Retweet.com, which put itself up for sale last month, has sold for $250,000 in an online auction on Flippa. The auction saw a fair amount of interest with 45 bids in total, but it appears that the winning party came in with a “buy it now” offer for $48,000 more than the current bid to take ownership of the Tweetmeme competitor.

Like Tweetmeme, the site aggregates the most popular links on Twitter, and also provides third-party websites with buttons that lets their visitors easily retweet articles. Although the service isn’t as popular as Tweetmeme, it has been able to accumulate respectable traffic, and it’s ideal name give it significant branding power. According to the company’s listing on Flippa, there is not yet any revenue.

At this point, we don’t know who the buyer is, though we heard rumblings last month that a major social news site was interested. We’re looking for more information and have contacted the team behind Retweet.com for details. We’ll update if we learn more.

[thanks Matt Binder for the tip]

Tags: retweet, tweetmeme, twitter

SV Angel, the angel fund founded by super-angel Ron Conway, is losing one of its general partners to a portfolio company. Brian Pokorny is now the CEO of fast-growing Silicon Valley-based Dailybooth.

Dailybooth, the runner up in the “best social app” and winner of the “time sink” categories at this year’s Crunchies Awards, is “your life in pictures.” Some 6 million monthly visitors share pictures and status updates with eachother. “It’s a community for self expression,” says Pokorny.

A typical interaction: a users posts a photo, taken with their webcam, showing what they’re eating, what they’re feeling, or perhaps with friends in the background. Other user then respond via text or photos. Some strings go on for hundreds of responses. Here’s an example.

The company, originally incubated by Y Combinator, has raised just under $1 million from notable investosr such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, Betaworks, Kevin Rose, Caterina Fake, Chris Sacca, Joshua Schachter, Gary Vaynerchuk and Aydin Senkut.

Founders Jon Wheatley and Ryan Amos will remain in their current roles at Dailybooth.

Pokorny has worked with Conway on his various investments since 2006, and has racked up quite an angel portfolio of his own. He owns stakes in Twitter, Square, Milo, Blippy, Bump, Tweetdeck, OMGPOP and others.

He’s staying close to SV Angel, too. In addition to his new role as CEO of Dailybooth, Pokorny will remain as a Strategic Partner with SV Angel where he will continue to provide key insights into sourcing and evaluating investment opportunities in social media and other sectors.

“I’m excited to have Brian join one of our hottest portfolio startups and lead it to the next level,” said Ron Conway via email. “He will remain part of the core team at SV Angel as a strategic partner, and I look forward to working with him in this new role.”

SV Angel has also been in the new recently – they are reportedly closing a new $10 million fund, the first time the fund will take outside investors to participate in their startup investments.

While Loren Brichter may be hard at work on Tweetie Two for the Mac, he hasn’t given on his baby: Tweetie 2 for the iPhone. While the app hasn’t been updated since late November, a new build is due shortly with one big addition: native Foursquare support.

What this means is that anytime someone in your tweet stream sends out a tweet from Foursquare (which, to the annoyance of some users, happens automatically at times), that Foursquare link (shown as a 4sq.com URL) will be able to be opened in Tweetie in a way that displays the location information in a nice format. When a tweet is eligible for this feature, you’ll see a purple square logo in the upper right hand corner of the tweet in Tweetie.

When you click on a Foursquare link, you’ll be taken to a page that shows the venue’s address and phone number as well as the Foursquare mayor of the place. If you click on the address you’ll load a Google Map showing you exactly where it is. If you click on the phone number, you’ll be able to call the place right from the iPhone. Below all of that, there is a button to open the venue in Foursquare, which launches the Foursquare iPhone app.

A couple other new features in Tweetie 2 include Vodpod video uploads and the ability to attach messages along with your TwitPics to that service.

Look for this Tweetie 2 update soon in the App Store (it will be version 2.1.1). Meanwhile, Tweetie Two for Mac should be released in a private beta in about a month, according to new info shared on MacHeist today. Tweetie for Mac will soon be added to the nanoBundle 2, and in anticipation, they’ve added this message:

As a MacHeist customer, you’re not only receiving a free upgrade to the upcoming, highly anticipated Tweetie 2 – we’ve also arranged exclusive access to the pre-public beta for you guys!

