Date:     
Wednesday January 23, 2008

Location: 
Karl Strauss Brewing Company
901A South Coast Dr.Costa Mesa, CA  92626 

Price: 
$40 AeA Members/$50Nonmembers

Time:  
5:30PM Registration & Networking       
6:00-PM-7:00PM Program       
7:00PM-8:00PM Networking 

Please forward this to others who may benefit by attending this event! Space is limited 

The Confluence of Social Networks, Technology and Entertainment Gives Birth to New Opportunities 

“The best form of advertising is word of mouth.” This adage and itsprinciples are extremely well-suited to the explosion of Internet-mediatedsocial networks. If gaming and dating sites encourage member interactionthrough chat rooms and instant messenger, then Web 2.0 ushers in newopportunities as social media, technology and entertainment converge. Robust platforms that facilitate interactivity will create converged userexperiences, new content classes and new interaction paradigms. Potentiallynew revenue-generating models will emerge, such as virtual merchandisesales, in-game product advertisement, digital content subscriptions andsales. As content migrates from the Internet to mobile phones, incumbentsand new entrants are moving in quickly to capture these opportunities. Forbusinesses, market segmentation is easier than ever before as consumersnaturally rally around common interests and passions. As such, perceptivebusinesses can advertise meaningfully to and interact with consumers toincrease sales, enhance customer loyalty programs and for the developmentand testing of new products and services. Join us for this event as weexplore the ways in which all companies along the value chain can benefitfrom the value creation of this new frontier. 

About the speaker: Vinh Ha, founder, bigdevelopment Since 1998, Vinh Ha hasdefined how businesses harness the Internet as a primary marketing tool todrive commerce and connections. Ha is an evangelist who espouses the valueof social networking as a powerful marketing tool for companies and brands. Some of his clients have included Op, Wienerschnitzel, Orange CountyPerforming Arts Center and Sir Speedy Franchises. Ha holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and public law with an emphasis in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles. 

How to register for The Confluence of Social Networking:To attend this January 23 program, please register by one of the followingmethods:or complete and return this form with your check or credit card.  A creditcard is necessary to hold the reservation.  Phone or Email: Call Alan Wald at (949) 450-1500 x104 or emailAlan_Wald@aeanet.org. Please include Name, Company, Email, and Phone. Ifregistering via email, please phone or fax the following credit cardinformation into the AeA office. 

Online:http://www.aeanet.org/events/EventsCatalog.cfm?Product_Major=OC010806

more in a moment…  

 I was also watching on TV and my computer, firebrand.com. It’s a show and website dedicated to commercials. It’s brilliant really. Good commercials are so very entertaining and 30 seconds long, perfect for my attention span. There’s Firebrand Live, which is a show hosted by a commentator, and since I’m such an infophile, I love the facts about the commericals: the ad firm, production company, and director. The interface is gorgeous, and works very well. It’s very well designed actually. Associated with each commercials are any available offers, promotions, contests, and links to the site. Brilliant.

At first, I thought to myself, “duh.” And initially I thought that even though technology was growing and proliferating, people were getting more tech savvy. But I think the reality is, technlology is moving along much faster than regular people have time to learn. here are some examples:

• There are computers in everything now. your toaster, oven, and fridge have computers. they are getting smarter and harder to use.
• And we thought VCRs were complicated? we now have digital cable, Tivo, HD flat screens, and surround sound. Have you ever tried hooking all that equipment up? The manual does not help, and once you do have everything set up, how confusing are the 5 remotes?
• Devices are getting more integrated/reliant on each other. iPhones have to work with iTunes on Windows Vista. Treos have to work on Macs running Leopard.
• Every day I read about how social networks are going to be woven into the fabric of the web. Three years ago, barely anyone knew what they were.

So, what’s the point? I guess the point is, I thought my type was headed down the road to obsolescence. But as it turns out, we are needed now more than ever. Thank god.

All good things really. Hopefully the first 2 trends will persist, and um, the third too since our logo has a reflection, I just noticed.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140529-c,sites/article.html 

Not sure what will happen with these guys in the coming months, but so far, so good. I’ve been a big fan of Facebook for about a year, and this move just makes me like them even more.

They have been in cahoots with Microsoft from a development perspective for a while. I think it was fairly organic how the relationship started, at least that’s what I heard. Turns out that for a while before the investment, thousands of Microsoft employees where using Facebook. Which makes sense because all of a sudden you can download Visual Studio Express (for free) and the Facebook Developer Toolkit and build a simple Facebook application pretty quickly. And by the way, the toolkit is hosted at Codeplex.com - Microsoft open source code/project website.

Google also has an equivalent, theirs is called OpenSocial. Bebo (UK’s largest social network, and the US’s third largest) says it will back OpenSocial and even launch its own Developer Platform.

So what does this mean? Well, it’s one of the reasons I left my last company, Omnifuse. They used to develop custom social networks. I’m not sure anymore that having your own social network requires that you have your very own custom-from-the-ground-up website. For lack of a better word, you need a “sandbox” where you can just drop in needed features and applications. Of course, it will be important for companies to own some of the intellectual property, but for the most part, a lot of the things we need and use in social network are already developed and available.

Another important consideration is the the fact that if you take advantage of things like Facebook’s application development tools, you’ll be able to tap into the network. This is 90% of the challenge. I’ve been involved in social network development of over 4 years, and it’s never the development of the social network that is difficult, it’s getting membership to grow.

So, good job Facebook and good luck Google. And for all you folks out there getting ready to build your own social network, make sure your strategy includes applications or widgets that will infiltrate and tickle the fancy of your member type who live in other social networks.

this is dumb. why?

• I have an iPhone, so I would look it up on Youtube and then bookmark.
• I could have just texted it to myself.
• I could have opened up a notes application on my phone and jotted it down.
• I could have emailed myself.

even though this is dumb, they still got $1M from Hummer Winblad. which makes Hummer Winblad, umm, well, you decide.

how can this be not dumb?

• give me an 800 number and put a speech recognition/speech-to-text app in front of it.
• dump the word/phrase into my fave search engine so I can look at it later.
• save what I said in a .wav file so if the speech software fails to recognize what I said, I can try to remember what I slurred (assumming I wasn’t driving while I was slurring).

Mr. Hummer or Mr. Winblad, call me please.

I’m sure you’ve heard of twitter by now. It’s nano- or microblogging, and personally, I’m addicted. It’s the child of the dude who co-founded Blogger. I didn’t get it at first, but being narcissistic and always wanting to tell people about my adventures, I got it really quickly, and so did they people who follow me on it. Imagine that, I am now able to tell my friends and colleagues about my escapades as they happen. The only problem is that my tweets (that’s what your posts are called), start to trail off around midnight or at the point where I’m on my second bottle of champagne, which ever comes first…

Tumblr is rad. To put it succinctly, it’s a tumbler where you put all your stuff in. And stuff, in Tumblr’s case, are all your social media: photos, videos, blog posts, and tweets! All your stuff is aggregated into one site. Again, since I am an exhibitionist, I love the fact that I can share with my fans all my adventures using words (twitter), photos (Flickr), and videos (Youtube).