On Gushcloud, gushers (users performing tasks on Gushcloud) are rewarded for promoting the brands and products that they like and in return, receive monetary rewards. Tasks include liking or sharing a Facebook page, tweeting, blogging, doing a survey and many others.

For companies or individuals that want to market or get their message out, Gushcloud offers a fuss-free way of creating buzz. This makes social media marketing easy for everyone by tapping on the power of crowd sourcing. Co-founder, Althea realises certain key trends and problems within the social marketing sphere and says, “There was a gap between how brands would like to communicate their ideas and products directly to the consumers, and Gushcloud was built to fill up that gap.”

I have personally tried and tested the platform. I must say that this is definitely an easy way to earn money while surfing the Internet. The extra ka-ching is just a Facebook post away!

The user experience is great. From the cheerful and ‘cutesy’ layout of the website to the ease of performing tasks, gushcloud makes gushing an enjoyable and effortless experience for its users. The simple step-by-step procedure for creating a task or ‘gushcloud’ also makes it easy for anyone to reach out to the online community.

Below is a short interview e27 had with Althea and Vincent, founders of Gushcloud:

Many startups encounter problems marketing their products. What advice do you have for early startups to gain traction?

Start with the basic idea, test it on your target audience, iterate and get a better product fit. Rinse and repeat. Gushcloud started with the backing of our digital marketing agency and our existing relationships with youth influencers. We could tap into that community easily.

For your startup, don’t procrastinate or operate in a silo. Work with potential customers/partners from the onset, be close to your target audience/market and keep networking. Someone might have the right community for your widget/website that you can potentially leverage. If you can’t find customers or users willing to use your product or service early, maybe its time to rethink the idea or pivot fast.

How does Gushcloud differentiate itself from other online crowd sourcing marketing platforms?

Gushcloud makes online marketing and advertising a rewarding social activity. In typical crowd sourcing platforms, you are not a part of a community. Instead, you are more of a contractor looking for jobs posted by vendors, occasionally. Building a relationship might be a goal but more often than not, it is a transaction. Gushcloud was built to help businesses start forming relationships with consumers in ways that complement Facebook and Twitter.

Businesses know who they are targeting and they can target communities instead of just individuals. On Gushcloud, they can look for influencers (other crowd sourced marketing platforms don’t measure influence).

Focus on marketing/advertising: Gushcloud makes it easy for anyone to do digital marketing. No complicated briefs or specifications and we’re not limited to paid tasks. Businesses or non-profits can also post favours.

About Gushcloud:

Gushcloud is social media platform that allows anyone with a message or marketing need to connect with an online target audience and reward them for promoting the message on social networks or performing marketing tasks such as completing a survey.

The company was founded in March 2011 by Ms. Althea Lim (CMO) and Mr Vincent Ha (CEO). Both have been in the online marketing business for the last 2 years in The Barnett Group, an agency that specializes in digital and social media marketing co-founded by Althea. Their CTO, Mr. Bryan Chow has over 10 years of experience in tech startups, mostly in Silicon Valley.

In early November 2011, the core team participated in the 8th Founder Showcase international pitch competition and came in 2^nd in terms of Judges scores and 3rd place for overall position. Gushcloud is the only Singaporean team that has made it to the top 10 of Founder Showcase.

Game Ventures is a gaming company that is based in Singapore and was started with a team of three, including Zaki Mahomed, Hamaad Ravda and Rahil Virani, in 2009. The company states on their website that they develop and publish the world’s finest competitive social games. Listed in their portfolio are four games namely Homerun Heroes, Howzat Cricket, XuQa and Pokerama. The company is now much focused on social sports gaming thus attention is on Homerun Heroes and Howzat Cricket.

e27 was privileged to meet up with the CEO of Game Ventures, Zaki Mahomed to chat about the new developments that they are working on.