Have fun using the best Mac Twitter client for now… and stay tuned for an email from us in about a month with your invite to the future of Mac tweeting.

3D is set to be big this year, and Samsung is hoping to tempt early adopters with a promotional offer that attempts to combat one of 3D TV’s main problems — lack of content — by bundling in a 3D movie with certain sales.

The promotion takes the form of a new “Starter Kit” that offers U.S. consumers the chance to enjoy 3D movies in their own living rooms, rather than having to head to nearest cinema to check out the eye-popping action.

In 2010, Samsung will offer a range of 3D-capable TVs, including the LED 7000/8000/9000 Series, LCD 750 Series and the Plasma 7000/8000 Series. Still, just two models will actually hit shop shelves this month: 46-inch and 55-inch models of the LED C7000.

The promotional Starter Kit will see anyone who buys a 2010 Samsung 3D TV and 3D Blu-ray Player or Home Theater System getting two pairs of Samsung 3D active glasses and a 3D version of DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters vs. Aliens on Blu-ray with 3D Shrek promised in the second half of the year.

As well as 3D abilities, the new LED TVs offer Internet@TV connectivity with the new Samsung App Store on board. To give you an idea of what you’ll have to cough up to go 3D in the comfort of your own home, pricing for the TVs alone ranges from $380 to $7,000.

Samsung’s 3D range arrives ahead of Sony’s due this summer and just a day ahead of Panasonic’s, due to launch in conjunction with Best Buy in the States on March 10.

Will you be splashing out for three-dimensional television? Let us know in the comments below.

Tags: 3D, 3dtv, dreamworks, samsung, televisions

When I wrote that location would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter’s geolocation would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.

While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. As you can see in the screenshot above, for tweets tagged with location, right next to the source of the tweet there is a location placemarker. When you hover over it, it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a little Google map showing the location that tweet was sent from.

You can see these maps as overlays both on individual tweet pages, and on tweets in your main stream. In some cases, depending on how Twitter geolocation API is being used, it looks like place names are even passed through to Twitter. For example, here’s a tweet sent from Foursquare that also says where the tweet is being sent from.

The timing of this move by Twitter is significant. Earlier today, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Twitter’s first-ever Chirp conference takes place just one week before f8. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). And of course, every app and their mother appears to be launching with some sort of location functionality at the SXSW in Austin, Texas, which begins on Friday. Many of those apps use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.

Update: It looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality after having it on for a bit. Look for it to come back shortly — certainly some time before SXSW.

[thanks Chad]

Facebook is finally going to enter the location game at this April’s f8 conference, according to a report this morning on the NYT’s Bits blog. And they’re looking to take Google head on.

We’ve been hearing rumors about Facebook’s location features for a long time, but the buzz has picked up in the last few months. Those rumors got legs in October, when we noticed that the site had added language explicitly talking about location features to its rewritten privacy policy.

The question now is exactly what this location sharing will look like. I’ve heard that Facebook has tested simply attaching location data to user status updates, similar to the way Twitter does it. According to the report, Facebook will also offer an API to third parties, presumably allowing services like Foursquare to send their location data into Facebook (it’s unclear if data will also flow the other way, but I suspect it will once Facebook can get the privacy settings right).

Perhaps the most interesting part of the Times piece is the assertion that Facebook isn’t looking to beat Foursquare, Gowalla, and similar location based services — something that I believe it could easily do if it wanted to. Rather, it’s looking to beat Google in the small-business advertising space. The Times report doesn’t say much on how exactly Facebook is going to do that, but I suspect it will involve getting as many third parties as possible to integrate its API.

New location-based social search tool FourWhere shows Foursquare tips and comments using Google Maps so you can search and discover what everyone is saying about nearby places.

Users simply input a location or address into FourWhere, right-click (control click) on the map and select display preferences. The map can display all comments nearby, all venues in the vicinity and/or remove venues without tips.

