The wolf is on the prowl….

TripWolf has launched in the U.S. They are introducing a useful new social media tool for online travelers that has a number of cool features which make it a great tool. I’ll spend some more time on it but so far I like what I see. I’m especially curious to see how well it works on my iPhone when I’m traveling which is a key for these new sites if they want to get high adaptation rates.

The Hyperconnected: Here They Come! is the name of a new IDC study of global communications habits commissioned by Nortel. They interviewed 2400 working adults in 17 countries. This will have implications on how business is being conducted as this group expands at a rapid pace and travel will certainly be affected. Their demands on the user experience will be higher than those of the less connected. They will also very likely be more willing to post their comments and reviews, good or bad, to their social network and beyond.

The study can be downloaded from the article page. Better get ready!

Technorati Tags: IDC, Nortel, communications, hyperconnected

This is a great video by Nova Spivack of Radar Networks on this topic still often misunderstood. I agree with his definition of the terms web 1.0 / 2.0 / 3.0 being about time periods in the development of the web. We’re now just about at the end of the second decade (2.0) and will enter the next (3.0) around 2010.

There will be definite implications on travel and the customer experience of researching, planning and purchasing travel. Before there will be dramatic changes, however, the pendulum will have to swing back to the front end or user experience focus, which he predicts will be the case in web 4.0 or more than ten years out, as web 3.0 deals more with the back end or the data.

In the meantime there will be new initiatives that will introduce semantic web tools into travel as we have seen with Uptake and TripIt. The latter is actually shown in one of his slides.

One of his comments I liked a lot is that we should talk about “artificial stupidity” rather than “artificial intelligence” that is required to eliminate humans from having to deal with the mundane, or stupid tasks, and let us focus on the intelligent ones. Couldn’t agree more.

Nova Spivack at The Next Web Conference 2008 from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

as reported in TechCrunch Technorati Founder Dave Sifry Takes On Travel Guide Industry with Offbeat Guides launching in private beta tomorrow.

Here’s who could easily offer this – or maybe are potential partners – the many destination marketing organizations and CVBs. They all sit on a ton of relevant data that is available for free on their websites but could be accessed and aggregated by Offbeat.

Another group of providers are the major online travel agencies, if they weren’t so focused on their old commission based business model and started to really innovate with a focus on customer added value, which this clearly is. Potential partners in addition to TripIt are Uptake and VibeAgent.

I like the basic idea. It’s questionable how large a market exists at the price point this is offered. Remains to be seen. As I’ve stated many times in this space before, there should be more integration among various web 2.0 based services for the online travelers and not just more and more individual efforts offering bits and pieces which don’t really improve the shopping experience of travel services.

OK, here’s a straight copy-paste post, but this is so spot on I think it’s fine and Seth agrees. The one’s emphasized in bold are my favorites:

by Seth Godin

Three years ago, I published this list, which was very much a riff, not a carefully planned manifesto. It has held up pretty well. Feel free to reprint or otherwise use, as long as you include a credit line. I’ve added a few at the bottom…

What Every Good Marketer Knows:

* Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
* Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
* Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
* Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
* Marketing begins before the product is created.
* Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
* Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
* Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
* Products that are remarkable get talked about.
* Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
* You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
* If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
* People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
* You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
* What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
* Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
* Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
* People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
* Good marketers tell a story.
* People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
* Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
* Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
* Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
* A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
* Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
* Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
* Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
* Good marketers measure.
* Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
* One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.

* In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
* Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
* There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
* Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
* You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
* You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
* Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.

I have only one thing to add: Follow this!
Technorati Tags: marketing, godin

Looks like an attempt to capitalize on the expanding social media scene that might have led to a decline in traffic to their Concierge.com main site. The two blogs will also give them more media inventory to sell as the article mentions. It’s another move of main stream media in the direction of the social web where the conversation is taking place.

Technorati Tags: social media, condenet, concierge.com

is my alternative title for this latest effort by major companies to get their message noticed in a marketplace that is increasingly tone deaf to their traditional one-way marketing speak. To counter that trend PR Giant Edelman Ventures Into Branded Content as reported in Advertising Age – Madison+Vine. It remains to be seen how effective this type of “enhanced” user-generated content will be and how many aspiring producers will participate to sell more burgers to their peers.

Interesting to note, is the participation of Expedia in this initiative. My question here is: Why not enter into a direct dialog with their thousands of customers and TripAdvisor users to provide them with content that they are most likely already posting on the web instead of going the “managed” route by working with their PR company? Looks to me like some kind of an American Idol inspired contest to sponsor consumer produced content rather than having it delivered by ad agencies. Will people buy it? Remains to be seen.

Technorati Tags: marketing, PR, UGC, edelman

I doubt it, after analyzing the results of the study Consumers Use Social Media to Vent about Customer Service reported in MarketingVOX. Key comment:

“These most savvy and sought-after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”

What’s also important is the following:

Search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research. Those rated of no value include micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce (39%), YouTube (27%) and social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (22%).

Reputations are made at any customer touch-point with your brand but are amplified exponentially online with the tools available to consumers today and the behavior they clearly exhibit. Ignore them at your own peril!
Technorati Tags: eMarketer, marketing, social media, social networks