Chatroulette – The Next Big Thing?

Chatroulette has a simple premise: you have random video chat with strangers all over the world. This conversation includes video, audio and chat and if you don’t like who you’re chatting with, you are always free to click ‘Next’ to go to the next stranger (called “Nexted or Nexting”). Pretty cool concept right? Chatroulette has been gaining steam the past few weeks. Its been featured on Good Morning America, The New York Times, several viral videos have gone up, and its creator, Andrey Ternovskiy, has already been contacted by several companies about financing the business. Several celebrities have also claimed to use Chatroulette such as Perez Hilton, Kelly Osbourne, and Nicole Ritchie.

Here’s a few videos of some “characters” you might meet in Chatroulette:

Here’s a list of more funny videos!

I tried it out yesterday night and over the course of 3 hours (yes it can get quite addicting), nexted a lot of faces (or maybe I got nexted a lot), seen some men flashing their privates, and chatted with a lot of people. I’ve chatted with an Australian guy about AC/DC and the Australian Open, someone from Indonesia about corruption and life there, and a Korean about Korean pop music. I’d say if you want to better understand why people are getting hooked on it, give it a try!

Can Chatroulette last?Its hard to say. I think the idea behind it is great. Chatroulette differs from the normal chat rooms because you can’t pick who you’re chatting to next and without your webcam turned on, you wont be able to join. Of course, you could cover your webcam, however, Chatroulette allows users to ‘Report’ you banning you from the website for 10 minutes and could end up in your IP banned if more people click the ‘Report’ on you.  The main problem with Chatroulette will be the pedophiles and the exhibitionists that roam around. Pornography may also run rampant on this website and so certain measures (registration maybe?) will need to occur to protect users. Time will tell how Chatroulette copes with this!

Nestlé’s Social Media Nightmare

You can bet a lot of customers wont be buying Nestlé products for quite some time. Just a few days ago, Greenpeace released a parody of Nestlé Kit Kat’s well-known commercial ‘Have a break’ with one big difference. Below is the video: *Warning: Contains graphic content and may be NSFW*

Greenpeace warns users that eating Kit Kat is like ‘eating/killing’ an orangutan because palm oil used in Kit Kat’s production comes from palm tree plantations which destroys the Orangutan’s natural habitat, driving them to extinction. Nestlé immediately tried to control this by demanding YouTube take down the video. I believe this was the first mistake because by removing the Greenpeace video from YouTube, this sparked even more interest and resulted in more videos of the ad being uploaded, people to talk about it, and gave the image that Nestlé had something to hide.

Soon after, the complaints of people reached the Nestle Facebook fan page and people started commenting on Nestlé’s wrongdoings. What irked even more customers was how the Nestlé fan page administrator replied to the comments with sarcasm and rudeness. Check this link for the whole conversation.

Heineken Scores a Web Hit

A video catching buzz right now is the Heineken Soccer/Football Swindle. Heineken got more than 1,000 Italian men to miss one of the biggest matches you can imagine, Real Madrid vs AC Milan, through job responsibilities, girlfriend’s request, and the like. The replacement? The men were told they had to watch a classical music concert. Poor guys! (not that I’m against classical music but this is one of the biggest matches you just cannot miss!) Here’s the video:

The creator of the video has stated that the video has resulted to more than 5 million visitors to the Heineken website. I wouldn’t be surprised, both men and women find the video funny and has been featured in several websites (MTV) and social media websites (Facebook).

The lesson here?

Marketers than can create funny and interesting videos such as this are more likely to be spread by other people. The feel-good film leaves you smiling and laughing as the men got duped. It also helps people who have no interest in Heineken or Football to join in and laugh along, increasing brand awareness. Most importantly, these positive feelings are associated with the Heineken brand. Hopefully, the feelings last so when the World Cup comes, you’d be watching it with your buddies holding a Heineken beer.

How to revitalize an old ad?

Get a celebrity to sue you for the ad.

photo taken from ABC WJBF-TV

Not necessarily the best way but it seems to be working for E-Trade’s Super Bowl Ad (video below). As the news spread out a hundred of tweets have already been posted, facebook statuses updated, a dozen of news articles (and comments) have been written, YouTube views increased, and a lot more. A brief background: a few days ago, egotistical Lindsay Lohan sued E-Trade‘s Super Bowl ad  on the grounds that the milkaholic baby in the video is based on her. She’s asking for a $100 million compensation and that the ads be pulled down immediately. I could give you a Comm Law analysis of possible arguments of both parties but as this is a marketing blog, I’ll cease. Needless to say, I think that E-Trade will win the case. Here’s the video in case you don’t remember:

