There’s a lot of talk going on, the week after Black Friday (and this week’s ‘Cyber Monday’, though in my opinion that’s completely invented by some smart marketing person with viral skilz) on the success of online stores. I read a few articles on how to engage social networking when selling something, and I read one particular article over at HitWise on how stores should build social networking into their stores to be successful.

I think it should be the other way around. True, if you can get your customer loyalty up so high that customers will linger around your store and exchange stories with fellow shoppers, that would be great, but I think allowing for feedback like Amazon does is as far as it goes. But instead of turning shoppers into community-members-that-will-sell-to-other-members (in the end, that’s the idea, right?) why not go into existing communities?

Campari has made quite an impressive move, with their Hotel Campari campaign, which has been online for a while now, and strictly in the form of user-generated content on community sites like YouTube, MySpace and Flickr. ReadIWriteWeb has an excellent piece up on the campaign, including an interview with the responsible marketer at MRM Worldwide, Niccolò Magnani:

“Our strategy was to focus on viral seeding and social networking, no traditional media adv online. I have no idea of the exact number of people going from Social Networks to Website [...] because we worked with a lot of social networks.

More than quantity, what I like to point is the quality of the relationship between users and Campari. Client is very happy about the close relationship between the brand and the users.

What I like is that we created a community of people that we can further talk about red passion.”

Basically, Campari set up themed profiles at a bunch of social networking sites, creating some buzz and driving traffic to the campaign’s website, Hotel Campari (not necessarily work safe but definitely Salma Hayek safe!). It’s a great move I think, but there is the risk of over-marketing. Also, the fact that they’re faking it, might create some community backlash -but perhaps in that scenario there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

On the subject, I’ve had this idea (readers of these pages apt at programming should find more ideas I want executed and use for my non-programming self!) of a container box, or list, that you can fill with items you would like as a gift for an upcoming birthday, Christmas, anniversary or wedding (duh!). I shall name it the ‘Birthday/Anniversary/Christmas/Bridal List’. Heh. But seriously, imagine you being able to build a list from several different shopping sites, with thumbnailed items, price and a short description and a link back to the store where you had found it, so your friends can buy it in a few clicks. Then, like all those slide show widgets littering MySpace, load it up to your profile page, paste it in your blog or wherever, and allow your friends to access the list’s discussion page (as well as other users to go straight to the product page on the shop’s website), where they could talk about your lame taste, suggest gifts among themselves, or decide who buys you what. Obviously, you should be excluded from access to the discussion page or be able to see which items have been crossed off. No more duplicate gifts, exactly what you wanted and people talking about products.

That’s a triple win situation, is it not? The only difficulty would be perhaps in how to ensure that you as the list owner do not see it (kind of like a reversed registration/login) -perhaps some social control could be helpful, by giving all friends and family access to all other friend’s and family’s details. I’m sure you’ll figure out a way.

Update: This is insane, and a nice addition to the ‘fakin’ it’ theme: Fakeyourspace (again, content warning is in order!) lets you add fake friends to your social networking site, with weekly fake comments, for real money. This just opens up a whole new page for any student of sociology…

It seems Google is finally trying to cut through the clutter, by eliminating their Google Answers service. I agree with TechCrunch’s assumption that this is probably a service with little added value to them, in a time of ever nichefying social network sites, where people with specific questions can easily find their answers. And heck, didn’t ‘To Google’ become an official verb some time ago?

So far no word on how Yahoo Answers is doing in comparison but isn’t it possible that community asking services such as these will become extinct as people learn to better navigate the Web themselves?

Microsoft Live also offers a similar service, called Live QnA. The thing with all these answer sites is that so many of the replies are filled with links, both asker and answerer end up unsatisfied in their experience, just passing and clicking links all the time. After getting a link as an answer three times in a row, you go straight to the source, I would imagine.

But perhaps the reasoning was different. Google Answers is different from Yahoo Answers or Live QnA because it acts as a sort of a market place for people needing research done, and people offering their time, at an agreed upon price for the effort. In that sense, it’s perhaps closer in it’s ambition to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, which also acts as an intermediary for time-consuming jobs like processing mortgage application forms.

