TechFold - Bold tech & web commentary

Grocery Stores, the Purchase-Stream, and Web 2.0

Online, we have a clickstream that charts our actions and attention. In a grocery store we have a purchase-stream - the exhaustive record of everything we’ve ever purchased, tracked by any major chain. Personally, I prefer shopping at Safeway - and I don’t doubt for a second that my “Safeway Club Card” is a GUID for me in Safeway’s customer purchases database, linking me to my buying history - and great savings (grin).

Unfortunately, “great savings” are where the party stops. Safeway does little to surface the value in that data to consumers (who knows what they’re doing with it for their own purposes). This is where the lessons and business models of Web 2.0 come into play. Consider these three ideas, all predicated on the existence of a Safeway.com website that I could log into with my club card:

1. Recipe Recommendations: Safeway knows what’s in my cupboard. AllRecipes knows what to do with it. Bring the two together and have a “Suggested Recipes based on your purchases” page. Recommend additional purchases to tweak sales too.
2. Social Networking: Grocery shopping has long been a nascent social activity. Stores in our funky bar district have an informal “singles” night for instance. Given the number of startups that want you to social network off of your clickstream (cluztr, me.dium), why not experiment with networking off your grocery shopping? Its no more or less bizarre.
3. Discovery: This is my favorite. Just like StumbleUpon analyzes clickstreams and correlates with groups to make suggestions, Safeway could be analyzing my purchases in comparison to others to suggest new things I should try.

Business Model

Membership and traffic drive the model - good olde fashioned “stickiness.” Assuming the Safeway.com socialnetworking/discovery/recipe portal got some traction, it would be a natural venue for advertisers - a whole big whopping supply of ad inventory to complement in-store and flyer campaigns - a natural upsell for Safeway. Its also a good way to distribute incentives (coupons), run contests, etc.

Ridiculous?

Is this sort of thinking ridiculous? Personally, I’d be pumped to have access to a fully automated recipe recommender like that described above. Why don’t more of these staid bricks-and-mortar institutions experiment? They seem to be at best stuck on in the mid-nineties data-mining revolution, using data to create internal value corporately; IMHO great customer-facing opportunities are passing them by.

clickstream, discovery, groceries, marketing, purchases, safeway social networking

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RedHedd.com - social networking for…. redheads.

RedHedd.com is a social network for redheads, which as their press release states, is modelled on MySpace. Well, yes, it looks like a red-themed MySpace clone, and seems to have all of the same features, as well as a niche vertical to appeal to and generate buzz around.

But: is it a business? IMHO - no. Its attempting to monetize what could as easily be a Facebook group by building it inside its own walled garden. No doubt it could garner a small, yet dedicated following, but I don’t see it as sustainable in the long run.

This isn’t a critique of RedHedd specifically, btw. That’s a critique of vertical social networking as a business model in general. The only organizations that are capable of cashing in on vertical networks are white labeller / aggregators like Ning that can pool miniscule revenue streams from thousands of properties; even that model is marginal IMHO.

At the end of the day, why join another network when your existing memberships (Facebook) provide the same group features and social networking functionality with a larger member pool to draw on, and without the added overhead of another membership?

facebook, ning, red, red hair, redheads, redhedd social networking

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NBC Buys RSS to E-mail Service R-Mail; Part One of a Social Strategy?

Roger Cadenhead draws our attention to the sale of rss-to-email service R-Mail, to - oddly enough - NBC. R-Mail.org is a wicked simple site with a “subscribe via email” widget for blogs, a very simple UI, a top feeds list (which shows an international user base), and so on.

According to Rogers…

The service has 50,000 users, 100,000 subscriptions and sends out more than 50,000 e-mails per day, according to DMW Daily, though I suspect a zero’s missing from the last figure.

Founded in 2006 2005, Rogers considers R-Mail to be one of the most missed stories of late, having been passed over for coverage in favour of Zookoda. With 50,000 users, a one-person team (Randy Charles Morin), and now a successful buyout (sum unknown), it does seem like one that’s flown under the radar.

That being said, there’s nothing on how much NBC paid, or what their plans are for the service. Morin’s blog notes the news, but adds nothing more to it. If they picked it up for a song (and hired Morin in the process, then it may have been less expensive than developing an email subscription service in house. The current NBC site includes neither RSS nor email subscriptions, and has the enigmatic byline “social-networking coming soon.”

email, nbc, rmail, rss social networking

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Rolling Stone Social Network: Born to gather moss

Om lets us know that Rolling Stone Magazine is creating a social network. So - a sixties brand with little relevance to the social-networking MySpace & FaceBook generation is attempting to gloss a layer of hipness over their decaying empire: I don’t see much good coming from this.

Rolling Stone has two options:

1. CURRENT PLAN = BAD IDEA: Increase brand penetration in their traditional target demographic: the 30+ aging hipsters crowd is where Rolling Stone finds its readership. By launching their own social network, they are taking on the challenge of converting this demographic - which has largely ignored the phenomenon - into social networkers. Whatever gains they expect to get in brand awareness, online presence, or physical circulation will be challenging to come by in a conceptually hostile market segment.
2. Increase brand penetration in new demographics: If Rolling Stone really wants to expand into the burgeoning, music-obsessed youth/college market, they should go where they go: FaceBook and MySpace. Create a co-branded special content area and/or group membership features around the Rolling Stone brand and content.

This whole thing looks like CEO “Gotta Have It” effect, sold up by hyperbolic consultants. Time for Rolling Stone to pause and re-think.

facebook, gigaom, myspace, rolling stone, rollingstone, social social networking

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