The Media Supermarket

My theory for the thing we all, as humans, look for was the following:
An experience of consciousness that engages us on all the levels. This means that the most engaging experience would be an experience involving the five senses, the mind, emotions, and engages others with us.
Sex includes all these elements and it is maybe the most engaging and intense thing we can ever do.
Yesterday, I had a really engaging experience with my friends from the company I used to work for. There was no sex, don’t worry:)
I was forced to imitate almost everyone in the company. This was shot with all different types of video and mobile cameras.
During the “show”, there were these moments were everyone exploded with laughter at the same time. Everybody clicked at the sight of a caricaturized presentation of a person they closely knew.
Of course, there were those moments were it didn’t click.
Is it the best idea to aim at achieving such moments with customers, especially in the “Experience Economy”?
I think we should think of these moments when we write, when we serve, and when we have any kind of contact with the customer.

My “customers” yesterday were also interacting by requesting certain characters, and in certain situations.
Think about it…

I just got back from Dubai after attending a training course on Mediadisk. This is the world’s leading media database, and includes around 800,000 contacts from 200,000 media outlets. The main advantage for this database is appreciated by anyone working on media communications on a daily basis.
Building and filtering lists according to many different criteria, grouping the data, and distributing emails and press releases is much easier with this system. I also saw how much hard work it takes for the researchers to gather and constantly update the regional data, which is in itself a feature of the product.
Mediadisk has a Middle East & North Africa module available, and anyone interested can book a free demo, to get to know the system. More details are available on the Products page of Mediadisk.

This was the title of a TV show on Alarabiya, which consisted of two parts: the first was a translation of the documentary, and the second was a discussion of the documentary by a panel of specialists in the field.
As a Google fan myself, I was interested in watching and getting to know more about the company and its services.
What was really interesting was thinking about the inevitable dilemma such a company will have to face, even if they had the most noble of intentions: in order to serve us better, they need to provide innovative and better products/services, and in order to be able to do that, they will need to collect more and more information about us, and keep that information stored, so they can base their developments on a sound history of searches, links, thoughts etc.
The same applies to us, the users; if we want better services and a more personalized experience, we will have to share some information about ourselves. Our privacy is the cost.
Maybe this is something that comes with becoming a celebrity.(Time magazine named me, and “You” person of the year.
So, what do we do, when faced with such a situation? Do we do our best to try and escape all the systems that try to “understand” us by following us in everything that we do?
As Seth Godin mentions in one of his posts,
“The thing is, privacy is an illusion. You think you have privacy, but the video surveillance firms and your credit card company disagree. If we’re already on camera, we might as well get some benefits from it. If we choose.”
Instead of trying to find the blind spots of the surveillance cameras and trying to avoid them, I think we should just come out and dance in front of these cameras! I don’t see any other choice. At least these cameras will know we have nothing to hide.
Saatchi & Saatchi’s CEO, Kevin Roberts expresses a similar attitude in the second point of his credo,”If it ain’t broke… Break it!”
We usually fall in the trap of trying to mend minor details in our hope to get back to the old pattern of doing things. This new attitude suggests that maybe if things started to break, they are not fit to the new situation anymore. Therefore…? Break it and go on.
Our “privacy” as we know it, is starting to break, and we might just be better off adjusting to the new system, and hopefully making good use of it.

Here are some of the upcoming events organized and managed by Events Unlimited.

Check the details here.

As every year, Pikasso held it’s annual awards ceremony in Amman today. The top prize was awarded to a visual that linked the brand with women’s ability and desire to bring out their talent.
Antonio Vincenti, GM of Pikasso opened with a speech congratulating the winners, thanking and audience, and highlighting his thoughts on the sensitive issue of Amman Municipality’s decision to change the outdoor landscape, and remove rooftops and billboards on buildings.
His thoughts were very interesting to me and very nicely put, where he surprisingly agreed to the removal of rooftops and building-mounted billboards, because the billboards’ main objective is to add to the city’s beauty, and be an important part of that city’s culture. But… on the condition of having a good enough alternative.
The alternative in discussion is supposed to be through providing more locations on the ground. I’m not sure how that will improve the scenery in the city. Having more and more billboards on sidewalks, will only block our vision of the buildings that we are trying to protect in the first place.
We still need to know how these will be positioned and how many they will be to really judge.
Before distributing the awards, there was a seminar conducted by Alain Weill, which I was unfortunately unable to attend. I’m sure I missed a lot of interesting stuff. The event was fun, and the food was good!

If you are wondering what “Web 2.0″ is, this is a perfect explanation…

Couldn’t embed it for some reason. But here is the link.

