A Community of Learning

Similar to how airbnb creates a marketplace for people to rent space (eg. couch, room, house), Teach Street creates a marketplace for people to advertise and look for lessons. Teach Street's tagline is "an online community for people who love to learn" - I mean, who can say no to that? I have spent 6 years in undergraduate and graduate school, so I do love being in communities where people love to learn and share knowledge with each other. I think this product appeals to anyone who's ever been a bit bored and wanted to learn something new (eg. housewives, retired people, working people wanting to spice up their routine). My question is who ends up selling these classes. Stay tuned.

Ease of use?

Learned of Polyvore's new mini-editor, which allows people to create online fashion style boards and post to Polyvore's online fashion community. Wondering how easy it is for someone not familiar with the tool to use it. Also, wondering what other widgets sites create for bloggers to use.

Give it a shot. Too bad the mini-editor doesn't fit within the blogger page and it's unclear how to change the fashion items in the tool.

Powered by Polyvore

social media drives business

Here's a good article on how businesses use social media to drive their business. no doubt innovative businesses will continue to think of how social media actually helps them, and that other businesses will play with social media for a week and forget about it. http://tcrn.ch/ccqGaK

Affiliate Marketing

I'm learning more about affiliate marketing revenue, where partner sites drive traffic and sales to a major site for a commission. Looking for more info, but one site highlighting programs for affiliates to sign up for is http://www.abestweb.com/. Bookmarking this resources here.

Kleiner Perkins invested in this??

lockerz.com is an "invite only" site where cool people can buy cool stuff, consumer cool media, and hang out with their cool friends. Unlike Gilt Groupe, the cool people running lockerz.com give off a ghetto cool image instead of a NY sex-in-the-city cool. I must not be the target demographic for lockerz.com because I don't aspire to be a member of the ghetto cool crowd.

LinkedIn competition

theladders.com caught my attention in last week's wall street journal because its tagline is ">$100K jobs for >$100K talent". Similar to LinkedIn's job board, you can search for jobs by location and position title. However, you need to pay for a special membership ($35/month) to actually apply for the job (and I imagine see the name of the company hiring).

return of display advertising

watch out - the annoying display ad you just couldn't close is the old guard of a new trend in engaging display advertising. well, maybe not new, but a trend i just learned about.

The World's Best Banner Ads (And Why They Worked)

factors for effective display ads:
-give user reason to click (reward)
-sense of urgency
-entertaining
-interesting placement on page

the traditional method to evaluate effective TV advertising follows the framework below:
A - attracts attention
B - communicates clear benefit
L - links to brand equity
E - executed well, consistent with other executions

facebook marketing = relationship building

marketing (advertising) on Facebook is a fuzzy art. expect to do brand-building and relationship building over weeks and months, test out positioning and calls to action, and watch your budget.

see article.

Web Analytics & Flash Sales

It's tough to figure out which private ecommerce sites are doing well.

Since user acquisition and retention are key revenue drivers, you can use a few useful tools to understand and analyze site analytics. The open question is which of these sites provides the most info. Compete allows you to compare traffic and other web analytics across several sites. Alexa allows you to scope out web analytics for a particular company.

On the topic of ecommerce trends, I've noticed a lot of excitement around Flash Sale site (sites selling luxury brands at a major discount for a set period of time. Besides Groupon, Living Social is popular, as well Rue La La.

Deal Shopping

Learned of another site that gives bargain deals on broad categories, from apparel to housewares to CDs. http://www.shopohlala.com/index.html

Federal CIO

I just listened to a NPR interview with Obama's federal CIO, Todd Park, and learned of the following cool ways that the government is giving Americans access to decision-making and data.

Tell Health and Human Services what you want
http://www.hhs.gov/open/

Download high value government data
http://www.data.gov/

Get up-to-date flight times before you fly
http://flyontime.us/

I'm curious how much nonprofits & individuals, consultants & businesses, and travelers will use this data. As someone who doesn't follow politics, I'm now interested in government developments.

Twitter 101 for Businesses

Kudos to my classmates who put this together.
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101

Social Media Campaigns

The big talk in marketing is how social media like Facebook and Twitter are changing how companies market to consumers. Companies can use social technology to have a "conversation" with consumers, listen to what consumers and competition are saying about their brand, and listento what the competition is doing.

I wanted to share social media campaigns I came across that were touted as "best":

Charity (Fundraising)
http://mashable.com/2009/04/02/social-media-charity-events/

Cause Marketing (Partnerships between Company & Nonprofit)
http://www.causemarketingforum.com/award_archives.asp

Social Networks

Several interesting factoids I learned about Social Networking Sites users from HBS:

• 70% of all SNS actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles (eg. "'Oh, you're that guy that did that internship in D.C. last summer")
• The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views.
• 90% of Twitter posts were created by only 10 percent of users.
  

Read more here: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6156.html

m-commerce news

Mobile commerce is becoming more popular. Business week article can tell you more

Go-To News Sources

I've gone through a variety of ways to stay on top of market news (and currently am not on top of news at all...). The industries that I've worked in have had a few standard online news publications that I'd recommend to anyone trying to stay aware of happenings in these areas:

Online Retail

• Web Marketing Today
• Internet Retailer Newslink Newsletter

Marketing & Consumer Products

• Advertising Age
• Hartman Group Newsletter
• The Food Institute

Marketing Analytics

• Avinash Kauschik's blog

M&A

• NY Times Deal Book

Loyalty Programs

Many retailers are trying to figure out how to take advantage of gifting occasions as a key aperture to increase purchases, and possibly trade up shoppers. I was impressed by Sephora's loyalty program, which remembered my birthday was coming up and offered me a free gift in store or online (with any purchase). This email will be successful in getting me to visit an actual store (frequency), where I'll probably play around with other products in store and buy something special for myself - all fun things for me!

What do you love?

I came across iliketotallyloveit, which is a place where people can share items they "totally love" and others can vote on these items. Google would call it democratization of shopping, or, as the company calls it, a "popularity contest". In fact, I love the logo - isn't it cute?

Social Shopping

Retailers are trying to capture Tweens (8-12 yr olds) by adding a social element to online shopping. Kaboodle is basically a social network (think LinkedIn) for shopping where teenagers can browse fashion interests and communicate with people who have similar fashion styles.

Ideas to Talk About

Remember the days in school when you'd hop into the auditorium to hear a foreign president, famous author, or fortune 500 CEO? Well, you can keep up the intellectual stimulation by watching interesting speeches on TED. If you're interested in starting a company, Stanford also offers talks by famous Silicon Valley entrepreneurs through the Entrepreneur Thought Leaders seminar.