My take is that Answers has potential, but lacks the scalabiltiy -in Google terms no easy feat. But perhaps an opportunity for Amazon to expand their Mechanical Turk service, and lower the threshold for search/administrative jobs to be included?  Right now, it comes off as a bit too complex at first glance on how to set up a job (or HIT, a Human Intelligence Task).

I just signed up for the Tape It Off The Internet’s beta, and it looks like I’ll have to stand in line a while to be admitted. I don’t have a lot of information to go on except for the name, and if it’s like my imagination, then I’m back to watching tv again!

I’m thinking, TiVo in the cloud folks. It’s been on my mind for a while, and here’s how it goes. Imagine your regular TiVo, a digital tv recording device that uses a local hard disk to record the shows on. Well, why not move this to the Net? A web interface, your personal settings and enough storage space to guard your shows. The ability to either stream or download your -own- taped shows (no sharing on the site itself, to keep the lawyers off their backs) and charge a neat $10 a month for unlimited use. No DRM, because nobody here is implying sharing. Just a hosted version of a TiVo. And think of all the channels they could offer, not just your local offerings, but worldwide. All it would take for them is setting up a recording server in every market and have it tape all available channels 24/7. Also, again with lawyers in mind, it would make sense if you’d actually only be able to tape upcoming shows, and that they don’t act like some sort of repository. Even though technically possible and desirable to ‘record’ past shows, I can just see the lawsuits rolling in when they’d offer that one.

That’s all, It’s been on my list for ever and I’ve never actually seen it done. I think it’d be a service a lot of people would pay for. Tioti is offering some social networking services around their offer (and again, I don’t really have a clue still what they’re about, I’m just wishful thinking out loud here), they should watch out for not turning it into one big streaming-of-last-night’s-Late Show-bonanza, that would surely kill it off by way of cease-and-desist. But sharing (and exhcanging, like tabs on Netvibes!) of topic or actor-centirc taping schedules and sitcom chit-chat would be perfect. I’ll let you guys know as soon as I’m in!

Well, just browsing some feeds, I came across a very nice companion to a future WebOS-for-the-masses. Enter Linutop, a bare-bones linux PC, which comes with only the most necessary bits to perform (I guess the term PC is stretching it, according to what’s in it, my Xbox 360 would qualify to be called a PC too). But in light of my previous post on a good use for a WebOS -this would be it. Now, if any of them would be smart and bundle it together with say 100 gigs of online storage space to boot, that’d be something I’d consider spending money on.

There seems to be a lot of activity and buzz around WebOS’s, virtual desktops that run entirely within a browser. Applications like Goowy, Xindesk, YouOS, EyeOS, Desktoptwo and even vaporware-like GoogleOS all offer variations on the theme. All also seem to be driven to some extent (and in the case of GoogleOS very much so) by a desire among techies open source zealots to stick it to Microsoft’s domination of the desktop.

It looks cool, and if anything they serve as great showcases for what Ajax and Flash are capable of producing nowadays. Goowy especially excells, even taking it one step further with their widgets. But what’s the point? I keep wrecking my brain why I would need something like this, let alone switch. The only thing I keep coming up with, is that a webOS offers a new lease on life to older computers. But even then, if you go through the trouble of installing an open source OS in the first place on a PC, the added value of a webOS falls dramatically. What would really do it, would be an OS-less PC, which would connect directly to the net, and then access the webOS through a built-in browser. Does something like this exist? I have no clue -I’m not a techie. I believe something should be done with the BIOS. Read/WriteWeb has a good post up on the possibilities, using a wished GoogleOS as an example.

If this were possible, a real effort could get underway to get all the black spots on the worldwide internet off the map. Think of all the written off PCs that are out there which could be given a new lease on life. Or think about the sub $100 desktop.  Both are aimed at proliferation in third world countries, schools and closing any gap that might exist in the information society (memes to be sure I don’t really subscribe to -I believe there would be some short-term benefit, but longer term it could actually hurt the developing world-, but it seems to me this would definitely benefit such efforts).