Enjoy…

When I go on selling advertisements, the traditional way, I have to get to know the client, talk to them, really understand them and convince them of the value of my offering. After that comes the long procedure (fight) over where to place the ad or how long it would be etc.
With contextualized ad systems, things seem to be just the opposite; I’m getting to know about the advertiser, through which I’m generating income, through my publication (blog), and after they publish the ads that I placed wherever I wanted!
This is how I got to know about several sites, blogs, services and people, one of which is John Chow.
The interesting thing, is that since advertising is contextual, and it is related to what I’m writing, the ads that show are usually interesting to me. Never mind about my visitors!
His ad caught my attention through several key words, like “your blog is a money maker”, and “I’ll show you how 100% free”.
He seems to really understand to the concept of giving in order to take, and has his own witty way of implementing it.
One of the ways he is using, is posting an ad on a certain blog, only to cheer the blogger and telling him to “keep up the good work”. How can you not wonder what the advertiser wants by just cheering up someone?! He only has the url of his blog under the cheer, and does not ask you to take action, not even click.
Apparently this not only caused readers to click and talk about it, the targeted blogger would reply with another Adsense ad as a reply for that ad. Here is a post showing interestig dialogs. Thanks JohnTP.
John’s post analyzing his incomefrom his blog was very instructive and gave me an idea about the different income streams available and how each can be used. I must have overestimated Google’s Adsense program. I look forward to sharing such results from my blog!
His latest strategy, which I fell for… (rose up to??) was to give links to bloggers who review his blog. For me, I thought it would be great to get some traffic from John, but I had to put something useful (I hope) about his blog. Therefore, I was forced to read more and more, to get to know him better, which is what his whole strategy is about. He got himself a new reader, and some links.
The memory of one of my college teachers,  Bob Schemel, just came to my mind when he asked us what was the thing that is equal for all human beings and no matter who you are, how much money you had, you are still an equal with all other people…
His answer? Time!
I had to agree, because come to think about it, we all have twenty four hours a day, and although smarter people might achieve more in less time, and might know how to collaborate, or purely use others to “save” time, we all have our deadlines, we need to be in a certain place at a certain time.
With the new available technologies, all this is collapsing. Time and space restrictions are collapsing. The quality of this post, for example, does not have anything to do with submitting it on time. There is no time limit for submitting it. So I “took” my time and wrote it at my convenience. You, in turn are reading it at your convenience and it can potentially be read any time in the future.
If this was a newspaper article, I would have had to submit it today, would have been paid to write it once, and anyone who wants to read it has only today, and maybe tomorrow to read it, then they’ll have to look in garbage can!
From an advertising point of view this article would have generated some income for the newspaper only once and that’s it.
In the case of this (and any other) post, whenever it is read, there will be some ads on the side or featured products to sell. It can therefore generate a theoretically unlimited amount of income for the blogger.   

Seems to me that time is no longer money, at least it is less so, than it used to be. Now, money is generated by the quality of your work, which is rewarded by more and more links (votes) from other people. These people don’t know (or care) when you wrote it, they care if it is useful or interesting.

So, if you want to make some cash, go out and get some links, because links are money! 

Just got to know about a new toolbar provider, Agloco. They are advertising for a new toolbar, which is yet to be distributed, and sharing the revenue with referrers. That’s a very interesting model compared to Conduit’s.
While Conduit let’s you make your own toolbar, with any links you want to any money-making program, they only impose the search box which is not an optional component. From that box, which is powered by Google, they earn their fees from clicks on sponsored links.
Agloco on the other hand, have their own standard toolbar “Viewbar”, with a contextualized advertising section that earns money from clicks, a search box, earning the same way, and a ‘rich media’ platform. Members who refer users will be “partners” owning the system, each with a share that depends on the number of referrals they send.
Two interesting models for monetizing your web presence, you can sign up for this system through this link.    

Nothing!
Was my first reaction. Especially when I first heard about Vital Edition a newly-opened online book store targeted to Amman locals.
What about Amazon? And How will they compete with Adab wa Fan, the joint venture between Maktoob, “the biggest Arab online community” and Aramex, the top Arab express courier?
After some investigation and a meeting with the owners, I realized that they can not only compete, but they have some real advantage over their main “competitors”.
When I order a book from Amazon it takes no less than two weeks to arrive to my part of the world. I have no idea how long it takes with Adab wa Fan. With Vital Edition, they deliver the books within 48 hours, which is really a big difference in convenience, and in the reduced cost. (their delivery is free)
I have no official statistics but people having credit cards in Amman are very little in number, and even these are still skeptical about making online transactions with credit cards. With VE you pay cash, and only after receiving your book.
Moreover, there is this personal element in their service where you can call a local mobile number and talk to a person, not just a machine.
Parallel to their online efforts, VE is creating an offline presence in cafes  in Amman, by renting display stands in outlets. This helps increase awareness of their brand, and gives a new dimension to customers experience in the outlet.
Maybe this is another cycle repeating itself where the local store has some advantage over Big Corps.
What still needs to be achieved is, well, the P word. Profitability doesn’t seem to be coming in the near future. I think this would be only possible through adding more local products and categories in the same way, and reducing over-heads by only providing delivery from affiliated suppliers. Another challenge is to improve their variety and provide choice for the customer. Currently, they have a limited range restricted to top best sellers in each category.
Nawwaf Uteibi and Mohammed Kilani, the founders, are motivated not just to make a good business, but to make a difference in the reading habits in their town.
Local publishing is also being valued more and more, especially with giant media companies covering the globe for the major event.
Similarly, local publishing is gaining more value for the fact that huge world events are covered and scanned by big companies who cannot scan every detail in every town, and because of cultural and language barriers.
Spring Spotters is a network of “spotters” who contribute by sharing new, and interesting business ideas and models. They openly encourage locals, who have cultural and geographical reach to share any developments in their locations. They also give prizes for popular articles.
Another project, is Home Turf Media’s new blog network which is a hybrid of both. It is “glocal”. The reach is global and the network is interlinked. At the same time the content of each blog is highly local. This is quite different from most blog networks, in that they are based on location and not subject. So far they have a small network of five blogs, and still in the beginning.
Seems we have different options; you can have a global business, and you can have a purely local one… You can also choose to go glocal.