Tag Archives: twitter

Introducing StoryStack

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For the past few weeks my two buddies and I have been coding non-stop and last night completed the first iteration of our product.  Now it’s time to take a step back, get some people using the app and see if we’re on the right track.

What’s the product?

StoryStack lets people create beautiful digital stories together.  Groups or individuals can combine photos, videos, maps, and text to tell rich stories on just about anything – weddings, group trips, cookbooks, design portfolios, and more.

Why are you building this?

A few months back I went on a trip with some of my friends to the Himalayas.   While on this trip we made a few key observations relating to sharing and remembering experiences:

  • Content on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are consumed individually and are therefor lacking depth and context.
  • If four of my friends go on a trip together and post their photos on Facebook, there’s a lot of overlap.
  • Slideshows are old-school, lacking interaction and are generally pretty boring.

How is what you’re doing different from Facebook/Flickr/Picassa?

There’s three main differences:

  • StoryStack is more then just a collection of photos and text you can add maps, tweets, check-ins, polls, videos and other widgets.
  • StoryStack is collaborative, multiple people can combine their content into a coherent narrative.
  • StoryStack stories are consumed from beginning to end creating an immersive, longer-form, contextual experience.

What are you doing next?

The plan for the next week or two is get user feedback and plan the next iteration of the product.  Should we focus on themes and improving the presentation layer?  Should we build in wikipedia style voting features to make this a platform for large events (like weddings and SXSW)?  Is this even a viable product?  We’re not really sure.  We also want to explore an iPad version.

Are you trying to raise money?

Not really.  We think delaying funding as long as possible is the way to go.  That doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in talking to investors.  We’ve been meeting with some VC’s just to get feedback on the concept and build relationships.

We’ve also applied to TechStars NY and are really hoping to get in.  The mentor list looks ridiculous and we think it’s an amazing program.

I want to try it out!

Sure, if you have low expectations and a sense of humor send me an email and I’ll send you an invite to a really buggy alpha (just don’t try it in IE).  Feedback on the product or concept is always appreciated.

Steal This Product Idea #4 – CricketFaceoff.com

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I’ve been playing Fantasy Football for the last 8 years and absolutely love it.   For those who don’t know how it works: you join a league with your friends, draft real players, and accumulate points based on how the players do in real life.  Each week you match up against one of your friends, if your team accumulates more points you win the match.

There’s so much to love about Fantasy Sports:

  • There’s constant interaction between members of the league through a live draft, trades and sh*t talking.  It’s a great way for me to stay connected with my friends from High School and College (I play in two leagues).
  • It makes me a much bigger sports fan by forcing me to read up and watch games I ordinarily wouldn’t care about.  I couldn’t care less about the Houston Texans but if I have Andre Johnson and my opponent that week has Matt Schaub, it makes for a thrilling, must watch game.

It turns out I’m not the only one who loves Fantasy Sports:

A 2006 study showed 22 percent of U.S. adult males 18 to 49 years old, with Internet access, play fantasy sports. Fantasy Sports is estimated to have a $3–$4 Billion annual economic impact across the sports industry. ~ Wikipedia

A few weeks ago two of my friends and I were discussing how Fantasy Cricket in it’s optimal form doesn’t exist and came up with an idea:

CricketFaceoff.com will allow fans and their friends to create virtual cricket leagues and compete against each other.  Users can manage their team and get access to live scores, stats, scouting reports, news and expert advice.

Considering that in India, ‘Cricket’ is the largest religion with a billion fanatic followers, Fantasy Cricket in the country has great potential.

Fantasy Cricket is at the hub of three dynamic industry spokes, namely, Internet, Gaming and Cricket. In a country like India, where cricket is almost the only sport, and with industry projections putting Internet penetration at an encouraging $300mn and online gaming at $200mn by 2010, this sector is definitely headed towards growth. [Wikipedia]

There are two main competitors: Dream11 and CricInfo.  Both of these sites lack:

  • An online draft system – Currently you can pick the same players on every team without penalty or restriction
  • Integration with Facebook/Twitter – Sign in with Facebook, Publish sh*t talking to news feed, Vote on who you think will win published to news feed, etc…

We actually went so far as to buy domains (CricketFaceoff.com and CricketSuperstar.com), get a logo (see above) and create mockups for the site.  There are two versions, the first is a full-out draft based fantasy cricket site:

 

The second is a “minimum viable product” pick the winner version.  There’s no live draft, less engagement, but still retains a lot of the core elements that we think can be successful:

 

Cricket faceoff simiplified

 

We have thought through a number of monetization strategies and strategic partnerships but in the end we didn’t have the patience to go through with it.  I’d still be interested in pursuing this in the future.  Get in touch if you are interested in collaborating…

Steal this Product Idea #2

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So it’s 2010 and according to the 80′s movies I was obsessed with as a kid we should have hoverboards, flying cars, sexy robots, and violent but thrilling reality tv gameshows.