The first obligatory question of the day was regarding what is up and coming for Game Ventures. Zaki shared much with us, starting with how Game Ventures is set on producing sports games. There is potential in this genre as  it has not been explored sufficiently on Facebook and other social networks, despite being very a very popular profit-center for mobile, console and PC gaming. The first sports game that Game Ventures built for Facebook was Howzat Cricket and it has been launched on Facebook since April 2011 in an open beta, gathering 425,000 active players to date, making it Singapore’s largest Facebook game. The newest game that is being pushed out is Homerun Heroes that was just released one week ago and to be officially launched by the end of this month on 6Waves, the world’s largest independent network for social games on Facebook. As we understand from Zaki, the team has been conscientiously doing their homework and is making good use of everything learnt from Howzat Cricket and applying it to Homerun Heroes. It  is highly likely that Howzat Cricket would achieve the same success!

In other aspects, the recent trip that Zaki took to the USA was for work purpose and more specifically, he was there to get publishers on-board for both of the games. Zaki is also in the midst of forming a board of advisers and was willing to only disclose one member, Bret Terrill, to us. However, we did manage to find out that most of the advisers would be US-based. When asked why there is no Singaporean on the board of advisers, Zaki said that they were looking for people who were in the industry or have been there for a while and there are few such  resources here in Singapore. The formation of this board of advisers would propel them towards becoming the best in the world in this genre, not just in Asia or in Singapore, by providing insights and guidance to Game Ventures.

Another piece of exciting news is that Game Ventures has recently raised more money in the amounts of S$800 000 from Neotany Labs, Digital Garage Japan, IIPL (IDA) and NRF. This amount of money would go far in funding the building of the games and marketing them to the mass market. Game Ventures is also foraging into mobile gaming apps but the concern that Zaki has was the fragmentation of the current mobile market and the need to build for at least two different platforms. The company size has also expanded to 50 people because young talent is constantly being groomed into tech leaders to keep the supply of developers constant ensuring that Game Ventures never encounters a developer shortage.

Game Ventures has also started to sign BD deals with ESPN, Ibibo, Spil Games, and others for their games. Sharing more about ESPN, Zaki basically outlined their strategy in collaborating with ESPN. Previously, ESPN has a games page that offered simple games in Flash that they are monetizing the audience directly. With the collaboration, Howzat Cricket is available on that website using Facebook Connect, drawing targeted traffic from sports fans who visit regularly. Logically, with a more interesting game, more people would be inclined to visit the page and play the game, driving traffic and increasing advertising revenue for ESPN alongside gaining new gamers for Game Venture. But the real win here for ESPN is the new monetization channel of virtual goods, which was not available with the previous set up. This results in more engaged, happier users who comeback more often and generate more income for both the developer and partner.

Zaki is convinced that sports gamers share a similar DNA and part of how he aims to make the games a huge success is to thoroughly understand the DNA make-up of these gamers to appeal to them and more importantly, engage them and thus retaining them. With an average of two to five percent of the gamers making purchases within the game, the business model is sound and is expected to bring in at least two to three million dollars in profit.

Game Ventures is also one of the few local companies that have ventured into capitalising on the Social Graph of Facebook. Though Zaki wishes that Facebook is friendlier to smaller developers, he adopts a “take it and deal with it” mentality. The benefits of capitalising on Facebook seems to have paid off.

While gamers are scattered throughout the world, Howzat Cricket sees a following in India, Pakistan, the UK, US and Australia. Homerun Heroes would probably see traffic from US and Japan. Zaki is quick to point out that Game Ventures is not platform reliant on Facebook and wants to put his games anywhere sports gamers hang out on the Internet and they will go where they think there is economic sense and ground for engagement.

Looking ahead, Zaki has set clear goals for himself and the company. Game Ventures will look to expanding their portfolio to include four online and mobile games by 2012. The two other games are still being confirmed but they are looking at the possibility of sports such as Soccer and Car racing due to their appeal worldwide. We, at e27, wish them all the best and look forward to news about their success.

The union of social media (Facebook) and online blogshops have produced an offspring- Hallways.

Hallways is the brainchild of Yi Sung Yong, Aditya Kristanto and Daniel Aris Pandu. They envisioned a platform that would allow anyone who wants to sell anything, create and establish a brand name in a social setting, ultimately making shopping fun for the user, and making the shops profitable for their owners.