Until then, the only thing I can come up with, is a MySpace-type application, especially when looking at Goowy, which seems to be spinning off its very slick-looking widgets under yourminis.com. It could work I think, because it’s very cognitive, It’d be like letting somebody ‘use’ my ‘computer’. On it, I could have public file folders with my stuff, and some private folders which I only share with family or friends, apart from the usual RSS feeds and other desktop toys. I could put my wallpaper up and basically, I’d be mimicking my desktop PC online, something that should help people without much online experience get confident with it. It could also bring people closer to online collaboration, without really calling it that way (think sharing a PC way back when).

Snap is a nice alternative for searching nowadays, what with all the spoofing and SEO going on to get sites listed higher than perhaps relevant to your search. It indexes sites but as it crawls it takes a picture of each page, rather than store its contents in a cache, like Google does. It presents the search results in a split window, with the links on the left, and the visual preview on the right. And it works really well, having searched a few sites it proves a far more intuitive way of looking for the page you need, much like flipping through CDs in a record store.

I like it because it combines online search technology with your own visual senses. Like Scrybe does with flipping through your calendar, Snap incorporates your senses in the experience they offer, with a far more relaxing result, something we will see more and more. It’s ok to browse a few things, and though it makes perfect sense to get the best result right up there at number one, I think sites that allow you to participate in an unconcious manner in the experience they offer while still being efficient, will have a bigger impact. It’s a perfect example of adapting the web to you, rather than putting you on a learning curve to experience the web.

Cognitive dissonance enters into the fray as well. Having seen a preview before you click the site, will likely have you ’stick’ with your decision longer, ie search further on the site you’re sent to. I’d be very interested to learn about the average time spent on a site coming from Snap versus any other search engine, something they could capitalize on with advertisers.

O’Reilly Radar has posted some musings on the future of business models, which sounded off some dot-com alarm bells with me. Tim O’Reilly takes the PS3 launch as an example, focusing on Sony’s approximate $300-$240 losss per PS3 console at the current retail price. O’Reilly then muses on, and somehow makes a jump to ad-sponsored online services:

What I find fascinating is that this is not merely news about the gaming industry. It’s potentially news from the future of all information-services-infused hardware. I forget who I heard ask me a year or two ago, “how long will it be before we can give away cars for a multi-year commitment to the information services embedded in them?” That question is increasingly on the horizon.

I beg to differ. There is nothing new going on here, let me explain my thoughts. First, Sony’s decision to subsidize a product and sell it below cost is as old as capitalism itself. I fail to see something radically new in an agressive market player with deep pockets introducing a new product below cost, hoping that once the marketing kicks in, demand will bring down overall cost price. Whether it’s smart, depends of course, but nothing new to my knowledge.

Secondly, O’Reilly confuses this sales strategy with the sponship of a product to reduce the cost to the consumer. Again, the common wisdom within the whole generation 2.0 seems to be that this is radically new -it’s not. A newspaper (anyone remember those AdCouncil ads from a few years back?) could be sold for as high as $10 (can’t remember the exact amount used in the ad) a copy, to cover its cost (like editors, reporters, photographers, printing and distribution). Placing ads in the newspaper brings down the cost to the price we pay now, under a dollar.

A 2.0 community site which needs some investment in servers, layout and applications, but for which the content and the reach is generated by unpaid community members, obviously has far lower cost levels. This means that introducing ads on the same scale as done with a newspaper, will show a plus coming just from the ads, which by itself can lead to a profit.

If you still don’t see it, compare the newspaper in my example with a free news daily like Metro, which has (almost) no writers on staff, and makes its money by placing free press releases primarily as their content and surviving on the ads alone. In short, this tells me there is nothing new going on with ad-sustained business models. It’s a lot easier to do online than offline, this is the one revolutionary aspect that I see.

Now for the second part, can this model spread to other products? Will I get to choose between buying a car and taking one out for free and -yeah what exactly? Again, we must look at the cost of the product and what advertising could take off. As I’ve explained, with a thriving community website this is fairly easily accomplished, as it is possible for a cheap news rag. The sponsorships or ads needed to offset the cost of a car just puts a little too much faith in the mighty advertising dollar I’m afraid. And Sony’s dumping is in no way to be seen as a harbinger of a brave new world 2.0.

