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There has been a lot of discussion over the last 12-18 months about how all these web 2.0 start-ups that we regularly see sprouting up intend to monetize their virtually based businesses. Whilst some dream up complex advertising models in order to monetize the likes of YouTube and Facebook, there is a new startup called ether which is developing web 2.0 driven technology that will enable anyone with an Internet connection to monetize an area of business that has yet to be perfected online: word of mouth consultation.

E-commerce shopping carts became the solution for the ‘tangible product’ sale over the Internet and Ether plans on being the simple solution for the very ‘non-tangible’ services that have been hard for the smaller businesses to sell over the web. Consultants who want to leverage all the marketing benefits that the Internet offers can use ether in conjunction with a traditional website to ensure that they get paid for their valuable ‘talk-time’.

The way that ether works is remarkably simple. You sign up and receive an ether phone number that will look something like 1-888-MY-ETHER. Using the ether account manager interface you set up this number to be forwarded to any phone number that you choose- a cell, home, work anywhere you like. You then set your rate, this is the cost that will be charged to people who call you to tap your knowledge over the phone. It’s worth mentioning at this point that ether makes their money by taking a 15% commission off the fees that you earn.

When someone calls the ether number that you have advertised everywhere (website,blog,business cards, email etc.) you will be presented with an automated message:

• Press 1 to take the call now and earn your $(your rate) for the hour you talk
• Press 2 if you can take the call within 3 hours, and earn the $(your rate) when you’re ready
• Press 3 if you cannot take the call now nor within the 3 hour time window

You can also mange your availability using a calendar feature in your ether account interface. By using this function you can ensure that you only get phone calls when you want them.Getting paid by ether is reasonably simple, working in much the same way as a standard affiliate program- direct debit or cheque by mail are your two options. I have to say an option for payment via PayPal would be a nice addition to the ether model.

Ether is currently available for use in a wide variety of international locations, including my home town of New Zealand. If you’re consultant of any type, why not try some ‘ether-commerce’?

Facebook Ads, the new Facebook advertising platform, has now officially launched. The new advertising platform from facebook has been in the pipeline for quite a while now and it’s eventual arrival yesterday comes hot on the heels of the news that MySpace will also be launching a targeted ad network.

Facebook’s official press release reveals some interesting details. The statement describes Facebook’s new offerings as, “an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want.” The official launch announcement was made in new York where Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went on to say:

“For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

In terms of the technical make-up of the new Facebook ads network there will be three major components:

• Business Pages - A facility for businesses to build pages to allow connectivity with their audiences
• Beacon/Social Ads - Viral social ad inventory offering
• Insight - An account interface allowing businesses to measure activity

As with most major social networking launches of late, facebook are going to hit the ground running with a nice stable of foundational corporate advertising partners including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft (no surprises here), Sony Pictures Television and Verizon Wireless.

The speed at which these new social media advertising technologies are being released is almost mind blowing. I suppose that this is due to the fact that organizations such as Facebook need to start making good on the hype that surrounds the discussions around their true value as a business.

As a committed online marketer myself, I have found the last few weeks to be real challenge. Running my day to day responsibilities as a consultant in this area whilst trying to keep up with everything that has been going on has resulted in some long hours.

MySpace, the world’s largest social network, is believed to be launching a new targeted advertising offering dubbed “Self Service by MySpace”. The news of the launch will apparently be officially broken at Ad:Tech today.

The new service will not have any impact on the existing agreement that myspace has with Google for text based advertising and will be initially offered to a selected group of advertisers over the next 60 days. Whilst the service is designed to serve image based ads it will be run on a similar basis to that of the text based Google Adwords network. This is quite a bold/new step in the social networking game, although it is believed that Facebook intend to announce a similar proposition early next week as well. Never the less, MySpace definitely seems to be first to market with this offering even if it is only by one day

In terms of specific features, the new MySpace ad network will allow users to target their display advertisements by way of geographic, demographic and user interest categories. The minimum spend will be $10 and myspace intend to adopt a set CPC initially for various categories.

