Born to Blog? Meet SocialNetworking for Babies: TotSpot, Kidmondo, Lil’Grams and Odadeo.

September 13, 2008 by admin · 2 Comments
Filed under: Technology 

Social networks have a whole new target audience: babies. Despite the fact that studies show record global growth for current world leader Facebook (153%) and spurts for Hi5 and even Friendster, that growth is bound to slow as grown-ups run out of fellow grown-ups to friend request. The solution? The diaper set.

Today, the modern equivalents of the now-dinosaur ‘Sears Photo Studio baby brag book’ are bubbling up everywhere. Social networks start while the babe is still a bump with blossoming sites like TheCradle.com, a hot new lifestyle destination for new pregnancy and new parenthood. The site, currently in beta, has easy-to-use social networking features for Moms to be, with personalizable web page templates, thriving message boards and a wealth of practical information. Moms can connect with other Moms who are in the same stage of pregnancy to share and support each other.

By the baby is born, he or she is already Google-able and ready to toddle (or twitter) over to the next step: their very own social network.

While bebe is napping (or busy studying Mandarin with his nanny), Mom and Dad can check out these growing choices:

Totspot: The brainchild of a bunch of family-oriented Harvard grads, TotSpot is a place to create a private page about your kids and share it with friends and family. It’s an online scrapbook and community for babies, kids, and their parents.

Kidmondo: Kidmondo was founded by a couple in New York City, who - after the birth of their second child - couldn’t find an compelling way to chronicle and share news about their kids with family and friends around the world. The mission: Kidmondo is a comprehensive online baby journal and organizer that allows parents and caregivers to chronicle their child’s life and share it with friends and family in a safe environment.

Guru’s Note: Kidmondo’s founders very smartly included ‘caregivers’ in their mission statement. This is a fact of today’s life — the caregiver may very likely be the one to witness the first step or horrors! rub whiskey on the gums of that teething babe. Takeaway: Hire a nanny whose skills extend from web 2.0 to wee-wee.

Twitter for TotsLil’Grams: This microblogging site — dubbed twittering for toddlers — comes from new father and entrepreneur Greg Narain of Blue Whale Labs. The mission: Lil’Grams is a real-time baby book designed to make it absolutely simple for parents to capture the precious moments of their baby’s life and share it with their family and friends instantly. The most precious moments of your baby’s life are countless - but they only come once. With LittleGrams, you can keep, track, and share anything about your baby.

Odadeo: Created by Stef Lewandowski, the site was soft launched on Father’s Day of last year but appears to still be in beta. The mission: Odadeo is the site that aims to answer the question “how am I going to be a better dad?” Whether you’re veteran of fatherhood or an outright newbie, Odadeo looks built to to help you make your father-son and father-daughter connections that much more Web 2.0-compliant.

Guru’s Note: There are some 85 million Moms in the U.S. and most of them seem to be on the Internet busily blogging (I’m one of them). So it’s about time the Dads start turning up in droves. One of the most frequently asked questions at events where Kat Gordon of Mom-marketing company, Maternal Instinct, and I team up to speak is: What about the Dads?

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Social Networking Shocker: With 132 Million Users Worldwide and 153% Growth in One Year, Facebook Leaps to #1.

August 13, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Technology 

 

Facebook now the world\'s largest social networking site
Tech Crunch is reporting some shocking new figures from Comscore on the social networking boom. Shocking, that is, if you’re MySpace, limping along at a mere 3% growth last year. To be fair, MySpace’s significant site re-design did not launch till June 18th, well after the close of the study. The positive reception to its cleaner, less-cluttered look and feel may improve growth for the formerly burgeoning site.

Other big jumps in global growth include Hi5 at 100% — good news for new Director of Communications hire, popular v-logger and social networking pro Adriana Gascoigne. Surprisingly, early social media pioneer, Friendster, grew by 50% while Bebo and Orkut showed improvement as well, with 32% and 41% respectively.

 

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Moo Just Grew. Moo Launches New Bigger Business Cards.

July 8, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: style & design 

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The company that turned mini-cards into a mondo success is now going big. Or at least bigger. The mighty Moo now brings its creative customer-centered cool to regular size business cards. Naturally they’re still echelons above those tired generic cards, with extra cool twists like your choice of two eco-friendly paper stocks, one of which is the chlorine-free, 100% recycled, recyclable and biodegradeable Moo ‘Green.’ Then there’s the ‘magic’ technology they’re dubbing ‘PrintFinity’, which lets you have a different photo, logo or design on every card. As they say “it’s a little portfolio in your pocket, a catalogue, a trading card, anything you like.’