Now the video ad of E-trade didn’t fare as well as its previous ads and also in comparison to the others ad shown at the Super Bowl (Hulu chart here and Ace Metrix here). In fact, if people would try and remember the Super Bowl XLIV ads, it would probably be: Doritos ads, Focus on the Family, Snickers and Google. E-Trade’s ad is quite distant. I, for one, had to re-watch it again to remember what it was. I assume that by getting sued by Lindsay and being featured in the news and social media, this must be beneficial to spreading the E-trade brand around. I wasn’t really aware of what E-trade was about since coming across the news .To see how much buzz this generated, I originally wrote this entry around March 10, and back then the views from the YouTube page of the commercial was 2.5 million views. After 4 days, it’s gone from 2.5 to 3.5 million views. That’s 250,000 views each day. That’s pretty incredible.

*update – March 18, 2010* AdAge Viral Video Chart shows a 616% increase for the ad.

Spotlight: SXSW

If you’ve been receiving a lot of tweets with tags such as #SXSW or #SXSWi and seeing it on the news, thats cause its that time again for the yearly SXSW conference! SXSW, or South by Southwest, is a group of separate conferences and festivals about the interactive, film and music scene.

The interactive conference (dubbed SXSW Interactive or SXSWi for short) will be held on March 12th to the 16th with several keynote speakers, a trade show, networking events, and parties. SXSW Interactive’s focus on emerging technology has earned the festival a reputation as a breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies. For example, Twitter launched at SXSW Interactive in 2007. With so many prominent people invading Austin, Texas such as Guy Kawasaki from Alltop, Chris Brogan, Evan Williams from Twitter, and a lot more other representatives from a variety of companies such as Google, Ubisoft, Nokia, Paypal, Mozilla, etc, this is one conference worth following and looking into especially if you’re into technology/social media/gaming! Mashable came with this great guide for people attending the conference and people who want to follow even if they just remain at home. Also, here’s the official video guide for first-timers to SXSW:

Will it blend?

Viral videos are a hit among consumers. One of that I came across and really liked was BlendTec’s Will it Blend? Videos.

Blendtec is basically a blender. What’s unusual about their videos is that they put ingredients in the blender that you wouldn’t expect – airguns, steel, camera, golf balls. Name it. Here’s the latest video from Blendtec’s YouTube page where CEO Tom Dickson investigates if an iPhone will blend. Will it blend? Here’s the results:

Not only was the viral video amusing to watch which delivered a lot of video views and subscribers to the YouTube channel but Blendtec also encouraged consumer feedback as to what new products to blend. Furthermore, a lot of other people have done their own versions adding to the fun and awareness of the brand. It seems to be working as reports say that YouTube has helped increase sales by 5 times for Blendtec.

Steam is coming to Mac computers this April

Since getting my Mac last year, I’ve received several jabs about it from my friends, specifically jokes about gaming. I couldn’t really argue or respond with a comeback – the truth is, there wasn’t as many quality games to the Mac as there was to the PC. Well, it seems things are about to change as Steam opens up to Mac users this coming April!

Steam <3 Mac. (Image from Destructoid.com)

For the non-gamers reading this, Steam is a massive online gaming distributor that has catered to the gaming needs of PC users since 2003. Its developer, Valve Software, has allowed PC gamers to play games such as Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Half-Life, Left for Dead, and other famous games. By one estimate, Steam is said to be responsible for 70% of digital gaming purchases. As of February, there’s been a lot of buzz about Valve making the official announcement at the Game Developers Conference. Valve let out some advertisements that look like these; they were a combination of famous gaming icons styled with identifiable Apple ads from before. Quite “obvious” but nonetheless, people got excited.

Half Life gaming icon Gordon with an Apple emblem on his Chest

Team Fortress model with iTunes background

Famous Apple ad but with Steam Text

For Mac-gamers, this is awesome news. Finally, no more using Boot Camp (running Windows separately, most Mac gamers use this to play PC games on their Mac computers). There has always been a lot of demand for Steam to come on the Mac interface. The Steam forums has threads about people asking about why hasn’t there been a Steam for Mac. People have been screaming for it. In my opinion, I think its a late move by Steam since people have been clamouring for this since 2005. Nonetheless, it is a great move to expand their market. Most people are buying Apple these days and thats just going to increase. I can only assume, but Valve probably had a meeting, saw how much request they are receiving from Mac-gamers (demand), and realized a lot of potential profit to be made, thus the Steam for Mac.