Currently, Hallways is still in the closed beta stage. There are still some bugs that need to be addressed and the shipping and payment methods have to be readied. It is expected that everything should be up and running in three to four weeks.

Review

I was lucky enough to be given a chance to try out the closed beta version of Hallways.

Good points

Not so good points

e27 had an email interview with Sung.

How did the idea for Hallways come about?

Facebook tags of people trying to sell stuff and promoting their ‘brands’ online were causing us a lot of stress (the notifications were a bitch..)

Who are the target users of Hallways? How are they going to be targeted?

Target users will be everybody who wants to buy and sell stuff. We expect a lot of Hallways shops to be from the same blog and facebook shops crowd. We are also targeting the flea markets (starting in Singapore) to bring them online. In two weeks time, we hope to be seen in the local flea markets, helping our first wave of users set up an online shop on the spot, and designing their logos/brands for them too.

I realise that Hallways is very similar in concept to Clozette. You have already mentioned the difference between Hallways and eBay and others in the FAQ but with such a similar start-up, what might your strengths be/ any defining characteristics or approaches?

Clozette has a very different approach to ‘social’. Same goes for eBay and others. Hallways as a social marketplace does the following:

Are there any special features that we should know about?

The homepage of Hallways is designed to be interactive and engaging; besides that we are in the process of implementing (will be up and running before our official launch), a tagging system – for users (shops and buyers), buyers will be able to type in the search bar: “A cool shirt for prom” and relevant listings (based on the tags) will be shown.

So Hallways is currently in closed beta. What are some future plans you have for Hallways that we can anticipate after launch?

In the pipeline we have the following:

On a side note, we have two other projects (hint: social bookmarks and a local search review system) that everyone should look forward to.

What can we do to try out Hallways before it is launched to the public?

The first 50 people to head over here after reading the article will be included in our next wave of beta testing (with many juicy updates)!

e27 urges you to  head over and try it out  if you are interested.

]]> http://e27.sg/2011/09/01/navigate-hallways-closed-beta/feed/ 0 http://e27.sg/2011/08/25/the-fashion-capitals-london-paris-milan-new-york-city-and-clozette/ http://e27.sg/2011/08/25/the-fashion-capitals-london-paris-milan-new-york-city-and-clozette/#comments Thu, 25 Aug 2011 02:49:00 +0000 Joyce Lim http://e27.sg/?p=13894

The question is: “What could a meal yield?”

For Roger Yuen and his dinner company Chua Chiang Meng, Kersie Koh and Cheryl Tan, the answer is the fruition of a business concept that has so much potential, they invested

…

Milaap is registered in Singapore and India. Milaap is an online microlending platform which brings in foreign capital from international lenders and allows the working poor of the country access to these funds. The loans that are procured are being used to fund various key areas such as vocational training and skill development, healthcare, sanitation, water, sustainable farming, energy and enterprise development.

Currently in an attempt to reach out to the community, they have a presence on the social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Vimeo and a blog.

e27 managed to engage Anoj in a short email interview.

What is Milaap’s philosophy?

Milaap was founded with a simple mission, to connect with ease the struggling 700 million people of India  living below $2 per day with prosperous Indians and the Diaspora, one based on mutual respect and dignity, creating opportunities that change the playing field for the poor.

How  is Milaap different from Kiva or other similar platforms that engage in micro-lending?

Milaap’s idea was sparked when the founder, Anoj, an ardent Kiva supporter was frustrated that a similar service wasn’t available to the Indian poor, constituting more than  25% of the world’s population living in poverty. While Milaap was built inspired by Kiva, certain characteristics are unique to us.

• First in India to enable global lending : Milaap is the first platform that enables anyone in the world to lend to India’s working poor. Other international players such as Kiva follow similar crowd-sourcing models but haven’t been able to work in India . But Milaap holds the unique advantage of sourcing capital for India’s poor from both foreign and domestic lenders. This opens up a whole new segment of people who can pave the way for bringing essential services to the 700 million who live on $2 a day.
• Cheapest Loans for the poor in the world: Milaap passes on the benefits of low cost loans from individuals to the end borrowers who end up paying interest as low as 6 – 9%. In contrast, the average interest rate on Kiva’s loan is around 34%.
• Self-sustaining business model: while Kiva depends on grants and donations to cover its operating costs and doesn’t have a revenue model, Milaap was built with a vision to be self-sustainable by charging a small interest fee to the borrower to cover its operating costs. This fee is 50% or more cheaper than existing sources of capital for the poor in the country.

