i'm a firefox browser evangelist since their early days and the open source marketing website project www.spreadfirefox.com was stroke of genius and a milestone in word-of-mouth marketing or better customer evangelism. the spreadfirefox.com platform provides open conversation with their customers, information about what's going on at mozilla and providing all kinds of material to help firefox users to spread the word.

this screenshot was taken on september, 16th 2004 when firefox hit 502,659 downloads (my blogpost).

"you are our marketing department, a diverse community of people tired of swatting popups [...] we'll provide the tools, but you will drive campaigns that will be rolled out here over the coming months [...] the community is spreading the word about firefox. millions of people are already using firefox and helping us chip away at internet explorer's marketshare."

said the website at this date. today firefox hit 206,168,203 downloads - which is an more than amazing success! due to recent statistics firefox is gaining nearly 50% of microsoft internet explorer's market share right now.

furthermore many firefox users turned into firefox evangelists and just made a 45,000+ square foot firefox crop circle - wow!



more information about this project and more photos ...

and while waiting for firefox 2.0 try out my favorite firefox extension.



(via the fox tales)

[tags: mozilla, firefox, customer evangelism, word-of-mouth, crop circle]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 21:45 | Link | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

with thanks to tim bonnemann i made it to the most recent web monday silicon valley tonight, taking place at the socialtext headquarters - thanks for the host! more and more web 2.0 interested people showed up for networking, exchange of ideas and some nice presentations.

"web monday is an informal gathering aimed at bringing together developers, designers, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, researchers, web pioneers, inventors, bloggers, podcasters, end users and other folks interested in web 2.0. the goal is to better connect the german web 2.0 scene as well as improve transatlantic idea exchange between germany and the us".

mnemomap

"mnemomap is a new way to search the internet. it combines technologies of social networking, search engines and other data sources to help you formulate search queries and find really relevant information [...] in an interactive way mnemomap helps the user to refine search queries by providing alternative or additional search parameters on-the-fly. by providing tags, translations and many other data sources to find words mnemomap helps formulating a search query that delivers better results. and finally: mnemomap shows live search results."

the presentation was hold by simon from germany via a jajah call (thanks for getting up at 4 am in the morning). mnemo is still in alpha but absolutely worth a try, that's where search technology should go.

gernot poetsch

gernot was presenting his diploma thesis about "concept and prototypical implementation of an xml-aggregator for multimedia content" focusing on subscribable content in order to handle our growing information overload via powerful rss/xml technology and a tool called james.

hyperscope

eugene was presenting douglas engelbart's latest effort to bring advanced navigation and linking capabilities to the web nowadays named hyperscope.

"the hyperscope is a high-performance thought processor that enables you to navigate, view, and link to documents in sophisticated ways. it's the brainchild of doug engelbart, the inventor of hypertext and the mouse, and is the first step towards his larger vision for an open hyperdocument system."

hyperscope uses opml as its base file format and allows us to granularly access and link to and within documents (you should really work on this page). btw, their release party is coming up in the beginning of september, so the product is still alpha and they need some help.

plazes

mark told us about "location awareness through plazes, but without the network" - which actually means via rfid and caused a nice discussion if barcodes wouldn't do it as well with less technological effort.

i had a good time, met nice people and will be at the next web monday as well. check out peter's instant notes on the event, the web monday wiki for more detailed information about the web monday and where it takes place close to you if you wanna participate the next time.

[tags: web montag, web monday, mnemomap, hyperscope, plazes, web 2.0]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 23:49 | Link | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

yesterday i stumbled over a billboard by cingular at advergirl which reminded me to the more unintentional visual kidnappings in berlin.

"vandalism, street-art or guerilla marketing?"

while the recognizable cingular billboard* is volitional like it is, the "cut-outs" in berlin are called visual kidnapping as part of street-art - or was it volitional by these companies as well while fighting for consumer attention?

(via advergirl and werbeblogger)

*cingular's campaigns in the us are based on lines like "no more dropped calls" and "raising the bar" (cell phone reception) which is pretty funny for europeans, because dropped calls just doesn't exist and these lines wouldn't work in europe.

hint: i don't find the time to write about it more detailed right now, but pls don't miss the "alternate reality game" which is going on in "klein-bloggersdorf" right now (check technorati). find more information at these blogs: probable source philipp retingshof, bernd, patrick, martin and spreeblick.