*Ad images taken from: http://www.aeropause.com/2010/03/steam-to-come-to-mac/

TradeShift may change financial system

An invoice is a commercial document issued by a seller to the buyer, indicating the products, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller has provided the buyer. An invoice indicates the buyer must pay the seller, according to the payment terms. (source: Wikipedia)

How do we do invoicing right now? For example, you head a company called ABC Inc., which just provided services to XYZ Inc. ABC sends an invoice to XYZ through several steps: ABC inputs the information on the invoice, prints it out, and sends it to XYZ through mail transportation, XYZ receives it, processes it, and then sends it back again. This process takes time, energy, and fees levied for credit card processing and other banking systems (multiply that by a hundred of transactions each day and that adds up) for each invoice.

Do you see the problem with that? Christian Lanng does, and it wants to remodel the invoicing structure by introducing TradeShift, a new dynamic e-invoicing company recently featured in Wired.com and TechCrunch which – if the idea catches on – can really change how the financial system is played. The basic premise of TradeShift is straightforward. Like Bluenile Diamonds cutting out the middleman (disintermediation) to offer cheaper prices, TradeShift hopes to cut out the intermediaries (banks, transportation, credit card companies) to save cost for businesses worldwide. Instead of the sending an invoice out and being labor-intensive, companies will send an invoice electronically through the TradeShift network. In our example, ABC would send an electronic invoice to XYZ which then receives this invoice in their TradeShift inbox and then pays online. That easy. It takes less time, no cost, less energy, and less paper. Currently, TradeShift has signed 2 regions in Northern Europe and one of the biggest cities in Brazil.

I personally think TradeShift is a great idea. If something can be done more efficiently, I say why not. The main issue I find here will be whether businesses are ready to trust TradeShift. I highly doubt that governments and large conglomerates will trust handling large and sensitive billing information online as this may be more risky and prone to hackers. Moreover, given the fact that TradeShift is new, I believe that big companies would pass on this opportunity and wait for small-companies to test TradeShift out.

What do you guys think?

QR Codes

I’ve recently started blogging and while surfing other blogs I would often come across images such as the one on the right. I never really understood what they are and so I did some research and here’s what I found:

- They’re called QR codes and QR stands for Quick Response

- They originated from Japan and were mainly used for automobile factories. People saw the versatility in it and started spreading the usage of it to Europe and recently to North America

- QR codes can be used to create a hardlink, a link from the physical world to the internet

- QR codes are used to store special website addresses. For example, the QR you saw awhile ago is Wikipedia Mobile’s URL.

- QR codes are particularly helpful in mobile internet users who use their phones to capture the code with their camera and the special software interprets the web address

- Applies to most phones such as the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia

- QR codes are free and can easily be created and printed out

- Mostly used in mobile marketing and has been used by companies and brands such as the Detroit Red Wings, Chevrolet, fashion, and a lot more.

To see how this QR could work with your mobile phone, check this video below by Google:

How can companies use this?

Companies can get very creative with this. If I had to create promotions for a speaker event with a relatively low budget, I could print out witty text ads with a QR code beside it. Curious students would scan the QR code and be directed to video or website explaining the event. QR codes are also budget-friendly. Most people also like the idea of being “surprised” by what they find therefore QR codes may be suitable in guerilla marketing. I also saw this video by Frisk Mints so I’m assuming that as long as its properly structured, most things can be a QR code (?). Imagine that.

Introducing Google Buzz

Hi world! I’d like to introduce you to.. *drum rolls*

GOOGLE BUZZ

To give you a quick summary (taken from Google HQ)

• Automatic friends lists (friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail)
• “Rich fast sharing” combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing
• Public and private sharing (swap between family and friends)
• Inbox integration (instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook might, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content)
• “Recommended Buzz” puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you’re not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.

Image taken from Mashable.com

In my opinion, I think its a great attempt by Google to join social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter. I vouch its going to stick and probably be a success for several reasons:

- Most of us have Google applications – we use Google search, we have our homepage set to iGoogle, we use Google Maps, we use Documents for office and school work, we use Wave for meetings, etc. I believe people are more open to accept and trust Google Buzz just because of the Google brand.

- With so many Google-related websites like YouTube and Blogger, which has more potential for future expansion? Definitely Buzz.

- No 140-text limit like Twitter’s. I know so many people complain about this. They don’t exactly want to write a 200+ word update but sometimes 140 can seem constraining.

- Pictures are shown. I think a lot of user will find this attractive. Seeing the picture or video along side the ‘buzz’ is more appealing than a ‘tweet’ with a link on it.

- Probably the most important for Buzz’s future success will be attributed to GMail Integration. By integrating Buzz to your GMail homepage, its much easier to follow and keep in touch with the status updates in just one page.

Here’s an very thorough analysis pitting Google Buzz to Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook by Jeremiah Owyang. Will Google Buzz be the next big thing? Time will tell.