To date, what is the reach and impact of Milaap?

Milaap has raised nearly $150,000 in loans, working across three states (eight districts) in India namely Tamil nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and impacting over 1750 lives.

Launched in 2008, Brandtology has 170 analysts in 15 countries across Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. Brandtology provides brand monitoring services to clients using a mix of technology solutions and trained social media analysts. Brandtology also provides multilingual services to clients, covering 12 languages. In April 2009, Walden International invested SGD2 million in the company.

Eddie Chau, Brandtology’s chief executive, said in the press release, “This is the logical and exciting next step for Brandtology, allowing us to continue our rapid growth across existing and new markets and maintain our focus on research and development with the financial strength and broad APAC sales network of the region’s leading media intelligence company behind us.”

Brandtology will remain a separate brand within the Media Monitors Group.

John Croll, Media Monitors CEO, said, “This is Media Monitors first acquisition since being acquired by Quadrant on 1 July 2010 and it reaffirms our growth strategy. This will create significant opportunities for cross-selling across all markets, and Brandtology’s strong presence in China in particular supports our strategic growth story in that market.”

The brand monitoring space is relatively crowded in Singapore, with local companies like Jamiq and Thoughtbuzz competing with Brandtology.

[Image from Brandtology. Media Monitors' Croll (left) and Brandtology's Chau]

Two entrepreneurs, Jason Johnson and Jason Illian, are attempting to not just digitize books, but also make them social. They call it ‘Social Books’. From The New York Times:

“Short-form content (e.g. status updates, tweets) on the Web is very interactive, very dynamic,” Mr. Johnson said. “You can see which of your friends read the same article and what they thought of it. It made us ask, ‘Can this be applied to long-form content? Can we take the advent of social media and apply it to the way we read books on tablets?’”

Social Book, as depicted in the video below, enables friends to read a book together even in different locations. Readers are able to share any part of the content with their Facebook and Twitter friends. The content could also be changed in real time by authors or even the readers. It works pretty much like Google Docs.

Social doesn’t just stop here. Users are also able to purchase a book from a friend’s bookshelf, making eBook libraries connected, searchable and shareable. Lastly, it doesn’t matter whether you’re reading from a Blackberry or an iPad, the application is built to be able to read and share on any device. But for a start, it will launch as an iPad application first before expanding to other platforms.

Phew, it surely sounds like a complicated eBook application?  The greatest challenge is still copyright related issues. The only titles available for download are those in the public domain, which aren’t that appealing to the masses.

“To develop its catalog, the company has enlisted the help of John Ingram, founder of the Ingram Book Company, a wholesale book distributor. Mr. Ingram, who is also an angel investor in Social Books, has done the same for other eBook applications, including iBooks for the iPhone and iPad. Social Books expects its digital shelves to be beefed up in time for the holidays.”

The application isn’t on iTunes yet. But interested individuals are able to register for its free limited beta applications through the company’s website.

– Penn-Olson.com by Willis Wee. Penn Olson is a tech, marketing and business blog based in Singapore.

If you are an influential Twitter user, you might be approached by a major automaker to be its brand ambassador.

Ford, Lexus and BMW are some of the brands that are hiring Twitter influencers as an alternative to hiring celebrities. Like in any social groups, there are people who are more influential than the others. Social networking sites have made those influencers more visible.

Hiring Twitter stars has several advantages. They are definitely more affordable and using the same investment, brands could hire more influencers. Their combined reach could even be stronger than a celebrity’s. People trust people like themselves. Getting social media influencers to represent the brand could be more effective as celebrities are too often used as endorsers; to the point that consumers are getting skeptical.

