PepsiCo is launching a social network around European football. The site is available on pepsiyouniverse.com

Obviously site has excellent potential with football fanatics. Although I’m not sure how they are looking to market it. You can already build your profile on the site. Apart from profiles you can take part in a quiz:

Brands are obviously entering social networking in a big way. Pepsi is cleverly levering consumer’s interest in Football as oppose to the drink itself. So what are the potential benefits for Pepsi. Some really obvious ones:

• Brand promotion, appeal to younger adopters
• Showcase its ties with one of the worlds most played sport.

Less obvious benefits:

• Market research of its product and brand
• Increase customer loyalty and
• Acquisition of (potential) customer details

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Tags: Pepsi, Social Network

Business Week has a very interesting article about Social Media, thanks Alex for pointing it out. The article is primarily correcting their earlier writeup about Social media in 2005.

There are 9 pages of very interesting information and well presented.

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Tags: BusinessWeek, Social Media

Just a quick reminder that Kwiqq will be exhibiting at Technology for Marketing and Advertising in Earls Court London on the 12th and 13th Feb

You can find the details in my earlier post.

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Tags: TFM&A, Technology, Marketing, Kwiqq, London

My inspiration for this blog comes from two sources:

1. Boohoo: Book written by the founder of a company called Boo, which raised $135 million over 18 months and then went bust
   • 
2. James Eder: Founder of Studentbeans.com who I met at LSE

The reason why I think Boo.com went bust was, lack of financial management and no focus on product (the actual website which sold sports gear). Looking at some of the successful applications (and/or websites), there approach was bottom up. Eg: Skype, YouTube etc.

Bottom-up approach the individual base elements of the system are first specified in great detail. These elements are then linked together to form larger subsystems, which then in turn are linked, sometimes in many levels, until a complete top-level system is formed. This strategy often resembles a “seed” model, whereby the beginnings are small but eventually grow in complexity and completeness. However, “organic strategies” may result in a tangle of elements and subsystems, developed in isolation and subject to local optimization as opposed to meeting a global purpose.

These sites spent years working on their application, getting real users to their site, building their product from the feedback they received from their users. Once the product is right and you have the users, raising finance is almost trivial. Yes you need to get the critical mass but that will not happen solely on the basis of Marketing and Sales. This brings me to James from Student Beans. Whilst answering questions after his talk, James mentioned “Get your product right and you won’t need any marketing”. I’m aware these were not his exact words but that’s the gist of it.

I agree with James but also feel marketing and sales are very important. If you have your product right then it will generate enquiries.

This is relevant to people who are building a social network, sometimes the notion is to heavily market it: Pay per click, press releases blah blah and forget that the focus was the social network. Another factor is the design, Boo.com spent a lot of emphasis on design (or rather forgot the actual user):

The designers had forgotten that getting people to use the website and purchase items outweighed the “sexiness” of the design

If entrepreneurs and companies should keep the design rich but at the same time not too complicated, so its not multi-browser compatible. Users generally like simple looking websites which work! What impresses them is the functionality not just the design alone. Eg: Facebook, Myspace etc

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Tags: boo.com, studentbeabs.com, bottom-up, design

Let me give you a quick over view of Voxswap. The site is still in its early stages and allows users to learn a new language with the help of the community.

There are chat, search features so you can quickly find people who can help you out and have a conversation. The site is targeted at languages hence there is a virtual keyboard for users to type all accents.

What in my mind is the USP (Unique Selling Point) of Voxswap ? I think its the attitude to KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. The site is kept simple and the focus is to learn a language in a fun way. No silly unnecessary tools: pokes, super walls, vampire bites etc. Things like drag and drop mechanism to build your profile.

The site is not even a week old and already there are 225 users on it.

The site is powered by Kwiqq. We have gone through months of upgrade to build version 2 of our software. Voxswap is our first website in this series. Kwiqq V2 is built on Symfony.

Symfony is an open source PhP framework developed over several years. What I really like about Symfony is its:

1. Enterprise ready: Hence it allows us to scale as the community grows.
2. Built in Ajax: We can quickly deploy Ajax features for our clients
3. Clean code: I love the modular code and MVC model symfony follows
4. Open Source: This allows us not only to access the wider open source development community but also to give something back

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Tags: Voxswap, Learn Language, Kwiqq V2, Symfony, Open Source

ITV bought Friends Reunited for £120m from husband and wide Steve and Juli Pankhurst in July 2000. Now its under enormous pressure from competitors like Facebook to improve its operation. A strategy has been laid down which includes rebranding itself.

