Since I'm in Park City, a day before the 2010 Sundance Film Festival officially begins, I thought I'd do a round-up of the films I'm most looking forward to this year at the festival. Attending Sundance, you have to put a list together of the movies you want to see the most. Sometimes you're lucky and you pick something that becomes the buzz of the fest - Super Size Me, Little Miss Sunshine, Rocket Science

Read more: Peter's 18 Most Anticipated Films of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival | /Film http://www.slashfilm.com/2010/01/21/peters-18-most-anticipated-films-of-the-2010-sundance-film-festival/#ixzz0dGnWLb8n

Swoopo Rakes it in - but does its Users?

Review & Guide to Swoopo.Com - an Auction Website

How it Works - For a user to bid on Swoopo, they must first pre-purchase their bids. They come at a price of $0.75 a pop. On a given item auction, users may place one of their bids and the auction price of the item will increase by $0.15, or, in the case of a penny auction, increase by $0.01. Once an additional bid is tacked to an item, the timer on the item will increase up to a maximum of 20 seconds. However, once an item reaches the final seconds of an auction, the timer will max out at 10 or 15 seconds no matter how many bids are made in the final time frame (though, this does imply that an item could be in its 'last 10 seconds' for over 24 hours).

Swoopo Rakes it in - but does its Users? Swoopo is indeed, for its owners, a simple profit-machine which nearly always will generate revenue. So long as the winning bid on a given item is one-sixth its retail price, Swoopo will net a profit. The calculation is simple: Say an item costs $1050 retail, and bidding will end at $175. Every time an item is bid on at Swoopo the price of the auction increases by $0.15. Dividing $175 by $0.15 means 1167 bids were made. Each of these bids cost a user $0.75. This means Swoopo will receive 1167 x $0.75 from bids ($875), and $175 from the user who won the auction.

This calculation, however, assumes Swoopo sells the item for 1/6 retail price. This is rarely the case as items typically will almost always surpass or come close to 50% retail.

Swoopo has in the past even sold Cash as an auction item, where users would bid on a lump sum of money. For a user, the benefits of Swoopo are questionable. Certainly, some users will get off lucky, only making a few bids at an item and snagging it at well under retail price. Unfortunately, the vast majority of bidders will end up losing an item, with some using upwards of a few hundred bids. Even in the case that a user wins an item a savings may not have been had. After totaling the cost of bids, the cost of the final auction price, and the cost of shipping the item, some bidders end up spending more on the item than if they walked into their local Best Buy or Game Stop and purchased it on the spot. Though I have never "Swoopo'd " personally, I do personally know friends who have, and I would like to give a word of advice to readers: Friends don't let friends Swoopo. Though there are deals to be had, the only people I see really raking in the big bucks are the owners of Swoopo: Entertainment Shopping EG.

Entertainment shopping sure is gaining in popularity. (source pennyauctionwatch)

Winnit International, Inc.
Suite 1, Mec Complex
Avenue D'Ahora
Providence, Mahe
Seychelles

Congratulations to the winner "chazza" of Winnit's lowest unique bid auction for a 2010 Porsche Cayman, the winning bid was $17.10. This would mean that there were at least 1,710 bids (at $4 per bid) placed on the auction.

There are now testimonials posted http://www.winnit.com/testimonial.php.

Once members have placed a bid, Winnit will inform them whether their bid is (1) unique and/or (2) the lowest. Based on this, Winnit will provide hints for the next bid in order to help users guess the lowest, unmatched amount on the same product. Each auction has a set fee-per-bid ranging from $1 to $4 depending on the product. Members may bid multiple times in any auction, but please note that the bid fee applies to each individual bid.

If a single Lowest Unique Bid has not been received by the close of an auction then the winner is determined by the lowest bid amount that has been placed by exactly two members. The member that placed this bid amount first will be deemed the winner. If an auction does not have a bid amount that exactly two members have placed then Winnit will find the bid amount that three users have bid and apply the same rules.

Winnit winners are notified of their prize within 12 hours of an auction's close in order to account for the reconciliation of bids and the auditing of results when necessary.

How to get started:

• Create a user account
• Select an auction to bid on
• Place your bid (bid fees are listed by product)
• Winnit will immediately inform you of the status of your bid and let you know whether or not you have guessed the lowest, unique amount. Remember to press the refresh button to update the status on your bids
• You will be updated on the status of your bids by e-mail and may also view auction status on your "My Account" page
• At the close of an auction, if your bid remains tagged as the Lowest Unique Bid, you will be notified of your win by email with instructions on how to proceed!

Note from WINNIT on facebook: ouch.

Winnit.com Hi guys! We are truly sorry about the delays in shipping! Due to sickness we are behind on deliveries. We are working around the clock to get items out before the 16th of december so you will have them before christmas! Again, we are truly sorry about this, but please do no worry about the legitimacy of Winnit. Everyon...

Looking for lists of the new auctions, I found this blog. Most refer to these as Penny Auctions.

The sites started in Europe years ago: Bidster.com in the UK and Fiksuhuuto in Finland, along with Swoopo and http://telebid.wordpress.com

Another article is listed at: Associated Content Penny Auction Sites - Deal of the Century or Scam of the Century?

http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/

Here is a big list: http://www.pennyauctiontraffic.com/

Penny Auctions are a new type of auction where users can get fantastic deals on brand new items. The catch is that each bid costs a little bit of money - typically under $1.00. You have to be the last bidder on the auction when the time runs out. Each bid that is placed raises the price of the auction by a penny and extends the time by a few seconds. Hence the name, penny auction.

