Beyond What We've Learned So Far

Of course APOC has provided all of its students with valuable knowledge, gotten fantastic speakers to present to us, and given us a very innovative learning experience that one would be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

In addition, from a variety of sources, we have received fantastic recommendations for websites, web tools, and other instruments of the digital kind that we can all take advantage of. I decided awhile ago to keep a list for myself so that I wouldn't forget them. I broke them into categories (that made sense to me) that probably wont be too hard to follow along with.

How selfish! My kindergarten teacher would be very disappointed in me for not being a better sharer...

*PLEASE COMMENT TO LET ME KNOW WHAT I'M LEAVING OUT

Marketing Analytics

-feedburner

-twitterfeed

-salesforce

Blueprint/wireframes

Gomockingbird

Lovelycharts

Development

-Wordpress

-Joomla

-Drupal

-Ning

-weebly

Sharing

-Google Docs

Outsourcings

-Elance

-Odesk

-Orangeslyce

Crowdsourcing

-99designs

-Deviantart

-Gettyimages

Twitter in a box:

-http://p2theme.com

-yammer.com

SEO

-Google Trends

-Google Keyword-Search

-SEOmoz

Enjoy,

Brian

More Connections...Thanks APOC

So as I discussed in my blog post about my business idea, I've started to look more seriously at starting this company. From what I can tell and how people have responded, the perception is that this could be both a very useful and potentially lucrative service.

However, I'd never really ventured into the whole seeking out a designer stage. Luckily for me, an awesome site designer/logo creator/brand extraordinaire named Tim Pederson came to our Wednesday night class. Zac told me to explain the idea to Tim to get his take on the idea. Tim loved it, and so I asked for his contact info so we could discuss it further. Apparently he thinks it'd be a piece of cake, and wants to tackle it once he finds the time to.

This was really cool to hear from someone who really knows what he's doing out in this digital space. With this bit of encouragement, James and I plan on collecting and analyzing more data to figure out exactly how this whole thing should operate.

Let me know your thoughts!

WordPress and Other Similar Services

Last Wednesday, Raanan Bar-Cohen of Automattic spoke to our APOC Online Technologies class about all the sites and services Automattic operates. One of these is WordPress, a site that many use for blogging, and even more use as the platform for their website.

You see, now, instead of hiring some random dude across the world who communicates in English through Google Translate to build a website for you from scratch, there is a more universal language. One person can build a site and be done with it, and another person can easily step in and take over from there.

BRILLIANT! WordPress and several other sites like Drupal and Joomla have made this whole "startup" thing even easier.

This is starting to make me more of a believer in the Chris Anderson's basic message of The Long Tail. Because of the new streamline way to make an online business idea a reality, a bunch of smaller businesses will be popping up and combining to have the same share of the market as the big dogs.

Connecting With A Classmate's Connection

Lisa Jacobs, one of my APOC peers, recently posted on her blog that her godson had started a company called OrangeSlyce that was basically an "elance.com" for college students who are looking to help small businesses and vice-versa (currently it just consists of ASU kids, although I signed up for it anyway).

Not only do I think this service is of an incredible value to the small businesses looking to "outsource" their work, I think the website is spectacular. So clean and well designed, in fact, that I messaged them and offered my marketing assistance (as they had a posting of their own looking for workers). It turned out that they didn't need my help, however, the CEO Sean Coleman emailed me back, which started an ongoing conversation. Thus far we have discussed marketing strategies, ideas for how I should design a website of my own, and useful resources for each other to use.

I plan to keeping in contact with Sean in the future, and thank Lisa for commenting on her godson's soon-to-be-huge business.

A Way To Return Lost Stuff

My friend James and I both spent this past summer working at internships in Madrid, Spain. There were three different groups of USC students there. One was from the engineering school, one was from the language school, and we were with the business school. What all three groups of students had in common, aside from the fact that we were from California, loved the nightlife, and never wanted to leave Madrid, was the fact that over 50% of each respective group lost a valuable item during the adventure. Whether it was a camera, a wallet, or a iPod, it was GONE.

This sucked...and there was no hope to get any of it back, not even if the finder of the lost item WANTED to get it back to the rightful owner. This hit home for me late in the trip when my brother lost the camera that had pictures of us RUNNING WITH THE BULLS. I still haven't come close to forgiving him for that one.

