veryrecent.com

I have not blogged for a long time. However, I found a subject that I believe is worth the time. I came across http://veryrecent.com the other day. It is an interesting site that allows searching of the dynamic parts of web 2.0. Tom Churm is the Developer/Owner of this site as far as I can determine. The site itself was not what caught my attention. It was the comments about veryrecent.com that drove me to blog again. Many of the comments had observations that were cosmetic. Reviewers wanted this feature or that look. No one was looking at VALUE!!! I looked at veryrecent.com and asked myself how this can make me MONEY!! Because in business, value is measured in dollars. As a recent McKinsey Report stated, “Assembling bits of information, facts, and anecdotes helps companies to make sense of what’s happening in an industry.” Today, many industries are in a state of uncertainty. When I tested veryrecent.com I found the results were returned from the most dynamic parts of Web 2.o. Now I would never act on the results of a search alone. Such data should be just one of many sources of information. That said, I believe Tom Churm has created a service that offers value on several fronts. For a new Internet offering value is vital to reaching critical mass that will allow it to survive. Some of the areas of value I found were:

• Protecting ones brand.
• Identifying who is shaping opinion.
• Assembling bits of random information.
• Quick means to identify vocal minority and active communities.
• Means to dissect content that is getting traction from similar content that is not getting traction.

There are many more sources of value that something like veryrecent.com could provide. It will be interesting to see if Tom Churm focuses on identifying and delivering value, or will the focus be on appeasing the critics.  Don’t get me wrong customer feedback is important. The customer is King. However, sometimes the King is blind and needs to be taught to see the value. The key seems to be to identify the KEY value and demonstrate the delivery of this KEY value.

Could this be your christmas shopping in 2008?

It’s the Christmas shopping season in 2008. I go to my local shopping mall and jump into the “3D Body Scanner” to have my body scanned and my exact clothing measurements taken. The results are uploaded to my Facebook account so I can share them with my friends. I also include my favorite colors, styles, etc. Now my friend Jamie can look at my measurements and go to “Size Me Up” to see what size and style of clothing she needs to purchase to match my actual measurements. Jamie may need a second opinion so she goes to a social shopping site like Stylehive and gets advice.  Jamie is convinced she has the perfect items so she goes to Amazon and orders the item. My present arrives at my door ready for Christmas.

Coupon Trains threat or opportunity?

Retailwire had a lot of interesting comments on their article “CPGmatters: How are illegal “coupon trains” hurting CPG brands?”. It seems that some manufactuers and retailers may be concerned about a practice called “Coupon Training”. [Here's how the scheme works: A person posts a "train" on a coupon website, such as Families.com, Mommysaver.com or Hotcouponworld.com. That person is the "conductor" and others sign up as "riders." When the "train" has enough passengers, it "leaves the station." This means the conductor mails a package of coupons to the first rider, then to the second, and so on. Along the way, expired coupons are tossed.]

 

People are using social networks to trade coupons. As several people who commented on this article noted trading coupons is not new. It has been done for generations. It is just that social networking is now making this practice efficient and nationwide. If you leave off counterfeit, stolen coupons and free coupons, should manufactuers be fighting this trend or should the be working to see how to make these forms of social networks work for them? As one person commented in the article, you already have money being spent to do viral marketing, and people are emailing friends and family coupons to people in their personal social networks.

 

Could not manufacturers and retailers be using these coupon trains as a distribution channel. If one really takes the time to think about it there are a number of ways that these coupon social networks could be used to the benifit of manufacturers and retailers. The ones that see these ways and develop them will be winners in the long run.

Is 3-D going anywhere?

Dr.Dobb’s has interesting article about progress IBM and Linden Labs are making advancing the 3-D Internet. 3-D is here to stay and understanding the emerging environment will be the key to making it payoff for businesses. How will 3-D meshes with the rest of web 2.0? In what ways can real life and virtual relate. That is what Transreality is all about. So I believe this area is worth an investment of time and money to gain understanding. This is why I am working on my Transreality Experiment in Second Life.

Forget the web page

Social Networking is changing the way we do business. I am trying to take advantage of this in my Second Life Transreality Experiment.  CIO Insight has a great example of this from CIO of FedEx Rob Carter. When Mr. Carter opened he was informed by his partner ‘We really don’t need a Web site.’ They had been keeping their friends informed about the progress of their Club in MySpace. When they were ready to open it was just a matter of letting their friends know and letting the word spread.

Between IM, and the social networks it appears that the rules are changing. Who you know may really be more important in the web 2.0 world than what you know. I will keep this example in mind as I move forward with this experiment.