Penny auctions are fun and exciting, and it is possible to sometimes score a great deal. However, you have to be careful because there are many sites which are dishonest or simply fraudulent. This list contains penny auction sites which have been checked out and are legitimate.

http://www.swoopo.com/
One of the oldest sites around. Hard to win anything, but lots of products. Slow. Same auctions run in multiple countries, which means you are competing with people from all over the world.

http://www.bidrodeo.com/
A well designed and professionally run penny auction site. Fast with fantastic customer support. Not too bid, Not as many users means less competition and higher chances of winning.

http://www.rockybids.com/ Founded in New York City
Lots of free bids and a few products. Kind of slow, but one of the leaders. Good customer support.

http://www.zoozle.com/
A crazy name and descent product selection. Not too pretty, but honest and professional.

http://www.bidcactus.com/
A promising site but it seems all that they sell is small items, bid packs, and low-value gift cards.

http://www.gobid.com/
Not as quick or pretty as some of the others, but worth a look. They sell mostly small items but are known to be legit, which is a lot to say compared to other sites not on this list.

http://www.bidstick.com/
bidstick focuses exclusively on high end Electronics, luxury goods and high ticket items. "We're in the process of adding convertible cars, jewelry and even vacation packages" says Keven Moore marketing director.
BidStick is a mid-sized auction site and does offer an varied product selection. It is one of the quicker sites on this list. Based in Miami, Florida.

http://www.bidray.com/
One of the biggest problems with this site is the annoying guy who walks onto your screen whenever you visit. Besides that, a descent site with a nice products.

http://www.junglecents.com/
This is slightly different take on the penny auction model. Instead of paying per bid, you pay per seat. Once all the seats are full, the auction runs and the last person to bid wins. Unfortunately, the auctions do not run very often.

http://www.prestigebids.com

http://www.bidntime.com

http://www.bidito.com

http://www.pennypurses.com/

A niche penny auction site dedicated to what women love most - purses. Designer bags can be yours for only a few bucks, if you can bid smarter than the competition.
Penny auctions are fun and exciting, and it is possible to sometimes score a great deal.
However, you have to be careful because there are many sites which are dishonest or simply fraudulent. This list contains penny auction sites which have been checked out and are legitimate.

by Andrew Roos

http://bigdeal.com seems to be the newest entry that hopes to avoid upsetting auction losers too much.

http://www.dfwbid.com

Noticed that Swoopo.com has also changed it's policy as well.

Bidzilla was taken down, and should be back up soon.

Wisedeal the wildcard.

http://www.quibids.com the guys from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Bidfire in Los Angeles

www.bidraptor.com

http://www.gobid.com winners a choice between receiving the item they won or receiving the full retail value in additional bids.

http://www.zoozle.com/ Rocky Point, NY

TechDirt

Turning The Dollar Auction Into A Profit Center

from the human-psychology-at-work dept

On my very first day of econ 101 as a freshman in college many, many years ago, my professor played a "game" with two students in the class in order to demonstrate how incentives can lead to bad outcomes for everyone. He held up a dollar, and told each student that they were competing to "buy" the dollar. However, rather than a standard auction, both parties had to pay whatever their final bid was. Thus, even the loser has to pay. This leads to screwed up incentives, where things quickly spiral out of control. At first, one student will bid a penny, and of course the other student will bid 2 pennies. In both of their minds, it makes sense to bid up to $1 to get $1 back. Except... once you hit $1, the other student doesn't want to lose, knowing he's going to pay out without getting anything back -- so the bidding zooms past $1, with both participants knowing that they're going to lose money, but wanting to "win" in order to make sure they don't lose as much as the other one. In the end, the only one who makes out well is the econ professor who collects the money from both students and only has to pay back one dollar. I think in my year, he ended up making $3 or $4 before the students gave up, realizing things were only going to get worse. This is apparently a popular exercise in a number of econ classes, called the Dollar Auction.

However, it looks like some enterprising or evil students who played (or observed) that game have decided to build a startup on the same principle, where they (of course) play the role of the econ professor, and everyone else becomes the suckers who are eventually forced to overbid to minimize their losses. Tom sends in a link to a description of how swoopo works, and it sounds very much like the dollar auction. Basically, you purchase "bids" and each bid you place increases the purchase price of an auction and extends the auction a little longer. In other words, everyone keeps paying, hoping that they'll eventually get the "good" offered for sale at lower than face price. But, of course, like the dollar auction, because of the competition, the incentives get set so that people are likely to keep spending to get something back for their bids, rather than nothing at all. Swoopo is slightly more insidious in that the "price" of the item increases at less than the cost per bid, such that the price of the item stays lower than its list price for a long time, even though many people bid on it. That creates a scenario, as described in the post, where users of the site end up shelling out a grand total of $1,125.90 to the company, for an 8GB iPod Touch that lists at $229. Most of the bidders end up with nothing... and only one got the Touch for $187.65 plus whatever money he spent on bids.

While you have to be impressed with the sheer obnoxiousness of the business model, you have to wonder how long it can last, once people start to realize that the only winner is the company itself, and most of the "buyers" turn out to be big, big losers. The dollar auction works great if you play it once... or if you can keep finding suckers. If the suckers recognize that they're suckers, things dry up quickly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SssNmt0vQyI&feature=player_embedded

http://augmentedr3pt0.wordpress.com/category/thesis-research-basis/

augmented reality & branding

The Branded World:

Brand development is about how to exploit timed strategies in order to optimize awareness, based on impactful presentation and experiential impressions.