Ford has used this new endorsement method with some success. Last year, it hired 100 social media influencers to test drive its new Ford Fiesta subcompact and post their impressions on social sites like YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. The campaign generated over seven million views on YouTube and four million mentions on Twitter. It drove 130,000 consumers to its website and 83% were previously non-Ford owners. The Wall Street Journal reported. But it wasn’t revealed how many cars were sold through this campaign.

Similar to engaging bloggers for product reviews, getting social media influencers has similar risk. You can’t control what they write about your brand and the campaign could backfire. Engaging celebrity endorsement is a safer route to gain reach but it comes with a hefty price.

– Penn-Olson.com by Willis Wee. Penn Olson is a tech, marketing and business blog based in Singapore.

Company founder Ramya Prajna explains to e27 that wooz.in is not another social network but an extension service that’s geared more towards events and marketing purposes. During this beta stage, attendees are given a card or a bracelet during events to check in to specific locations, venues, or rooms, that have wooz.in readers set up. The cards and bracelets are for people to keep and hopefully carry with them at the next event held by Think.Web or its clients. Those who have signed up to the service will receive email notifications ahead of any future event.

He said that he was inspired by a similar service used by Facebook during its developer conference some time ago. At that event, Facebook handed each attendee an RFID tag to be used when joining conference sessions which will then publish a message that gets posted on their individual Facebook walls.

Initially wooz.in was developed as a value added service for the company’s clients for consumer engagement activities and it will remain so for the near future. However he hasn’t ruled out spinning off the team from his company should it require greater involvement and an independent development path at some point in the future.

As Indonesians swarm to multiple social networks, updating each of them one by one would be quite a time consuming activity, so he came up with wooz.in to streamline that process. He hopes that it allows individuals to socialize during events without having to fiddle around with their mobile devices and dealing with unreliable network connections.

The primary function right now is for check-in announcements while activity reporting is something that could be added in the future although it depends on negotiations with clients.

Each check in on wooz.in earns a user one pin. Pin collection is one way for the clients to engage with consumers and provide them with rewards or promos after a certain number of related pins has been acquired.

With wooz.in, the content of the message sent to the networks are not user-editable, it is instead determined by the event organizers or clients. This clearly leads to concerns  that the service could be used to promote products or activities without explicit consent from the user.

Ramya assured that as wooz.in develops, they will add granular control to the service for users to determine which kinds of messages are allowed to be sent out from their accounts and which should be suppressed.

He hopes that more mobile devices will adopt Near Field Communication to enhance and streamline these kinds of activities even further.

A new online game called Ionopolis sponsored by Japanese sports drink Pocari Sweat has Indonesian users signing up in droves ahead of its official launch some time this month. More than 12,000 users have registered for the game in the week that registrations have been open. The game seems to be the first, at least in the country, to integrate Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare as elements of the game that players need to use to complete the tasks that they will be faced with.

The game is presented in a comic book form and places you as the hero whose job is to take down and defeat monsters hellbent on dehydrating the city of Ionopolis. To defeat the monsters, players are tasked with answering questions ranging from general knowledge, sports, history, to certain specifics about Pocari Sweat.

Certain tasks can only be completed by posting status updates on Facebook or Twitter or by checking in to certain locations on Foursquare. If you’ve been seeing #ionopolis tags, you’ve spotted them. While Pocari does have a Koprol account, it doesn’t look like Yahoo’s Indonesian social networking property is part of the game yet.

Each player’s energy level in the game is determined by his hydration level which gets renewed daily. Alternatively, players can request for game vouchers with every purchase of a can or bottle of Pocari Sweat from certain stores to power up, especially as energy levels tend to be depleted after an hour or two of gameplay. Clearly, this ties the game very closely to actual sales.

At some point in the game players will be eliminated and the top 100 players move on to the next stage where they will face another elimination round to select the top 10 and then eventually the top two. Prizes include iPod Nanos, gift vouchers, and a trip to Japan.

Unfortunately, whenever I tried to play the game, it kept spewing out PHP errors all over the site, so I’m not sure what’s going on there beyond the initial stage. However, it’s been active for a little more than a week.

