In the continuing saga of my Enterprise Web 2.0 class, we’re about to begin our end of semester project. The project involves creating a Second Life “Exploratorium” related to the book, Groundswell. The Exploratorium will be located on a large floating platform in the sky over ITWorld. I think this is a really neat idea, considering I found it to be a particularly enjoyable and insightful read. While we are tasked with representing the book as a whole, my part of the project will specifically center around my takeaways from Chapter 2,which is entitled “Jujitsu and the technologies of the groundswell.”

No, I won’t probably won’t be simply building a huge character in a Jujitsu keikogi, although that’s would certainly be a riot. Rather, since the authors of Groundswell chose the word because it means the “art of softness” or “way of yielding,” I will probably try to create something that demonstrates their intention. My ultimate product then, should reflect how firms can deftly turn the motions of the groundswell to their advantage. I’ll also try to highlight other interesting chapter topics as well.

So I finally joined Second Life, per our course.  I would have joined a bit sooner perhaps, but coming up with a name proved to be an experience in itself.  After doing a small bit of research I found a site called SLNameWatch that provides up to date listing of available last names, as well as specific information on their individual utilization.  According to the site, the names are grouped into pools which shift to different global portals every hour or so to ensure fairness in their distribution.   Since I’m an avid runner, once I saw the last name “Runner” was available I had to have it.   So for several days I’d track the names via the site waiting until the pool with “Runner” switched to a portal that was in English so could grab it.  At one point I had it at the main SL server group, only to have Firefox lock up when I clicked submit after the captcha, which totally sucked.  Anyway, last night I was able to track it to the “newBerlin” api(portal) and sucessfully register the name: “Houston Runner.”  Also, by registering through that portal they also gave me $100 Linden once I arrived-  Sweet!  :0)  Oh and forgive my appearance, the SL app is unfortunately lagalicious for the most part, so I really got tired of trying to spruce up my avatar,  will tackle it some other time.

I think the most interesting aspect of the advent of the life-changing, uni-number phenom now known as Google Voice is the immediate impact it will most likely have on other voice communication related service providers.   Many of it’s seemingly limitless calling features were founded by Grand Central of course, but market wise Grand Central is no Google.   Once this service officially launches, it should certainly turn Grand Central’s existing ~100k user base figure into the millions in a year, if not a month.

Drowning in it the subsequent wake will be fee-based voice transcribing companies like Call-wave, Spinvox and PhoneTag, conference calling providers such as the award-winning FreeConferenceCall.com, and- dare I say it- Skype.com, the reigning champion of Internet based telephony.

Skype’s case is of particular interest to me because I’ve been a member for a several years, and used Skype extensively for my calling needs during a semester this past summer in Europe.  After reading in the NYT article that Google has undercut Skype in its international calling rates to some countries,  I went to Skype.com to see.  Sure enough, Skype is at $.021 to France for example, while Google per the author is at $.02.  Seems pretty negligable, but the amounts can add up fast.

Either way, perhaps the  strongest reponse by Skype  to the announcement of Google Voice came last month, as it began offering its first-ever  subscription based calling plans.   A game effort to try to retain at least a measure of its customer-base before the slaughter begins, and I as a user obviously wish them the best.  In fact, I wish all the listed companies the best, as well as the many others who will soon fall victim to progress.   Can’t say I’m really helping things much myself however, just signed up for the waiting list this afternoon.

Sources

http://about.skype.com/2008/04/skype_announces_unlimited_long.html

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342917,00.asp

http://www.freeconferencecall.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/technology/personaltech/12pogue.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&em

It’s it’s efforts to redefine beauty and sell more product along the way, Dove did an excellent job conversing with the groundswell.

I thought their first two vids were really well done, particularly the first one “Evolution,” as evidenced by it’s 8 or so million hits.   I was simply amazed that they were able to develop and deliver such effectiveness of concept in only 60 seconds.

Yet, the latter videos involving the “real beauties” themselves somewhat turned me off, and trust me, I’m no prude.  I thought the un-ending displays of half naked women went overboard and simply wasn’t nedeed to get Dove’s point accross.  As a male I of course could be biased, but the fact that it was banned from TV in the US tells me I wasn’t the only one who felt this way.

However this latter point brings up why in the end Dove’s viral films were a great strategy.  Who really cares about being banned from US media, when women of all ages around the globe can see these videos on youtube?  To then capture these viewers, in parallel Dove launched their campaignforrealbeauty website, where women are able to meet and discuss notions of beauty as well as femininity in general.  Through this strategy,  Dove was able to capture exactly what riding the groundswell is all about.

But not so fast- the dark side to the groundswell from a business perspective,  especially to mass market global conglomerates  like Unilever in general, is that sometimes the groundswell bites back.  Dove’s notion of it’s own real beauty was publicly challenged by Greenpeace in the 60 second video, “Onslaught(er),” a play on Dove’s own “Onslaught.” The video was just as well produced, and served as a stark reminder that our modern beauty products don’t come without tremendous costs.

The video spearheaded Greenpeace’s campaign, allowed them to capture the groundswell as well,  resulting in Dove last year agreeing to support Greenpeace’s call for an immediate moratorium on deforestation for palm oil plantations.  In their efforts to protect the environment,  Greenpeace’s own use of the groundswell proved just as effective as Dove’s.

Cellfire, a company out of California, offers a service that allows consumers to receive coupons on their cell-phones and then show them at the register to cash in on the savings.