Tools in technology such as the Internet are only a reflection of a brand's growth. Such an immediate and simple feed of information is vital in showing the influence of marketing moves, and provide businesses with the room to go back and think about their position in the market to better plan their next move. A website and its traffic is a reflection of how effective the brand is in terms of generating curiosity among population, for people to visit and find out more about the brand.

We are in an era that is integrated with technology. Thus, it makes sense to intuitively tap into new generation method and strategies, which are more in tune with current, urban city events/movements as well as moving forward with web based information.

Also due to the global shift in the fundamental ways we communicate. Major companies are all attempting to fit the web 2.0 cultures to their business. Changing their brand image by creating a persona on the web, which is friendlier and more approachable, for people to follow up on the company activities. This shift ultimately marks a new beginning for in our social dynamics. Since web technologies revolutionized the oldest and most trusted ways of spreading news and information, which is by word of mouth, As 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, it means that the role of "mavens" as suggested in "The Tipping Point" will evolve to a new form through applications in digital social media. Instead of finding news, news will come to you. Thus, looking back at the current platform for augmented reality, the technologies have yet to include the social media and real-time networking capabilities.

In today's world, the online and real time events must run parallel with each other in order to optimize real-time awareness and "follow ups" on the business. Looking in parallel with the emerging trends in technologies. The world is moving towards digital live feed/conversation on a p2p level. Google wave is one of such development, which will revolutionize communication between a person and his/her social network. The concept of Identity 2.0 on the other hand, helps legitimize an individual's identity between organization and individuals, and would enable personalized assistance, transaction, and many applicable services.

What this all means is that, in the near future. The relationship between corporations and individuals should evolve around the user, possibly adding to the idea of a personalized friend's list, where the user is given the choice of "who" to connect with in selective locations and time zones. Information is then fed through and edited live, while simultaneously organized by location, which causes a reverse of the current model in service consumption. The brand or service should follow and bombard the user with information and assistance, only at the user's own will to be susceptible to the bombardment. By doing so it would maximize the brand/service mavens potential to promote services and assist others. Therefore, other than being able to view a listing of location based information overlaying reality vision such as wikitude and yelp reviews. The user can chose to appear online to an organization whenever they are in need. For instance, if a person is looking for real estate, they can choose to connect with a trusted real estate company or agent in a location that interest their buying and would be able to get real time recommendation and listings based on their whereabouts and criteria; they would also be guided to exact locations using augmented reality. Similarly, the user can get taxi cab, delivery, and participate in meetings more easily simply because the person/organization at the other end of the connection is sharing your whereabouts and current status. On the other hand, people may also seek medical help in times of emergency and connect with doctors real time to assess the best possible action to take. In a sense it is about creating an instance of common mind, or shared vision between a person and another person on the network, or between a person and an organization on a network. This development should also translate the online experience to real life, and improve the overall service experience in many ways.

During the days when most people were not as active on the Internet, magazines and books were the main source. READ MORE.

The Irony of the Video Business -

Has anyone else noticed the irony that Redbox, a company that rents DVDs for a dollar from a kiosk that people have to drive to, is the most disruptive force in the video business ?

Or the irony that the most successful video delivery business, Netflix, makes almost all of their money shipping DVDs in red envelopes from distribution centers across the country ?

Or that even with the dominance of Apple's Itunes, they only account for about 1/3 of music sales, in an industry that is becoming less dependent on music sales.

I'm not suggesting anyone run out and start a video sales and rental store, or open up a record store. But then again, I never would have agreed that opening up kiosks in 7-11s and Grocery Stores to rent DVDs for a dollar would be a good idea either.

On the flipside, conventional wisdom says that the most disruptive and dominant force in video is youtube.com . In reality, they are just a very large online media company doing business in the most old fashioned of means. They license and aggregate content and then sell advertisers their viewers. They are big, which by definition makes them a force. However, there is absolutely nothing disruptive about what they do. They are no different than Broadcast Networkz on Television.

They have the same problem as Networks like NBC, ABC, CBS.

At some point, when online video consumption reaches 100pct penetration, like Broadcast TV before it, Youtube will have to find a way to license hit shows so that they can build or just retain viewership. With advertising as their single revenue stream (as opposed to subscription revenue like cable networks have ), they may find themselves once again being subsidized by Google just a few short years after they reach the profitability they covet.

The sweet irony in comparing Google/Youtube to Broadcast Network TV, is that despite being online, Google has no idea who their viewers are any more than NBC, CBS, ABC do. Could Facebook Connect be in Google's future ?

The point is that when everyone is looking in one direction, sometimes industry change and profits can come from where everyone is telling you not to look

ShareThis

[Mark Cuban]

Check Twitter for Bargains

By JONNELLE MARTE

Businesses from your preferred airline to your favorite cafe are using Twitter to trumpet last-minute discounts and giveaways. You, too, can get looped in to these immediate and often exclusive deals.

Users of the social network (Twitter.com) can sign up to "follow" stores or clubs they like. Messages, or "tweets," from businesses, like those from individual users, are limited to 140 characters.

The best bargains, such as free meals at your local diner or cross-country flights for less than $20, may be gone in a few hours.

"For people that are on the go all the time, this is a great way to find the deal and it might be the only way to find a deal," said Hillary Mendelsohn, who uses Twitter to find bargains for her Web site, thepurplebook.com, an online shopping guide.