On top of this, MySpace are apparently also going to launch an additional advertising option for users that will be known as “Hyper Targeting by MySpace”. As the name suggests this new ad network will allow much more granular targeting for advertisers. It will leverage MySpace’s proprietary technology that builds a detailed profile of each myspace member including specifics such as friends, age, gender, location and interests.

This technology has already been ’soft’ launched back in July with a small but important business user base of companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Taco Bell, Ford & Microsoft.

Anyone who has had anything to do with any type of start-up business, whether it be web 2.0 based or bricks & mortar, knows that you need a good lawyer. The frustrating thing is that when you are serious about your new business venture (as most are or they would not be taking the risk) you are often just as serious about the quality of legal advice you should have. The bummer is that high quality legal advice arrives with equally high costs- not ideal at all in a start-up situation.

Often initial legal advice for start-ups is restricted to contracts such as NDAs. Having been involved in a number of start-ups, this was the source of most of my frustration. Why should I pay top dollar for what is pretty much a cookie cut document that has had a bit of ‘find and replace’ treatment and then sold to me at some crazy lawyers price?

Problems of this nature can now be resolved with the help of new start-up Tractis. This new service is a web platform that allows you to negotiate, manage, and sign contracts 100% online and 100% legally binding. It is the brain child of the team at Negonation who proudly confess on their blog that will either achieve or die n their attempt to create ‘a legal system for the internet nation’. You certainly cannot suggest that this start-up is not committed with comments such as this

Tractis incorporates a multilingual approach with content available in English and Spanish. There are a number of ways to take advantage of the service with the most simple being the use of existing contract templates. These template can be navigated easily thanks to a tagging function. There is also a rating function which will help users further narrow down their search for the appropriate contract template.

As far as cost is concerned, contract buyers (signers) need not pay a red cent and contract sellers (people who create the contract) get charged €1 per signature. As mentioned earlier in this post, the cost of legal help is typically crazy and Tractis becomes a really viable option with costs like this.

Closer to the middle of this month the development team at Tractis intend to launch a developer API. This will allow you to connect directly with our back-end and use digital certificates to authenticate your users, store documents, digitally sign contracts and ‘lots more’ according to the latest Negonation blog post.

Digitally creating & (particularly) signing off documents has been considered as being a little way off by the lawyers and doctors that I have mentioned this topic to. These are the two professions that seem to cling to the paper trail, often for reasons that are quite understandable. I am positive that most of us would like to see a well oiled paperless legal system before this type of thing is tried in the medical profession where lives are at stake.

So, if you have a great new idea and need a contract for an OEM software license or the like, why not try Tractis?

It was only last week that I posted on Rev2 about Microsoft’s investment in facebook and how they had beaten Google to the chase. Whilst Google had always been considered as a serious bidder in the battle for facebook shares, it would be very un-characteristic of them to not have their own plan to stamp their authority in the social networking space. So, in true Google fashion, it seems that they intend to do just this with a plan that is apparently code named MakaMaka.

MakaMaka seems to be Google’s wider strategy to add a linking social networking element to all of their existing application offerings. In addition to this Google are also said to be planning the use of the feed technology utilized by Google Reader in order to produce functionality akin to that of the facebook news and mini-feed’s.

According to trustworthy industry sources, the first signs of MakaMaka will be noticeable to the public around early November. It is at this pint that we will apparently start to see the opening up of Googles main web 2.0 applications such as iGoogle. The new set of API’s that will be offered will also allow 3rd Party developers to build for Google’s very own social network, Orkut.

Facebook definitely lead the way in terms of ‘open development platform’ policies. However, it certainly seems that Google have intentions to hatch a plan (MakaMaka) that will rival the bold move made by Zuckerberg at facebook earlier this year. The one aspect of the MakaMaka strategy that will concern facebook the most (should these predictions be accurate) will be Google’s intentions to treat the whole web as a development platform rather than restricting developers to the confines of Google’s platform alone ala facebook. What this creates is a scenario where appls built for Google become instantly applicable for a variety of other uses outside the Google platform.