Part of the rebranding would be to change its name and introducing more free elements to it. FR currently charges people a subscription to allow them to contact other users.

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Tags: FriendsReunited, ITV, Rename

I wrote earlier that Walmart offering SEM might be a hoax. Apparently its not as reported by Karl Ribas:

Karl says: “ Sam’s Choice Cola and Sam’s Choice Drinking Water… there’s a brand new product offering hitting the shelves. Introducing Sam’s Choice Pay Per Click services”

Wow its actually true

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Tags: Walmart, SEM, Karl Ribas, Wow

Walmart or ASDA (ASDA’s UK website) as we know it in the UK, are offering Search Engine Marketing as a product. The product can be seen on Sam’s club. I was well surprised when Tesco’s started offering mobile phones but this is really, taking it to the next level.

I haven’t done any independent research but read it on Mashable. This is potentially a big step for any supermarket chain, definitely would surprise Tescos’. On looking closely on Sam’s Club I’m unable to find any reference to Walmart. I’m almost convinced that this is a Hoax!

Just to give you an idea Sam’s branded advertisement can set you back $100/month. Not bad at all ! I know companies can spend in millions to see any results as. Someone to ask about it are guys at Oban, Multi-lingual PPC specialists.

I think Sam’s target market are corner shops, small e-retailers etc. I’ll keep you posted !

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Tags: Walmart, ASDA, Search Engine Marketing, Oban, PPC, Sam’s club

If you have been following kwiqq you might know that we began on 15th Jan 2007. In just a year we have seen some amazing results. We met some fantastic people in the community: Brighton (BNM), London, California, European etc.

I would like to thank everyone for being supportive and accepting funny accent multicultural (Raj) and skinny blond haired (Jack) :). Your advice and references are much appreciated! This year our achievements were:

• Kwiqq grew from 1 man band to a team of 11 people.
• Raj won BusinessWeek’s Europe’s Young entrepreneur 2007
• Jack spoke about Social Networking at several conferences like Ad-tech (Europe’s Biggest interactive marketing conference), Internet marketing conference (Sweden), 02 sponsored New Product Network, Mashup* Event and SEMN IP-Pitching organised by Wired Sussex
• Raj spoke on Entrepreneurship at Make Your Mark (YES Network), £5 App, Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurs at the British Council (with The Minister of State for Competitiveness, Stephen Timms MP)
• We are working with some fabulous clients like First Choice (2wentys), Highams PLC, Sussex Innovation Centre and SEEDA.
• We were covered in some major publications (online and offline) like BusinessWeek, Techcrunch, Hindustan Times, TTG, The Argus, Intruders.tv, Hobsons, Wired Sussex, Blognation etc.

Our ambitions for 2008:

I always think of ourselves as a very ambitious company. As you would suspect we have some targets for next year:

• Physical presence outside the UK. I will announce this once deals and our vision is finalised
• Officially launch version 2 of Kwiqq’s software with major upgrades in the server and front end of the software.
• Serve more customers this year, strategy includes increasing our sales force and development team.
• Concentrate on our product. Improve functionality and explore other undiscovered areas of social networking in areas like privacy, usability etc

Personal Objectives for 2008:

• Do more dance videos, one wasn’t enough
• Eating healthy food and no snacking (good bye junk food). I’ll try and join a gym, not sure if I’ll get the time though (atleast I’m honest about it)
  
• Continue my mission to get more young people into entrepreneurship. Its a wonderful thing which would help them in various spheres of life.
  
• Not wear suit and tie unless I really have to.
  

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Tags: Kwiqq, achievements, 2007, 2008, Jack Farihall, Raj Anand

There are few well known marketing exhibitions in London including Ad-Tech (London), Internetworld etc.

One of the upcoming marketing and advertising events next year is TFM&A organised from 12-13Feb 2008 in Earls Court 2, London.




The event claims to be :

“The UK’s only dedicated event delivering data, digital and CRM solutions for marketing, media and advertising professionals”

Find who is Exhibiting , FAQs, Sponsorship Opportunities and Highlights of 2007

This year’s highlights are:

• 40 Free Seminars in 4 themed Theatres
• Networking Bar
• Specialist Clinic
• Advertising Agency Pavilion

Kwiqq will be exhibiting too, so if you are interested in meeting with us face to face why not register now

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Tags: TFM&ATechnology for Marketing & Advertising Ad-tech internetworld kwiqq