Find your favorite businesses by using the search or "Find People" tools on Twitter.com. A quick search for a key phrase like "deals to Vegas" or "cheap laptops" will also yield a stream of messages, which you can then re-post to share with other users or keep to yourself -- you don't have to post tweets to take advantage of these deals.

Stick to brands and names you trust to avoid scams and be wary of imposters, since Twitter is still developing a verification process for users who register well-known names.

LivingSocial Takes Top Spot Among Facebook Apps

After months of being the top Facebook application, Causes, which lets individuals and tiny groups raise money for charities and non-profits, has been bumped to the No. 2 spot.

if ( show_doubleclick_ad && ( adTemplate & SKY_LEFT ) == SKY_LEFT ) { placeAd('ARTICLE',commercialNode,3,'',true) ; }

Couple of years back, around this same time when Twitter was launched, most of the major search engines have started to think about the idea of 'real-time' results and include a 'freshness' factor to the results returned for some of the queries that are performed on their search engines. Twitter is both more and less than a search engine, but there are lots of third parties doing search-like things around the Twitter data. Especially because Twitter search seems to be returning real time search results.

Real Time Search Engines:

Real-time searches are more valuable because it lets you know what's happening right now on any given topic. Companies use it to handle customer services. News junkies use it to follow political events. With this increase in demand for real time searches many new real time search engines like collecta, crowdeye have been launched over the last few months.

This new generation of emerging search engines are ready to compete with the big boys to tap into the torrent of tweets, blog postings and online photos that can be captured by cell phones. Below are some of the real-time search engines that allow you to take a deep look as what's going right now.

• Collecta - scours the net for the most recent blog posts, news stories, tweets and comments and displays them in a continuous waterfall. It's a torrent of information to keep track of.

• Crowdeye - currently a twitter only search engine, it gives you results from tweets and retweets including graphs, charts and relevant third party links.

• OneRiot - is a bookmarking site for twitter. Users share tweets that contain URLs to web pages and this site keeps track and returns search results based on topics. This is a really great way to discover some new sites related to subjects and you can interact with the twitter shares right from the site by replying to or retweeting good stuff you find.

• Topsy - lots of stats when you search including the a collection of authors by volume for each topic you are trending. Really like this to find people who are very active around a topic or who are your best retweeters.

• Scoopler - aggregates and organizes content shared on the Internet instantaneously, similar to eye-witness reports of breaking news, with photos and videos from the events, and links to the hottest memes of the day. Indexing live updates from Twitter, Flickr, Digg and Delicious, they are able to surface some of the most relevant results, updated in real-time.

Users needs Realtime Searches

As the current trend on the web is towards more and more real-time information, the race is on to collect, organize, and filter the data so that people can actually may sense of it. Real-time search is one of the hottest mini Web trend out there right now, promising new ways to help users tease out current information they want from the digital information glut. The ability to seek out what everyone is discussing or looking for in the moment captures the imagination.

Even Google made its counter-move to real time search, by coming out with a new set of feature called 'Search Options', which gives users the option to filter out certain results and only see content that is only a particular number of days old, ie. 1 day, 1 week, 1 year. This has been clearly reflected from the words of Google's co-founder Larry Page:

"I have always thought we needed to index the web every second to allow real time search. At first, my team laughed and did not believe me. Now they know they have to do it. Not everybody needs sub-second indexing but people are getting pretty excited about realtime."

And as you all know when the news broke that Michael Jackson had died Twitter was able to deliver better relevant results. On the other hand, Google thought MJ died at age 65 in 2007 and sometimes later it was able to show only the "We are Sorry Page"!

Google Results showing Michael Jackson died at age 65

So I conclude saying that unless Google take actions on this real time search issues(which was at one time a laughable concept), it will be hard for them to with stand their position, so I hope soon Google will overcome this issue. And I can also sense the launches of more real time search engines in the future with this growing demand for it.

Update:

Hmmm not to much of my surprise, now the Microsoft's new release Bing also have joined the race for real time searches. Sources from Bing said as follows:

"There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We've been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space. Today we're unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest.

Starting later today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you'll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing's search results. For example, if you type "Kara Swisher Twitter" or "Kara Swisher Tweets" or even "@karaswisher" as your search query, you'll see something like the below. (Note this feature will be rolling out gradually over the course of the next few hours so you may not see it right away.)"

By Scott Collins
June 16, 2008

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/16/entertainment/et-channel16

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/may/11/business/fi-ct-hulu11

Hulu's tug of war with TV

As online TV viewership surges, media companies reconsider the wisdom of sharing their content for free.

By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Meg James

Online video site Hulu trumpeted its ascension to the media big time a few months back with a dash of sardonic humor. In its debut TV commercial, in which Alec Baldwin mocks the audience's addiction to the very shows he creates as a fictional network executive, the site calls itself "an evil plot to destroy the world."

The joke is uneasily close to the truth for some in the television business.

Once dismissed as "Clown Co." by Silicon Valley critics who scoffed at the notion that old media giants could ever harness the Internet, the website with a name that sounds like a Hawaiian dance has quickly upset the status quo. Hulu's traction with users has entrenched entertainment companies worried that the video site's runaway success could undercut the financial underpinnings of the industry.

Those companies are fighting back, and the result could mean no more free passes for many signature cable programs that appear on Hulu.

NBC Universal and News Corp. publicly launched Hulu a little more than a year ago as a gamble on television's digital future. The website allows viewers to watch thousands of episodes of TV shows for free, from current hits like "Family Guy" and "The Office" to old favorites like "WKRP in Cincinnati" and "I Dream of Jeannie." Hulu's simple design, expansive catalog and no cover charge have elevated it to one of the most popular websites for watching video.