The service already has over a million users and the firm has over 200 paid advertisers, including Sears, Kroger and Jiffy Lube. These marketers in turn pay Cellfire both an upfront fee and a subscription fee based on the number of users retrieving their particular coupons. To ensure delivery of their services to consumers Cellfire has agreements with major cell-phone providers, such as AT&T, Verizon & Sprint.

How neat is that?

It’s probably best to first distinguish between customers and users:

• Meebo primarily appeals to users who have existing Instant Messaging accounts and users who are on the go, thus lacking access to local IM desktop applications.

• It could also be observed that Meebo’s users are generally younger, and therefore fairly in tune with IM technologies. Per Meebo.com, the current median user is 21.

• Quite frankly, at 40 million unique users the user base of Meebo is huge, and should continue to grow to ridiculous proportions. It’s no surprise considering Meebo encompasses the usership of the top IM apps in circulation, including AOL IM, Yahoo IM, MSN IM, Google-Talk, and MySpace IM. The firm’s IM traffic already exceeds 80 million messages a day.

However the current revenue producing participants- which are therefore the actual paying customers- of Meebo are most likely advertisers:

Meebo would most likely appeal to:

• Advertisers who want access to Meebo’s enormous user base

• Advertisers who want to reach a youthful, active, and tech savvy audience

• Advertisers who want to bring customer fan/hobby/media/product/service discussions to their websites, using Meebo Rooms and Widgets

My class group- Team Discovery- is going with Meebo.com as a business model case study.

We are tasked to investigate Meebo and identify how the firm functions, what prodcuts/services they offer, and how they package themselves to/interact with their customers.  We are attempting to ascertain how Meebo  generally competes in the global marketplace, while paying particular consideration to their use of information systems and Web 2.0 technologies.  We should further ascertain a fair estimation of Meebo’s success and/or failure based on their current business model.

We’re attempting to invite a member of the Meebo team to speak with our class regarding their exploits, either in person or via Skype.  We’re now in the process of sending emails to the following team members in hopes they might respond and share a few moments:

Danny embed@meebo.com

Michael  ads@meebo.com

-and just in case:

The Whole Team comments@meebo.com

Wish us luck!  The fact that our class is in the evening (6-9pm cst) might increase our chances of success, so we’ll see!

According to the book Groundswell, this is actually the case.  Constant Contact strives for integrity in their email marketing and fosters an environment to this effect.  Their policy regarding spam is intense, for example in Groundswell, the authors describe how one user was flagged and their account suspended, for only 6 spam reports in over 2000 emails.  Take a moment to review their anti spam policy.

To nurture an environment of trust, Constant Contacts started a user community forum where b2b users can discuss techniques, successes and failures  with each other.   The Spam issue naturally became one of the top discussions in this community of email marketers, and Constant Contact was able to successfully leverage this discussion to demonstrate their seriousness about keeping their name as one of the only spam free email markters around.

Here’s a positive review ->

http://email-marketing-service-review.toptenreviews.com/constant-contact-review.html

Here’s a negative review ->

http://www.darrenbarefoot.com/archives/2007/05/constant-contact-if-youre-going-to-post-fake-comments-leave-the-office.html

Here’s a real user review ->

http://www.wolf-howl.com/22/constant-contact-review/

Here’s how much their stock has grown recently ->

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/05/12/constant-contact-the-check-s-in-the-email/

Last Wednesday (Feb 11th) I ran a fast 1 mile (~6:30ish) and then another slow 4.5 miles (~35:00) and called it a week, to taper for the V-Day Gimmie Some race…

I’m now happy to report my training is paying off, as I finished the Gimmie Some Sugar 5K in a personal record (pr) 19:44, which put me 5th overall & 2nd in my age group. Heck yeah! One of the splits was even sub 6, around 5:50.

However once again I forgot to stop my Garmin at the finish line,  so it’ll have a couple more minutes than it should when I get around to listing it.  I did the same thing during the Houston Half, as well as the Nike Human Race.   I’m just so exhausted at the end there you know?

But yeah, one of my life goals- a sub 20:00 5k- has finally been reached, so I guess it’s off to other pursuits.  In the meantime I’m going to tackle some school work, and should get back to training soon- I’ve got a 5 miler this weekend.

FriendFeed

Friend Feed is a Web 2.0 aggregation tool. I came across it on the Groundswell: “Blook Report” site.

The FriendFeed site motto/mission statement is:  FriendFeed helps you discover and discuss interesting stuff that your friends and family find on the web.

FriendFeed:

* aggregates all of your activity from the sites you choose using web crawling technologies similar to those used by search engines.

* For most sites, all you need to provide FriendFeed is your username, and the FriendFeed crawler will automatically find and broadcast all of your public activity on that site.

* For other sites, or for services that contain private data and require special forms of authentication, FriendFeed takes advantage of the APIs provided by those sites to collect your activity.

Developed by Stanford/Google alums Bret Taylor and Jim Norris, who among other things jointly developed the API for Google Maps.

FriendFeed currently interfaces with over 40 websites , most with Web 2.0 leaning models, including facebook, twitter, youtube, flikr, stumpleupon, slideshare, digg, etc…

The business plan from first glance seems to be for the team to continue to perfect friendfeed in the near term, before launching any specific business model. This is perhaps possible due to the existing wealth of the development team as former high level Google employees, well as access to readily available venture capital through connections with that work.  More research should show if this is in fact the case.