Archive | 2010

The Gold Rush to develop the local ad sales army

Yesterday’s news of Groupon’s massive $950 million financing round wasn’t unexpected, and just confirms their intent to build a sales army to dominate SMB business in the same way Yellow Pages held sway over local advertisers in the 20th Century. Morgan Brown explains the new Groupon strategy well: Groupon knows that in order to grow [...]

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8 Major Social Commerce Trends for 2011

8 Major Social Commerce Trends for 2011

“Social commerce” became a buzz word in the summer of 2010: Here are eight new trends in social commerce that will appear in 2011: 1) Demand based shopping applications Groupon demonstrated how supply in the form of retail inventory can be packaged into deep discount opportunities. Demand is the inverse – how many people in [...]

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Reviewing 2010 – based on 2009 media predictions

Reviewing 2010 – based on 2009 media predictions

One year ago, I listed ten media predictions for 2010. Here’s an update. Many of my predictions are still work in progress: 1) Community engagement will become the driver of new local media. One definitive result: 2010 brought the expansion of AOL’s Patch across almost 200 cities, each with a salaried managing editor. It’s important [...]

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High brow culture meets Facebook, and exposes biased judging

High brow culture meets Facebook, and exposes biased judging

Another example of closed door politicking going by the wayside. All competitions with international judging need to disclose judge scores, particularly those dealing with subjective cultural and artistic sensibilities. The organizer for the prestigious International Frederyk Chopin Competition held every five years decided to disclose the judges’ scores a month later. And even better, the [...]

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Social Commerce is currently unsocial

Social Commerce is currently unsocial

With Groupon currently the poster child for social commerce, there’s a lack of true social interactions in the current nascent state of social commerce beyond “sharing” the deal with your buds. The group buying concept is essentially another ploy to get folks to buy something in the traditional e-commerce sense. How do deals become social? [...]

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Living Social receives $175 million investment from Amazon.

The consolidation of the group buying systems continues: LivingSocial (www.livingsocial.com) has secured a $175 million investment from Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN). LivingSocial has also secured an additional $8 million investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners. LivingSocial will use this investment to maintain a steady drumbeat of worldwide launches and overall business growth while continuing to serve more [...]

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Deals Aggregation, Deal Feeds and Syndication Networks (Slideshow)

Deals Aggregation, Deal Feeds and Syndication Networks (Slideshow)

The next phase of Group Buying Systems View more presentations from Pat Kitano. Groupon announced its new Deal Feed that allows consumer to customize and monitor and filter the types of deals and merchants they want to track. The Deal Feed works in coordination with the new Groupon Stores product so that consumers can “follow” [...]

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Evolutionary Product Development goes into Overdrive

Evolutionary Product Development goes into Overdrive

Innovation has gone into overdrive as Facebook, Google and Yahoo! serially announce a plethora of innovative products every week. This week brings: Facebook messaging – social email that allows Facebook to access all their emails without ever leaving Facebook. Google Hotpot – a recommendation engine associated with Google Places that roams right into Yelp territory, [...]

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Twitter as Utility – the reason Twitter can’t identify the killer business model

Twitter as Utility – the reason Twitter can’t identify the killer business model

“Twitter : One-to-many real time broadcast” from Mary Meeker, Web 2.0 presentation, November 16, 2010 Twitter has evolved into an efficient online broadcast media that it was destined to be. In fact, Twitter has become a broadcast platform akin to any communication media – i.e. radio or TV. It’s a utility. It’s the reason why [...]

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Ten ways Facebook Deals changes the local deals landscape

Ten ways Facebook Deals changes the local deals landscape

Facebook announced yesterday that businesses can add deals and rewards for their customers who check in through Facebook Places. The impact on local advertising is huge: 1. Deals will be everywhere The “Deal” becomes the currency of local advertising because it is performance based, efficient for reaching the customer and isn’t burdened with the CPM-based [...]

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