Things are going to be heating up big time in this space in the short term future, and I for one am all for it. Competitiuon like this creates a better situation for the most important group, the users like you and I. It has been interesting to note the progress of some of my favorite facebook applications over the last few weeks. I have noticed a few version 2 releases of a number of popular app’s which, to my mind, re-enforces the fact that open platform development is a certain in the future of the Internet

Since the dawn of (Internet) time there has been one category online that has empowered the skills of housewives around the globe- recipes. The cooking recipes category on the Internet is simply huge. This should really come as no surprise to us all as the recipes are mostly textual data with a few basic images, perfect for sharing on the Internet! Whilst recipes may be simple from a technical perspective, they value within this data is immense as quality food is desired by every human being- bar none.

I do not promote my cooking skills on a regular basis, however, the recipe information online has motivated me more in recent years to cook more often. The only problem I find is following a recipe on my mac as I don’t own a printer (and I never really want to). Propping my laptop up on the kitchen bench is not something I see as helping the plight of my loyal Macintosh sidekick, particularly given the mess I tend to make.

This is why new startup TasteBook could be my new best cooking partner. TasteBook is a new online service that enables anyone to take 100 of their favorite recipes and create their very own recipe book. The full color book is built with an opening binding that allows segments of each edition to be added at your pleasure. If you only want to start off by adding 30 recipes to you first TasteBook, you can always add up to 7o at later dates. The cost of a single TasteBook with 100 recipes is $34.95

There are over 25,000 recipes from epicurious available to be searched and refined to make your personalized TasteBook. One feature that I am a huge fan of is the interface on this website, particularly when you are reviewing your TasteBook creation. You are served up (no pun) a virtual version of your TasteBook which can be ‘flicked’ through and viewed like a real book.

Once you are up and running with your TasteBook account you can start using the 2.0 features of this online recipe service. Members can upload an address book full of contact details from any major email account provider. Using these details, TasteBook will facilitate your sharing of any individual or collection of recipes. Your friends can even add recipes to your TasteBook or as a group you can all get together and create a seasonal TasteBook to be used as a gift.

I’m getting hungry just writing about all this…..

Update: The deal is confirmed. Microsoft will be paying $240 million for a 1.6% stake in the company, confirming its thin-air analyst valuation of $15 billion. Nice — someone will be partying hard tonight.

The latest news in the world of Facebook is that the much speculated alliance between facebook and Microsoft is seemingly all go.

Sources close to the deal are not sure of precise details, however, the agreement is expected to include at least an ownership stake for Microsoft in the fast moving social network. This is a clear win for Microsoft over Google, who were also believed to have been bidding hard for a partnership with facebook.

Having lost on previous social network investment opportunities such as myspace, Microsoft will be pleased to make some solid progress in this important online space. And for Facebook, the suggested enormity of the investment that will be made by Microsoft will allow Zuckerberg and his team to move Facebook up to the next level.

I’m on the war path to get rid of the traditional paper trail this week on Rev2. My last post focused on a collaborative workspace service which can help us all reduce our own paper trails. This post is all about a new service called Proquo, which can help you reduce the paper use of larger businesses who want to send stuff to you on paper.

There are not many people out there that are not sick of the junk mail that pours into your letter box. Even the old ‘No Circulars’ sign on the letterbox itself does nothing to put off those would be printed mail ’spammers’. The Proquo service sets about resolving this problem on your behalf.

All you need to do is sign up for a free Proquo account. Proquo will then help you manage your profile on the various marketing databases in the US that are the source of lists for all those junk mail marketing companies.

Apart from the fact that this service directly helps our environment by reducing paper use, you will also get the benefit of minimising the theft of your identity without your knowledge. Proquo is a service that I am already a big fan of even though I cannot actually subscribe due to my location. I just wish they had an offering for us down-under in New Zealand.

If I lived in the States, I would be signing up for the Proquo service right now, it’s a ‘no-brainer’ really

If there is one aspect of the traditional bricks and mortar business that seems to have hung by a thread, despite the technology boom, it’s the good old paper trail! It never ceases to amaze me how much paper human beings churn through in the corporate world.

