Helzerman's Odd Bits » beta

BuzzLogic Launches Conversational Dashboard

oddbits — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:15:38 +0000

Today, San Francisco based BuzzLogic launched its Conversational Advertising Dashboard – an easy to use tool designed to make media buying simple across a complex social media landscape. With ad budgets shrinking and the demand for quick, provable results higher than ever, advertisers are under the gun to get the most bang for their meager budgets. Add to this, the reality that both agencies and corporate marketing departments are laying off staff, and you have fewer resources working in pressure-cooker environments to produce quality ad content for a marketplace -microblogs, forums, and other venues where real time conversations happen- that is still not well understood.

As any account manager will tell you, the first question at the end of a campaign is not, “What did people think of the ad?”, it’s “Did the ad meet its target?”. And then the follow up questions…how many people clicked on it? …where did those clicks come from? …what were those people discussing? us? our competition? …did they already know our products? …and so on.

In other words, “Did the ad perform well, and can you prove it?”

BuzzLogic’s Conversational Advertising Dashboard for brands and agencies allows you to answer these questions with provable data that is not only easy to gather, but highly transparent and measurable for the client. This sort of data gathering and targeting is BuzzLogic’s specialty and part of what makes them successful with clients ranging from 360i to OmnicomMediaGroup, both of whom participated in, along with other customers, in an early beta of the dashboard. The platform is available in wide beta as of today.

According to the company, “BuzzLogic’s Conversational Advertising Dashboard gives advertising buyers and planners the tools they need to more effectively target and communicate messages to customer audiences and influence purchase decisions. Visual and metrics-driven insights provide full campaign transparency, showing which publishers are running the ads and the exact content in which the ads are placed. The tool also enables marketers to quickly scan historical posts by publisher and assess conversational tones. Additionally, a conversation social graph illustrates the sites that are contributing to and extending the conversational thread out to further engaged audiences. As a result, advertising messages and creative can be tailored to reflect the specific content of targeted conversations, driving more relevant, effective campaigns and, ultimately, deeper audience engagement and better ROI.”

“Brands want to be where customers are most engaged online and increasingly that’s within conversational media,” said John Donahue, global director of business intelligence analytics, OmnicomMediaGroup. “But, before advertisers can realize the promise of this platform, we need the insight, transparency and control that has been lacking thus far. BuzzLogic’s Conversational Advertising Dashboard is the only tool I’ve seen that makes it easy to understand online conversations as they relate to advertising performance, enabling us to increase the efficacy of campaigns and justify the spend.”

Courtney Hughes, VP Strategic Sales, BuzzLogic took me through a demonstration, based on real customer data, and all I can say is I wish I had a tool like this back in my agency days!

Conversational Advertising Dashboard features include:

Transparency: Visual and metrics-driven insights provide full campaign transparency, showing which publishers are running the ads and the exact content of conversations in where ads are being placed.

Social Intelligence: Conversation social graph provides a roadmap to understand the topics being discussed, the size of the conversation, and the publishers connecting around certain topics.

Performance Insights: Performance data available on a per-conversation basis, allowing advertisers to determine creative performance.

Campaign Control: Advertisers have complete control around where ads are placed, and can easily select sites for review and potential removal from campaigns.

Deeper Metrics: In addition to traditional campaign reporting on impressions and clicks, the Dashboard provides metrics within each conversation being targeted, including the IAB social media metrics, measuring conversation size, site relevance, author credibility and content freshness.

To use an example, let’s say your company has ads running on a particular blog and during the time your ad is running, the blog conversations are centered primarily around your company. You might find that those ads have a low click through rate because participants in that blog’s conversations are already expert on your company’s offerings and/or are existing customers. So, while at first blush, a you might think of pulling your ad from that site, the agency could argue that this captive audience of existing users might be a perfect target for up-sell ads or new beta announcements, etc. Clients might also see other surprising results, such as very high click through rates for their ads on sites where their competitors are the subject of discussion, as we saw in the demonstration I was given.
At the end of the day, anything that allows one to prove the value of their service whilst providing a real path to increased sales, especially in something as murky as online advertising -in the even more murky social conversational landscape- is worth its weight in virtual gold in my book. Very impressive.

