Business 2.0 ... Best Magazine ??

I have been a subscriber for Business 2.0 for the past 5 months and it is by far the best business mag out there..especially for the tech and web crowd. It seems to get better each month..they have fresh content that is actually engaging. Plus I am a huge Om Malik fan!

I do also get Entrepreneur and Inc. which are great reads as well..but are still not on the same level.

Get Free Opinion Polls

Ultimate Mashup: Googlezon vs. MicroHoo

With the convergence of Mashup building platforms lately I thought I would try to Supersize this concept.



That got me thinking of the "Ultimate Web Mashup". In one corner you have w/ a Combined Market Cap of $325B "MicroHoo" and in the other corner you have the King of Search and the King of Commerce "Googlezon".

K..so all kidding aside what would the web be like if these four companies morphed into two titans?

Now lets look at these mergers..first lets take a look at the Microsoft/Yahoo tandem. It seems like a decent match if you look at it from the point that Yahoo and Microsoft both are jack of all trades , masters of none... It's a no brainer in terms of obtaining market share in search appx. 41%. to Google's 51%. Microhoo could def. flex it's muscle's in the Media area as well. Publishing could explode to the mainstream with this combination. They already are sharing the IM space together so that's a start.

Imagine what could be done w/ Vista levraging the social aspects of Yahoo and it's new Panama advertising system

What about Microhoo Mail combines the best of Yahoo Mail and Outlook...tags/rss/im/news

This Mega-Power could develop a "new media landscape" which would challenge TV. With it's combination of bringing media to the home flawlessly.. NBC/Flickr/Blogs/Videos etc..


The Google/Amazon tandem on the other hand has a more of natural relationship...their users are alike (smart/loyal) and their services are alike.. S3/EC2 which goes hand in hand w/ cloud storage and hosting that Google benefits from via Google Docs and Spreadsheets etc...And the possibilities in Search would be major as well.. imagine integrated Google Book Search via Amazon listings this could also tie into products and videos as well via Froogle and Youtube.

How about Alexa combined w/ Google Analytics


Then the most compelling aspect to this merger would be the e-commerce implications. Hmmm what if they tied Google Checkout / Amazon E Commerce /Adwords / Amazon Historical Pricing /Amazon Affiliates etc together... Googlezon could effectively chew up 51% of all online transactions! With it's combined data capabilities Web 3.0 could be here quite quickly. Think about the efficiency in which services could be rendered. Yikes! it's scary..

Mashups would be amazing combining Google and Amazon services that users could create vertical hubs that would maximize the Long Tail effect. Advertisers would see higher click thru and transaction rates due to amazingly targeted content.


These are just some random thoughts..I would be happy to hear your thoughts on this topic.


Here is a video that has been around quite awhile but is still fun to watch especially how fast things are going right now in comparison to the time-line in this video.

Poor Britney !!!

You know I am not a huge "pop" fan and especially not a Britney fan..but I got to tell you..I feel really bad for her and her children.

Where are her parents? Oh that's right her parents are the ones that introduced her to this life and promoted it...

I pray that the tattoo of the cross that she got does help her find what she is looking for in her life.. as someone who has been down that path I can def. sympathize w/ her.

Can Google Hear Me ??

I caught wind of this site last night via my Rss feeds..but couldn't access it do to it getting on Digg and killing their servers.

All I have to say is I LOVE the Internet..

Please read his blog it is inspiring and really says allot about what most people think: Google= Good

Hope the idea that he is pitching lives up to the Hype...

Good Luck Aaron!

Social Commerce ???

I have been thinking allot about how to incorporate Social Networking into our new E-commerce based membership startup...forums/classifieds/member pages etc.. are all the likely suspects. The problem is that we have to build a vibrant community first..so how do we do this and get some sense of relationship building?

It seems like their are multitudes of options out there whether it be a tools Meebo, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Me.dium and leveraging other social networking sites like Myspace , Facebook , Youtube and Flickr.

This can get intimidating quite quickly but I think that I have come up w/ a scenario that will make it easy for members to interact w/ our staff and other members in an efficient manner.

Can you have a site that incorporates a mix of Social Networking tools but doesn't have the typical infrastructure i.e forums, chat rooms, member pages?

Could we mesh the ability to use tools like Meebo which blends all major IM's (Gtalk,AIM,YIM,MSM,Jabber) together in a web based widget instead of using LivePerson?

Second would be how can we take that to the next level..a blog would be nice..but our demographic audience are primarily 18-27 males.. so we need to keep it short and simple. I came across this article from Lifehacker regarding real world applications for Twitter. Twitter is an application where you can post quick blurbs about daily happenings in your life and are sent via Sms, IM's or Blogs.

The key in my mind is somehow to use these tools to make a bridge between our site and the big boys i.e Youtube/Myspace/Facebook/Flickr.

Our strategic marketing plan is to develop relationships in community forums that are specific for our startup. Could we find a way to incorporate a community based off of Me.dium
that would give our members and fellow enthusiasts to socially surf? Maybe this is taking it to far.

Let me know what you think I should do regarding a "Social Networking Strategy"

Youtube = America's Most Wanted

I was watching the news the other night and saw that Youtube had lead to the capature of two suspected criminals...I was suprised that it wasn't a highly technical person(s) that did this.. It really speaks to the Viral nature of Youtube.

Community = Web 2.0

After reading a couple of great post's by Nic Brisbourne ..it really got me thinking about organic viral marketing . His first post was about what makes community's succeed. It was a fascinating read especially w/ all of the news this week associated w/ Digg and Flickr and their decisions to ruffle the feathers of their initial users.

"Webforums like the Mobile Monday Yahoo Group are a good and simple example - people post news and questions to the group and over time rules have emerged governing what is allowed (anything to do with the mobile web) and what isn’t (blatant advertising). When the rules are broken people respond with lots of angry posts and if necessary the moderators wade in to sum up group opinion and explicitly say what should be allowed and what shouldn’t. Thus the group has a set of rules, is self policing and thrives because of it. If the self policing failed and the advert spam became to voluminous people would stop participating and the community would fall apart.

An interesting question then is how those rules evolve, and if you are building an online community what you can do to influence that evolution to maximise your chances of success."

By Nic Brisbourne

I am actually in the process of e-commerce/membership based startup that will be leveraging online car community's as evangelists. Our #1 concern was not to force our "service" down the members of these community's. So my first thought to gain some traction was to offer a $5k Shopping Spree for new members that sign up in Lottery. This seemed ok at the time..but I wasn't convinced that this would get us the kind of customers that we want to evangelize for us and to get a handle on our unique business model.... Well as luck would have it I was logged on to me.dium.com and saw a bunch of people crowed around a site called Woot.com . This social commerce site sells 1 product a day...that's it and thousands of people flock to it.. to participate in online banter about the product of the day whether good or bad. The products are priced way below any thing on the net... so that may be a big attraction...but the community is really what drives it. You will typically find 300-400 comments on a given Woot Off!

So this really got me thinking about how we can engage our potential new members in an honest way that really depicts who we are: Bring a Woot style format everyday for individual automotive communities that we advertise in to help us get out our message. We are a site that solves the problem of all car enthusiasts: "Getting the best parts in one place for the best price"

Quote from Nic Brisbourne

"Pre-critical mass there is no natural network value, so your entire value proposition can only be about personal value. That worked fine for Del.icio.us and Flickr because storing bookmarks and photos gives a lot of personal value - it doesn’t work for e.g. review sites, because until there is a critical mass of reviews there is not much value to the consumer."

I am banking that our startup will give that personal value to customer...