)
5. To redeem, you show the barman or barmaid your phone and pay a buck

Wowza, hunh?



- What a great way for a bar to drum up business!
- What a great way for budget conscious young people to go out at a slightly lower cost.
- What a great way for a control freak to get their way on what bar s/he and the friends will patronize that night.
- What a great way for liquor brands to promote mixed drinks versus suds.
- Or suds companies to promote their brands of suds.
- Or or or.

There are a variety of reasons why this sort of model might work better for bars than group couponing. Because I would imagine that trial rates would be enormous, given that you pay on premise versus online for a coupon you might or might not get around to using.



I would also be interested in knowing the impact this has on tipping. In my (extensive though now dated as I have not had an alcohol drink in 10.5 years) experience, a buck a drink is a "normal" tip in a bar. My suspicion is that a customer would be AT LEAST that generous on a discounted drink.

I would also think that you are covering your costs on a lot of drinks (using well brands,) so there wouldn't be the danger of creating unprofitable sales. So long as a reasonable number of people follow up the discounted drink with a full priced one, there's great money to be made here. And the opportunity to drive trial and loyalty makes this a really intriguing bar marketing tactic.

Teaser: Like the Squirrel in This Video!

COD: Words can't describe the wonder that is Quest Visual's WordLens

Nothing I can say about this unbelievably unbelievable app will have 1/10 of the value of just showing you what it is. Watch and believe that there is a God. And apparently he works at Quest Visual.



I don't care if you have any Spanish to translate. Buy the damned app as a means of showing your love for the remarkably remarkable. Oh. My. God!

iPhone only thus far, but they are hinting about Android, WinPhone7, Palm, and Blackberry.

Thus far I have seen three AR applications that are more than just silly gimmicks. The Layar real estate dealy. The Snoopy Hallmark card (which, OK, is sort of a gimmick, but it was still an awesome product.) And this, the eighth wonder of the world.

Teaser: What's Going to Be Announced Friday?

COD: 99Dresses.com gives women a free infinite wardrobe. Really.

I've made several posts about the fashion world because it appears as if digital is really upending the status quo in that industry. 99dresses.com is definitely part of that disruption.

This site is essentially a barter community where fashionistas put up clothes they no longer want, and other fashion mavens acquire them, without an exchange of cash. Instead, the clothes are "sold" for a special virtual currency called buttons. You earn buttons for your unwanted togs, and spend them on items you do want that are posted by others.



Now this is really cool. From the site:

99dresses is the brainchild of 19-year-old Nikki Durkin who was inspired to provide a solution to this problem when, at the age of 16, she noticed that 90% of her wardrobe remained unworn. After living in an all-girls boarding school for 6 years, Nikki noticed that girls would borrow and swap each other's clothing all the time so that they had something new to wear to parties. Each girl in the boarding house therefore had access to 20 closets instead of just their own.

This gave Nikki the idea of harnessing this ad-hoc behaviour and giving women a structured web platform whereby they could collaboratively consume fashion together with millions of other women. The result was 99dresses.com - the world's first peer-to-peer online wardrobe that will, once and for all, solve the problem of women having 'a wardrobe full of clothes but nothing to wear'.

Here's Nikki herself explaining the site:



Digital innovation has long been pretty exclusively a "pickle party." It is so magnificent that this young woman and many other women are now bringing their ideas to this digital industry.

Goods on offer range from couture to KMart. Naturally, the number of buttons required to purchase something depends upon its actual dollar value. You can search for specific type of item or browse items by category like bags or skirts.

You sign up by linking the site to your FB account. From there, it's all about getting your trade on. Traders ship goods themselves, and an intuitive rating system a la eBay and Amazon helps encourage honesty and great business practices.



The site is partnered with digital investors at Pollenizer, a concern that makes investments in Australian start-ups with really innovative offerings and approaches. I'd heard of them, but hadn't really explored their offerings until now. Expect to read more about Pollenizer companies in the future!

Teaser: Big News Coming on Friday!

What could it be?

COD: Me likey Thingd's Fancy

What do you get when you get a whole mess of people together to show the community what things they like? Well, the people at Thingd.com have created just such a community in thefancy.com, a site where people share photos of their favorite things with the world.

You join thefancy.com and scan through the things others have found and posted. Or you can add new things from any website with their toolbar button. Search for like minded or interesting people and collections. Follow collectors, experts, stores, or your friends.



When you see something you must have, you click the photo and get redirected to the site where the photo originated. From there (presuming it's a store) you can buy it in the usual way.

As of this writing (I write some listings a couple weeks in advance) there's no info on the site on how they plan to make money, but it's easy to see so many distinct possibilities on that front. TheFancy.com might get a referral fee from an online store, or create it's own "middlestore" that would allow people to buy on thefancy.com and get goods shipped from the originating store. That's just two of the myriad examples I could provide.



I was impressed by both the originality of this concept and by the community members and things that they had uncovered. Search by item type, by user, by keyword, or just scan the panoply of everything recently uploaded. You get to see so much cool and unusual stuff, and by dint of it being "pre-fancied" by another member, you have some assurance that it is as cool as it looks.

I liken it to a virtual window shopping experience, but with a whole mess of very cool windows in which to peer.