"show me the way to hilton"

My best friend is currently in Mongolia, building their new public health care system. I'm skypeing him quite often, and he just told me he doesn't like his hotel - so I found a new one for him - the local Hilton in Ulaanbaatar. Unfortunately (it was supposed to be scheduled to open in may 2008) it's still in building process.

Crazy world isn't it? But it feels really good having him "close" though he's on the other side of the world.

Wow, so nen Whiteboard möchte ich haben...

Just a test - please ignore... ;)

Twitter as Sales tool - yet another story

I just stumbled upon a german platform called susuh.de, and they are offering a service to find local service-providers like haircutters, groceries or what ever. So what makes them unique is the ability to send a request via twitter to the platform. I personally haven't tried the service yet (just because there's no party to make at the moment and I don't need a beer supplier currently ;) ) but I think it's the right way to get the users where they are: mobile. Just type something like "@brauche beer this evening" and your request is posted to the platform and matched against a supplier, who dmessages you an offer. No need for registration here!

That's a very inspiring and barrier free way to get users on your platform. Congrats to susuh.de, and good luck!

P2P filesharing and the impact on the (video-, movie-, nameit-) industry

I often read articles like "P2P filesharing doesn't have impact on the music-industry: the music industry is just not able to find new business models". I thought about that, and I found a point I can understand the industry spending millions on lawsuits against filesharing users.

One often brought argument is

"people are willing to pay for digital content, because in stores like itunes the quality of the content is great and the delivery is fast."

Yeah, but: If a user can chose between a clean user interface, good quality, a big catalogue and if it's free or he has to pay: he will chose the free version.

I came across coda.fm: a torrent site with an extraordinary clean interface, very good information about the artists, albums etc., common functions like "people who liked this music, also liked that etc.". This is a threat to the music industry. When torrent sites start to act like coda.fm there's no need anymore to go to a store and buy your content legally - or just because of the "legal" reason. The music industry is fighting for that.

That's why I don't believe in concepts like Nokias "comes with music" - every dataplan enabled phone is able to play last.fm which is perfect for my free preferred music on the go. But when I pay for music (and I actually do, be it a subscription or a pay-per-listen plan) I want to own it.

So, in some ways I can understand the industry: with torrent sites getting more and more "professionel" I don't see revenues for them anymore.

Selling products on twitter

A friend of mine works for a pr agency, and she is currently evaluating the use of twitter for one of their customers - an online shop in germany . She came up with an idea, which from my first impression, sounded brilliant: use the direct contact to potential customers from twitter, and tell them about the products in the online shop, when they talk about a demand in their tweets.

After some consideration I found it difficult: where is the small line, when selling becomes spamming, or positive ment information. So, its all about the style, how the company is adressing their customers. For example:

@fredl: "Damn, I need a new notebook, but can't decide which to take"

@notebooksellingeshop: "@fredl, take this one: <link>! Its the best and cheapest price out there"

I find this annoying: this is like salesmen in former times came to your door, trying to sell an abonnement for a newspaper.

Another, in my opinion, positive attempt would be:

@fredl: "Damn, I need a new notebook, but can't decide which to take"

@notebooksellingeshop: "hey @fredl, looking for a notebook? What exactly is your demand, maybe we have a product which fits your needs. Do you use it for business? Are travelling a lot? Or is it more for home use, like games, movie editing etc." (Well yes, shorten this to 140 ;) )

@fredl: "hey @notebooksellingeshop, basically it needs to be small, 'cause i'm travelling. Heard something about "netbooks" - got that? "

@notebooksellingeshop: "hey @fredl, have a look in our shop <link>. This notebook has been tested by <hardwaretestmagazine> with 5 stars, an we think, we offer it to you for a fair price. It's 13" wide, and the aku lives for about 4h."

So, this is an attempt on how to communicate with your customers. And guess what? It's not magic. It's just the "old-fashioned" way on how to be polite, and sell respect to your customers.

In addition, there's been a cool interview with uservoice.com on #building43: Watch it and learn how to put your ear on your customers needs.

Twitter is killing RSS

I'm using bloglines since 2003 as my webbased RSS aggregator, and for years it has been my site of choice to start the day: where's a new article, where's a new discussion going on. But since some month I experience my twitter client (seesmic for the moment) to be the first place to go - why? Because it works like a user-filtered aggregator of the news going on. I suppose 70-80% tweets of my friends contain links to interesting articles and news. Since I'm trying to keep a "clean" following list, I trust the posted links as "relevant" for me. Therefore it might be a good idea for a search engine to filter those tweets, wich really conatin links - 'cause I'd trust them more and would follow them more often than plain, "machine" based link results. It might be a good idea for google to add this filter and place them at the top of their result list as a mix of "trusted" sources and algorithm based results.