It’s a simple app with a powerful purpose. For those of us preparing to journey out to Austin for SXSW, FourWhere’s release couldn’t have come at a better time. A search around the downtown area yields comments with insightful information about restaurants and bars. Essentially the application offers a map-based search experience for socialites looking to plan a fun night out.

FourWhere currently only pulls in data from Foursquare, but Sysomos, the company behind the app, has plans to integrate more social data in the future.

Tags: foursquare, fourwhere, location-based, sysomos

Mollie Vandor is the Product Manager for Ranker.com and Media Director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter and on her blog, where she writes about the web, the world and what it’s like to be a geek chic chick.

Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes — lately, it seems like there’s a new natural disaster wreaking havoc on poor planet Earth every week. From our television sets to our Twitter streams, it’s impossible to ignore the devastation these disasters leave behind. And, no matter where you’re watching from, it’s hard not to feel just a little bit helpless in the face of such colossal catastrophes.

But when it comes to natural disasters, modern technology is making it easier than ever to take control by creating your own emergency response system — no high pitched beeping required. There are tons of tools to help you create emergency preparedness plans, keep in touch during a disaster, and get your life back after one strikes. Nothing will keep you safer or saner during a natural disaster than having a good plan in advance.

According to FEMA, the best way to avoid significant damage during a disaster is to prepare an emergency response plan in advance. The FEMA website is a great place to get that process started. In fact, they offer an easy checklist of items you should consider when putting together your plan: Escape routes, family communications, utility shut-off and safety, insurance and vital records, special needs, caring for animals, and safety skills. It seems like a lot, but fortunately, there are plenty of resources to help make all that planning much easier.

Figuring out your escape route is probably the top priority when it comes to emergency preparedness. And, making sure that your loved ones know where to go and how to meet up could help keep your family together when everything else is falling apart. That’s where Google’s MyMaps service comes in handy. MyMaps lets you plan a route using landmarks, lines, and shapes, and lets you easily share that route or access it on your mobile browser. Of course, the most reliable option in a disaster is still the lo-fi hard copy of that escape route. MyMaps lets you print perfect copies so you can laminate them and stick them everywhere from the fridge door to the kids’ backpacks.

And while you’re throwing things in those backpacks, also think about including an ID card, in case your child is separated from their caretaker during a disaster. You can easily order ID cards online at places like Life360, a site that offers multiple mobile and web-based emergency planning services, including ID cards for your kids and a messaging system that contacts your entire network of family and friends during a disaster.

Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of emergency preparedness apps. From the ICE app for iPhone and Android, which stores your emergency contacts and medical information, to the self-explanatory Emergency Preparedness Checklist (iPhone), there are plenty of quick, easy and mobile options to help you get a jump on your emergency planning.

Plus, if you share my proclivity for destroying any home improvement project you come within five feet of, there’s also an easy online guide to help you shut off your utilities, from the Washington state Department of Health. And, the only technical knowledge required is the ability to print the super-simple instructions and tape them up near your door.

One of the scariest parts of any emergency is not being able to reach the people you love — and knowing that the people you love might not be able to reach you. And, of course, you want to stay abreast of all the breaking news about whatever it is that’s going on. Fortunately, one of the best advantages of our constantly-connected world is that there are multiple channels for communication. When one channel goes down during a disaster, you might still be able to get through on another one.

The first thing to do is make sure you have a backup plan for keeping all your gadgets in good working order during a disaster. Now might be a good time to invest in a solar charger for your iPhone or Blackberry, for example — not to mention a hand-cranked emergency radio, flashlight and flares. Or, you could just hit up the Red Cross Store for a gadget that does all of the above, and charges your MP3 player too. If you’d rather just upgrade your existing gadgets, check out the Emergency Radio app, which turns your iPhone into a supercharged scanner for police, fire, NOAA and other emergency radio frequencies.

