I would not be surprised to see google come out with their own phone in the next few years. It makes perfect sense in their quest to index all the world’s information, and to deliver relevant ads anywhere and everywhere.
Archive for December, 2006 Page 3 of 4
The manhattan real estate market continues to be strong, fueled by global demand and a surging population of millionaires (and billionaires).
I just read about Jaxtr, a company that lets users make free calls generated by a widget on their myspace profiles. It lets users take private phone calls from myspace visitors, without revealing their phone numbers. While I think this is cool, I don’t really find it that useful and I doubt that it will really take off.
But it does validate some thoughts Brian and I had about the direction of Call True (one of my startups, you can read about my past here) last year. We thought there were two really interesting applications of our product that held a lot of potential, both of which Jaxtr seems to be acting on.
1.) Anonymous calling for first time chatters, especially beneficial for dating sites. Imagine speaking with someone you may want to go on a date with from say match.com, and realizing it’s a total disaster…and you would wish you hadn’t ever given them your phone number (or revealed it through callerID). Instead our service would allow you to click the button and generate an anonymous call between you and the other person (on your cell phone,etc) before moving things any further. That way if the call was not something you enjoyed, you could easily block that user from ever calling again just as you do now with myspace mail etc. I spent a few months hounding a biz dev guy over at eharmony without making too much progress. Still think it can work
2.)Email click to call….We had this feature but didn’t really sell it….and it got a lot of attention. It’s really nothing more than email signature with a little html in it, but people seem to think it’s really cool and far more complicated than it really is. It’s a great tool for sales people to put in their email signature files because it tempts visitors to call, all they have to do is click and enter their number…and bam they’re connected. I would say that email signature with click to call generated more interest than really anything else we tried. It seems jaxtr is offering that as well.
It all comes down to execution. We certainly had the ideas and the talent to make both of these things above come true, but we struggled going in all 10 directions we were tempted by. Lesson learned…focus then execute.
powered by performancing firefox
This is a great little tool to determine the actual value of a click to you and your web business. If you do online lead gen or affiliate marketing (I’ve done both) this is great for you.
Finding Video Product Reviews Online..These services seem to think that video reviews are more useful than written reviews. RC Helicopters are selling this year due to youtube videos, so I think they’re on to something.
The big discussion in New York recently has been about the trans fat ban going into effect for New York City restaurants. I think it’s a cool and gutsy push by the city to make eating out a more healthy activity. Admittedly, I’m not quite sure trans fats are really as bad as some people say, but I do think in the long run not consuming them on a regular basis will be good for everyone.
The ban and the national debate it has created could not come at a better time. According to this morning’s Wall Street Journal, Americans get 1/3rd of their daily calories from restaurant food up from 18% in 1970 (I would guess that in New York it’s more like 50-60%), and they go on to say that “numerous studies have shown that eating out regularly makes you fat. Restaurant foods tend to be packed with more calories and less nutrition.” But the truth is that even banning trans fats will not make restaurant eating anymore healthy because ultimately people end up eating way too much anyway. I know that I generally will almost always eat all of whatever is put in front of me at a restaurant, even though I’m more than aware of how little my portions should be. It’s very difficult.
I would imagine that most people are absolutely clueless about what they put in their bodies on a daily basis, and really don’t care all that much. I think that to drastically improve the health of the nation, it’s going to take some major public information campaigns backed by big names people listen to (ie celebrities like Oprah).
But as the article goes on to demonstrate, that would not really be a good thing for a lot of the big chains out there including Starbucks and Panera. At Starbucks seemingly quick and easy snack of a Grand Latte and a slice of crumb cake quickly adds up to 930 calories or 14lbs a year if you eat it once a week. So what are some solutions? From this mornings article:
Instead of ordering an entree, choose an appetizer,
which is usually just as delicious as other foods on the menu but in a
smaller portion size. If you want an entree, split it with a friend or
ask for the take-out box at the beginning of the meal so you don’t
overeat.
I guess the easiest thing to do (which I struggle with) would be to simply watch your portions (Impossible to do at Chipotle, it’s just so good and you get so much). Eat slower and less, and despite eating out regularly you’ll be at least making steps towards healthier living.
Google’s Long Term Goal: “The long-term fantasy is we walk up to you and you give us, say, $10 million and we’ll completely allocate it for you” across different media and ad types, he said in an interview last month.
Google Tests New Ad Offerings — But Will Advertisers Follow? - WSJ.com
In this month’s Fortune Magazine, there is a great article on “Finding the next Google,” in which they talk about the next big thing on the web. They believe that Google rode the wave of finding to incredible profitability, realizing that people would use the web to find specific items or bits of information. The future, according to the article, is in discovery,that is showing you things based on your current likes and dislikes that you are not currently aware of but will probably be interested in.
The most obvious examples of success in the discovery space are sites like last.fm and pandora, who are both building extremely popular communities
around the concept of music recommendations (discovery). They know that if person A loves Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews, and person B loves Dave
Matthews then they will probably like Jack Johnson, and they’ll then play a song of Jack Johnson for person B. These optimized music introductions are incredibly effective at pushing your music limits very quickly because all the new songs you are exposed to have been carefully screened…by others.
This is also clear on Amazon.com, where they have watched the buying habits of others and have your buying history handy, so they can easily create targeted, automated product recommendations to you on the homepage instantly. This creates a far more effective landing pages, than just a bunch of categories or instant products. This is about personalization and automation.
I believe, as Fortune mentions, the next wave of the web lies in the ability to assist in targeted discovery. People want to explore the endless supply out there, but have no idea where to start. It’s extremely complicated to ever think of recommendation engines knowing if you like BMW’s then you’ll like Starbucks and Kenny G, but with enough connections (ie connections to your existing personality online…myspace, email, amazon account, last.fm account, ebay account) and enough computing power, it’s possible to start building comprehensive personal profiles, which in turn would allow for more and more relevant recommendations. Imagine taking it a step further and offering a last.fm like scrobbler, that sits in the background of your internet browsing quietly building an anonymous (anonymous in the sense that NO ONE ever would have access to it with your name on it…it would only be viewed by machines for the purpose of recommending things to you) profile that could offer you the perfect vacation designed just for you, the ski jacket you’d love, and a news site right up your alley. I’m in a situation where people are asking what I want for Christmas, and I really have no idea what’s even really out there. If had a stream of recommendations, it would be easy for me and everyone I want to share those recommendations with, to know instantly.
Another way these profiles could be built (and maybe this is why google is offering discounts to people using google checkout this holiday…to build a user base and profiles) would be to have access to, and analyze your real life spending. I would imagine that most purchases over $30 are made with a credit or debit card, which of course means they are entirely electronic and can therefore easily be analyzed for patterns, and used to build a preference profile around you. What if google check out was an easy, back end way of doing this? If they got enough people buying across all sorts of sites, they’d be able to start building recommendations as well. Or even more possible, would be someone partnering with a credit bureau to build personalized shopping recommendations based on current credit and past buying history…just rambling here.
It’s a scary tight rope to walk between big brother and making sense of all that is out there, but I think we’ll get there in a way that ultimately proves to be a major win/win for companies and consumers alike.
Another company moving into this space is Aggregate Knowledge, see them here.
We are following our people. We have been a builder to the baby boom since we began.. The city is a combination resort community, but the resort is New York City — or Chicago or L.A. or Miami. City living is entering hyper growth..it’s cool
