DC Insights

Social Web Running. . .

Literally that, Running. Staying true to the more entertaining weekend blogs, and to share a bit about myself besides my professional pursuits, I wanted to write about running. . . via social media. I've been a big running for about 10 years now with 8 marathons under my belt and hopefully plenty more to follow. My last was the 5^th of December, a trail marathon in Indiana – check out this elevation profile! Lots of fun ;-)

I first thought about putting a top 5 or 10 list together but quickly realized I should leave that to Carol and her Top running websites list or the Healthcare Administration Degree's 100 list. Thanks for the thorough lists, folks!

Then, I thought about a site I used with some frequency before, Athletic Minded Traveler . . . but then I found out they went to a pay-for-service model since I last used them. As a traveling consultant, I found it to be a valuable resource when it was free. . . $20 a year now, but I don't have a need. So I moved on. . . .

For a community to gain serious momentum, it might just need to be on Facebook these days, right? Well I went looking and quickly found:

• Running: The largest running associated group associated with http://www.runningnews.gr/, and I don't have a marathon planned for Greece. . . yet
• Running: The second largest, and this appears to be out of New Zealand. . . perhaps
• Running: The third largest, somehow associated with http://running-shoe-coupons.110mb.com/, but with Chicago based photos. . .

So, if you are looking to become mayor of something that could be major, try aggregating the online running community. . . somewhere (for when they aren't out running, I suppose) There is Runners Lounge, but, and this is possibly horrible to say, can any social site be legitimate without use of Facebook Connect?

I did happen upon traineo, an awesome site for someone who is looking to get seriously motivated about weight loss and fitness. Watch the quick 1:41 min video to understand. Basically, you set up goals, they use analytics to guide and motivate you. But, most importantly, you join in on a community of motivators who all help each other – that's huge. A resource like this should be used in any/all preventative health programs! I wrote about this back in June. FYI, fitlink has a similar model.

traineo in under 2 mins from traineo on Vimeo.

So there you go. . . I have not been missing too much online while I've been out running ;-) BTW, Today's run along the lake was amazing!

Did I miss any amazing online running gems that you know of?

UPDATE:  Want to give mention to Weight Loss Buddy at http://tinyurl.com/ybkqpcj with features similar to traineo.  And, it appears the site is halfway to perfection.  They are on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. . . but I want to see them (1) using Facebook Connect and (2) allowing users to share their ongoing successes via Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace.  Thanks for the reference Stacy!

A Quick, Personal Intro to Behavioral Economics

I want to start a conversation on Behavioral Economics ("BE") and I want to make sure you can internalize it. . . AND I found the website that helps me!

Here is a personal (and positive) experience that allows you to 'live' BE. Here's what you do:

1. Visit stickK and identify a goal you've been struggling to achieve (e.g., marathon, last 10 lbs of baby fat, grad school)
2. Register/Login and enter the details of your commitment
3. Choose the stakes – this is where it can get REALLY interesting (i.e., I suggest Anti-Charity)!

   So. . . essentially decide which of the following is the most LOATHSOME:

• Americans United for Life
• NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation
• Nature Conservancy
• The National Center for Public Policy Research
• Freedom to Marry
• Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
• Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence
• NRA Foundation
• George W. Bush Presidential Library
• William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library

1. Set a referee if you REALLY want to be serious
2. Start the races!!!!

I found the site through this New Yorker article and find the context of the article hilarious (HINT: I have a similar anti-charity).

QUESTION TO YOU: Have you had a recent retail or service experience on the web that created an incentive structure similar to sticK's? I'd love to hear about it!

 

To keep this blog fun, and short, I wanted to drop a few more BE references for you all:

• You should check out a great TEB video of Dan Ariely:

   

• And feel free to read a white paper I worked on while working with Dan (more on the paper later):

Predictably Irrational Customers

View more documents from Eric Siegmann.

 

• Finally, I want to put a plug in for Dan's book. . . BUY THIS BOOK ;-)

Cheers Folks

Aardvark – New Best Animal, EVER!

Aardvark is a must see! O.k., so this is not about the animal (everyone know the Liger is the best animal EVER).

I want you introduce to the most amazing, new web service, aardvark. Here's their one liner, "Aardvark was conceived as the first Social Search engine: a way to find people, not web pages, that have specific information." It's a simple concept in theory:

• Identify and connect a network of people (LOTS of people - all over)
  • Aardvark is very smart to leverage multiple, mature networks that we already propagate
• Create multiple (infinite?) 'panels of experts' by allowing users to self select their expertise
• Open the network allowing users to ask and answer questions
  • Questions are most likely evaluated and allocated to a topic. . .
  • Then sent out to all folks within your 'network' with self-identified expertise in that topic. . .
  • BAM. . . answers get sent to you!

Saturday evening, with the fixings for dinner in front of me, I was inspired to test the site with the below question, and was quite pleased with the speed and quality of the answers – though somewhat subjective:

• You (that's me): What's the best spice to stir-fry shrimp with?
• Christopher G.; 26 / M / Pembroke Pines, FL: We had some shrimp using some Bahamian spices (not sure what it was), maybe some Paprika, and Curry (I think) last night - tasted great!
• Donald J.; 36 / M / Washington, DC: For something different try hoisin, five spice powder, or Szechuan peppercorn

Pretty Awesome for a Saturday evening Q&A on stir-fry shrimp between Chicago, Florida, and DC!