Even without any extra apps, your 3G-enabled phone will likely help you stay connected in case of an emergency. Even though phone lines may be down or jammed, the 3G network won’t necessarily be out as well. This is how Twitter status updates helped locate a missing person during the recent Chile earthquake. So, having an app for Twitter, Instant Messenger, or even Facebook on your mobile device might help you keep in touch with loved ones who can’t get through to you via more traditional means of communication. And, a quick status update telling everyone where you are and how you’re doing could help give loved ones peace of mind in the middle of the chaos that comes with a catastrophe.

Speaking of peace of mind, FEMA will actually e-mail you disaster updates in real-time, so you can stay up to date on the latest breaking disaster news. Most college campuses have similar services, so students — and their parents — can receive regular text messages and e-mails during an emergency. The FCC actually maintains a pretty good list of these services. And, of course, you should always know the right resources for specific information about the particular types of catastrophes that are common to your neck of the woods. For example, during the recent Hawaii tsunami warnings, residents could receive up-to-the-minute reports from a variety of sources, including NOAA.

So, bookmark your local emergency services sites, or add them to an RSS feed or special start page. Create a Twitter list of the people you trust for breaking news about your area, or set up an old fashioned phone tree using e-mail over 3G as a backup in case the phone lines go down. No matter what you decide to do, make sure you have plans in place for staying in touch across multiple means of communication. You never know what will work and what won’t if a disaster really does strike.

Once the immediate threat of a natural disaster has passed, you may find yourself facing an awful lot of cleanup, not to mention plenty of paperwork, as you try to recover your assets. This is why it’s important to catalog your stuff before that happens. This will make the process of an insurance claim much easier.

The first step in setting up a cataloging system is to get yourself organized. There are plenty of apps for that, and options for Blackberry users as well. Once you’re organized, you can start scanning all of your important possessions and papers into a web-based app, which will store them in the cloud. So, no matter what you lose in a disaster, you won’t lose your records too.

Use Home Inventory for iPhone or Star Home Inventory for Blackberry to track all of your stuff from the comfort of your mobile device. If you have a Mac, you can also use DeliciousMonster to scan all of your books, movies and more into your computer by their bar codes. Or, just hook up a standard barcode scanner directly to your laptop. Publish your stuff to the web to make sure your data is safe in case your desktop is destroyed. And, to really be on the safe side, create a Google Docs account, and back up your important insurance papers directly from your desktop.

Despite how far modern technology has come, we still haven’t figured out a perfect way to prevent natural disasters. Preparation is still the best defense. Proper planning means that if a disaster does strike, you’ll know what to do, where to go, and how to recover — which is some pretty powerful stuff indeed, even in the face of the forces of nature.

- 5 Ways to Use Twitter to Avoid a Backchannel Disaster
- How Companies Are Using Your Social Media Data
- The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
- How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement
- 3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, BradenGunem

Tags: disaster, emergency, how to, List, Lists, social media

A couple of reports have come out recently that have looked at the prospects of unified communications (UC). The studies seem to indicate that enterprises are moving towards UC adoption on the whole to cut operating costs, and that this drive is also encouraging the uptake of cloud-based UC solutions.

First is the second annual Unified Communications Tracking Poll from technology vendor CDW, published in March 2010. It surveyed 915 IT professionals in the US with the responsibility for UC in business, government, healthcare and education. The full report can be found here. CDW found that of organizations it surveyed:

·         8% had fully implemented UC - steady from previous 2009;

·         67% had a business case or strategic plan for UC adoption - up from 55%;

·         58% have deployed unified messaging - up from 46%

·         45% have deployed presence technology - up from to 37%

Crucially, of the organizations that have fully implemented UC, 71% say that return on investment (ROI) has met or exceeded their expectations. Reducing operating costs was seen as the top benefit of UC (54%), followed by increased productivity (50%) and more reliable communication (44%).

"IT executives report that economic pressures were a greater concern in 2009 than in 2008, but for many, the return on investment from UC deployments is so compelling that they ask, 'Why wouldn't we do this?'" said Pat Scheckel, vice president of converged infrastructure solutions at CDW. "The result is reduced costs, increased productivity and improved decision making - benefits that resonate across every industry, especially in a recessionary economy."