[tags: visual kidnapping, alternate reality game, arg, philipp retingshof]

Posted by netzkobold in viral marketing at 05:18 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

nice american express ad by ogilvy starring andy roddick.



(via advergirl and frederik)

[tags: american express, ogilvy, andy roddick, pong, ad, commercial]

Posted by netzkobold in clips at 16:32 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

similar to the websites as graphs web2dna will take your website, analyze it, crunch it to little bits and spit it out as a graphic representation of a human dna.

"basically a semantically rich site will appear brighter than one with messy old-style code. you can also determine the richness of text on a site. a site the focuses on (text) content is one where the dna patterns is large (filling many containers), but contains a lot of empty spaces between the lines (empty space is the individual words).

nice, but i would be way more interested in a kind of graphical social network analysis tool based on links from and to your blog. pls drop me a comment if you know something like this, thx.

(via spreeblick and problematik.net)

[tags: web2dna, websitesasgraphs, graph, visualization, representation, sna]

Posted by netzkobold in sna at 18:18 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

smirnoff is seeding its recent viral clip via youtube - a skit on rap videos starring some dorky white trash with cash, directed by little x (aka julien christian lutz), promoting the new smirnoff raw tea line.

"this will be a nice test of youtube to see how effective it can be in generating awareness into sales. if smirnoff is happy to piss away money through a video that isnt really branding or establishing a clear sale, then it could fail eventually only being known as the tea party video. i myself don't think there is enough brand mention or graphic treatment in establishing a new brand to create a lasting impression on the general consumer. also it's not clear that its an ad, barring only a website mention. that spells obscurity to me." via lifefilter

ross is right that this is a nice test for smirnoff to check the effectiveness of a single youtube seeding spot and i think that the product mention and professionalism of the clip fits the irony what it makes a viral spot. like i wrote here, i still think:

"viral marketing campaigns or microsites often don't boost the distribution of a product or service in a couple of days but rather support the brand in a more long-term perspective because of gaining attention - the most valuable commodity in advertising.

it shows smirnoff's kind of humour and that they are open for new ways in marketing - not a bad effort in my point of view, even if the viral microsite follow-up www.tea-partay.com is still missing.

(via advertising/design goodness and werbeblogger)

[tags: smirnoff, tea partay, raw tea, viral marketing, word-of-mouth]

Posted by netzkobold in viral marketing, clips at 22:41 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

i read this article a couple of years ago and just stumbled over it again while searching for something else with my indispensable google desktop search. so it's not brandnew but still newsworthy and i wanted to share it with you.

frederick reichheld wrote this article about customer loyalty called "the one number you need to grow" in the year 2003. after years of research for his book "the loyalty effect" he discovered that one question as the strongest indicator of revenue growth.

"how likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?"

when customers were asked to rate this question on a scale of zero to 10, reichheld discovered that those offering a nine or 10 ranking, known as "promoters," showed the strongest correlation of repurchase and referral rates, while those with a ranking of six or below which he labeled "detractors" were likely to exit the company. plus they would often spread negative word-of-mouth messages.

this is "the one number you need to grow"!

the customers' willingness to recommend a product or service to someone else - because when customers recommend you, they are putting their reputation on the line. and they'll take that risk only if they are intensely loyal.

i think this is not hard to get and reichheld provides deeper insights into his theory in his hbr article and book. read on ...

[tags: customer loyalty, frederick reichheld, word-of-mouth]

Posted by netzkobold in word-of-mouth at 21:55 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

business 2.0 is offering a complete online version of its monthly magazine at digital.business2.com with a special online media reader provided by olive software.

some of the articles were provided as online version and pdf download before but now you can run over the pages of the whole magazine online easily.