Happily, you can even buy your business cards in runs as short as 50. So you’re never stuck with boxes of cards with the wrong address, forcing you to spend the night before the Big Conference making teeny stickers to cover up the old one. Moo really gets that life today is ever evolving and your cards need to morph right along with you. These eclectic cards are $21.99, with the mini-cards still happily available at $19.99.

As is probably pretty obvious, I have long been a Moo fan. And not just because I am originally from Wisconsin and born to worship Golden Guernseys. Moo is a great example of how fresh perspective and imagination plus Web 2.0 tools can transform a commodity business into a whole new industry. Moo Prints, based in London, was the brainchild of Richard Moross, who got bored with the same-old same-old bland of traditional business cards. Moross also noticed that the Internet and its virtual communities were changing the offline world, creating new kinds of relationships and new forms of interaction. There was all that pent-up user-generated-creativity bubbling all over the web. So rather than introduce the mini Moo cards in the same-old, same-old way, Moo invented a new distribution channel by partnering with social networking and community sites like Flickr and Bebo. Now Facebook, etsy, livejournal, Vox and Fotolog have joined the Moo Crew as well.

Here are some ways I’ve used Moo (feel free to add your own ideas here):

*I invented MOOLIGANS Cards for Kids. Because you can add 10 pictures per Moo order, this makes it inexpensive and fast for Moms, Girl Scout troops, teachers, classmates, etc. to create Moo Cards for the group. I set up class, club, activity, school blogs and print that email address or URL on the back of the MOOLIGANS.

* I get teeny Moo-sized envelopes from Paper Source and I put a couple of (different) Moos in the envelope with one of my Guru of New Moo Stickers on the outside. At a conference or event, my teeny envelopes are much less likely to get lost, discarded or neglected, because they’re more substantial, don’t seem boringly corporate and everyone wants to open them and see what’s inside.

New Moo!

*Okay, I'll admit it. I sometimes use pieces-parts-of-myself (or others) rather than my whole face because it's far more intriguing to just show lips or eyes. Mystery!

*I've used Moos as mini event invitations
*For client PR --promoting blogs, books, art, photography, design portfolio
*As very personal and reasonably priced birthday gifts
*I like to buy art when I travel --- I bring it home and Moo-it so I can always have tiny souvenirs of that streetfair in Avignon with me. And it's a nice gift for your traveling partners.
*I tried (but failed) to turn my stickers into cute magnets. I am dangerous with craft supplies.

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Yanked Off Yelpers: How To Piss Off Your Most Passionate Users in 7 Days or Less.

July 5, 2008 by admin · 4 Comments
Filed under: Technology, small business 

One of the many positive outcomes of Dell Hell, “Cancel My AOL account”, and “The Comcast Dude is Sleeping on My Couch” is the dramatic change these mighty-mouth insurrections have wrought in the way companies perceive — and interact with — their customers. Most companies these days are not only fervently interested in customer retention and the lifetime value of customers but they’re also laser-focused on their best customers. As a Customer Experience pro, I’ve conducted research studies on countless loyalty programs, goldmining projects, organic transparency, and ‘highly engaged’ market segmentations. I spent five years working with some of Microsoft’s evangelist programs in which we experimented with numerous ‘preferred’ or ‘insider’ strategies and nearly as many years with Yahoo Global Customer Care. Everybody (and rightfully so) is ready to jump through hoops to keep their Loyal Customers purringly happy.

Everybody that is, except Yelp.  SFGate reports that the online review site yanked ‘an undisclosed number of accounts after finding that the business owners had swapped positive reviews with other business owners. Yelp also regularly deletes reviews it believes are phony. The move sparked an outcry among local businesses, and has even led some entrepreneurs to band together with thoughts of a class-action lawsuit. Their reasoning is, if they legitimately spend their money and patronize a service, why can’t they review it?”

Activist Adryenn I’ve had an upclose-and-personal view of the mystifying way Yelp chose to treat its most passionate users via firebrand Adryenn Ashley, who in the grand tradition of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” decided to fight back by putting her considerable marketing and citizen journalist expertise to good use. On Wednesday she created Yelp-Sucks.com and YelpLawsuit.com, asking people “yanked by Yelp” to sign up for a class-action suit. Apparently, response to these sites is growing as frustrated yelpers chase after both reinstatement — and that so-far elusive apology.