However, it inspired me, and my friend James. While we were eating at what happened to be the oldest restaurant in the world, we came up with an idea for a service that would help people have their lost items returned to them. Essentially, we decided that a service that registered one's device to a database that rewards people for returning found objects might be of interest to people in this world. They would receive a sticker in the mail that went onto their device that would instruct the finder how they would receive a reward for returning it.

We talked about this a lot, came up with some really good marketing ideas for it, but then realized we don't know yet if people would even sign up for such a thing. We both are entering the marketing field, and know that marketing today is building a product around your consumer. Our Professor referred to this as being market driven (finding the needs of the consumer and creating a product to satisfy that need) instead of product driven (creating a product and creating a need for the product).

This lead us to create a survey. Using SurveyMonkey, we created what we think is a pretty effective survey that answers our questions. We would've like to have asked more questions, but since we don't have the upgraded account, it limited us to 10. If we get responses that are positive, we will create a more specific account that will tell us more about our potential costumer. I've already generated over 60 responses just by posting it as my Facebook status and messaging people asking them to spend a minute on it, and would be especially happy if you took it as well!: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/82DVRFR

Through 60 responses, there clearly is a lot of interest. The perceived value of this service has showed a wide range (some think it should be free, others think it should cost more than $7). It's about split in half right now.

I'll give a full analysis on here in a few days about what kind of results we received and what our next step might be.

Stay tuned!

It's Now Or Never For MySpace

While it was one of the pioneers of what revolutionized at the Internet and how the world operates now as a whole, it is hard to say MySpace really does ANYTHING anymore.

Facebook and Twitter have been able to dig their feet in the sand and outlast what once was a giant, and now there are hundreds of other social networking sites that serve different functions.

FINALLY, MySpace is realizing that they are going to need to change what exactly they do. Before turning into the social network that it was--a playground, a nightclub, a social gathering--or whatever you though MySpace was, it was created to be a music portal (Independent musicians used MySpace as a platform to gain more exposure). Based on their new slogan, it sounds like they are going back toward something more like this (rather than trying to be something more like Facebook).

The attempt to re-brand the site, with the slogan "Discover and be Discovered" is definitely a step in the right direction. I mean, at this point, they had to do SOMETHING.

In principle, the main purpose of the site sounds to me kind of like an expanded version of Digg. According to TechCrunch, "The idea is to hit users over the head with new stuff when they come to MySpace. New people they should be meeting. Movie trailers they should watch. Games they may want to play (perhaps against other MySpace users), music they should listen to, articles they should read. Etc"

This seems like a good last-ditch effort. At the very least, they realized the current site isn't cutting it and are making a wise decision by making a complete overhaul of the site. They still have information about the users' tendancies from back when the users frequented the site that may prove to be invaluable to the way MySpace retains users from this point forward.

To be honest, I think it's just too late. While I think that the information they already have may prove to be useful, the entire MySpace brand has just collapsed in my mind. It would take the most brilliant marketing strategies, along with an overwhelmingly sticky site, to get it standing on its own two feet again.

Even with superstar executives from companies coming in (and leaving), I just don't see that happening. After all, I tend to believe that MySpace really only became popular on accident.

Read the TechCrunch article here!

Another Twist As The Online Movie Rental Business Continues To Unravel

Add another huge name to the list of companies involved in the distribution of movies...WALMART.

WOW!

According to this article on Mashable, the colossal everything-you-can-imagine chain store is taking its shot at the ever-shifting movie distribution world. They are likely to purchase the online movie service called Vudu, which works with Internet-enabled TV's.

Every company seems to want a piece of this evolving industry that really hasn't seemed to take a foothold, but for better or for worse, Walmart might have a serious role in its future. As the article points out, because Walmart is such a huge retailer of televisions, they can really streamline their effort to sell the two as a package.

Even though I'm not really a Walmart shopper or supporter, I think this was a brilliant move on their part. Since their TV prices are so low and sales are so high, Walmart will be able to make the Vudu a widespread service installed in most living rooms. They will likely be able to effectively use the synergy between the TV prices and the Vudu service, and out of nowhere, might be in the driver's seat in no time.

First Mom and Pop stores, now NETFLIX? Walmart, you do just take over the world. Just wait for Google to get more involved...then things will get really crazy.