Also in March, a new report from Frost and Sullivan looked at the adoption of cloud-based UC services in Europe. It says that the recessionary impact is convincing enterprises to look at new ways of deploying UC, and that cloud is emerging as a real contender. It finds that the cloud-based US market earned revenues of €46.9 million in 2009 and estimates this to reach €1.6 billion in 2014 - a growth rate of 79%.

Frost points out that the concept of hosted enterprise communications services has gained mainstream acceptance in recent years as modern communications have become increasingly more sophisticated. Additionally, during the economic downturn, rising costs and a fall in the availability of capital are favouring OPEX-based solutions.

"Down economy favouring OPEX-based solutions coupled with market's need for flexibility and focus on core competencies, all boost cloud-based UC services adoption," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Dorota Oviedo. "Both small businesses and large enterprises are interested in communications delivered as a service."

Google launched an application marketplace today comprised of services from third-party providers that integrate with the Google Apps ecosystem.

The news has been anticipated for some time. In particular, it shows how much Google is embracing open-standards and leveraging its search and Google Apps platform to attract third-party developers.

Sponsor

Google made the announcement at its Google Campfire One event tonight. The emphasis Google is putting on the enterprise is apparent in how much attention the company put into the event. Over and over we heard that Google passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend.

It is that mark that Google is using as its hook for attracting developers to its platform. Developers will be charged $100 to join the program. With that entrance fee, they may add as many apps as they wish to the Google Apps Marketplace.

The marketplace supports OpenID to provide a single sign-on for developers. Authorization is integrated into the platform. The customers get access through OAuth, the open standard for authorizing users.

A "manifest page" is the foundation for the service. The developers provides information when adding the application to the marketplace that identifies it. Developers then provide additional information about the product.

The system is a controlled. Application developers submit the app for approval, which might take a few days.

Intuit provided an example of how the system works by showing how payroll could be managed. The customer accesses the account. With Google Apps integration, the customer accesses an account where they have the employee information. It's that collected contact network that is then integrated with the payroll application.

Atlassian showed how Studio, its project management application, would integrate with GMail and Google Apps. Again, if the company is standardized on Google Apps, the information is available through the network.

Manymoon is another project mangement application that was demonstrated. It uses Google Apps to develop features such as a calendar, showing how a startup can leverage Google Apps to add features to its service.

Other companies that were a part of the initial launch include Socialwok and Appirio.

At its core, the marketplace is built upon Google's search capabilities. Google Apps can be extended with applications. In turn, developers have access to the built-in capabilities of Google Apps.

Perhaps the greatest value to customers will be if they are centralized on Google Apps. If so, they can get some pretty powerful capabilities of the marketplace.

Back in October we wrote about Appboy, a social network for mobile app developers and users. Since launching, Appboy has continued to evolve into a community for both developers and users to find and rate apps, as well as submit ideas for new mobile applications. Appboy has just rolled out a big update to its site which improves the design, adds stronger integration with Facebook and Twitter, and makes it easy to keep up with what your favorite app developers are doing. The site has also launched a new companion iPhone application and started a new partnership with Best Buy Mobile.

The Appboy Profile pages have been given a total facelift. Now, in addition to displaying your user activity and favorite apps, users can link their Twitter accounts with Appboy and auto-publish any #appboy tweets directly to their Appboy page.

For users, this feature might not get a ton of play, but for app developers it becomes a pretty handy way of keeping your Appboy profile up-to-date with little fuss.

Users can also now login with either Twitter or Facebook Connect. We really like that Appboy has embraced other social networks instead of trying to force users to keep everything in the Appboy garden.

You can also now follow other users, which is especially helpful when you want to keep up with what’s happening with your favorite app or app idea.

The App Pages have also received a new coat of paint, with an easy way to vote “Love It” or “Hate It” on an app’s page. Comments and reviews can now be viewed separately, which is nice when you just want to distill one group or the other. Plus, users can now add related links, videos and reviews to an app page which can help provide better context.

User reviews are also now ratable — Digg style — which allows the most helpful reviews to appear higher on the list.

