Well with 150,000 views of this video already, I’m clearly not setting any trends by providing this link to you. But here’s a hilarious knock at the technology industry from a YouTube Channel called The Richter Scales.
Category Archives: Personal
Are You a Sports Widow?
I’m taking a few minutes to plug a new and exciting idea from two of Seattle’s best Marketing folks. Dave Sharp and Nan Hall have launched SportsWidow.com. The site is focused on aspects of a "Sports Family" and profiled tonight on King 5’s Evening Magazine.
Some of the many features include the following:
- Sports Widow Journal & Features – Topical commentary, tips, ideas about coping/ surviving in a house full of sports fans.
- Store – Sports Widow® Wear and Gear
- www.sportswidowradio.com : Pilot Radio Show – This sample 1-hour radio show features interviews with other Sports Widows, Boxer George Foreman and relationship expert Pepper Schwartz, PhD. It includes the Sports Widow Blues theme song by composer/vocalist Chris Sharp and the C. Sharp Trio (yes, she’s Sharp’s wife). www.sportswidow.com/podcasts/theme song.mp3
- Fan Fare – Recipes and entertaining ideas for sports events
- Resources – Book, website and movie recommendations
The team will be looking for content soon. “We plan to connect with Sports Widows through interactive media, traditional media, special events, social network meet-ups and products specifically geared to them,” says Sharp. “To that end, we are searching for partners who share our vision and passion for this subject and market.” Plans to roll out Sports Widow Entertainment, include a radio talk show, syndicated columns, cartoons, greeting cards, books, video games/instructional videos, and a television show.
Movaya Wants to Make It Easy to Sell Mobile Games From Your Web Site
New product announcement from Movaya today, as they released version 2.0 of Plug N Play, which is a technology that makes it even easier for any online merchant (or even a blog) to sell mobile games from their web site, deliver them directly to the customer’s phone, and directly charge their cell phone bill.
While the mobile game industry is still in its early stages, all signs point to an explosion in revenues of mobile games in the coming years. The new version of Movaya’s product comes after months of research and feedback from the several hundred web sites already implementing the platform.
The entire press release is available in a Social Media form at their blog.
Martin Conquest Takes Next Steps
When I was in Manchester (UK), I was lucky enough to do a little "Real World Training" for a group of folks running what I think is going to be an extraordicary company, called Martin Conquest.
Years ago, the son of Martin Conquest CEO Alan Martin had a horrible accident and lost the use of his legs. Alan soon set out to build a motorcyle that was wheelchair accessible. It’s taken several years of testing and prototyping, but according to this article, it appears they are now in production.
The bikes have been tested up to 100 MPH. Imagine sitting in a wheelchair, driving a motorcycle at triple digit speeds. Very cool.
Anyway, I wsih these guys more continued success. It really is a great story.
A few notes
So now that the dust is settling from the BlogWorld / Vegas trip, I’ll sprinkle in a few little bits that I have highlighted here in notes. One curious
company we ran across was the expo’s media sponosor, a magazine called Blogger and Podcasting.
If you recognize the same kind of ironies that roughly 98.6% of the conference attendees noticed, you will chuckle and say to yourself, "Interesting. A print magazine dedicated to an industry whose sole purpose is to put print magazines out of business." Or, you might be less generous and say something far more disparaging or mean. Even the conference panelists on VC funding made special note, commenting on how they would pass on any deal that involved a magazine about blogging.
Is this newsworthy from a "Bubble Watch" standpoint? It certainly shows that there are market inconsistencies. And it probably wouldn’t be too problematic, if it wasn’t coupled with the fact that Exhibitor booths at BlogWorld were peppered with Booth Babes. I think this shocked me more than anything, because I can’t think of a group of people that would be less impressed, and dare I say possibly intimidated and annoyed, by scantily clad models who have no idea what they are talking about. When BlogWorld starts taking on a Comdex feel, something seems off-base.
Amateur Writers, Start Your Engines
For months, maybe years, it’s been increasingly difficult to determine the blurry line between "professional" and "amateur" when it comes to news reporting or developing entertaining videos. Now that line seems to be simple enough – If you are developing content, you are an amateur, and if you are a professional, you are on strike.
What a perfect storm for the aspiring amateur writer who never had the stomach to quit their job, move to LA, and battle for seats on ‘Joey" or "The Danny Bonaduce Show."
With the writers on strike, and thousands of cable channels still running 24 hours a day, content will be in demand. Now if I was running programming for a network, I’d probably look two places – International and the Internet.