Mobile phone operators ‘giving’ (remember, there’s no such thing as a free lunch -Milton Friedman RIP) away handsets while tying you into a two-year contract does come closer -but it’s much directer, because there is a clear view on ARPU for the duration of the contract they sell to offset the cost of the handset. Advertising does not have this certainty, as anyone who spent fifty bucks on the wrong words in AdSense can attest to. What Google is talking about now, free phones and call plans entirely subsidized with commercials injected into your calls isn’t new -I have seen similar attempts around 2000 in Europe, not just on mobile but also on fixed long distance or international calls. Voice and text messages instead of video messages, and without Google’s critical mass (I think it would stand a really good chance this time around).

Advertising has not changed much over the last hundred years. From Print to Television in fifty years, and fifty years later Onlne got added. Companies buy space or airtime or impressions to sell their product. It always amazes me to hear intelligent people caught up at the forefront of a new hype start to ramble off and see them look all the way down where we mere mortals go about our business and mumble something like ‘one day, all of your lives will be changed because of what we’re doing here.’

Don’t get me wrong, I respect Tim O’Reilly very much as a figurehead for anything web related. I just think he ran too far ahead of the pack, and over the cliff on this one. My whole reasoning has always been that www, internet, the Google, the tubes, 2.0, dot com -with little buttons- and whatever else we will be calling it, comes down to the same interaction between buyers and sellers, with -slightly- different tools. 

A final, related musing of myself: if the FCC hadn’t stepped in in 1973 to put a stop to the ongoing growth of advertising on television, and the blurring of the line between programming and commercials, wouldn’t we now already have had shows produced by Anheuser-Busch and Burger King? And wouldn’t Web 2.0 gurus then be respected techie wizzards instead of marketing wannabees?

So is Web 2.0 an enabler for new marketing strategies, or is it an enabler from the marketing community at large?

With the Web 2.0 Conference ending in San Francisco, all bloggers have returned to their fixed internet connections and felt they had to do some somber realist thinking about all that Ajax goodieness being thrown at them for a week. Barron’s Eric Savitz has an interesting take on things, and refers to VC blogger Paul Kedrosky, who has made a list of companies to short. Writes Savitz:

One obvious difference, though, is that there really haven’t been any Web 2.0 IPOs. Last time, we had Pets.com, and Webvan, and TheGlobe and all of their brethren. This time, investors can choose from Google, which has a core business that is very much Web 1.0, first-generation Web companies like Yahoo and eBay, and mainstream media companies like News Corp. (NWS). Ladies and gentlement, please welcome Mr. Web 2.0, Rupert Murdoch.

The interesting question from a bearish investor’s point of view is this: where are the Web 2.0 short ideas?

Paul Kedrosky tried to answer that question today, and came up with a pretty thin list: Google, Adobe (ADBE), Yahoo (YHOO) and Fox Interactive, which of course is part of News Corp. As bubble’s go, pretty thin pickings for the shorts; and I’m not sure I’d be want to be short any of those companies right now. And you can’t short Facebook. Anyone have a better idea?

My 2 cents: We are in a bubble, if that’s what you want to call it. But the difference with the previous one is that then, everybody’s exit strategy seemed to be an IPO, and trying to create a feeding frenzy among investors that were still light years away (as were many of the companies themselves) of understanding the business models du jour. Now, my impression is that this is a perceived bubble, because everyone inside is reading every other insiders comments without sticking their heads out of the window once (hello blogging!). It seems to me 99% of all these Web 2.0 upstarts are in an angel investor phase. On top, everyone’s strategy seems to be not to IPO, but instead to get bought by one of the Big Three, or make an ad deal with any of them. Very different. (Also see this excellent timeline of acquisitions by Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft over the last few years).

We’re basically seeing the results of a few hardcore companies making it really big, and investors -in many cases using their own money, don’t forget that- seeding a lot of seeds to find the next big thing. They don’t know what it is, but seeing MySpace’s success they know it can be anything. So yeah, there will be a shakeout, and a lot of developers will get a shot at it, burning through 1-5 million along the way, whooo. Nothing big, nothing to worry about.

My advice to anyone worried about a Bust 2.0 right now: Get off the blogs, read the WSJ instead for a month, and you’ll find your perspective coming back to you again.

Update: Lol, see what I mean about blogging? Business Week posts similar sentiments, and the same headline -down to the question mark- as my humble post ;) That’s it, I’m off to buy a newspaper.