Learn more: http://www.buzzlogic.com

Amazee Launches Activist Social Network

oddbits — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:36:06 +0000

Swiss company Amazee today launched a social network targeted toward Internet activists. The site allows users to create profiles and projects in order to collaborate with like minded people on causes of interest. Amazee was launched as a free platform, however the website makes the clarification that individuals or groups that are not non-profit will need to upgrade to a paid membership. Amazee is not the first platform for grassroots organizing. Two popular applications include Causes on Facebook and The Point, which is used for large scale activism.

Users on Amazee will find a variety of features for collaborating on and promoting their projects, such as the ability to create a project magazine to keep visitors informed on their cause. Each project has a “white board” where members can jointly edit documents. Amazee also offers features one would expect in a social network including photo and file uploads, a calendar, event planning, and to dos. Beyond that, Amazee allows project owners to seek sponsors for their cause. One method of sponsorship gives sponsors the option of supporting projects on Amazee via its ad sponsoring system. In this scenario, the sponsor buys advertising space next to the project he or she would like to support. The revenue this ad generates is split between the project and Amazee.

Microsoft-backed Social Network Wallop.com Goes Under

oddbits — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:55:47 +0000

Apparently even Microsoft’s backing isn’t enough to secure safety in the mercurial world of social networking. Wallop, an invite-only social network branded as “the exclusive social experience”, today posted the following message on their website:

Dear Wallop.com Member,

Thank you for being part of the Wallop beta social networking site. We really appreciate your feedback and support. The beta period will end on September 18th, 2008 – after that date you will no longer be able to access your account.

Wallop was backed by $13 million from Microsoft and venture capitalists including Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners and Consor Capital. The site was officially launched at the Demo conference in 2006.

Lycos adds video, other features to Webon social network platform

oddbits — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:00:22 +0000

Lycos this week announced that users can now add video to their Webon sites without the need for a third-party service. For those not familiar with the it, Webon is Lycos’s first internet application in full support of OpenSocial API (more on this below).

In a statement made on its blog, the company said;

We’re pleased to announce that you can now add video to your Webon sites without the need for a third-party service. If you have a home movie, screen capture, or other video file you’d like to add, just drag the Video icon from the editing toolbar onto your page. You’ll be prompted to select the video file you want to upload, and then a placeholder will keep you posted on the progress of the upload and encoding of the video. Once encoding is complete, the video will appear automatically just where you placed it, with standard player controls (play, pause, volume, and so on).

Unlike many sites, we don’t put any ads or Webon logos over your videos; they look just the way you want them to. You can also resize the dimensions of the video player to fit your site better.

Free accounts can upload a few short videos. If you want to host more, however, you’ll need to upgrade to a Personal Account, which now includes 100 videos of up to 10 minutes in length. (We do have to pay the bills somehow, after all.)

Webon is targeted toward a wide audience and features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface with familiar word processor-like text editing. But don’t let that fool you, with OpenSocial API support, users can build their own add-ons bringing a new level of interaction for the site programmer and options to the casual user, who can take advantage of add-ons designed by others. With the click of a button, even novice users can add blogs, photo albums, maps and other widgets. Webon also supports OpenID, which is quickly becoming the preferred way for many to maintain their identities online.

It’s refreshing to see one of the older companies in our industry adopt standards we’ve come to expect, along with some nice surprises. My favorite features are:

The ability to create a site without registering

The Webon blog that keeps users up to date on announcements, new features and styles

No ads on the free version

The ability to create sites from the same account

OpenSocial API support

You’ll note that my favorites list, with the exception of the last item, is not technical. That’s because there are a lot of good technical solutions. What’s tougher, is putting together a platform that people will actually want to built on. The list above is a solid foundation.

BlueHaze Launches Communities for Concert Fans on facebook, iPhone and the Web

oddbits — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:09:28 +0000

BlueHaze has announced the launch of a multi-platform community for concert fans at bluehaze.com, facebook, and the iPhone. While BlueHaze claims to be the first company in their space to launch in multi-platform, expect this to become the standard moving forward as people get more attached to their mobile devices and sites like facebook remain a core part of our web experience.