With 42 million viewers in March -- an audience nearly twice the size of TV's most popular show, Fox's "American Idol" -- Hulu whizzed past Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, and is now nipping at the heels of Google's YouTube.

"Hulu has certainly exceeded all of our expectations," said Jean-Briac Perrette, NBC Universal's president of digital distribution. "We've come a long way from Clown Co."

Late last month, Walt Disney Co. overcame its initial skepticism and signed on as an equity owner of Hulu, which has nearly 150 content partners. That gives the video site even more star power with the addition of ABC's "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost," and cable hits such as ABC Family's "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" and Disney Channel's "Wizards of Waverly Place."

"Our feeling is that -- and some of this is instinct, by the way -- media consumption online is growing and will continue to grow," Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger said in a call last week with analysts who grilled him about Hulu. "It is really important for us to establish ourselves there."

But in making a bid for the next generation of Internet- attuned viewers, Hulu's owners have strained their lucrative relationships with cable and satellite operators. Companies like Time Warner Cable Inc. and DirecTV Group Inc. pay cable networks billions of dollars each year to carry programming. Believing that they should have exclusivity because their payments support the enormous cost of producing TV shows, such companies have been pushing back against the Hulu freebies.

Investors also are wary that the media companies' embrace of the Internet-content-should-be-

I've seen a few CRAZY media pitches over the years....
I would be inclinded to create a TV show where would be creatives attempt to pitch their MEDIA PROPERTIES (FILM, TV, BOOKS, WEB SITES, GAMES) etc. The follow-up would be fascinating. Was the concept shelved, did it get picked up by a few stars, who is attaching themselves to it?

Matthew Phillips

By Hillary Canada

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2009/05/22/oh-the-shark-has-pretty-t...

It's hard enough to pitch a business plan to hurried venture capitalists. Try doing it on camera in front of millions of people to five wealthy business people who aren't afraid to show their pointy teeth.

That's the premise behind Shark Tank, a new reality television series from Mark Burnett coming this fall, ABC announced this week.

The concept of pitching a business to potential investors isn't all that new for reality TV. ABC ran two seasons of American Inventor, which gave entrepreneurs $50,000 to improve their products, with the shot of winning "$1,000,000 worth of business support, entrepreneurial counsel, physical resources, and prize money." And last year, VentureWire covered the launch of a whole mess of these TV shows including Wall Street Warriors, Bobby G: Adventure Capitalist, and Start-Up Junkies, all of which sought to capture the drama behind high-stakes investing. AOL even got in on the action, creating an on-line series called The StartUp.

In fact the concept for Shark Tank, like all craze-inducing franchises (think American Idol, The Office and The Beatles), originally debuted in the U.K. under the moniker Dragons' Den.

But either way, we're interested to see what Burnett, who gave the world Survivor and The Apprentice, has in store for us. If Shark Tank follows the Dragons' Den model, we're eager to see the kind of pitches fledgling business owners can give in three minutes or less. We're also looking forward to the investors fighting one another for the right to fund top-tier ideas. Would it be too much to hope for another Omarosa?

The five "Sharks" are entrepreneurs-turned multi-millionaires: Barbara Corcoran, a Manhattan real estate titan; Kevin Harrington, an infomercials producer (think Flobee and Magic Saw); Robert Herjavec, a Canadian technology executive; Daymond John, owner of clothing company FUBU The Collection; and Kevin O'Leary, a Canadian entrepreneur and investor.

Here's the link to the casting call if you want to appear on the show.

_______________________

Tuesdays get going with Burnett's "Shark Tank" reality series, where budding entrepreneurs try to talk millionaires (billionaires?) out of their money to finance bright ideas. The "Dancing" results show follows at 9 p.m. and a Jerry Bruckheimer drama about amateur detectives who try to solve the deaths of unknown victims, "The Forgotten," airs at 10 p.m.

______________________________________

UK version Dragons Den:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzcQtXA5Gc8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu0QifxOGvs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tc6-vSYIMk SPOOF

ABC orders Mark Burnett pilot

September 04, 2008 The network has handed out a pilot order to the unscripted project, an adaptation of the Japanese reality format "Dragon's Den." Sony Pictures TV is producing the show, which features aspiring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to moguls, aka the "Sharks," in hopes of landing investment funds. The arena of business-themed reality shows is a familiar one for Burnett, who also created and is executive producing "The Apprentice," which returns with a second celebrity edition in January.
_____________________________________________________________________________

March 29, 2009

ABC greenlights Burnett's 'Shark Tank'

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/03/abc-mark-burnett-shark-tank.html

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Enter the Sharks of "Shark Tank" -- Barbara Corcoran (Manhattan real estate titan), Kevin Harrington (king of infomercials), Robert Herjavec (technology tycoon), Daymond John (fashion mogul) and Kevin O'Leary (venture capitalist) -- five multi-millionaires who lifted themselves up by their bootstraps to make their own entrepreneurial dreams come true and turned their ideas into empires.

Each week ambitious entrepreneurs from across the country will present their breakthrough business concepts, products, properties and services to the panel of ruthless investors. Their goal is to convince these merciless moguls to invest their own dollars in the concept. Convincing real-life millionaires to part with their own money is no easy task, because when the idea is poor, the Sharks will tear into the illprepared presenters and pass on the idea with a simple, "I'm out!" -- sending them running for the exit.