The web 2.0 revolution, however, has provided the first real opportunity for humans to genuinely move to a paper-less professional society. Collaborative work-spaces are the opportunity I’m talking about, and I recently had the chance to review a new site offering this service. It’s called ReviewBasics, and it already has a great rep!

ReviewBasics is pitched as a service for designers, photographers, writers, consultants, analysts and pretty much any other professional who wants to get opinion or feedback on a specific piece of information that they are working on. The information is provided to third parties securely by ReviewBasics, at which point these third party ‘editors’ can use an extremely slick and simple interface to make visual and/or textual suggestions to help improve the information they were asked to review.

Like I say, the ReviewBasics interface is definitely a strength of this new service. When you think about it, this will need to be a core strategic competency for the Sharp-Style start-up. For this service to be sticky to the point where it will be recommended and spread, it will require a edge in interface and I think that these guys have started off on the right foot.

In terms of what content can it handled by ReviewBasics, you are in with a grin for information in rich text (RTF), Microsoft word (DOC), Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT), adobe acrobat (PDF), flash video (FLV) and image (JPG, GIF, PNG) formats. The team at ReviewBasics are also happy to consider offering new formats should the demand suffice.

For me, the most special of the features offered by ReviewBasic is the video editing suite. ReviewBasic actually converts the video file into a user friendly web format that can be edited at any level, even frame by frame. Coupled with the aforementioned sexy interface, this feature is all good.

Although ReviewBasics is still in beta, the service has been awarded some great feedback by some well respected sources. Competition is definitely hot in this space with the big guns such as Google docs providing similar services, particularly in the textual document space.

All in all I think ReviewBasics has a great future. Go ahead and try their free beta account offering which is currently available….I’m pretty sure you won’t be disappointed

Wow! Mark Zuckerberg and facebook sure are rustling the feathers of some big birds these days. It was only the other day that I was posting about the Google vs. facebook debate heating up. The latest competitor news for facebook will be more concerning for Zuckerberg I’m sure. The statistical king of social networks, MySpace, has made some big announcements.

During a Q&A session with John Battelle at the web 2.0 conference yesterday, Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe took an opportunity to present some interesting improvements and additions that will be made to their social networking site. Rumors about how MySpace will offer an open platform have been rife, particularly given the fact that facebook introduced this exact feature in May this year and have since seemed to benefit massively from the tactic.

Based on what was revealed by Murdoch and DeWolfe, these rumors are drifting more towards becoming matters of fact. The big news is that MySpace will indeed introduce a phased strategy moving towards and eventual open platform situation, similar to that of facebook.

The segmented approach by MySpace to get their first open platform situation live and operational for their members involves 3 main phases:

1. Widget Directory Launch

In the immediate short term MySpace will launch a directory made up of widgets that already exist for users profile pages. The purpose of this move is simply to make the ability for users to access the widegts a whole lot easier than it is currently.

2. Open Platform Launch

In the more medium term (within a couple/few months) MySpace will implement the ‘guts’ of their new strategy- a genuine platform. The platform will be a set of API’s and a new markup language that third party developers can use to build applications that will run within MySpace. The good news is that unlike existing MySpace widgets, developers of the new era of widgets will be able to access deeper profile information that can then be built in permanently.

Whilst advertisements cannot be placed within the new MySpace widgets, any revenue generated by ads placed on the specific application page will be granted to the developer (100%).

3. Beta Testing

Unfortunately, the new MySpace application functionality will not be available to all MySpace users in the first instance. A beta testing group of around 1-2 million members will be utilized after which the platform will be open to all members.

Conclusion

Myspace is the biggest social network in the western world so this move, as I eluded to earlier in the post, will definitely alert the big guns at facebook. The fact that facebook have been through this open platform implementation phase already will serve as a a great base of education for MySpace. Murdoch’s team can now, to a certain extent, take a more deliberate and traditional approach to implementing their new strategy.

When facebook launched their open platform they were doing something remarkable in an effort to differentiate and whilst being first and fast is mostly always better, this approach does have it’s risks when you are up against a player as big and rich as Murdoch. The question is, can MySpace exploit these risks?