OurielOhayon

ElfYourSelf

Good viral tool. Except that is i was office max i would have created an embeddable tool for website/blog owners which would have increased viral promotion + saved me the unecessery manipulations of capturing a pic of myself + sending myself an email to get the link you are about to click.

This is already a famous marketing mechanics that was used recently by HP

Of course this is just an avatar and not really me dancing….

Selling through my blog is working

Remember i put on sale my itrip for half price?

In one day i got someone interested, more efficient than any listing service i know. This is good news and i am planning to use my blog more like that.

Blog Shopping could be something to look after.

By the way i just launched a TechCrunchShop for the french audience (supported by Zlio.com).

Easier than getting Arrington to link your site

Text-ad links does not lack imagination for its new campaign…appearing on TechCrunch

But the funniest thing is that they used a picture of Michael I SHOT (at the nextweb seebelow as well as my flickr account)

Should i ask for royalties???

One day i'll switch to Mac...

See why on those brilliant Mac vs PC ads

 

The death of Page views is announced

I have been thinking about it for a while but Steven Rubel says it better than me. So please read that. New web application make the ruling principle of page view less relevant and maybe totally irrelevant (one of the guilty on that one is ajax that makes page refresh inexistant). Quoting

The page view does not offer a suitable way to measure the next generation of web sites. These sites will be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to conduct affairs all within a single web page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one page to another. The widgetization of the web will only accelerate this.

I think it is about time marketers and media agency pay more (REALLY MORE) attention to other pararmeters like loyalty/churn, user lifetime, time spent on website, time spent per page, ability to lead conversion, level of influence, advertising memory and awareness generation, and other things that we are discovering as we speak.

Internet is a media that is way more complex and sophisticated that only page views. So why advertising should not be?

Of course this is not for tomorrow but within 12/24 month will hear much more about that and Comscore/Hitwise and Nielsen will have by then to provide real alternative way to measure and benchmark websites. But internet companies will also have to learn that and educate the market with what really matters: the value of an end user.

A powerful ad

For pedestrian accident. Via netzkobol

10 Tips for Naming Your Web 2.0 Startup

Good post here on that. here are the headlines

1. Keep Length at a Minimum
2. Be Generic or Be Original
3. Encourage Word of Mouth
4. Capture the .com
5. Avoid Using Hyphens
6. Avoid Domain Hacks
7. Keep it Meaningful

I would add 3:

• Squeez the “beta” (it is just meaningless nowadays)
• Make it easy to remember/spell
• Ask yourself if it could become an expression of a verb (eg. skype me/google me)

My favourite internet brand names (not necessarily service): Digg, Feedburner, ZapZap, Sphere, Pandora

My less favourite brand name: Delicious (never know how to spell it right), Zooomr (hard to spell).

When brands speak the truth

I was impressed by this Unilever owned Dove TV campaign. It shows how fake ads can be and how fooled we are. Dove talks about beauty in a way nobody does. And i mean relevant, true way!

I wish internet brands could build identity in such a way, and not just out of a value proposition or a good product/service. Skype is one of the few brands that is doing that with the Communication industry. Fon.com has also a very strong identity although very young.

 

The endless influence of a powerful brand

Through Ruben’s blog

Free tip to all web2.0 startups dreaming of critical size

You got your new web2.0 service out there, and you are waiting for users graph to show a happy face. Critical size is your challenge now (probably the most difficult) You have 3 uncontrollable options and an extra:

• spend a few bucks in marketing (but this might not work and you might not have the money)
• wait for techcrunch to review you > see the techcrunch effect
• Get digged/slashdotted > see the digg effect

Or be patient and wait for the magic of virality as Flickr did. But then you might have to be very patient.

So here is a tip and i don t see so many Startups applying it. Suggest your existing users using his existing contacts to spread the word. But not just by putting a web form where each one has to enter his friends’mail one after the other, which makes the mechanics unefficient because it is just a pain in the ass to do that.

Remember your users have existing contact list in either Outlook or other web service (Instant Messengers). Just put in place a mechanism where users can easily import they adress book and spread the message. Skype ( is doing that and some others too. I came across an items sharing company called Multiply that is also doing that with all your contact books offline/online (hotmail, facebook,…) and you can then send a message by email or IM. 

This is worth both for consumer and business services (linkedin and plaxo are also using those techniques). No need to say i would put that function in a VERY PROMINENT WAY. Most companies i review don’t do that. It is so easy and can be very rewarding. In my previous StartUp more than 20% of the traffic was coming by that technique. Make the numbers…

Of course this is assuming you have something interesting to offer

tags technorati : viral marketing critical size startups