Social Media — Page 2

Stealth Startup Inveni Launches Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in SF, and midVenturesLaunch in Chicago

September 28, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

Today, Minnetonka-based Inveni LLC is telling the world its newly launched discovery engine “will drive social recommendations in the Web’s next wave.” The company’s free consumer service will also enable better targeted advertising. The Inveni discovery engine, says the firm, will change how consumers both make and receive recommendations on the Web. As of today, the service is publicly available, after more than a year in development and several months of private beta testing. The company is making its debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco, and also demonstrating its technology later today at the midVenturesLAUNCH startup conference in Chicago.

“The next wave of the Web will be about personalization. We’re focusing on using personalization to meaningfully improve discovery and decision making,” said Aaron Weber, CEO and cofounder. “The Inveni discovery engine leaps ahead of other online recommendation services. What we’ve developed is unlike anything previously available. Inveni consolidates ratings you put anywhere online – Netflix, IMDB, and more – provides tools to make and receive recommendations wherever you are, and helps you make better, more informed buying decisions.” The service has received positive feedback from users during the private beta over the past several months, said Weber.

Inveni provides its highly personalized product recommendations based on a consumer’s universal taste profile. To create a personalized taste profile, Inveni empowers users to aggregate product and service ratings they’ve made across the Internet to quickly build deep, rich profiles of their tastes. Beginning with the media categories of movies and TV, users can share their taste profile information with friends and other services online. Inveni also facilitates product recommendations between friends (word of mouth), based on their tastes.

“We use this taste profile data, along with our unique crowd-refined recommendation engine, to provide highly targeted advertising, while simultaneously providing consumers with a compelling personalized service for discovery and sharing,” said Robert Bodor, CTO and cofounder, “We aim to become the premier provider of highly targeted consumer data for advertising online. We do that by turning the current consumer data model upside down, putting the user in control of their information. We are entirely opt-in, and are raising the bar on consumer privacy protection.”

The company produced a fun, two-minute video to describe its value proposition to consumers, which you can view here. … [Read More…]

Congresswoman Calls for Skype Use?

July 13, 2010 By Steve Borsch

UPDATE 7/18/10: If this doesn’t prove the point of this article…nothing does. Security expert Bruce Schneier posts, “Skype’s Cryptography Reverse-Engineered” and if this proves to be true, it would be trivial for rogue nations or eavesdroppers to listen-in on Congressional Skype conversations!

A fake Skype call highly unlikely to ever occur

In a time when cybersecurity has become the new battleground among nations and calls for enhanced national defense online are accelerating, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is trumpeting the use of a technology for communications that has an unknown security model and seems at odds with the usual Republican focus on national security.

An article by Jeremy Herb in the StarTribune this morning caught my eye, “Bachmann pushes Congress to embrace Skype.” It outlines the reasons why Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling for the use of the free Skype program on Congressional networks—so she and others can talk directly with their constituents or hold “virtual town halls”—but its use is banned in the House of Representatives.

The article quotes a University of Minnesota computer science professor, Joseph Konstan, who says this about the fundamental reason a peer-to-peer program like Skype is problematic and why it would be banned: “The reason people worry about using tools like these is they are inherently insecure. The design of Skype is something that hasn’t been carefully scrutinized, and so it may very well be there are bugs in there.”

Sure there could be bugs, but the biggest reason installing Skype on Capitol computer networks is a huge problem is because of that unknown security model of Skype. It is not possible to know much about the security of Skype since their code is proprietary and is not open to peer review or close examination of potential security holes.

As a fan of Skype and someone who has used it daily for several years, I evangelize its use constantly. That said, I wouldn’t want my government to embrace it without some very close scrunity and safeguards and I’m puzzled why Rep. Bachmann would now be banging-the-drum for Congress to adopt Skype. Here’s why doing so isn’t wise. … [Read More…]

How Many Social Media Day Cards Did You Get?