I can forgive scientists for failing to deliver on the important stuff, but at the very least, they should’ve come up with a really easy way for me to stay up to date on the music I love.

Here’s my problem: I love music, but downloading it is a pain in the ass.  Many times:

  • It’s not the right version (terrible sounding live album or kung-fu panda in croatian)
  • The quality sucks (camcorder rip)
  • It’s not tagged properly
  • It’s not what you are looking for (self-promoting rappers, porn or just plain weird)
  • It’s super slow (maybe that’s just cause I’m in India)
  • It’s “illegal”

So in order to satisfy my cravings for new music without the hassle, I buy albums on iTunes. The issue is most of the time I have no idea what to buy.  The only way for me to stay up to date is to manually browsing the iTunes store, explicitly ask my friends for recommendations, listen to internet radio and write down the tracks I like or browsing hype machine, pandora and other music sites and just sampling music.  That’s is a lot of work and I’m really lazy (which is why I don’t buy a lot of music).

I don’t want to go out and look for music, movies, games, books and apps I want stuff I like to find me.

Here’s what I’m thinking: create a service that lets you “follow” your favorite digital content: music, movies, games, apps, and books and receive notifications any time new related content is released:

  • Phase 1 – Music over Twitter:
    • Put in your favorite artist, band or genre (similar to iLike or Pandora)
    • Decide how and how often you’d like to receive notifications (as soon as it happens, daily, weekly) and how (tweets, @mentions, direct message)
    • Link to a summary page which shows an activity feed (new tracks, alubms, remixes, videos, etc…) for the music you have decided you like
    • Link to iTunes for affiliate sales
  • Phase 2 – Other content: Movies (Actor, Director, Genre), Games (Game, Genre, Studio), Books (Author, Publisher, Genre) and Apps
  • Phase 3 – Recommendations: Tie up with services like Netflix and Pandora to start making recommendations on content you may like
  • Phase 4 – Other Notifications: Email, SMS, Facebook, etc…
  • Phase 5 – Incentivize users to repost content, by sharing revenue

Great Scott! Music Hack Day is coming to SF in a few weeks.  Someone please build this, I’d use it.

Steal this Product Idea: Sign.al

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We are overloaded with information.  During the course of my day I email, tweet, comment, post, chat, message, buzz, check in, call, sms, mms, bbm and sometimes (if I’m really lucky) actually talk to people.  We are moving towards an ever increasing flood of content (much of it automated) and it’s only gettin’ worse.  One day soon everything will tweet.

It’s not the the sheer quantity of information that’s the problem (faster flow of information will only help people achieve more), it’s how we send and receive it:

  • Sending: How do I send out information so that it reaches it’s intended audience only.  In the upcoming era of persistent, public online identity, how do I can still share my green-beer, toga party pictures with my friends and make sure potential clients don’t see it?  Additionally, I want to publicize my boring social media posts without spamming my friends who I know really, really don’t care.
  • Receiving: With all this content around how do I make sure that that important stuff gets to me FAST, while the stuff that matters stays buried (until I get really bored or have lots of time to look through it).

The idea that’s been bouncin’ around my head tries to address the second point… enter: sign.al.

I have a dream… that one day my phone will ring when my buddy is callin’ me up to go grab a beer, while calls from vodafone bill collectors stay silent.  That my blackberry will only flash in meetings only when really really important stuff happens (like the Mets scoring a winning run).  That one day, we’ll be able to ignore the tens, hundereds or thousands of messages that don’t matter, and focus our attentions on the ones that do. Here’s how sign.al would work

  • You give it all your account information (gmail, facebook, twitter, etc…)
  • It starts off like any aggregator (Seesmic for instance), showing you a timeline of emails, facebook messages, tweets, yadda yadda:

  • Aright, now’s where it starts getting cool… after a little while, it moves away from a timeline view, to a priority view.  It starts guessing knowing what you are most likely gonna want to read and respond to and starts moving those to the top.  This shift is already happening (FB news feed vs time line, Mozilla Raindrop, Xobni for Bberry)
  • Sign.al can know what’s important by:
    • Frequency – How regularly you read and respond to individuals
    • Speed – Of your read/response
    • Popularity – The number of comments, retweets, likes, and mentions
    • Proximity – Number of shared connections
    • Medium – @mentions more weightage the email cc’s?
    • Geolocation – Are messages from Mumbai and NYC more important to me?
    • Time of day – Are certain types of messages more important at a certain time?
    • Content – Am I more likely to be interested in content about the Jets regardless of where, when, how it’s getting to me? (yes)
    • Recency – Moving away from this but still a factor
  • Phase 2 – Phone app
    • Incorporating voice and SMS into the mix of content to prioritize
    • Different types of notifications instead of timeline: ring for an important sms, vibrate for a somewhat important @mention, silent for a newsletter.
  • Phase 3 – Setting status (implicitly?): In a meeting, driving, out to lunch, available – Based on this reduce/amplify notification methods.  If I’m sitting at the airport bored and normally my phone vibrates for an important tweet, now ring.
  • Phase 4 – Anticipate – Based on where I am, the type of message, who I’m connecting with, the medium, the format etc… start anticipating how I may respond to them (in a totally not creepy big brotherish way)

Ideas are a dime a dozen, execution’s what matters.  Take this idea, build it, I’ll use it and be happy (just be forewarned you need to legal operations in Albania to actually register the sign.al domain name :p ).

quick update: my buddy Aditya actually wants to make this happen… check out his blog for more info.

B2B Social Media Marketing

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Many people question the value of social media for B2B companies.  I recently gave two sessions trying to answer these questions:

  • Why/How do B2B companies engage in social media?
  • What should companies listen to on the social web and how?
  • What type of content should your company be generating?
  • What is social search and how does it effect marketing?
  • What are first steps businesses can take to start participating in the social web?

My main points are as follows:

  • Social media can be used to achieve many of your business objectives (generating awareness, capturing leads, sales, recruitment, etc…).
  • The main opportunity for social media in B2B organizations is establishing yourself as a thought leader.
  • Create content that appeals to a wider audience then just your current customers.
  • Become a destination for anyone looking to learn more about the industry.
  • We’re moving away from static search toward recommendations.
  • It is critical to have conversations going on about your company.

Video and Slides below:


B2B Social Media Usage from Amit Klein on Vimeo.


Social Media for B2B
View more presentations from Amit Klein.



Game Changer: Why Google bought Aardvark for $50 million

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As confirmed by TechCrunch, Google today announced that they’ve bough Aardvark for $50 million – brilliant move by the Goog. I’ll get to the why after a little background.

Google still dominates the most lucrative percentage of marketing dollars spent on the web:

But recently they seem scared. Google is a one trick pony, with the Adwords serving as their main source of revenue. They’ve tried over and over to replicat it’s success but have failed miserably with Youtube, Dodgeball, Jaiku, Lively, Orkut and Wave. I visited Google’s New York offices in Jan 2007. The most memorable moment (besides the organic salmon burgers in the cafeteria) was when one of the engineers said that Google was the only site in the world, whose goal was to minimize time spent on it. At the time I was blown away – “Give the people what they want.”

Fast forward to today – for most searches related to products, services or experiential recommendations – Google fails:

googfail

People no longer trust the anonymous, SEO optimized, affiliate marketing driven, possibly automated, blog post. The next web is built on relationship driven, public, recommendations. Google’s biggest threat is not another search engine, but a change to the underlying way that people search. Enter Facebook and Twitter. I no longer search for news, it finds me (goodbye RSS).  It’s no surprise Google has made numerous plays at Twitter and FB has changed it’s whole strategy because of Twitter. They are all fighting for the same role, to be the underlying real-time, social operating system on the web.

Eyeballs and CPM ads are finally being replaced by microtransactions and quantified actions. Subscriptions are the new black. G used to be the gateway to the web.  Now, more sites are reporting an increasing trend of quality traffic from Twitter and FB.  The top brass at Google knows that social is critical.

Purchasing Aardvark is a brilliant (third or fourth) play into the social arena. With Buzz just released, Google now has a captive audience of 176mil (in Gmail) to test, position and improve social search (before it’s too late).  People don’t want to be sold to, but will gladly buy products based on recommendations by people they trust.  The line between advertising and content is blurring.  The key is being able to monitize recommendations (companies would gladly pay 2% of a product’s price for a sale).