In addition to a new website design, Appboy now has its own iPhone app. The free app gives users all the functionality of the website right on the iPhone. That’s really nice, especially when you are looking for a new app or want to leave a review for something you just purchased. Sure, the App Store works for that too, but what is nice about Appboy is that it is a community.

Check out these screenshots to see the app in action. As you can see, the interface matches the website and it’s very easy to get around and rate or learn about apps and app ideas.

One of the most unique features of Appboy is that it isn’t focused on just one platform; it’s focused on mobile apps in general. So whether you have an Android device, an iPhone, a BlackBerry or a Palm Pre, you can find, rate and suggest ideas for new apps.

Best Buy just launched a new mobile site, Best Buy Mobile, and Appboy powers the Apps section for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. The top 10 apps from each platform are fed into Best Buy’s site and those apps come directly from the Appboy community.

This is a pretty big step, considering the relative age of the site, and we think it’s because Appboy has shown itself as being committed to the mobile community as a whole.

Appboy continues to be a great resource for developers and users wanting to connect and share what’s cool and what sucks in the mobile app space. The new iPhone app is a really nice addition to the site and we hope that the Best Buy partnership will bring even more users into the community.

How do you find out about new mobile applications? Let us know!

Tags: android, appboy, apple, apps, iphone, iphone apps, mobile apps

I had a great conversation last week that sparked an early stage idea for what I think would be a wonderful way for learning and development organizations to leverage SharePoint better. 

The concept is probably easiest to understand by considering what HP did around their course on Web 2.0 for Marketing.  You can find more on this by going to the LearnTrends – SharePoint in Corporate Learning Recordings.

The basic concept was that HP’s learning organization wanted to help their marketing professionals get up to speed on the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.  Of course, that’s an interesting learning problem in that the answer around “implications” is not defined. 

The L&D organization created a social learning experience that brought together 60 marketing professionals from across the organization.  They established a goal of having the group produce a summary of what they found and what Web 2.0 could mean for the organization.  In many ways, this was a facilitated work task more than a learning experience.  The L&D organization provided some instruction on the basics for how the sessions would operate and some information around Web 2.0, but a lot of the effort was discovery by the marketing professionals themselves.

In the picture below, you can see some of the mechanisms they used:

• Social Bookmarks to share resources they found
• Discussion Boards to ask questions and have discussions.
• A blog that helped spark conversations around key topics.
• A wiki that served as a repository for the resources they collected.
• Virtual class sessions to share what they were finding
• Learners were encouraged to do quick screen capture movies to explain their thoughts around particular uses of Web 2.0 technologies and share with the group.

The results were pretty incredible for HP.  And it’s exactly this kind of facilitated social learning experience where the result is somewhat a work objective that makes a lot of sense.

Based on the above description, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with what I think would be a fantastic learning opportunity for L&D organizations who want to understand what it means to Use SharePoint in their organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions.

The idea would be to:

• Set a goal to produce a presentation and set of recommendations to be presented to senior L&D management
• Get a cross section of L&D professionals and possibly others within the business
• Setup an environment that will be used both as a sandbox and as a support for the learning experience
• Introduce SharePoint (and/or other technologies) to participants
• Facilitate activities and discussions that ultimately lead towards the presentation and recommendations

Of course, there’s nothing preventing variants of this being done across multiple smaller organizations.  And certainly there are lots of external professionals that likely would make sense to either help make this happen or include as third party experts as part of the learning experience.  See Learning Community, Peers and Outside Experts for more description of possible design elements.

I also think this is a great way to help build understanding of social learning within an organization.

I’m hoping to get feedback on this?  Does it make sense as a model?  Are organizations already beyond this or should it actually be a facilitated discussion around learning technologies period, not just SharePoint?  Will it make the most sense as SharePoint 2010 begins to roll out into organizations?

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eLearning Technology
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The Super Bowl may be long over, but Brand Battle 2010 continues to rage on, as yet another commercial is bit by the controversy bug — this time one of those adorable spots from E-Trade featuring a talking baby named “Lindsay.”