With only so many countries that speak English, the International channel dries up pretty quickly. So the next stop is YouTube and the Blogosphere. How many ways are there to turn some sort of blog or YouTube channel into a hybrid Internet / TV program? And if a kid is developing content for kicks and giggles, how much do they really need to pay him?
It’s a huge open window for aspiring writers. During the last threat of a writer’s strike, the "reality show" was hatched by networks as a defense mechanism, and that genre ended up dominating TV for nearly a decade. What genre will this strike launch?
Sonics 2.0
The NBA kicked off season #40 in Seattle last night, in a game notworthy for it’s few absolutes:
- It wasn’t the actual first game of the year, as the team had played in Denver the night before
- It may or may not have been the last home opener in team history.
- They never looked like they would get killed, and never looked liek they would win.
- The roster is stacked full of people you may have heard of, but wouldn’t recognize if they sat next to you.
- The arena was almost full
- The fans didn’t quite know how to root for the players and boo the owners
But that made for an interesting dynamic. Some of the recognizable attractions remain – like Squatch, the Boom Squad and Sonics Dance team. T-Mobile still has big ads and the Dunking Ushers still put on a cool show. But there were no more Starbucks ads, and unless I missed them, the Southwest Airlines promotion seemed to be gone. At least there was no ad for the Stillwater Savings and Loan or Petroleum Workers Union 476.
There were some very noticeable handmade signs that I’m surprised fans were allowed to bring into the arena, including, "Noklahoma" and "Trade Bennett." It certainly would not have been unreasonable for an ownership group to force security to remove signs that denigrade the team or execs.
The loudest roar of the night was not prompted by the scoreboard, Squatch or PA Announcer – it was started by the fans and was simply a cheer of, "Save Our Sonics" that reverberated through the stadium for a few minutes. KJR’s Softy Mahler could be seen in the corner of the stadium taking part, and maybe 10% of the stadium was standing for it. With a little more organization, this cheer could take on a bigger role in future games, much like the "Go" ‘Huskies" cheer at UW shifts from side to side.
And finally, here’s an angle people aren’t writing about. The sales, marketing, admin, HR and other folks who work for the Sonics today are all Seattleites. They don’t want to move to Oklahoma. So you have owners who want to go, fans who want them to stay, employees who want them to stay and players who don’t care.
But one thing that is absolute – Kevin Durant is going to be a stud.
Stephen Colbert Op-Ed Piece in New York Times
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times dared Stephen Colbert to write an Op-Ed piece this week. Funny Stuff.
Check out Widget Bucks
I’m going to give a big ol’ plug to my friends over at mpire, and congratulate them on the launch of Widget Bucks. Here’s the straight skinny from one of their promotional emails:
Are you earning $2 – $15 CPM on your current ads? Do you wish you had more control over the type of content being displayed on your site? Are CPA ads frustrating because you can’t control if a user actually does make a purchase?
After years of dealing with ad networks, we saw too many ads that sucked and networks paying too low of CPM’s to effectively monetize people’s sites, we decided to do something about it. We’re proud to announce the launch of WidgetBucks.com a shopping ad network. With our widgets displaying contextual product offers in an engaging format, we’re seeing $3-6+ CPM on thousands of sites.
Today we have made our beta available for you to try it for yourself and start earning more money. Configuring the widget for your site is quick and easy and you’ll see immediate results.
I will be playing with Widget Bucks tonight here on AndyBoyer.com, and we’ll also be testing it on MyElectionChoices.com.
A Plug for Proper Direct Marketing
I sign up for a lot of things to check them out, so I’m on a ton of mailing lists. I’m not complaining, because it certainly doesn’t take me very long to zap through my inbox and delete 25 emails from Shutterfly, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Art.com, etc… who obviously have a spreadsheet that says, "If we send 1 million emails per week, 10,000 people will open them and 100 will buy something." Such is the world of anonymously blasting your email base.
But today I got an email from the folks at Lumosity, a "brain games" site I wrote briefly about a few months back. I had forgotten about them. They sit in my favorites bar, but the link is dusty from lack of use. So getting an email from them was an actual pleasure. I *wanted* to read that email because I had forgotten about them. And they had new things to tell me, so I appreciated hearing them.
So here’s a lesson to take from everyday life and apply to Direct Marketing. "Don’t talk unless you have something to say." After all, it’s free to talk too, but you rarely see people coming up out of the blue to start a conversation about nothing with you. And "Special 20% off sale" is not something to say. "New package discounts to Fiji" does not count as something to say either. Lumosity’s message was, "You joined our beta program, now we have new games for your brain, do you want to check them out?" That counts as news in my book. Now if they hit me every week about their newest game, they’ll go in the "Annoying yet not Spam category." But for now, they get a plug.