What will be interesting to see is if either Facebook, Twitter or Google is able to do it alone (doubtful – but maybe FB), whether some big-time M&A will happen (Goog buys Twitter), or whether they will be forced to open up to each other, each find their respective niches, and continue to compete on the fringe (likely).   What do you think, with Buzz + Aardvark will they be able to achieve monetizable, real-time, social search before FB and Twitter?

Google's Biggest Competitor isn't another Search Engine

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There’s no doubt that Google Search is a great product, but aside from some cosmetic changes in how results are displayed there hasn’t been any major innovation in search in the last few years (aright, Goggles is pretty awesome):

There are a number of questions which Google fails to answer:

  • “where’s the best bagel in new york?”
  • “what’s a cheap, clean, centrally located hotel in bangkok”
  • “which DSLR camera should I buy?”

In the cases above, you’re most likely to get SEO-optimized aggregator/review site whose primary motivation is affiliate sales.  And forget about finding anything usable to:

  • “what’s everyone up to this weekend?”
  • “should I get a tattoo?”
  • “is business school right for me”

Increasingly, I turn to Twitter and Facebook for these types of questions:

dslr2

twitterdslr6

Aardvark is another really nice product that tries to answer these experiential/recommendation type of questions.  It’s easy to use (via a chat bot) and gets quick and solid responses.  The same question got me three responses within 10 min (here’s two):

  • (From Rakesh R./24/M/Arlington,US, Re: **cameras**
    go for canon 50D with a kit lens to start with . Your body is excellent but lens is OK types. u can always improve on ur lens whne u know what u needhttp://vark.com/z/b41bf (Amazon: Canon EOS 50D)
  • (From Sam A./M/Dubai,UnitedArabEmirates, Re: **cameras**
    Well the best bet would be to start looking at the more popular brands:
    Canon and Nikon. Some people also swear by Olympus and Leica (the latter
    being seriously expensive), and even Sony. I’d stay away from Sony because
    cameras is not their real bread and butter (though I have read some good
    reviews regarding their Alpha series). Now I wouldn’t recommend sticking to
    the popular brands because they’re better or provide the best value for
    money, but rather for things beyond that: availability of accessories,
    lenses, repair options, etc. I personally just purchased a Canon D7 and it’s
    a really great camera. Though a little on the pricey side, it provides great
    value for money. Things like high continuous shooting rate, HD video, etc.
    This site helps you actually buy one: http://reviews.cnet.com/dslr-buying-guide/

    This website will be really helpful in doing some comparisons: http://snapsort.com/
    Enjoy!

Imagine if I could aggregate this data, slice and dice according to my tastes (i.e. 2nd degree relationships within NYC who have bought a camera in the last 6 weeks), compare prices and actually buy this thing from a single application?  This is a game changer that could be a devastating blow to Google SEM and forever change the way we buy products and services (though Google’s smart and they’re workin’ on it) . Facebook ::nudge nudge wink wink:: I’m lookin’ at you…

My favorite quote from the excellent video by @equalman (posted below) is:

We no longer search for the news, the news finds us…
In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us

Increasingly though, it’s not just individuals who will be turning to social tools to answer tough questions:

There’s a new tool that can help companies predict sales for the coming weeks, or decide whether to increase inventories or put items on sale in certain stores.

It’s Twitter.

~ MIT Sloan

Social data from Facebook, Twitter and the like combined with traditional CRMs will allow you to keep track of buzz, transactions and brand loyalty/sentiment, letting you answer questions like:

  • What are people saying about my product right now?
  • How has the perception of my brand changed recently and in what direction is it trending?
  • Geographically where is my biggest, rapidly emerging and diminishing customers?
  • Who are my biggest evangelists, in what demographic do they fall in, where are they located?
  • Who are my biggest naysayers, how can I change their perception?
  • What is the perception of my product vs. my competitors?
  • What product features do my (potential) customers want?
  • Where is my next potential biggest growth market?
  • What are the trending (in both directions) topics in my industry?

Social CRM is totally hot right now and an important trend to watch this year:


Everyone’s talking… are you listening?

Eating our own Dogfood in Marketing 2.0 Class

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Social Media and Web 2.0 is all about the collaborative, bidirectional flow of information.  It’s no longer a brand, company or authority figure dictating the rules.  As part of the course I’m teaching at NMIMS and ISB, I’m trying to apply the same principals and ask the students to help shape the class.   Here are some examples of what we are doin’:

  • We have a fairly active Google Wave which covers the course goals and meeting notes.  Students are free to edit the course outline, ask questions and suggest topics for future classes (please note you must be logged in to Google for this to work… the embed API is also fairly new – i.e. buggy):

[wave id="googlewave.com!w%252BjWA1cBmJA"]

  • We have a few really awesome guest speakers including:
  • Rather then a preassigned reading list, the students are being asked to share a few links weekly with each other via Twitter and Wave.
  • Students can ask questions/make suggestions/provide their own examples (via twitter and wave) during the class.
  • The students will be partnering with a local NGO to raise awareness or solicit donations for a social cause using social media and an SEM campaign (hopefully Yahoo! and Google will come through and donate some ad credits).  These projects will be posted publicly.

