ngivoni’s blog

So it turns out that in the SMS game you're at the will of the carrier's.  You're sort of beholden to their whim, since you're playing on their turf.  The problem is they can get about as irrational as your aunt after asking her why she talks all the sweeten'low home every time you have lunch with her.

AT&T is asking a little out of whack these days' as they are being sue in court for charges on people's bills.  Turns out that other SMS companies claimed their services' were free, when in actuality AT&T was still charging them their standard rates to send and receive messages.  This pissed some people of which in turn cost AT&T money, which in turn made them pissed and now they're after blood. 

Where are they getting it?

All the services out there.  We've been audited 3 times, and the latest is because we have the word AT&T in the drop-down...geeze.  Live and learn and then live and learn and then just scratch your head and go WTF?

...where do you go, who do you know...www.zibadoo.com

So I had the pleasure to attend IBM's Web 2.0 Goes to Work conference on Tuesday.

It was a great way to bone up on my IBM knowledge, as I've really not paid much attention to it's going on's in the recent years.

As you can imagine it was all about Mash-ups, Blogs, RSS feeds and the whole world of sharing information.  It was also a great way to pick up some of the latest and greatest industry buzz-words:

"Value Points" = a reason something is worth doing
"Mash-up" = how random information is combine to create new and relevant applications
"Time to value"= the length of time it takes to make an application available to the end users
"Situational Applications" = Applications that are only used for a short time by a select group of people
"Enterprise 2.0"= These are business applications that use Web 2.0 to share data within an organization

Anyways, turns out that IBM has move it's model to open source, as many may have already known through it's release of Eclipse to the development community. And they're trying to extend it via the Web 2.0 application model.

Take a looksy at what they've got in the works:
http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/

N
...who do you know, where do you go...www.zibadoo.com

We're at it again. 

We'll be at the ACL festival, well sort of, we'll be on the way to the ACL festival.

We've got a both set up on the path to ACL, we'll be on Barton Spring, so come check us out.

...who do you know, where do you go...www.zibadoo.com

We've decided to expose our Z and get the word out. The past couple days we've gotten some great exposure for Zibadoo. 

We made it to the Flugtag; Zibadoo sponsored a craft, Get Ready to Drumble, chalked the entire Congress bridge with our message (the area where about 30,000 people would be walking to get to Auditorium Shores) and unveiled our Z-truck.  I was pretty bad-ass! (no pun intended!)  

We also started school off with a bang or should I say tag.  Our covert street team chalked up UT with the Z the night before classes started.  We've made it our goal to get out there and stir up a buzz.

So if you see the Z don't hesitate to stop and check us out!

...who do you know, where do you go...www.zibadoo.com

Some of you have never heard or experienced Red Bull's Flugtag.  That's okay, check the site.

It's actually a pretty asinine event, so I won't go into detail about describing it.  It does, however, set Red Bull apart from it's competitors in the energy drink market.

So Zibadoo made an appearance there.  We sponsored a craft, chalked up the sidewalks, debuted the z-truck and pushed through the sea of drunken fans to get our name out.

We learned a lot about guerrilla marketing tactics; Show up early so you can talk to people before the event, have relevant hand outs like fans, and don't expect people to be receptive!

N

...who do you know, where do you go...www.zibadoo.com

So apparently repetition and more repetition is a great way to get people to remember the name of your company.  No one really understands how to measure advertising, or if it really even works, but there is something to be said about hearing something over and over again and then recalling it.

We've got a message that we're trying to repeat out in the public.  Let's see if it works...

...who do you know, where do you go...www.zibadoo.com

Today we do some last minute planning for Red Bulls Flug Tag.  It's a big event and we hope to be out there in full force promoting our company and what we're about.

So we'll see you out there!

...who do you know, where do you go...www.zibadoo.com

So it was discovered that our small and budding company might be one of the more diverse outfits in Austin.  We've got 3 members on our staff of 10 born outside the US.  We've got a Hindu, Muslim, and 2 Jews.  It's pretty amazing!

I'm a firm believer of diversity.  It stirs the creative juices.

...who do you know where do go...www.zibadoo.com

So now we're at the tail end of the summer.  We've got 7 merchants on zibadoo and more coming.  It's been a lot of wrangling with the merchants, but we're at a good place. 

Now we're working on increasing membership usage.  We've got some big plans...Red Bull, chalking, Z-truck, myspace. Which will work?  We'll find out.

...who do you know where do go...www.zibadoo.com

So some of you have been doing search engine optimization for your sites forever.  Making sure that Google and the other search engines get your site to come up on the proper search terms results.

Me, well, I didn't know jack about seo till about a week ago.  Sitemap.xml files, robot.txt files, link backs, etc.  I knew it existed, I just never delved into it before.  Interesting stuff.  Bottom line, you need to get people to link and talk about your site often and regularly...so now I need to find some web blabber mouths ;)

...who do you know where do go...www.zibadoo.com