While Aardvark is awesome, the potential for enterprise use is huge. Can you imagine building a similar internal support network that allows customers to asynchronously connect with the most appropriate internal resources – big wins on improved customer satisfaction/loyalty and support cost savings.

I could spend all Sunday afternoon thinking and writing about aardvark. . . but instead I'm going to have a beer before seeing Springsteen play in Milwaukee. . . with GA tickets!!! I'll be sure to tell you all about it. . .

Tell me what you think of aardvark and the concept potential. . . looking forward to hearing thoughts, opinions, and cons! Cheers

GrubHub.com – a Quick SM Assessment

Had a great Friday presentation at Booth School of Business where Matt Maloney spoke about the company he cofounded, Grubhub.com. I love the concept of GrubHub – using inexpensive web technology to aggregate information and make our lives easier. And with the business model where restaurants pay GrubHub a % of online orders, it is win-win for them and free for us.

I thought it would be fun to review how well they use social media tools. Below is the information I collected – I included information on foodler, a competitor, as a point of reference.

Looking at a restaurant, there is a review section – great place to get customer credentials on the food. I used La Gondola as a reference. Here are things that I liked:

• The default review sorting places links to published reviews up top
• And when available links you to Yelp reviews
• Each reviewer has number of reviews and orders by their name for credentialing
• One can rate reviews as helpful or not
• One can sort reviews by 'most helpful' and 'Reviewer's Experience'

Here are my weekend 2 cents:

• The reviews are simple. I might want to know what with the reviewer ate. Foodler goes to the next level, aggregating reviews to the menu items associated with the reviewed order. Foodler also let one know the frequency that menu items were ordered. Note that Foodler provides no visibility into the individual reviewers or quality ratings of reviews. It also does not provide an open field for review like GrubHub.
• Links to external published and Yelp reviews take me to a new tab. It may be better to keep the customer engage on their site – could they communicate that information internally through a mashup before letting the customer leave?
• There is so much more information on these restaurants online. Is it possible to pull this in through mashup/aggregation as well? I know sometime you can have too much information - but GrubHub could pull this in at a low cost and let customers use it to their needs. External content could include:
  • Google has 26 reviews; La Gondola is ZAGAT rated 17 years in a row; additional reviews exist on CenterStage Chicago, tripadvisor, 10best.com, and urban spoon

Some other obvious spaces for them to be in:

They have a facebook page with 1,298 fans. Foodler has 2,445 fans. Their use of this space is consistent with other similar merchants, including:

• Fan buzz and promotion
• Fan feedback, i.e. new restaurants to include
• Promotional Monday trivia post – answer a question get $10 gift card
• Blog publication announcements

They have a twitter page with 1,828 followers and consistent traffic of responses, links to daily specials, and general announcements. Foodler has 83 followers and last tweeted June 28^th. . .

There is an iPhone app, made available August of 2008. Foodler does not have one. Now, I'm ashamed to say I do not have an iPhone yet, so if someone out there has used this app, I'd love to hear about it – do share.

So there you go - an internet based business that does well in engaging their customers via social media tools. I believe they have additional opportunities to mashing up more external review information. It is an easy way to leverage valuable external information, and customer traffic, to add experience value at a minimal cost and effort. I'll see if Matt has time to discuss that with me ;-)

Cheers all, and Go Broncos!

Informatics Tells You what to Like!

Here is the first weekend blog – where I explore the other side of eCommerce, web 2.0, and social media. Sure, it's all applicable to business – we just don't have to be too serious all the time ;-)

This article immediately caught my attention, mathematically analyzing music to determine the next blockbuster. If you've spent anytime listening to Pandora, and know the background to their Music Genome Project, then Music Intelligence Solution's concept of picking winners from historic data is no surprise. While it is always nice to hold an opinion, now you know you don't even have to put too much effort into that.

The same is happening with movies. While you can get recommendations at Netflix based on how your and others ratings of previously viewed movies, jinni takes it to the next level with their Movie Genome Project. I played around with it a bit, but my Netflix queue is long enough that I'm not desperate to know what I've missed. . . not yet. Here are two good blog reviews, one positive and one critical, if you want to read more. Another note of interest, Clerk Dogs believe the human aspect of picking out the right movies cannot be broken down to metadata and algorithms. They replaced the VHS rental experience by collecting movie clerk opinions and using those to suggest what you'll like – in a more human way? Here's a good blog for more on Clerk Dogs.

What's really exciting is where this can take us. . . can one engineer songs (or movies) that they know will be winners based on algorithmic analysis of historic data? Of course, one can suggest that engineering winners has been done in the past. I immediately think of cash-in phenomenon of boy bands or the ongoing success of Pixar animation and 007 movies. But, remove the experience and expertise that goes into developing those winners, find a small, highly intelligent team of data geeks in India, Nova Scotia, or Nowhere, OK, pick the genre you want to own, and start 'manufacturing'.

In terms of logging customer behavior and running algorithms to determine how best to serve them, this is not new. But there is a lot more to be done. If you're looking to get in on the ground floor with the next metadata/algorithm based recommendation site, you can always use rovi to start off at least. . .