Targeted at concert goers, BlueHaze offers features including the ability to find local shows and buy tickets through partner sites. Users can check out what concerts their friends are attending and share concert photos, reviews and set lists with other fans. The site also allows members to scan their iTunes library and get tour alerts from their favorite artists.

I asked Mark Shedletsky, the CEO of BlueHaze, about his vision for the company.

Our goal at BlueHaze is enhance the live music experience for concert fans before, during and after the show.

Before the show, we aim to make it really easy to discover new bands and find shows – through local concert listings, tour alerts from your favorite artists, and the ability to see what shows your friends are seeing. We also give you an opportunity to socialize and meet other fans that have similar live music taste.

During the show, our iPhone app can be used to snap and share concert photos in real-time with other fans at the show. The photos are immediately available for viewing on the phone for the entire world to see, as well as on the site and facebook app. In short, we set out to create the dominant community to connect the hundreds or thousands of fans at each show to each other and to the artist – something that didn’t exist before BlueHaze.

After the concert, BlueHaze.com – and the facebook app – connect all of the fans together that were at the show and offer the chance to share photos, reviews, and set lists. In the near future, we will giving a handful of tools to artists to make it really easy for them to interact with their local fans that are actually paying to see them live.

BlueHaze is brand new on the scene having just launched on September 3rd (about a week ago, as of this writing), but already they’ve seen 40,000+ downloads of the iPhone app and they have a solid base of users on both the site and facebook application.

Shedletsky said, “The reaction to date has been amazing. We’re getting great user feedback and seeing lots of interactivity with the site and apps.” The blogging community and press has supported our launch completely, and at our demo yesterday, we received a ton of very positive feedback.”

One thing he said that struck me was, “Every concert is a community. For one night, in that one venue, you’re a part of something bigger.” Although I’m not really a live music fan, I distinctly remember the “feel” of big concerts I went to in my youth from artists like The Grateful Dead and Ozzy Ozbourne. I wonder what the experience will be like for today’s audiences getting together to chat about Molly Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers.

MeetingWave Brings Social Networking into the Real World

oddbits — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:00:25 +0000

We’re all online these days, but have we forgotten how to interact in person? With unemployment topping six percent, business networking is more important than ever and some people (albeit probably not antisocial folks like me) might want to get to know their neighbors. MeetingWave, recently launched in beta, is part of a trend toward social networking sites designed to enable offline interaction.

The concept is simple, you sign on to the free website, create a profile and post an invite to meet new people. You decide who can attend and how much information you want to share in advance on the location, details and particulars of the meeting. Feeling shy about posting an invite? You can also browse existing invites and accept any that are of interest. When I browsed the site for meetings in the Bay Area, I found listings around topics including real estate, mom’s groups, and even romance.

A large percentage of users are traveling business people who want to meet like minded people in cities they’re visiting. This was actually the inspiration for the site. I spoke with John Boyd, MeetingWave, CEO and Founder who said he originally thought of the idea in 1999 when he was a patent attorney and frequently traveling.

“My only options,” Boyd said, “would be eating in the hotel room alone or eating in the dining room where I was also alone. I thought it would be useful to have a networking tool where I could meet people when I was on the road.”

MeetingWave offers new users guidance on how to structure their invites to generate interest and provides easy step by step instructions making the process simple. The site also provides practical safety tips that should be followed in any offline networking setting, such as meeting in public places and bringing a friend with you if appropriate.

In addition to the current FAQs, Boyd pointed out that there will soon be a “features” page dedicated to explaining how the site works and highlighting useful features people might miss, such as the ability to import contacts from Linked-In, GMail, Yahoo! Mail and other web mail services, forward invites of interest to friends for their review, use RSS to be notified of new invites of interest and more.

By the end of Q4 2008 the company plans to roll out a geolocation platform on either Blackberry or iPhone that would allow users to do things such as search for meetings on a particular topic within a certain distance, such as 10 miles, of their current location or be notified of invites of interest based on their location. Other features in the works include email notifications of new invites of interest and widget technology that would enable users to seamlessly integrate MeetingWave into existing social networks on sites such as Ning.