July 1, 2010 By Phil Wilson

Yesterday (June 30th) marked the first ever Social Media Day. By no means was this a national “bank” holiday, nor a holiday proclaimed by the recognized official holiday creator…Hallmark. No, this was a day proclaimed by perhaps the purveyor of social media news, Mashable.

What pray tell is the purpose of Social Media Day? The folks at Mashable are glad you asked. It’s “A day that honors the technological and societal advancements that have allowed us to have a dialogue, to connect and to engage not only the creators of media, but perhaps more importantly, one another.”

Um…yeah. Allow me to translate; It’s a day to get your butt up from behind the monitor, your nose out of your smartphone, relax you thumbs and meet the people you tweet, poke and follow face to face. A day to put the social in social media. Oh, and there’s booze and munchies. Of course, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore embellishes it a bit more in his welcome video. (Really…the video was meant to be played at gatherings around the world. Kinda creepy…) Perhaps he has a desire for this to be much more of a “revolution”. No matter, the intent is to get you out and about.

The local Minneapolis meet up was superbly organized by our friend and social media maestro, Mykl Roventine. Mykl is responsible for, or part of, everything social media from Social Media Breakfast, to Unsummit, to Tech Karaoke and beyond. When Mashable sent out the word to have a Minneapolis Meetup, Mykl stepped up and secured Chino Latino in Uptown, gathered up some sponsors (SMBMSP and Sterling Cross Media) and rallied the troops. Mykl tells the story in the video below. (Forgive the sound quality..I guess the EVO 4G won’t replace my Flip cam, at least not without some sort of outboard mic.)

At 6:30pm some 50 of the 70+ who signed up began to congregate, the drink flowed and the tasty appetizers were savored. Much of the Twin Cities’ Social Media actives were in attendance and some new faces were spotted and welcomed. It was a great time. Of course, those of us who dig the social “media” are never really far from it as everyone checked-in, tweeted and posted photos throughout the evening. Yep, there was a tweet wall. However, well…there was just very little discussion of this “revolution” of which Mashable was speaking. It was just plain social.

Perhaps it’s because we, here in the Land o’ 10,000 lakes, already get the whole social part. While the concept of Social Media Day is all well and good, there are any number of meet-ups, tweet-ups, happy hours and breakfasts of which you can attend during any given month in and around the Twin Cities. It makes me feel kind of sad for those in other cities who must look to, or be prompted by, Mashable to get together in “real life”. While no specific date for another gathering has been past down from the social media mount, you’re encouraged to once again step away from the warm glow of the screen and meet and greet your friends and followers in person at a location of your choosing. Oh…and don’t forget to check in on Foursquare.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqjwUlIFk0E

Minnov8 Gang 79: The Facebookers

May 15, 2010 By Steve Borsch

The Facebook privacy controversy continues to heat up. In fact, as of May 2010, the Better Business Bureau gave Facebook a D rating, stating “We have enough concerns about this company (for example, their offer, customer complaints, advertising, etc.) that we recommend caution in doing business with it.” To bring another perspective in to the podcast, our guest this week is Tom Borgerding, CEO of Campus Media Group, an organization that assists brands with leveraging Facebook and other new media.

Show Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson.
Music by Kahuna Kawentzmann w/tune, “Late Bird” from podsafe Music Alley.
Modified image based on the James Bond 007 knockoff from the 1960s, the Matt Helm movies series starring Dean Martin.

The Podcast

Podcast (m8-audio): Download (Duration: 1:07:49 — 41.2MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:07:49 — 41.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More

Links discussed during the show:

Stillwater company Nibipedia led by Troy Peterson
Internet Broadcasting, the departure of their CEO, David Lebow, partner Mashery
Mentioned by Tom Bergerding: Polyvore
Graeme mentioned Involver
MOJO MN; Minnebar
Visi Open House Friday, May 21st
Open source alternative to Facebook, Diaspora. Just a concept, as of this writing they’ve raised $143k and have over 4k supporter/donators!
Facebook controversy links:
- OpenBook
- New York Times stories compiled here
- Excellent essay by social media researcher Danah Boyd (now w/Microsoft)
- The case for staying with Facebook
Fix your Facebook privacy settings or delete your account altogether
FASCINATING infographic by a developer with the Visual Communication Lab at IBM Research Center for Social Software. The views expressed on it are his own, and do not reflect those of IBM (and read his disclaimers below the graph) BUT make sure you click on the years on the right in succession from 2005 until 2010 so you can visualize the erosion of privacy on Facebook since 2005. If your reaction is not “Holy Sh*t!” I’ll be surprised.