But these Sharks aren't just out for blood, they too have a goal: to own a piece of the next big idea. Entrepreneurs will be asked to give up a percentage of their companies' equity to the Sharks in order to get the investment they need. But when the Sharks hear a really top-notch idea, and more than one of them wants to sink their teeth into it, a war between them will erupt. Then the once-desperate entrepreneur can rejoice when the Sharks reveal their true interest in the product and bid up the price of the investment.

Shark Tank
TERMS for SIGNUP:

DO YOU HAVE THE NEXT GREAT MONEYMAKING IDEA? We are currently on the search for entrepreneurs, inventors, businesspersons, dreamers, promoters, creators, innovators, etc. If you feel you have a lucrative business idea but just can't seem to secure the financial backing to get it off the ground then Shark Tank is just the show for you. Each episode features aspiring entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to moguls in hopes of landing investment funds. Apply now for your chance to enter the "Shark Tank" and see if your idea survives.

IMPORTANT NOTICE - IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING DO NOT APPLY:

By making an email submission, you acknowledge and agree that you are making a submission solely for purposes of being considered by Mark Burnett Productions, Inc., Sony Pictures Television, Inc., American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. and their respective affiliated or related entities (collectively "Shark Tank Entities") to be a participant on "Shark Tank" and will not receive any compensation or credit for making a submission. BY MAKING AN EMAIL SUBMISSION, YOU ARE ACCEPTING AND AGREEING TO THE ABC.COM TERMS OF USE . You understand that your email submission is not confidential nor submitted in confidence or trust and no confidential or fiduciary relationship is intended or created by making an email submission. You understand that the Shark Tank Entities are diversified companies who may possess or come to possess information similar or identical to information contained in your email submission, and you agree that any such similarity or identity shall not give rise to any claim or entitlement, whether for compensation, credit or otherwise. By making an email submission, you hereby release the Shark Tank Entities and their respective directors, officers, shareholders, employees, and licensees from any and all claims relating to your email submission, including without limitation arising from the risk of misdirection or misdelivery of your email.

Yesterday, our CEO sent me an article from Lifehacker that announced a new Google experiment, the Google Wonder Wheel. The experiment didn't actually work on my desktop but the video on YouTube demonstrated the capabilities. It's just like a mind map that allows you to drill down into deeper search results. The future is getting cooler, right?

I like how wonderwheel is starting to make search not only more 'fun but also more connected.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtirDMfcOKE&feature=player_embedded

Microsoft Decides It Has No Answer For The Answers Market

By Joseph Tartakoff - Mon 11 May 2009 01:59 PM PST

MSN QnA, Microsoft's rival to Yahoo Answers, is shutting down. A spokeswoman says MSN QnA is being closed "as part of our overall investment in updating and re-aligning our online services to provide customers with new ways to share their opinions and ideas." It's the latest MSN-branded service to be cut. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) announced it was closing its MSN Encarta site in late March. But as recently as mid-February, Microsoft still seemed dedicated to the QnA service, rebranding it as MSN QnA from Live QnA and moving into the MSN organization.

The answers market has been tough for big companies to break into, with the notable exception of Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO). Microsoft launched QnA in August 2006, four months before Google (NSDQ: GOOG) decided to shut down Google Answers, which charged users to have their questions answered. In its three years in existence, Microsoft's QnA appears to have attracted about 3 million questions. Yahoo Answers measures itself not by questions but by answers-it has attracted more than 750 million answers-but it's clear that Yahoo is far more popular. LiveSide first reported the news Monday.

What if the ads we saw when watching TV were always just what we wanted to see? Well, we believe it is possible to make TV ads more relevant to viewers and to deliver more value to advertisers. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/tuning-in-to-tv-data.html

Television is becoming more like the web. Just as users click with their mouse to choose what's most relevant to them on the web, viewers send signals about what they want to see on television with clicks of the remote control.

Each week, Google analyzes data from millions of anonymized set-top boxes (STBs) to see which channels they were tuned to second by second. This data is provided by our partner, EchoStar. We're then able to use tuning metrics to provide our advertisers with next-day reports of how many televisions showed their ads nationwide and how the audience responded with their remotes.

We look at the various tuning metrics as signals from the audience about what they want to see and when. One of the metrics we've been exploring is the % Initial Audience Retained (%IAR). This is the percentage of the audience that was present at the beginning of the ad and then stayed tuned-in through the entire ad. If most viewers see an ad they like and decide to stay tuned-in, that ad would have a high %IAR.

Many factors affect audience behavior, including the nature of the programming, the time of day, the day of week, and, of course, the personality of each viewer. But ads themselves also have an impact. By identifying which factors affect tune-away, we can focus in on how the audience reacted to the ad itself.

Check out this video to learn what we found:



The chart below shows all TV commercials that aired on the Google TV Ads platform August through November 2008. Each dot represents an ad, and they are lined up from left to right in order of their %IAR as compared to what we'd expect given other factors (e.g., time of day, network, etc). The red dots on the left represent ads where more audience tuned away than expected. The green dots on the right represent ads where more of the audience stayed tuned than expected. The black dots in the middle are "normal," meaning there was no significant difference between the audience retention for those ads versus what you would expect based on historical data.

The next question we wanted to answer was how well this historical data could predict the future audience reaction. If we can use the past to predict the future, then we can get closer to putting relevant ads in front of TV viewers. So we selected one ad with relatively high audience tune-away (red dot) and one ad with relatively low tune-away (green dot) to run side-by-side on national television to test our findings. In the graph below, the diagonal line shows where audiences reacted the same to both ads. The points above that line represent airings when more of the audience stayed tuned to the ad that had previously retained audiences better. We learned audiences reacted predictably to the two ads.

