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.

Oldie But Goodie

Mind Boggling Brand Message

Mentos + Coca light
by Smad

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.