VLAB Event – The Real Time Web: Imperative or Insanity?

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real time webThe cost of creating, sharing and distributing data in real time has become essentially zero, leading to an explosion of user generated content. Currently, every minute,

  • 500,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook,
  • 70,000 bit.ly links are clicked,
  • 25,000 messages are created on Twitter,
  • 1,000 blog posts go live, and
  • 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

Over the last decades, the amount of data created by individuals has doubled every 1.5 to 2 years. Technologies like pubsubhubbub and xmpp are making it easier to push that firehose of data out to users, with only a millisecond of latency from thought and distribution. But how do we effectively use that data to make decisions that drive value for consumers and businesses?  How much is too much to handle? And what’s the opportunity for the entrepreneur?

In this event, we engage with entrepreneurs, investors, and established players to separate reality from hype, and explore the following questions:

  • Is real-time technology just for pesky marketers and profit-hungry wall street traders, or is there something in there for the rest of us?
  • Where and how can real-time data help us make better decisions?
  • How can we enable users to effectively digest and manage the ever-increasing torrents of information?
  • What are the opportunities and possible new business models?
  • What psychological principles drive the addiction of ever changing, seemingly relevant real time data?
  • And what’s the real time entrepreneur to do about it?

When
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where
Stanford Business School

Register here

VLAB Event – The Internet of Things: Sensors Everywhere

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Today, an increasing number of pervasive and connected sensors are intelligently monitoring our daily lives and contributing to the rapid dissolution of the divide between our physical and digital worlds. This sensor revolution is creating anew layer of the Internet — what some analysts and researchers call the “Internet of Things”.

Driven mainly by innovations in power consumption, size and ubiquitous connectivity, sensors are gathering and reporting data on a variety of areas including medical,transportation, energy, security, general consumer and industrial manufacturing.

Gartner reports “By year end 2012, physical sensors will create 20 percent of non-video internet traffic.”

Come discover how new companies are addressing sensor-based market opportunities.

  • What sensors are currently embedded in the world, what data are they producing and how are businesses leveraging that data?
  • The coming 5 years promises to hold an explosion of ubiquitously embedded devices and sensors. Where will these sensors be and what will they do? And how will the data and analytics be of value to businesses and consumers?
  • What will be the primary pain points in a world characterized by sensors everywhere?
  • What are the top opportunities for start ups in the space and what will business models look like?

When
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
6:00pm – 7:00pm – Networking and Refreshment
7:00pm – 8:30pm – Panel Discussion and Q/A

Where
Stanford Business School

The event is sold out, but tickets may be available at the door following no-shows or last minute cancellations.

DoD Armed with New and Social Media

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The U.S. Department of Defense released on February 26, 2010 its official new media and social media policy. The Directive-Type Memorandum 09-026, which is effective immediately, states that DoD employees (including U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines) can use and participate in new media and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and forums.

Last year, David Meerman Scott interviewed Roxie Merritt, Director of New Media Operations at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in the DoD (the top social media person at the DoD) and told him about the need for this policy: “It’s not about controlling the message any more. It’s about giving people as much information and resources and facts as they can.”

Many large and small companies block employee access to YouTube, Facebook, and other social networking sites (David Meerman Scott’s guestimate is 25% US corporations). Some of the mentioned reasons are:

- Drain to productivity
- Security issue within the company computer systems
- People may harm the company brand should employees reveal too much information
- Bandwidth

With some three million employees, the DoD is one of the largest organizations in the world. And in fact, I hardly can think of any other organization to which security and information leaks could be more crucial. If the DoD can, so can any organization.

Got a cross-platform app for that?

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According to a recent eMarketer article based on a report from DM2PRO and Quattro Wireless, apps for social networks in addition to mobile apps are under consideration by more marketers than ever before. Among those marketers who already had an app in 2009, Facebook was the leading platform.

Spending on social apps, however, will stagnate even though more marketers have already developed the applications.

Fewer than one-half of marketers created either a mobile or social app in 2009, but most plan to invest in a mobile app this year. The iPhone is the platform of choice, followed by Android.

There’s some solid reasoning behind the choice to move more resources to mobile. According to Scott Monty “The strategy: [is to] create more opportunity for engagement with customers. On social networks, we’ll see a greater opportunity for reach, targeting and sharing, but with mobile there’s more creative control and the ability to have a message stick with the recipient longer.”

The top one-third of marketers using mobile apps planned to up their investments by 75% or more. The reasons:

  • increase in mobile use by target audience
  • increased standardization in mobile
  • better tools to build mobile apps
  • and notably: the ability to create flashed based cross-platform apps.

Summary: during 2010 we are going to see interesting cross-platform app based campaigns leveraging each of  the distinct characteristics of social and mobile.

VLAB Event – Virtual Goods

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Tomorrow night at 6pm in Santa Clara, California, the MIT/Stanford VLAB (Venture Lab) is hosting an event on the future of virtual goods titled Virtual Goods: Runaway Growth Opens New Opportunities to Monetize.

Virtual goods are quickly becoming a powerful new online monetization model, with users buying gifts, swords, clothes, and other digital items to enhance their experience in social networks and games.