Asked about his feelings on the Beta program Boyd said, “We’re excited about moving forward.”

As well he should be. With possible applications ranging from end user social networking to closed systems for setting up meetings at places such as large conferences and tradeshows, MeetingWave has a lot of market potential.

Beta – whereIstand Social Network, See How Your Opinions Compare

oddbits — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:03:54 +0000

Almost everyone loves a good debate, be it on the election happening in the United States this year, or on topics like sport or (my personal favorite) important issues like whether or not Britney Spears will F things up at the MTV Awards again this year (of course she will!).

A social network has recently launched beta (term used loosely since the community appears to be thriving and is quite sophisticated) that allows you to do just that and more.The site, whereIstand.com, is a new Web 2.0 opinion aggregator that people can use to express, find or compare opinions on issues that are important to them.

Even those, who don’t like to debate, may find interest in comparing their views with the public at large, or comparing the opinions of various politicians and celebrities against each other. The options available are pretty impressive.

According to Geoff Decker, Senior Editor, whereIstand.com, public figures are increasingly becoming part of the whereIstand community. Decker said,

We’ve enabled a feature that will allow public figures with accounts on whereIstand to have the ability to take their own stands. Previously, it was the users who are charged with the responsibility of finding evidence for a public figure’s opinion – through information that’s publicly available on the Internet. However, after several public figures expressed an interest in taking their own stands, we created a “public figure member” account for them. Users can still post evidence of their opinions, but the public figure members can take stands as well on issues that that they have an opinion of.

OB readers will find this bit particularly interesting. Decker provided some new details on the site’s prediction analysis along with a link to a report,

At the mid season point of the 2008 MLB baseball season, whereIstand released a report on the accuracy of prediction of public figures for which team would win each respective division. The report can be seen here and it is based on whereIstand issues and opinions, such as Who will win the AL East? (other five related prediction issues can be found on right hand column, under “Related Issues”).

In the coming months, whereIstand developers will begin to distinguish prediction issues by marking which prediction, or pick, turns out to be correct once the event is concluded. Based on this information, you’ll be able to see the history of public figure and member predictions and how often they were right and how often they were wrong. For the prognosticators who are predicting who will win the 2008 presidential election, we will be able to hold them accountable.

Oddpodz Launches Creative Services Social Network –Beta Now Available- CEO Gives 4 Tips to Avoid Getting Scammed

oddbits — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:23:17 +0000

Oddpodz has released a new online destination for creative services professionals, Idea Engine, into beta. According to the company, the social network, “is leveraging technology and online marketing to bring creative buyers and sellers together in an educational, inspiring, and interactive environment called a creative Idea Engine. The Idea Engine brings collaboration, content, and connections to one place for creative professionals and business.”

Having visited a number of online talent-based communities (mostly around programming) over the years, I asked Karen Post, CEO of Oddpodz , about Idea Engine, and what sets it apart. Here is what she had to say.

“Our vision for Oddpodz is to build a very robust community of buyers and sellers of creative services. The differences between Oddpodz and the other creative service type sites are, our focus will not be limited to a sector of providers or buyers, but profile of this market. They will tend to be entrepreneurial, optimistic and change agents driven by new thinking, ideas, collaborating and the best resources, not the lowest price. Our near future tools, site features and off-line activities will deliver in these. Plus our leadership team has been on both sides of this world, as buyers and sellers.”

Hiring talent in a global economy has obvious price advantages but also carries risk since you’re often dealing with individuals you will never meet in person. I asked Ms. Post about checks and security offered by Oddpodz .

“Our next phase of the site development will include basic verified vendor service standards, and an advanced premium vendor accreditation system. Additionally, we plan on offering a variety of personalized services as part of our membership levels.”

Karen Post’s top four pieces of advice for anyone beginning the vendor selection process for creative content online (regardless of which website or service they choose) are as follows:

1. Working and communication style along with chemistry are more important than price.
2. Talk to other companies that are your size and like you about this vendor. A big client list means nothing.
3. If a deadline is important, include a penalty for missed deadlines.
4. If you are spending over 100,000 have an attorney review the contract before you sign up.