"Sell your soul on twitter " or how to find new business models in the recommendation age

What I was asking myself today was, if publisher would be willing to pay for inbound links. There are several reasons for a clear "yes":

1. e-commerce sites know how to calculate their traffic-earnings coming from the conversions in their shops
2. news-publisher know what they get for their visits, by selling volume-based ads

Now, wouldn't that be a smart way to monetize services like twitter. I mean, twitter is more or less a recommendation tool to guide your friends to articles or sites you find interesting.

Take e.g. the URL shortening services out there - why can't I register with them, and earn money for every user (my followers) who click on that link? Money comes from sites who are willing to pay for traffic. Let them bid in an auction against each other, who is willing to pay more for your click.

The cash could be splittet:

1. Main part goes to the user, posting the link
2. One part goes to the "selling" service
3. And one part goes to the underlaying service (like twitter, etc.)

Of course, the quality of incoming traffic is key in the question, if publishers are willing to pay - but quality is measurable e.g. through conversion rate. Publishers can rate their users, paying them nothing (or just less) for "bad traffic" and more for "good" traffic.

UPDATE:Fred Wilson seems to be of my opinion, and has it very nice illustrated

Security of minors in social networks

As AFP reports some of the big social netoworks like facebook and StudiVZ have just signed a commitment to secure minors in social networks. One of the "action points" seem to be alert buttons for minors, who feel harassed by adults.

In a recent project which launched in october 2008, the "Deutsche Sportausweis" which is a social network for athletes in germany, we've installed a special mechanism to secure minors from adults: the "kids club".

Adults are not able to contact or write to minors in any way as long as the minors are not willing to accept a friend request by the adults. Because every sports associateion in germany tells us the age of the participating members, we can secure this mechanism.

The "kids club" has an entirely different and more "youthful" design as well as special features (like games for kids). Our Community framework YUMA is able to handle an unlimited number of different templates, and thus functions, for the same underlying structure (multi channelling).

Enterprise software is not dead - and so isn't web 2.0 software

I just stumbled upon article on VentureBlog.com by David and I have to agree to the things he points out. In essence:

"Enterprise Software is Not Dead Yet"

But it has to transform. We at motionet delivered our enterprise community framework "YUMA" from the beginning on with very sophisticated business models. Because with our whitelabel, module based community, we are able to deliver web 2.0 functionalities fast (low time to market) reliable and safe (robust and tested many times in live setups), we offer our customers performance based fees.

Take a typical video streaming module from YUMA as a hosted solution and integrated into a customers' existing infrastructure (e.g. Coremedia CMS). Typically there's a small setup and customizing fee, but running costs depend on traffic. In these traffic fees all monitoring and service fees (updates etc.) are included. So the customer is able to try web 2.0 functions on their site for a small amount of money - if their users like it, traffic grows, and our customer, as well as us, participate with growing traffic - with integrated adserver-functions, this can be refinanced. And this is exactly a good selling argument for our software:

"If you can credibly argue that a customer's increased profits will exceed the price it will pay for the software, purchasing the software should be a no brainer."

And by offering hosted solutions (Software as a Service), always based on the same software core, ROI rises for our customers by dividing update and development costs through many.

May I ask: Is web 2.0 software dead yet? No it isn't. But:

There's no need for any more facebook out there. But companies, which understand web 2.0 as the participating web, or communication web, can profit by reducing e.g. service or callcenter costs for their products, by letting their customers talk and help each other: users helping users is a key feature with a huge potential out there in the web 2.0 market. As David says:

"Companies will pay to save money. Even in a recession, those enterprise solutions that can credibly argue that they will save you more than they cost will continue to grow."

But not only for public websites, but for Intranets web 2.0 software is a key to reduce costs: take a worldwide operating marketing department which can share their knowledeg about campaigns, can discuss new advertisements, buy display ads together and so gain scale effects. By exchaning all their knowledge, why develop the same advertisements for similar target groups in every single country? If the german marketing departement just knew, that their collegues from Austria just launched a succesful campaign, they could use it for their own as well - and dramatically reduce agency costs.