Seriously? Coolest thing ever. So addictive! wordle does some super cool stuff with word tags, etc. It can peek at your Facebook, twitter, etc and make great word clouds. Artistic set ups, great colors.. just very cool looking. I ended up creating a notepad file of various Christmas words, my family's names, and Merry Christmas over and over and am going to use it as our Christmas card this year. If you have a chance to peek at wordle.net, do it. It seems like a wee simple thing, but it's just SO fun :)
I don't know much about this yet.. I'm going to investigate, tho! Feel free to leave a message re: what this thing is all about!
I adore Kaboodle. Seriously. I am pretty in love with this site. They have amazing people working for them... people who you can actually interact with. "Hey dude, this isn't working for me." "What? Oh let me see.. here you go.. all fixed.. have a great day"... that sort of thing. How often does that happen on a large website? I mean, usually you're pretty lucky if you can even find an email address for a site owner/information person... nevermind having them care enough to personally get back to you.
About Kaboodle? Well... in 2005, Manish and co-founders Keiron and Chetan, who both shared his vision of a new approach to online shopping, got together to transform the process into a more social and much simpler experience.
Kaboodle explains itself ; "Kaboodle is a social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products. Kaboodle's powerful shopping tools allow people to organize their shopping through lists, discover new things from people with similar style, get discounts on popular products and find best prices. At the heart of Kaboodle is a fun and engaging community of people who love to shop. Community members create and join groups, share advice, feedback and product suggestions and personalize their profiles with polls and other widgets."
I've found that I use Kaboodle for many different things. Wish lists for my family's Christmas presents. Lists of websites I like and want to go back to again. I search for new products/services that my Kaboodle friends are using. Why? Cus I can email that Kaboodle friend and say "Hey, what did you think of ___?" and I get honest opinions. There's also neat contests and such, which make it fun... but the core of this site is that its useful. If you haven't tried Kaboodle.. do it. Do it now. You'll love it!
(Btw.. My Kaboodle name is Nefarious_Cupcake. Feel free to look me up!)
SodaHead is a community that offers a free and dynamic environment to share and gather opinions and meet friends – a place to ask questions, express ideas, and connect with like and not-so-like friends... SodaHeads, as the company refers to them as.
Here you can vote on, comment on, and debate about topics ranging from music, movies, and celeb gossip to politics, religion, technology and business. The nice thing about this seems to be that you don't need to be an expert... just a real person who wants to meet others, and/or ask questions, and/or answer questions.
I'm a bit confused as to how this differs from Yahoo Answers, but it seems to be a well built, well thought out site and even has a pretty cool polling widget.
Something to play with, anyway :)
Second Life Marketing Treasure?
Posted by Jenna Taylor Labels: Linden Labs, Marketing, Second Life, Social Networking
I've tried out Second Life, and honestly, it seems really cool. Problem is, I want instant gratification. In this case, gratification would come in the form of "I know what I'm doing immediately", and Second Life doesn't provide that for me. I found, as a new user, that I was completely adrift, with no idea of SL’s possibilities, or how to find areas that might interest me. NOW.. that being said, there are tons of people who adore this site. They love having a chat feature with a neat virtual skin. I'm more interested in the markting and networking possibility of Second Life and would love to figure out how that works.
I've heard from some in the marketing community that it's potential as a gold mine social/fantasy environment is fading away due to the negligence of its developers. Personally, I believe part of the problem is the marketers themselves. Very few have actually made an intelligent effort to utilize the platform. Instead, most marketing attempts within SL wind up very reminiscent of the corporate world’s first ham-fisted attempts to make use of the world wide web.
For me, I found the animations and controls a new user begins with crazy difficult. That, unfortunately, may be enough to put most potential users right off the idea of continuing. Does that mean the marketing professionals are bailing before they really get into it and see the possibilities? Probably. And because of that anyone who would wish to create an engaging and interactive experience within the platform may turn to other mediums simply because the learning curve is too difficult.
I've heard (although I believe there are some people I'm hearing who are just Linden Lab haters) that because LL doesn't address visual concerns of creative professionals, SL won't reach it's potential as a marketing medium. Are they shooting themselves in the foot? I doubt it. I've worked for software/internet companies too long to believe they simply don't care or are too full of themselves to make the changes needed. Most likely they're working 80 hour work weeks attempting to get things done, but it's just slow in coming. Maybe they should be structuring courses/classes/online demo's for marketing professionals in order to get them into SL and making money. You know darn well if someone is making big money in SL, the other marketing professionals will be circling like sharks.
I think the potential for a virtual world such as SL is great, and there’s an undeniable market for such a world that allows unhindered, uncensored user generated content as SL does. I think the only major hinderance is that marketing professionals and alike are not getting the instant gratification they need in order to view SL as a viable money maker. Personally, I'd like to spend some time researching it a bit more, but since I'm busy, I simply don't have the time to do that.
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