According to the New York Post, actress Lindsay Lohan is suing the investment site on the grounds that the man-eating, substance-abusing baby in the commercial is based on her.

Lohan’s lawyer, Stephanie Ovadia, is asking that the commercial be taken off the air and every copy of the offending spot be rounded up (which could now be more difficult given today’s coverage). The actress is also asking for $100 million.

According to Ovadia: “Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E-Trade is using that knowledge to profit… They used the name Lindsay…They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

Ovadia also says Lohan was mistreated because E-Trade didn’t get her approval nor offer her compensation for allegedly being referred to in the ad. Now, the lawyer says her client is owed $50 million in exemplary damages, as well as $50 million in compensatory damages.

Although Ovadia says that the spot — which debuted during the Super Bowl and aired during the Winter Olympics — helped garner E-Trade mucho money, it wasn’t one of the most popular ads to premiere. It didn’t rank tops with either online viewers or couch potatoes (although the talking baby series has racked up a lot of success in the past).

Still, today it joins a cadre of commercials that cleaned up on hits due to controversy — including the Tim Tebow spot, GoDaddy’s rejected “Lola” ad and men’s-only dating site ManCrunch’s similarly punted ad.

One could argue that by suing E-Trade, Lohan is calling even more attention to the ad in question. As of right now, the ad has nearly 2.5 million views on YouTube. It remains to be seen — most likely tomorrow — what effect this lawsuit has on further increasing visibility. But judging from the fact that it’s been cropping up all over the web since the litigious news hit, you can bet Lohan’s legal ire will ensure the vid’s virality for at least the remainder of this week.

Check out the vid below and let us know in the comments whether or not Lohan has a case.

Tags: legal, lindsay lohan, MARKETING, Super Bowl, viral video, youtube

Hulu struck a deal to host content from The NFL Network in January, including eight shows and highlights from every team in the National Football League. The network has been adding new content to the site ever since, and this week Hulu has posted an impressive 400 hours of NFL-related videos.

Fierce Online Video reports that Hulu plans to add 600 more hours before the next football season starts.

Sports enthusiasts are seeing a big boom in web video coverage; the NCAA college basketball league just launched a website that streams shareable clips from countless March Madness plays.

Meanwhile, Hulu is likely hoping deals like this one will — in tandem with its own in-house reality show If I Can Dream — help make up for the loss of two of its most popular shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Hulu saw a slight dip in viewership in the month of January, but maybe this vast library of NFL content will help pull the numbers back up.

[via Business Insider]

Tags: football, hulu, News, nfl, nfl network, sports, video

The Fragile, Global Effort to Form a New Iran for the 21st Century

Today, the Prime Minister of Turkey announced that the nation is against further sanctions against Iran, a neighbor in good standing. Turkey is just the latest nation to voice opposition to the UN Security Council’s plan on Iran, evidence that the international response to Tehran’s nuclear programs are more nuanced and complex than many in the Obama administration would desire. China and Brazil have also been obstacles to new sanctions. Russia has shown some signs that it is open to new sanctions, as long as they would not create a “humanitarian crisis.” However, Russia has also vowed to stand against any action taken to deliberately change the regime in Iran. Clearly, the international puzzle is very complicated.

At the same time, the White House announced yesterday that they will be easing certain restrictions on trade with Iran, Cuba, and Sudan in an effort to increase the communication abilities of the people of those nations. This is the latest in a series of developments orgininating from Hillary Clinton’s State Department that signify the administration’s desire to use social networking to bring about democracy in dictatorships and repressive regimes.

The Obama administration has learned that if diplomacy with Iran fails, the best solution is internal, non-violent (using that term loosely) regime change in Iran.  Targeted sanctions, avoiding oil sanctions, clamping down on smuggling operations and increasing internet access are all the first steps in that process.  However, many nations with diplomatic and economic relationships with Iran will not be so willing to go along if the focus shifts from stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program to replacing Iran’s system of government.