Other things I could be/should be doing:

  • Posting the course outline (as a wave) and inviting everyone whose registered for the ISB course to make their edits/suggestions (for topics or speakers)/questions/modifications prior to the start of the course.
  • Reaching out to students in these universities ahead of time (via Twitter) to build some hype and make sure the class is filled up.

Anyone else have any ideas on how to make the course better?  Let me know…

Intro to Social Media Videos

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Last week I gave two sessions on Social Media Marketing at SPJain. Videos and slides below… let me know what you think:


Intro to Social Media – Part 1 – SP Jain – Dec 09 from Amit Klein on Vimeo.



Intro to Social Media – Part 2 – SP Jain – Dec 09 from Amit Klein on Vimeo.


Intro to Social Media
View more presentations from Amit Klein.

Want to be a billion dollar company? Get 28mil users

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Business models on the web are undergoing a massive transformation. Originally mimicking the print industry (advertising revenues based on circulation numbers), we are now only beginning to explore real value adding, revenue generating opportunities which leverage the real-time, social, location-aware, collaborative nature of the web. While there are companies who are strategically concerned with building a profitable enterprise from the getgo (like 37signals, Zynga), there are many others who are concerned with building great products, attracting a huge user base and figuring out the home-run revenue streams later (most notably: Google, FB, Twitter).

There’s a ton of factors that come into play when choosing which route to take (do you have money? can you take the risk? are there obvious monetization opportunities now? by forgoing these are you putting yourself in a better position to capitalize on larger opportunities down the road?), but let’s assume for a sec you are in the user base game. How many user’s do you need to actually make some money. Here’s some back of the envelope stats (please take these with a grain of salt, some numbers here are estimates):

Site Valuation Number of Users Revenue Revenue per user per year Valuation per user
MySpace Bought for $580mil (2005) 100mil $200mil (2006) $2 $5.80
Facebook $10bil as per latest investment (2009) 300mil $300mil (2008 estimate) $1 $33.3
Twitter $1bil as per latest investment (2009) 9.8mil (unique monthly 2008) 0-not that significant $0 100/(9.8*12)=$8.50
YouTube Bought for $1.65bil (2006) 20mil (2006) $0 $0 $86
SNAP – Facebook App Maker Public Company Market Cap: $10mil (2008) 5.5mil $1.75mil (2008) $.28 $1.81
Google Public Company Market Cap: $173.57bil (2009) 144.293mil (unique monthly 2008) $21.795bil (2008) $12.58 1723570/(144.3*12) = $100.23
Yahoo Public Company Market Cap: $23.42bil (2009) 141.956mil (unique monthly 2008) $7.208bil (2008) $4.23 23420/(141.9*12) = $13.75


Some Observations:

  • There’s a big difference between market cap, investment round valuation and acquisition price, for the purposes of this exercise I combined them. There’s also a difference between registered users, active users, monthly unique visitors, etc… I needed someway to make comparisons, I’m smushing stuff up to draw comparisons.
  • I should probably add a few more companies like Skype, Paypal, eBay, Amazon, etc… to make this less search and social network focused.
  • Google crushes it $12/user/year damn dude…
  • YouTube founders are extremely lucky to get that kind of exit
  • Valuations and revenues don’t seem to be related (surprise)
  • Across all these companies the average revenue per user is: $2.87 and average valuation per user is: $35.62. Want to be a billion dollar company? You’ll need approximately 28mil users (I’m kidding… sort of)

What do you think? Is it better to play the userbase game or find ways to monetize immediately? Any way to make the above numbers more accurate? Any other conclusions you can draw from this data? Would love to hear from you…

Resources used:

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2008/10/Top_50_US_Internet_Sites
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/annuals.cfm
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/boom-twitter-more-than-doubles-unique-visitors-to-93-million-in-march/
http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html
http://www.investorplace.com/experts/douglas_mcintyre/articles/twitter-facebook-myspace-value.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=283
http://mashable.com/2008/01/16/snap-interactive/
http://247wallst.com/2007/02/16/googles_revenue/