Visit the site at http://Oddpodz .com

Tween Social Network Tries Personal Approach to Keep Pervs at Bay

oddbits — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:00:34 +0000

New meeting place for tween girls or poaching ground for predators?

She’s too old for kiddie sites, too young for MySpace, acts like she’s 11, looks like she’s 17 -and in reality, she’s around 13. Sound like your daughter? If so, the people behind Beacon Street Girls, have developed a social network in beta now and scheduled for official release this fall that is targeted squarely at her and her tweener friends.

Geared toward girls too old for Webkinz and too young for Facebook, Beacon Street Girls aims to “provide provides girls 9-13 with a myriad of online activities designed to satisfy their ever-growing need to create and communicate with each other.”

What interests me about the site (Odd Bits doesn’t typically cover the Tween-scene) is it’s unique approach to keeping predators at bay, since at first glance –let’s face it- the site looks like a perv’s dream come true.

I asked Bobby Carlton, Director of Marketing what steps they take, in addition to the privacy measures outlined on the site in detail (which include not allowing members to give out any personal information including name, school, address, email, etc.), to ensure that predators to not sneak in through the well used comment system. After reading through several dozen comments, for example, I found several that sounded surprisingly articulate for the average 12 or 13 year old girl. This was her response:

All the comments are reviewed by grownup monitors BEFORE they are posted — either our staff or a small group of people we know personally. No personal information is allowed so there is no way for a predator to get access to a kid. We frequently perform what we’ve taken to calling “surgical edits” where we actually edit the post to take out names, school names, anything more specific than a state or country. In other words, a predator could get on the site but couldn’t accomplish anything. Frankly, it is more likely that a kid will be targeted for bullying by someone they know and we spend a lot of time trying to keep mean or ambiguous comments off the site. I personally take monitoring shifts to keep up on what is going on — we’re more likely to see a kid trying to give out their email address to their new found friends, or someone typing in gibberish or a long string of exclamation points than anything else.

Virtual world and toy industry analyst Sean McGowan, Needham & Company LLC, agrees with the placement of the Beacon Street Girls between Webkinz or Club Penguin and Facebook, and sees the growth potential for the site. “The Beacon Street Girls are targeting a marketplace with a readymade feeder system. Sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz are giving children a taste of social networking and whetting their appetite for the more sophisticated fare Club BSG serves. Meanwhile, the continuing popularity of brands with online-offline connections means that the company has a real revenue stream and an existing audience.”

According to B*tween Productions, safety is paramount on the Beacon Street Girls site. Company materials state that, “while Club BSG mimics the “friending” and social networking conventions found on teen and adult sites, the Beacon Street Girls’ website controls do not allow any direct contact between strangers. Girls build their profiles by making selections from pre-defined menus. All comments are reviewed by adult monitors before they are published to the site. Only posts that follow all the “Club Rules” are allowed. No personal information is collected.”
It has yet to be seen if B*tween Productions will be able to support the increased costs of the personal monitoring system if the numbers increase. Also, tweens are an especially fickle audience and, just as 17 Magazine is widely read by 12 year olds, not 17 year olds, it is hard to say if they’ve rightly targeted their audience. I’d rate this as a wait and see, but, in terms of their approach to warding off predators, history has proven that human involvement trumps technology every time, so in that case, at least I think their approach is spot on.

Helzerman's Odd Bits » beta

BuzzLogic Launches Conversational Dashboard

Related posts

Amazee Launches Activist Social Network

Related posts

Microsoft-backed Social Network Wallop.com Goes Under

Related posts

Lycos adds video, other features to Webon social network platform

Related posts

BlueHaze Launches Communities for Concert Fans on facebook, iPhone and the Web

Related posts

MeetingWave Brings Social Networking into the Real World

Related posts

Beta – whereIstand Social Network, See How Your Opinions Compare

Related posts

Oddpodz Launches Creative Services Social Network –Beta Now Available- CEO Gives 4 Tips to Avoid Getting Scammed

Related posts

Tween Social Network Tries Personal Approach to Keep Pervs at Bay

Related posts