On Thursday morning, 28 Oct, the site was down until late in the afternoon, presumably following a surge of new players as information about the game was posted on Indonesia’s top online community, Kaskus, two days earlier and people began talking about it.

We’ll be monitoring the social media-gaming trend in Indonesia as it develops.

Take a multi-billion dollar digital marketing industry, add industry veterans, mix it well with technology and sprinkle it with an industry award and you get an exciting and rapidly growing company – Pinstorm, a company that originated in India and has its APAC headquarters in Singapore.

Pinstorm was founded in 2005 by Mahesh Murthy, who was Country Head of Channel V, and also runs Seedfund, an early-stage venture capital fund in India. They were one of the 31 asian companies to have won the Red Herring Top 100 Global award this year.

Now, Red Herring awards are usually bestowed upon innovative technology companies which was why, it piqued my interest to see how a digital marketing firm got into this space and was recognized as a technology firm. They are also, the only digital brand management firm to have won this award. I spoke to Geetha Sethi, APAC head of Pinstorm to understand this interesting concoction of web products with digital marketing services.

Technology

Pinstorm provides Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Interactive Digital Display Advertising, Social Media Marketing Campaigns and Online Reputation Management services to their clients. In order to provide these services, they have developed a broad spectrum of proprietary tools in-house.

For example, they have developed a tool called LiveBanner, which falls under the category of Interactive Digital Display Advertising to help clients display their services across various platforms. This tool was used by CNN to display real-time news that engages the user. This banner could be seen on Yahoo, MSN, LinkedIn and host of other portals.

BroadWords is another proprietary technology that lets them deploy ad campaigns across different channels with low cost. This tool helps in finding out relevant yet low-priced key words for the clients. To cite a use-case, one of their clients required a particular set of keywords that were essential to them. Even after bidding for 21 cents a click, they were at a low position on the page and were hardly getting more than 1000 clicks a month. That’s when they used BroadWords to identify what they call “virgin” keywords, which were being bid for only 5 cents. Afterwhich, one keyword alone generated about 8000 clicks a month.

Similary they have host of other technologies that does personal searching, twitter monitoring, geo tracking, competitive analysis, social media monitoring and a lot more technology driven services.

Their clients and partners list is nothing less than impressive and are spread across different verticals. Some of their clients include DBS, HSBC bank, NUS, INSEAD, ebay, National Geographic.

Digital marketing products Vs Digital marketing firms

In the digital marketing/advertising landscape, we have product-based companies that cater to a particular need for their clients. ThoughtBuzz, JamiQ are examples of such companies that focus solely on social media brand monitoring. Also, products like myADengine compete indirectly in this space.  Can these companies co-exist or will they cannibalize each other?

Firms such as Pinstorm provides a service to their clients and products is a part of their offering. Their main value proposition lies in providing holistic solutions that solve a particular need. Whereas, digital marketing product companies are selling a product first with consulting services as an add-on. There is a fine-line between the two and is hard to say which approach is better. It is largely dependent on the varied needs of the clients and their budgets for such services.

In my opinion with regards to Pinstorm, each individual technology does not stand out as innovative or anything to write home about. But, it’s the way they cleverly integrate all the pieces of software to provide a holistic solution to their clients, that sets them apart.

[img courtesy: Dynamic Business]

Back in 2007, we ran Asia’s first Facebook Developer Garage where we had bigwigs like Trey Phillips, winner of the F8 hackton. We were also fortunate enough to have Dave Morin, Senior Platform Manager at Facebook, to join in via video conferencing. The pictures are a testament of the buzz and vibrancy of the local Facebook developers community.

Since then, Singapore startups have take a greater interest in using Facebook as the platform for their applications. Tyler Projects has since hit the million user mark with over USD$50,000 in revenue per month. Various other applications such as FAME, Piecehunters and even Fresboo have launched on the Facebook platform. While the platform has had it’s fair share of critics, from the sporadic user engagement to the lack of a viable payment model, it is not doubt that the Facebook platform is here to stay.

Details of the Event
Date: 22nd and 23rd September 2009
Location: Grand Hyatt Singapore, 10 Scotts Road (map here)
RSVP: FREE! (link here)

Day 1 – 22nd September 2009

Day 2 – 23rd September 2009

We are back with a BANG this time and that too with none other than Google!
Yes, Google is back with another kick-ass Hackathon right here in Singapore.