Those nations with decent relations with Iran want to ensure that any action taken against the country produces results. Also, they are weary of jeopardizing their fragile standing with the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime by supporting measures that overtly support the Green Movement, the opposition to the government in Iran.

Because of these complex international issues, expect to see the State Department to find new ways to support opposition forces inside Iran short of directly harming or attacking the regime itself. The newest announcement that certain aspects of information technology will be taken off of the sanction list might be the first step in the United States actively establishing communication networks inside Iran. As Iran slows down and filters its own servers, the need for those outside the country to supply new sources of access are even more important than ever.

Let’s hope Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama take this one step further. It’s time to bomb Iran, with the internet.

Cartoon of courtesy http://www.theroadtothehorizon.org/

Je voudrais revenir sur cet intéressant article paru dans l’édition de Janvier-Février de la Harvard Business Review au sujet de la nécessité de repenser le marketing. (D’ailleurs pour les non abonnés je pense que l’intégralité du dossier “Reivent” paru dans ce numéro mérite qu’on sorte la carte bancaire pour l’acheter en ligne).

Le postulat de départ est connu. Jamais l’entreprise n’a eu autant d’outils pour intéragir directement avec le consommateur et jamais celui-ci n’a eu autant envie de lui dire ce qu’il pense. Pour rester compétitive dans un tel contexte il va falloir se focaliser sur plus sur le fait d’amener rapidement un individu à la transaction mais créer une vraie relation sur le long terme qui dégagera peut être moins de valeur de suite mais davantage dans la durée. (Sur ce point je vous revoit à ce que je disais sur le CRM ici et cet article, toujours de la HBR sur le customer capitalism).

Une des notions qui émerge est celle de “Customer Manager”. Avec une définition relativement intéressante : quelqu’un qui connait par cœur les produits, sait analyser les informations structurées et non structurées (blogs, forums…), plus attaché à la perception de la marque qu’aux chiffres de présence dans les médias. On leur demande un très bon niveau en sciences sociales (psychologie, sociologie), en économie en plus d’une connaissance du marketing.

L’idée est donc ne plus pousser le produit au client mais de considerer ce dernier comme une partie prenante du développement de l’entreprise et co-construire l’offre avec lui.

Maintenant se pose une question par rapport à une tendance à la mode : le community management. Est-ce finalement la même chose ? Sont-ce deux fonctions complémentaires ? Opposées.

J’ai déjà exposé mes craintes de voir le rôle du community manager dévoyé et devenir ni plus ni moins que du bon vieux push-marketing se refaisant une apparente virginité. A mon sens un bon community manager (ou plutôt un community manager dont l’employeur a compris la finalité de la démarche) est également un customer manager. Dans le cas inverse ce qui différencie les deux est évident : l’un a pour objectif de générer des conversations et attirer de l’attention, le second de construire de la valeur. La différence entre les deux est infime mais capitale : la capacité à transformer l’échange en actions et amener l’entreprise à véritablement se déterminer par rapport à sa relation client ce qui nécessite une véritable remise en cause de beaucoup de process et de certitudes. Et, je le disais, un certain niveau de seniorité chez le manager en question qui se retrouve avec une lourde responsabilité.

Il n’empêche que c’est une tendance en marche. Comme l’article le remarque, le B2B est largement en avance sur le B2C même si ce dernier s’y met peu à peu. Il est vrai que les entreprises ont depuis longtemps appris à co-construire avec leurs clients et fournisseurs au sein d’une supply chain de plus en plus performante alors que, peut être en raison de son poids économique individuel négligeable par rapport au volume d’affaire de l’entreprise, le consommateur individuel a toujours été négligé et prié d’acheter sans réfléchir ni donner son avis.

Les temps changent.

NB : je prenais bien sur ici le rôle du community manager dans la composante “client”. Le community manager interne a également ses propres caractéristiques et enjeux.

• Un manifeste “socialnomics” (2)
• Des medias sociaux au Social CRM : mon expérience “aérienne” (6)
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• Votre projet entreprise 2.0 est confié à une fonction centrale ? Evitez les pièges ! (2)
• Social CRM et lead generation : migraines en perspective (3)