Today the market for Virtual Goods (VG) is already $1 Billion in the United States alone, and is expected to grow 80% to $1,800,000 next year. In Asia, the market is already seven times that of the United States, $7 Billion and more amazingly, in China, VG revenues actually exceed on-line ad revenues.

This event is going to be very very interesting with Justin Smith founder of Inside Network, the first service dedicated to providing business information and market research to the Facebook platform and social gaming ecosystem as the moderator and Brian Balfour, Founder and VP Product Marketing at Viximo, Jude Gomila, Co-Founder and President of Heyzap, Bill Grosso, CTO and SVP Product at Live Gamer, as well as Owen Mahoney, CEO at Outspark as panelists. I’m very excited to be part of the team organizing this outstanding event.

Space is limited, reserve your spot today as we are projecting no walk-in tickets availability tomorrow. Look forward to seeing you there!

  • When: Tuesday, December 8, 2009
  • Time: 6:00pm – 8:30pm
  • Where: Sun Microsystems Auditorium SCA03, 4030 George Sellon Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054 (map) (not Stanford GSB)

Augmented Reality: The Esquire Case for Marketers

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Technically, augmented reality refers to the technology that layers different kind of information, for example pictures, sounds words, etc. over live video. In its December 2009 issue, Esquire placed augmented reality markers that using a computer with a webcam trigger additional digital content on the computer’s screen. The Barbarian Group provided the augmented reality technology and Psyop the animations.

I scanned the Esquire cover which you can download and print to try it yourself. To run the augmented reality, you’ll need a software which can be downloaded from Esquire here.

In the past I worked on various marketing campaigns that combined online and offline into a comprehensive marketing mix. The Esquire example certainly shows possibilities for a seamless marketing integration between the digital and real world. I can imagine a billboard campaign where consumers point their smartphones and access a tailored augmented reality according to location, time, weather and other info, and that can be also constantly updated with real time offers. Interesting possibilities, yet I believe there is still real friction for consumers: They have to download and install an application (and of course have a smartphone able to run it).

Startup Strategy 101

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You probably heard about Mint, the personal finance site that launched two years ago and was acquired for $170 million last month by Intuit.

The following video of Mint’s CEO Aaron Patzer’s presentation on building startups from the ground up, gives a lot of answers to questions presented to entrepreneurs launching a startup in Silicon Valley. I had to learn this stuff on the job– Aaron’s highly recommendable disclosures and advice includes:

  • Cofounders and employees
  • Incorporation
  • Financial modeling
  • Funding Rounds
  • Goals and milestones for each round
  • Handling investors

The presentation’s deck is available here .

Featured on BusinessWeek’s Business Exchange

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I will be the Featured User on Business Exchange on Wednesday, October 14 for 24 hours.

Business Exchange is a service of BusinesWeek that allows users to create business topics, collaboratively aggregate content and connect with other business focused users around these topics. The goal is to have access at the right time to actionable insight delivered in form of a feed.

Check my profile and contributions that led to be BX’s Featured User here .

Featured_on_Businessweek

Your brand is what your customers say it is

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Your customers have their own idea about your brand and with today’s social technologies they communicate with each other and decide what your brand is. Listen to what they say and:

  1. Find out what your brand stands for: Monitor the difference between the message you are trying to get across with what your customers or people and general are talking about.
  2. Understand how the conversation is shifting in time: Social media can give you better answers than surveys on a weekly or even daily basis. There is a growing evidence about the correlation between social media buzz and sales.
  3. Identify the influence sources: Find the people talking about your products, the so called influencers and cultivate them.
  4. Manage PR crises: Monitoring your brand is an early warning system allowing to respond to a crisis before it escalates.
  5. Generate new ideas: Listen and you can tap into the ideas your customers may have for new products or services

If listening to your customers is your current goal, expect at some point to be talking to them using social technologies– every fruitful conversation includes listening and talking.

Your social media plan in four steps

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You realized your company needs to get involved in Social Media, but don’t know how to implement it? Follow these four proven steps to create your Social Media plan:

  1. Define the engagement type of your customers
    It is crucial to know what your customers are already doing– your strategy should leverage this activity. Define whether they tend to be creators (of content), critics (posting ratings, reviews, etc.), collectors (of information), joiners (of networking sites), spectators (reading blogs, listening podcasts, etc) or are simply inactive. A helpful tool for this assessment can be found here.
  2. Define your Social Media goal
    Your company can pursue five basic goals with social media:

    • Listen: The use of Social Media for research and better understanding of your customers
    • Talk: The use of Social Media to extend the existing digital marketing spreading messages about your company
    • Energize: The use of Social Media to fuel viral marketing via your most engaged customers
    • Support: The use of Social Media to enable customers to support each other
    • Embrace: The use of Social Media to crowd-source your product/service development
  3. Define your Social Media strategy
    Basically the Social Media strategy should provide an answer to the questions: a) how will you engage your customers? and b) how will this engagement grow over time? Keep always in mind that the Social Media strategy should align the type of engagement of your customers with your company’s Social Media goal. For example you don’t want to build a social media strategy to enable customers to support each other (Support Goal) only to find out that your customers are more like to join social networks like Facebook (joiners group).
  4. Define your Social Media platform/technology
    Last but not least, it is relatively easy to decide on the appropriate technology (blogs, wikis, widgets, social networks, etc.) once you defined the engagement type of your customers, your social media goals and strategy.