Here’s what puzzles me. Yelp is based in the Bay area. Its founders have deep Internet expertise. They understand the power of igniting a conversation and watching it grow like the wildfires down here in Big Sur. A recent article in the New York Times says: “What Yelp did differently than these others, as Jeremy Stoppelman, the site’

s co-founder and chief executive describes it, was to spend most of its energy attracting a small group of fanatic reviewers.”

Now, I have no insider information on the deleted accounts. I have no idea if any of them violated Yelp’s (fuzzy) rules. But I do know that Yelp is violating most of today’s cardinal rules of Customer Experience. Why would they choose to deal with their most passionate users, some of whom probably come from this ’small group of fanatic reviewers’ in such a harsh and old-school way? Why the cold, quasi-accusatory termination emails? Couldn’t they have at least considered possible explanations for what may appear to be phony reviews? Couldn’t they have started with contacting the questionable Yelpers and saying something like: “Hey, we’re growing like crazy because people like you love to Yelp. But we’re trying our best to keep Yelp a great tool for everyone — and some of your recent activity is raising questions. Here’s a handy contact form. Talk to us.

While Techcrunch claims that these pissed off passionate customers are merely a sign of Yelp’s power, it might be good to mull over these numbers from a recent survey: Eight out of 10 people who go away will bad mouth you. Then they’ll tell somewhere between 25 and 250 people about the problem they had — and they’ll relish explaining it in enraged detail. And woe-is-you if among these customers is a wow-is-me Adryenn Ashley . . .

After they finish bad-mouthing your company? That’s when they’ll scour the Internet in search of your competitors.

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Your 15 Minutes of UGC Fame & Fortune Start Here.

June 25, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Technology, Uncategorized, Women, entertainment, food & beverage, lifestyle & leisure, marketing & advertising, media & publishing 


While researching my article on Rickrolling, I came across a bunch of User Generated Content Contests that sound like fun. There’s something for everyone — from Creative Consumers to Brainiacs. Increasingly tuned-in marketers are playing it smart with these promotions, following the Three Rules of UGC Contest Development:

  1. Tap into consumers’ passions
  2. Use multiple social channels to reach consumers
  3. Know your audience — pick prizes & content format accordingly

Some of these chances at fame and fortune end soon.  So hurry.

Casting Call: Lifetime Networks invites female filmmakers to submit their original short films. Deadline for entries is July 8. The winning contestant will have their short shown on Lifetime Movie Networks and receive a cash prize of $5,000 plus the opportunity to attend networking events and festivals.

TechwareLabs Case Mod Contest with over $600 in prizes!!!Quote: Are you a mad modder at heart? Have you taken the toaster over and crammed a quad core CPU, dual video cards, and four hard drives into it? Have you altered your washer to look like something that qualifies as a WMD and outfit it with a PC? If so we want to see your mod, big or small. Submit everything you have modified and we will incorporate it into a video to be hosted on our site. The winning case mod will receive over $600 in prizes and have their creation appear in the video and also be interviewed by us and be featured on our front page. Get your dremel and bondo out and let the mods begin.

Shoot, Share, Get On TV. Ziddio feels like a mash up of YouTube and Bix.com, allowing users to enter competitions and win prizes - including appearances on TV. People create videos and upload them to Ziddio.com for the world to see, laugh, question, mock, and even enjoy. Run by Comcast; frequent contests.

Do You Think You Have What It Takes To Be A Super Star?
Simon Malls is inviting you to come and check out the Simon dTOUR Live Video and Recording Studio! At select malls across the country you will have the chance of a lifetime to show us what you’ve got.

BrainReactions is an online brainstorming site. Most of the time, BStormers do it out of the kindness of their hearts and a persistent need to do something, anything with their random neuro-eurekas. But for the first time since I’ve been seeding the site with my genius, (mad) money will change hands. Check out the Monjee contest.

Someday Stories From Wells Fargo
Everybody’s got a dream for Someday. What’s yours? This is a contest that’s all about you and what you want for your “Someday.” Today, just tell us the true and aspiring story about your Someday dream and your winnings could help make it real.

Calling All Filmmakers!

Power up with this potion and get out your camera. Create a :30 (30 second) commercial featuring CUBA’s new ‘All Natural’ ‘Herbal Energy Juice’.