Through our analysis of tuning data from millions of set-top boxes, we're getting closer to matching the right ads to the right television audience. It takes a lot of processing power to make sense of the enormous amount of data, but the insights to be gleaned are very powerful. Not only are we able to offer advertisers better measurement and more accountability for their TV campaigns, our goal is to also create a better viewing experience for TV audiences by showing viewers what they want to see.

Building Complementary Services: A Powerful Long-Term Social Media Marketing Strategy

A fundamental aspect of marketing is to gain the attention of a target audience and engage or redirect it in a way which fulfills specific objectives, such as a positive increase in reputation, legitimacy, mindshare, exposure (visitor traffic), sales and captured leads (subscribers, users, clients etc).

In terms of online marketing, social media channels offer many opportunities. Some webmasters focus on setting up profiles with self-serving user generated content only for backlinks and traffic. Other savvy brands or individuals actively interact with online communities while moderating the impulse to 'spam', in order to build legitimacy, authority and a better reputation in the specific field.

And then there are a few that adopt a particularly powerful social media marketing strategy that consistently extracts attention with ease. A way that reaches out to every new and future member of a social community automatically with minimal effort. A tactic that markets continuously as long as the social channel exists and grows, without end or interruption.

Introducing the Method

Image Credit: Mick Ø

You might have heard about Dell earning $1 million in revenue from posting product offers on their Twitter account. So they're using Twitter like email, as a sales alert system. Not a big deal really. But they've also recently started posting exclusive 'Twitter-only' discount offers on their Twitter profile (Over 100K followers!). Exclusive to Twitter. Those are the magic words. Exclusive to Myspace users. Exclusive to Bebo users. Exclusives, exclusives.

When a social media channel (like Twitter) becomes large enough, it's time to think about devoting serious attention to leveraging the size and reach of the userbase. Marketing doesn't need to only target the lucky demographic you manage to data-mine and filter out from the online crowd. Sure, its more 'targeted' but why limit yourself to just that? Why not reach everyone and let the interested few fall through the net themselves? Move the masses. Not just the few. No market segmentation needed. No need to selectively pitch and sell.

Exclusive product or service offers for users of a specific social website are only the beginning. There are a lot more ways to deeply tap into and gain the favor of large social communities. But first of all you'll need to understand the mentality of social media users. People will consciously or subconsciously self-identify as members of a particular online social tribe. "I'm a Digg user. I'm a Facebook junkie. I love being a Youtuber."

Put aside your demographic notions of gender, age and location for a moment. People are more than all that when they are online. They create identities, behavioral patterns and personas based on the community they most frequently use. This constructed online identity is a proxy that can be used to not only engage these users but develop a favorable impression of your brand. Tap into their love or hate for the service and reach from there.

Image Credit: myspace is for losers

A powerful social media marketing strategy is to create a service, tool, system which perfectly complements, faciliates and improves each individual users experience of the specific social website. Think of the features that unite them and the problems that frustrate them. This creation must be almost indispensable and extremely useful to a very broad audience. They must be able to pick it up easily and integrate it into their daily routine.

It must be highly customizable and relevant to the different ways one can participate in the social community. A powerful long-term strategy would be to invest time and money on creating free complementary services for large and growing online social communities. Each new or future user is drawn towards to your tools naturally because they help them to better enjoy the social channel. They will gravitate towards you and pull other users along.

The Twitter Example

I'll use Twitter to illustrate my point again but note that what is said here applies to most social media communities. Twitter is not exceptional in this regard. All large social media communities online operate in a similar manner: they all have devoted users who love ways to improve their experience of the community or service.

Many popular blogs (like Mashable) and other websites have a huge Twitter fetish. Whenever a new and interesting app/service is released, they'll write about it immediately. Twitter users will often tweet and retweet a new app because its relevant or interesting to them. So what's the end result when you create an exceptional tool for Twitter users?

A large influx of traffic and links that'll flow towards your service's webpage, which can easily to funneled to your Twitter profile, other websites and business. The large influx of new users is continually exposed to your brand (indirectly via the service). You're essentially appealing to a guaranteed audience that'll always be there.

If your tool/service appeals to a broad enough market, it'll develop a userbase. Work at it and soon enough it'll grow itself. People will recommend it to friends, new users and the general public even withou any direct incentives from your end. Why? Because it is genuinely helpful. There is minimal trace of self-serving marketing and little effort or cost at your end to continually leverage a community that is all too willing to promote you.

Reaching the Peak of this Marketing Strategy

When someone asks for a good non-mobile way of using Twitter, the names of popular desktop clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl often come up. They are considered essential tools for a better user experience. They are near the peak of our social media marketing strategy.

The pinnacle is reached when your service achieves great recognition and mindshare within the community. At this point you can easily expect an endless flow of user recommendations, backlinks, referral traffic and support from a community interested in evangelizing their favorite social media channel and inadvertently, the value of your brand.

This may even lead to the specific social media channel directly recommending your service as a worthy addon to what they offer. For instance, Twitter is very explicit about what third-party tools it endorses: the Apps page feature Twhirl/Tweetdeck amongst other tools and its one of the first few pages that is pushed to a new user when he/she signs up.

Even if you do not reach this level of achievement for a single service, you can create many diverse services to fulfill different needs. Don't release them all at once. Spread them out and launch over a certain timespan so links and traffic can stream in consistently from blogs that monitor news about the social website. Be sure to interlink and promote your previous tools/services. This is another way of gaining attention and building influence over time.

