From mowing the lawn or picking up dry cleaning to researching a cruise or planning a party, busy people can pay willing takers on DoMyStuff.com. Unlike posting a classified ad on Craigslist with a fixed price, DoMyStuff.com has an eBay style ratings and auction pricing model.
Archive for April, 2007
On the heels of a Yahoo/OMD study showing a 43 hour media day for Generation Y due to multitasking, eMarketer reports that their younger siblings are getting into the act with even toddlers practicing media multitasking.
For those of you (myself included) who have become addicted to the site, these numbers should come as no surprise. I’m intrigued that Facebook has supplanted Flickr as the no. 1 photo sharing site.
Read the story behind the making of Facebook.
The new Trident site in the UK reminds me of my Joost experience: video chapters, a simple, proximity-based interface and loads of extra content to better understand what Trident is about. A very good online experience, which lacks a little bit of interactivity but surely is sticky enough to expose people for at least five minutes to the Trident brand.
Got a Complaint? Don’t send it by email.
Published April 13, 2007 customer experience Leave a CommentPeople who complain to companies via e-mail are waiting longer to get a response: a study found only a third of top firms replied within 24 hours in 2007, compared with nearly two-thirds in 2002.
‘”I think we’ve got plenty of infrastructure, we’ve got more technology than we know what to do with. The problem is there isn’t a strategy in place that says it’s important to treat the customer well.’
Nearly half — 49 per cent — did not reply at all in 2007, down from a high of 86 per cent five years earlier, according to the customer service study by Hornstein Associates. “We keep recreating the wheel, bringing new customers in to take the place of those who’ve had bad experiences and leave,” Hornstein told CBC News Online.
Clients need to implement a strategy that addresses customer feedback – good or bad. I always believed that the customer should:
A. get email acknowledgment of the feedback sent
B. a solution or comment within 48 hours when dealing with online feedback
Why companies don’t see the value in this is beyond my scope.
More on the story at CBC.
According to a recent Merrill-Lynch study, by 2011, 30% of American households will own a Wii. If that estimate holds up (and given the Wii’s still-thundering sales figures, there’s no reason to doubt it), about one out of every three U.S. homes will soon have a new kind of Web browser sitting in their living room.
The obvious immediate objection, or course, is “who’s going to browse the Web without a keyboard?”
The most obvious immediate answer: the very young, who already send text messages over their cellphones more than they send IMs over their computers. They’ll acclimate quickly to the keyboard-free Web, and being so popular, developers will figure out ways to integrate the Wii’s pointer/nunchuck controller to Web apps which make the experience increasingly intuitive. (Of course, Nintendo could always go the Xbox route, too, and add a keyboard peripheral for us old school Netizens.)
Couple the Wii’s Internet Channel with the company’s stylus-operated DS handheld getting an Opera browser in June, and it’s easy to see Nintendo becoming the dominant Internet hardware company a few years down the road. Couple that to the growing sophistication and popularity of Web-integrated cellphones, and it’s difficult to see the PC remaining our main means for accessing the Internet for much longer.
So here’s the million dollar question: If the personal computer is no longer essential to the Internet, what happens to all the industries built around it?
Looks like Jones Soda isn’t the only soft drink maker to let their fans design their cans. PEPSI – yeah, PEPSI – is the latest advertiser to grab UGC (user generated content) by the reigns. While the site is intuitive and growing in popularity, I’m curious to see what PEPSI is going to do with this content. Will they use the designs as inspiration for their brand development teams, or will they actually go and produce user-generated labels for their cans? Looking forward to the result.
Yesterday I watched Joost for the first time. For anyone who doesn’t know, Joost was built by the guys who brought us Kazaa and Skype. The business model is simple: ads are highly targeted to users based on location, time and content being viewed.
I’ll start with the obvious: Joost is good. Really good. The interface is totally optimized for video. The controls are intuitive and come loaded with features that enhance my viewing experience, like More Info, What’s Next, and Rate this Show. Nothing new here when I compare it to Rogers on Demand on my “other” TV. However, the rating system is nice. Something Rogers doesn’t care about.
There’s My Joost where I can share and invite others, chat and more: think Joost social network. They have a few widgets to help me IM with other Joost members, date and time widgets, and a few others. The creators are relying solely on user ratings. Over time I’ll be able to add my own widgets.
Then there’s My Channels where I can store my favorites. Again, nothing new but the “if you like that you’ll like this” logic is nice.
While Joost is still in BETA there are a couple of hiccups:
1. the content is lame. I didn’t know the Guinness Book of World Records had their own show.
2. the picture quality is inconsistent.
While Joost has done a fabulous job of bringing a whole new video experience to webizens, they need to be more diligent about the content they select and how it appears if they’re going to succeed.
There’s a why reason I bought a HD Plasma TV: it’s called picture quality. And until they fix this issue (they as in my internet provider or the boys from Joost), it’ll be the same old channel surfing habits for me.
Does the Global TV show “Currents” logo look a little similar?
How to create more traffic on your site with really shy people
Published April 3, 2007 social networking 3 Comments
Another social networking site – im in like with you although here’s the twist:
Their business model relies on shy people flirting with other shy people. To flirt with someone, you must bid for their attention. To bid, you must have points. You collect points by adding info to your profile, uploading photos and videos and logging into the site every day.
You know the geeks are gonna love this. It’s still in BETA and you have to be invited to participate. But watch for this one.
And for anyone who’s really interested, here’s how it works:
1. Post the best-looking picture of yourself that you have because iminlikewithyou users must bid to flirt with you. Don’t worry if you’re not best-looking. If you got invited to iminlikewithyou, you’re already in the top 15%.
2. Earn points and bid. To flirt with someone, you must bid for their attention. To bid, you must have points. You collect points by adding info to your profile, uploading photos and videos and logging into the site every day.
3. Start a flirting game. It’s a lot like “The Dating Game”. Pretty much anything qualifies as a game, like asking where is the best slice of pizza or are you from Prospect Park? The majority of Iminlikewithyou’s 550 users live in New York City because that’s where founders Charles Forman and Dal Albritton live. Once a user has bid on your game, you can encourage him or her by sending them a wink.
4. Bid on other games. You can bid to take PopSugar’s PartySugar to dinner or pick a Final Four winner for some dude in the East Village. Like eBay, you must outbid your competitors in order to win the product, or in this case, the attention of the game host.
5. Pick your date. After a game is completed, the game host (that’s you) can pick one from the top five competitors. Points are deducted from the winning bidder if you decide you want an introduction to that person.
6. Contact anonymously. iminlikewithyou makes up alias email address and phone numbers so don’t worry if you picked a weirdo or creep. You can always go back and start a new game.