Web Innovation Is Everywhere in Minnesota – Even In an Ice Cream Shop!

May 10, 2010 By Graeme Thickins

A small retailer in St. Paul that’s obsessed with serving its customers has introduced an innovative new convenience for them that would shame even the largest retail giant — and it’s been no less than a year in the making. Izzy’s Ice Cream in St. Paul today announced a service that delivers real-time updates to its loyal customers about ice cream flavors currently being served in-store via its web site, Facebook and Twitter pages, and email updates.

It’s called “Izzy’s Flavor Up!” and it essentially allows customers to subscribe to their favorite ice cream flavors. Current flavors are updated every three minutes on its “flavor grid” web page.

With web site design and technology assistance from Bloomington MN-based The Nerdery (aka Sierra Bravo), Rogers MN-based RFID firm AbeTech, and CA-based tech vendor Phoenix Technologies, Izzy’s Ice Cream is now tagging all its 90+ flavors of ice cream in-store with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Each flavor’s tub is tagged with a unique code that’s automatically scanned when placed in the dipping cabinet.

What it means for an ice cream lover is nothing less than nirvana. Customers can now know, with absolute certainty anytime around the clock, which flavors are available in-store. When new flavors are removed from or added to the dipping cabinet, Izzy’s web site, Facebook and Twitter pages will automatically be updated, alerting fans to the latest changes. Customers can sign up for email alerts for their favorite flavors – so they’ll always know when their favorite Hot Brown Sugar, Soy Peanut Butter, or Peace Coffee ice cream is available. My buddy Al Maruggi told me today that Izzy’s has the best coconut ice cream in the Twin Cities, too, as he licked a sample thereof.

We also learned that SMS or text updates are on the way, if you’d rather get your alerts that way. In-store customers can see the technology in action via a large-screen monitor that shows which flavors are now being scooped.

“Our customers are extremely passionate about their favorite flavors of Izzy’s ice cream,” said Jeff Sommers, Izzy’s owner, in a statement. “Their enthusiasm, while motivating me to continue creating delicious flavors, can also prove to be a customer service issue. Before today, our customers had no way of knowing if their favorite flavors were going to be available when they walked through the door. This system solves that problem and makes it easier for our customers to enjoy their favorite flavors.” The title of a video that Izzy’s crack PR firm put up on YouTube says it all: “How to Subscribe to Ice Cream.”

The nameplates for each flavor in the store have RFID chips built in, which are then read by antennae anchored in the dipping cabinet. The inventory is automatically updated simply through the act of an employee changing flavors in the dipping cabinet. That act triggers an inventory update, which in turn publishes the current flavors to multiple channels: the in-store screen, Izzy’s website, its Twitter and Facebook pages, and it’s automated emails to subscribers of individual flavors.

Izzy’s isn’t just a retail business. It has a catering business as well, and a wholesale business that has signed up several upscale grocery stores and restaurants throughout the Twin Cities that now offer its products — Kowalski’s, just to name one chain.

Regarding its latest new wrinkle, “This is undoubtedly one of the first uses of RFID as a customer service application,” said the company’s statement. Izzy’s has a history of embracing new technology, having installed solar panels in 2005. Owner Jeff Sommers also showed attendees at his media briefing today an innovative new cleaning system he has implemented in Izzy’s kitchen called “Zap Water,” which is an amazingly more environmentally friendly way to maintain a germ-free, allergen-free environment.

Izzy’s gets my vote as a true Minnesota innovator! Now, excuse me, I’m jumping onto their web site to check if my favorite flavor is still available tonight….

« Previous Page