TruTv + Black Gold Teams Up To Go Social.
My old white water rafting buddy, Thom Beers, strikes it rich again with the premiere of Black Gold. In conjunction with this sure-to-be-another-hit, TruTV launched the Black Gold Challenge casual game on Facebook, MySpace and Bebo to promote the premiere of the new series about West Texas oil roughnecks, debuting Wednesday, June 18 at 10p. Players tap their friends to form a drilling crew then pick a spot in Texas to begin drilling for hidden caches of “black gold.” One hidden hole contains a voucher for $50,000.

What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar?
You know the drill.

CREATE ENTER JUDGE
Yahoo’s contest site, Bix, offers a variety of contests including a Spore Creature contest with a MacAir and 50-inch plasma TV as prizes. I’m thinking I might have a better shot with the Spore contest than with my karoake version of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’

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The Un-Facebook: New York Times Launches TimesPeople Social Network Beta

June 19, 2008 by admin · 2 Comments
Filed under: Uncategorized, entertainment, marketing & advertising, media & publishing 

From the moment you register with your existing New York Times log-in, you know you’re not on Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Linkedin, Bebo or any of today’s rather plebeian social networks.

Here’s the almost graceful greeting: The TimesPeople Team wishes you a pleasant experience.

The site then invites you to “Share and Discover the Best of NYTimes.com” by sharing articles, videos, blog posts, slideshows, comments, ratings and reviews of movies, restaurant and hotels. In other words, all that newfangled social stuff the grown-up media is yearning to make work.

It was a bit disheartening to search and discover NO FRIENDS were waiting to ping me on TimesPeople. However, it’s early on in this new network, with the launch just hours ago. Surely I won’t be alone here long, wanting fervently to share the latest article on Amy Winehouse or Bush in the Rose Garden.

Currently, TimesPeople is only a (easy and quick) beta release of a Firefox browser add-on. Later on, the public launch will work on all browsers without a plug-in.

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Reviving A Sixties Icon: Schlitz, The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous Is Back.

June 19, 2008 by admin · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Uncategorized, food & beverage, marketing & advertising 

I’m from Milwaukee, so I oughta know . . .   Oops.  That jingle actually belongs to Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer, not Schlitz.   But these days, who knows?  The Pabst Brewing Company now owns Schlitz.  The company is bringing back the Schlitz  “Classic 1960’s Formula”, which was last widely used more than 30 years ago.

Target for the icon is guys who remember the sixties fondly, recalling it as an era when ‘values mattered.’ Aside from tapping into the original recipe, this revived brew also brings back the famous “Brown Glass” dating back to 1912 and revolutionary in its time, plus old-school attitude. New advertising suggests that drinkers go back to a time when “the cars were cooler, the athletes didn’t cheat, and the beer was better.” Check it all out on the new website.

This ‘more full bodied taste’ brew, once beloved by everybody’s Packer-Backer grandfather, will be officially launched Tuesday in Milwaukee at Libiamo’s.  The restaurant is in the heart of Schlitz Park, the office park created out of the old Schlitz brewery.

Questions remain about the comeback: Can an old brand be dusted off, spiffed up for a new era and given a second chance? Can it successfully emerge from a long sleepy 30 year hibernation? Typically, when these retro-brandings have been accomplished, marketers go after a new target — rather than merely try to re-up the old one. Think VW’s rebirth of sentimental cult favorite, the Beetle, which relaunched in the late 90’s. Think Apple, which has reinvented itself repeatedly. Think another Milwaukee icon and comeback company, Harley Davidson, which also touts a unique heritage and a rabidly loyal fan base, including a solid 75% of customers with a penchant for repeat purchases. But the company never bet solely on its existing users, no matter how its HOGs grew, nor by standing still in terms of product development. Instead, Harley rebuilt its brands by letting them evolve; by creating products based on heritage but adding new contemporary twists aimed at being more compelling and relevant to a modern audience.

Harley also smartly used one of the primary attributes of any fan base, particularly a cult favorite like the Harley Owners Group: their love of talking about the Harley experience. Long before we marketers blithely began tossing around jargon –customer experience, experiential marketing, meaningful marketing –Harley was encouraging word-of-mouth. It worked.

Does anybody know if Pabst/Schlitz is working on a WOM campaign or using social marketing tools to reach potential new users? Hope so –because targeting just guys who remember the sixties might be a touch dicey. As they say, ‘if you can remember the sixties, you probably weren’t there.’

 

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