Have you ever wanted to build map-based applications and wondered where to start from?
Built a simple application and wondered how to achieve low cost scaling?
Want to make your application more “social”?
Enable your web site visitors to talk to each other and build a community?
Genuinely interested in cool technologies?

If your answers to any of the above question is a big resounding YES. Then, you should attend this event!

This will be a half – day event where you will get to interact with Google’s developer advocates, Patrick Chanezon and Pamela Fox and know more about OpenSocial , FriendConnect and Google Maps API . It will also give you an opportunity to form into teams, start hacking and building new applications.
You can also look forward to getting some swag and prizes for your cool applications. :)

It is happening on Tuesday, June 16th, from 2.00pm to 10.30pm at the admin building in SMU. It’s FREE to BE THERE!

You can RSVP here ==>  http://bit.ly/htRbI

This is the entire schedule for the day,

2:00 p.m – Registration opens
2:30 – 2:45 – Introduction / Housekeeping
2:45 – 3:15 – Geo and Social lightning talks
3:15 – 3:45 – Team forming
3:45 – onward Hacking
o Potential breakout sessions, depending on interest, during hackathon
+ Google App Engine – cron, Java runtime
+ YouTube APIs
+ Demos – incl. Peekspy
6:30 – Dinner
9:30 – Demos / Wrap-up

Looking forward to see you guys there!

PS: Do watch out for this space for an upcoming, pre-event mini-bonanza we have in store for you ;)

Has anyone read this post by Seth Godin about where the agents have gone to? I thought it really made quite a bit of sense and that this is advice agencies or consultancies could use right now.

Ever watched ‘Mad Men’? It seemed like the way to woo a client then was to take the client out to a strip club for drinks and follow that up with some authoritative sounding talk. And back then, it worked because the client figured the agency knew better and they put their complete, unquestioning trust into the agency’s expertise. Unfortunately, that’s no longer how it works now.  As is mentioned in post, the client aided by a computer (and the internet) is quite capable of going online and executing something by themselves.  Whether or not it works, is another thing but the internet is empowering clients to realize they might not need that agency or consultancy around any more. Especially in an economy which is scarier than a hardcore Japanese horror flick, clients will be looking to tighten up their budgets and cut costs. The middlemen need to give clients a reason to keep them on.

According to Godin, that reason would be value. Here’s how it goes: a consultant or agent who merely does everything the way the client wants it, is a middleman who is anonymous and easily replaceable. However, someone who has good  judgment, who adds value to the client’s experience with their consultancy or agency by telling their client “Yes you can do this” or “No, shouldn’t do this” and backs it up with sound advice, is definitely not anonymous or replaceable. Unfortunately, majority of Asian cultures encourage anonymity and not rocking the proverbial boat by pandering to the people who hold the money (in this case, the client). But with the economy being a horror show and Professor Google, the middleman who says ‘yes’ to the client’s every whim is in serious trouble. Even though it seems that you might lose a client by saying ‘no’ and pissing them off, its just as risky to be anonymous. Because when time comes to clash the budget, the client wouldn’t be remembering the middleman who bowed to their every wish. Rather, it is the middleman who proves to be an invaluable source of advice and judgment that the client will remember and be less likely to try to replace.

The Web 2.0 platform, encompasses social networking sites and a host of web applications that supports user-generated content and communities. It enhances creativity, user-generated information sharing and collaboration.

Social media refers to the use of Web 2.0 technologies to reach out to communities, sharing user-generated content/information, a distinct difference from the traditional media. And social marketing – branch of social media – is the latest tactical tool for businesses to promote their products and services. This is done by marketing efforts through various sites like Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and blogging platforms.

The benefits of using social media are aplenty:

• reduce PR and marketing training expenses – Oracle halved their PR budget by the use of social news releases
• speeds up the rate at which information reaches your audience.
• understand your customers better, and gain more effective feedback.

The bottomline is, social media matters. Read more in this Business Times article!