Alternatively, you can sponsor and fund creative web developers who have a knack for creating addons for the specific social community. You don't always have to build them yourself, you just need to strongly associate them with your brand.

Publicity is Giving Someone a Reason to Talk about You

Image Credit: speech bubble

Why would a popular tech industry blog like Techcrunch write about an unknown web designer in Toronto? Or a freelance writer in Tokyo? Because these two people did something interesting. Something relevant to Techcrunch's blog and topic focus. Publicity is easy to get when your target is content-hungry publishers in a news cycle that loves novelty.

Many people encounter problems marketing online. You can't get mentioned in a popular blog that sends a lot of visitors. Because you're not relevant. So the solution is simple: make yourself compatible via an action, association or proxy. Build/do something that people in a specific field will talk about. The social media marketing strategy we are talking about is a publicity funnel. It gives you attention you can redirect to grow your core business or brand.

In the long run, you always should aim to build excellent authority services that grab a big chunk of user mindshare but should you fail in that aspect, there are short term advantages to using this marketing strategy. It can be a cyclical tactic to leverage news publishers for free traffic. Build a system, launch and promote. Grow users. Update with new features, send out news alerts. Build another service, launch and promote. Interlink systems, cross-promote. Grow users. Update features. It's a way to get free traffic and links over and over again.

It's kinda like linkbait on a mullet page but this is a lot more effective. You don't just become a flavor of the day on Digg but an actual service with registered users. Attention isn't given to you for the duration of a funny article but everyday when someone returns to re-use your service. Over time, user loyalty can develop into hardcore evangelism.

Monetization Won't Be a Problem When You Command Attention

In general, monetization comes easy if you're willing to work hard to develop your service's reputation and value amongst the community of social media users. Remember Ashley Qualls? She's a 18 year old high school dropout who created a website for Myspace layouts early on.

Most new Myspace users want to customize their layouts so layout providers were in hot demand. Her popular website was widely embraced by the community and it made $70K and more in revenue every month (back in 2007). While Facebook's popularity has eclipsed MySpace, there's still a guaranteed user audience for established providers like Ashley.

There's always a way to make money when you have people flowing into your site on a daily basis via the proxy that you've set up for a particular social media channel. In the end, what you've created is another notch in your resume and can be used in many ways to demonstrate competence or expertise. Apart from monetizing via display ads or premium service plans, you can heavily promote your core business or offer B2B consultancy programs.

But don't spend all your money and time only creating hit-or-miss services. When it comes down to it, a strategy like this must only be an add-on to your core business model or income system. Until it becomes a massive success, never mistake the means for the end.

What Social Media Sites Should You Target?

This particular method works best with very large and well known social media communities because you're relying on their popularity and the size of the userbase to get attention. If you're unfamiliar with what's hot nowadays, the Alexa Top 500 gives a rough listing of the heavily trafficked social media sites both globally and in each country.

Focus on them but always keep an eye on other growing social communities. Read sites that report on new startups and be in the loop for news about specific social sites, especially the ones that appear to be growing fast. The key is to look out for problems faced by users, while enhancing features which are the main draw of the specific social service.

Keep trust-worthy programmers/coders and designers close by so you can materialize ideas as fast as possible. It also helps to be an active user in the specific social media community so you can develop an instinctive understanding of its architecture, usability and possibilities.

Sounds like a Lot of Effort Doesn't it? But it Works.

If you're feeling tired just by reading this article, this tactic is probably not for you. If you're really excited (with wheels turning in your head), you're on the right track to success. There has to be some enthusiasm for you to see this method through. And one last important tip: always build relationships with key influencers, way before you begin to pitch. Trust me, it helps a lot.

To get new tips on social media and marketing, subscribe to dosh dosh today (It's free!).

Branded Content Matchmaker PlaceVine Gets $500k Seed Round

By David Kaplan - Wed 25 Feb 2009 01:11 PM PST

Branded entertainment sites like Bud.tv and Honeyshed have bit the dust, but the push for product integration hasn't shown any signs of dying. PlaceVine, a company that runs a site focused on matching agencies and marketers with producers, has raised roughly $500,000 in a seed round, according to sources close to the company. The funding was provided by NYCSeed, a public-private organ that was created with help from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office last June during Internet Week.

As for PlaceVine, which has offices in New York and Los Angeles, the company began offering its online services last October. Since then, the company says it has signed up 300 producers and 200 brands and agencies. Marketer licenses start at $145 per month. The company didn't specifically say what it plans to use the seed round for, aside from general "growth building."
Release

(1) BeatMyPrice - Community powered price comparison site that helps you find the best price on products. You enter product details, price and the URL where you found the item. If someone finds the same item for less, you are offered the result, otherwise your link is saved as the cheapest one. Read more: BeatMyPrice - Find the Best Price Online.

1. Find the best price you can online
2. Visit beatmyprice.com
3. Enter the details
4. See if someone has found it cheaper elsewhere
5. Save! (otherwise your price becomes the one to beat)

(2) Blist - Create comprehensive lists, be it a simple personal list or an advanced database. You could embed things like images, pdf files, word docs right beside a name in a spreadsheet etc. Read more: Blist - Create And Share Comprehensive Lists On The Web.

Looking over http://www.xplane.com and http://www.duarte.com for strategy design, my question in who is doing this for books? I love this stuff, since reading "Serious Play" by Dr. Michael Schrage years ago.

Strategy by Design