(via basic thinking and werbeblogger)

[tags: business, business 2.0, magazine, startups, online media]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 20:08 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

a couple of weeks ago don told me about general motors' steps towards open source marketing and now i stumbled over this detailed post by klaus eck.

in march 2006 general motors launched a website (now offline) inviting their customers to send in their own 30-second commercials promoting the new chevrolet tahoe suv in the hope these clips are going to spread virally through the internet.

the impact wasn't bad - 4 million page hits, 400,000 users (according to general motors) - but unfortunately a high percentage of the commercials sent in were critically dealing with the less fuel efficiency of these suv's and the topic of global warming (see example).



these "negative" commercials were spreading much faster than any of the "positive" ones because they were not like they were supposed to be - the campaign idea fired back with a 40% decrease of sales of the chevy tahoe (not an approved correlation).

general motors deleted these "negative" ads from their microsite and shut down the website in the end.

open source and viral marketing provide so many opportunities if done in the right way, but it is all about honest conversation during a loss of controllability - like a pinball game:

"you have limited controllability after a viral marketing campaign has been launched, but you always have the chance to give the campaign the right impulses to navigate it in the wanted direction."

general motors was on the right way by talking to it's customers but instead of shutting down the website and deleting all "negative" content, they should have used this platform staying in contact with its customers at eye level, talking about propable and known concerns.

we will see who will do it right in the near future, like mozilla firefox has demonstrated it impressively with www.spreadfirefox.com ...

(via pr blogger)

[tags: general motors, chevrolet, suv, global warming, open source marketing]

Posted by netzkobold in marketing at 03:50 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

german viral marketing tv feature at nano (3sat) starring vm-people berlin.



good summarizing report but awkward conclusion by the nano presenter.

have a look by yourself ...

(via vm-people blog)

[tags: viral marketing, vm-people, thomas zorbach, 3sat, nano, word-of-mouth]

Posted by netzkobold in viral marketing at 09:30 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

how fast the word can spread nowadays ...



nice commercials by solo mobile (first / second) directed by brian lee hughes.

(via glossy > werbeblogger > robert basic)

[tags: solo mobile, spread the word, cell phone, walkie talkie, brian lee hughes]

Posted by netzkobold in clips at 01:14 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

social networking platforms take their place in the development of the enhancing web nowadays.

"a social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations."

everybody has a network of relatives, friends, colleagues and more loose contacts - small or big, densely knit or ramified. social networking platforms provide the opportunity mapping a part of your social network virtually.

well known examples are openbc, linkedin, orkut , facebook or myspace.

all these social networking platforms have their pro's and con's and map personal connections in different ways. they provide the chance to stay in contact with existing connections and afford an opportunity to establish valuable new ones. they can show how people in your extended network are related to each other but with a lack of information - the quality of the connection.

tristan louis recently posted some continuative thoughts how social networks can fail or succeed.

an very interesting topic and i'm still anxious to see what is going to follow ...

(via a friend's email and guy kawasaki)

update: some interesting papers on social networking by danah boyd.

[tags: social networks, social network analysis, sna, social software]

Posted by netzkobold in sna at 18:29 | Link | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

first - what is jajah? jajah is a simple website where you type in your own phone number (landline or mobile) and the number you want to call (landline or mobile) - your phone will ring, pick it up and you will be connected to the desired destination for free. your computer is not needed anymore after you have initiated the call and you are using your own regular phone.

second - what is free? jajah now provides free telehone calls between landline and mobile phones. the jajah free global calling plan applies to landline and mobile calls to and within the united states, canada, china, hong kong, singapore and taiwan and the plan also applies to landline calls to and within australia, the united kingdom, germany, france, italy, spain and nearly all other european countries. it applies when both call participants are registered jajah users.

"jajah's free global calling plan is the further realization of jajahs vision of breaking down the barriers to global communication. people have been predicting free phone calls for years, now jajah is the first to actually make free phone calls a reality. with jajah, you place a regular call and talk on your phone the way you always have; we simply ask that you dial the call from our website." said jajah co-founder roman scharf

third - what does that mean? you can call your friends and colleagues for free with your own phone when they register at jajah like you did (the registration is free). in countries where free phone calls are not available, or if someone is calling a non-jajah user, calls are simply subject to jajahs ultra-low rates, usually less than 3 cents a minute.



forth - what are the benefits? free telephony - of course. there is no download and no software to install. you don't need a headset, so you are not stuck to your computer. you are using your own phone so you can shut down your computer and you can step outside with your cordless or mobile phone enjoying the sun while talking to your friends for free.

fifth - what else? when i'm on the road i can even initiate my jajah call opening www.jajah.com/mini with my mobile phone. and with jajah's firefox extension every phone number on any website becomes a clickable link - just click to call.

does this sounds complicated? it's not, simply go to www.jajah.com and you can try it out even without registration ...

[tags: jajah, web-activated, telephony, free calls, free telephony]

Posted by netzkobold in technology at 05:21 | Link | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)