Woman creates myhusbandneedsajob.com

(Image: myhusbandneedsajob.com)

During these bad economic times, a lot of people have been doing everything they can to find a job. Sometimes it takes the power of two to do so. After Michael Stearns got his MBA from Georgetown and came to California, he had been struggling to find a job for 8 months. His wife then decides to take matters into her own hands and created myhusbandneedsajob.com. Myhusbandneedsajob.com is simply a promotional site that sells one product: her husband.

Myhusbandneedsajob.com as creative buzz

Notice that when the wife decided to help her husband, she did not create a site that just talks about Mike. She purposely added herself into the picture by calling it myhusbandneedsajob.com instead of just hiremike.com or something related. The first page of it is just her holding a big sign that says “Hire My Husband”.

This is actually really smart because there are millions of people trying to find a job for themselves, and it does not stand out. However, not that many sites are created to promote someone else, especially a spouse. myhusbandneedsajob.com is a catchy idea because women will look at it and respect how she is being so supportive of her spouse, while men out there will all tell their wives about it.

In essence, myhusbandneedsajob.com perfectly fits in the 6 concepts of Made to Stick(an awesome book that’s worth a read): Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotional, and Stories. As you can see, myhusbandneedsajob.com is a simple and emotional story that qualifies for a viral campaign.

Slight problems with myhusbandneedsajob.com

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A new OFFLINE social media marketing idea

While I was driving today I saw a van with Progressive Auto Insurance painted on it. It was probably a company owned van, but I was also reminded of the Geek Squad Beetles that I see every once in awhile and some other company painted cars.

This got me thinking.

I noticed that paintings or signs on cars often get noticed. People even look at other people’s car license plates.

Basically, these cars get a lot of eyeballs.

The social media way of marketing offline

Applying my background in Social Media Marketing, I came up with a new marketing idea that is low cost but highly effective.

This is how it works:

A company creates a program, where they would advertise on the cars of people who commute long distances everyday.

They can pay a couple hundred dollars to these people every month to do the exact same things they would be doing anyway.

Heck, instead of paying money, this company could just offer to pay all their gas bills.
Continue reading A new OFFLINE social media marketing idea

A Revenue Model for Twitter

So in the past couple months, I have realized that I am fully capable of being completely addicted to Twitter. I have a tendency of thinking and doing too many things at once (like writing different things with both hands at the same time, and Hulahooping while doing DDR), and Twitter sort of appeals to my ADD tendencies, no sense of privacy, and the need to connect with the world. Twitter is pretty awesome.

Interestingly, Twitter only needs to build its core competency, while there are over 250 OTHER websites out there that help Twitter build more advanced features. There are sites that organize your friends, see your influence on twitter, use twitter on your desktop or phone, take pictures to twitter, see who you should follow, see what clients your friends use for twitter etc etc. Most sites need to cramp out their design while adding features that may or may not work. Twitter just keeps its constraints (the three principles of twitter: simplicity, constraint, and craftsmanship), and have the rest of the sites build its advanced features. I don’t think ANY other site out there has something like this.

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The Crunchies 2008: Not that Great. (although the Myspace Afterparty was pretty cool)

Last Friday I went to the Crunchies 2008 event, and had a pretty awesome time.

For those of you who don’t know, the Crunchies Awards is somewhat like the Oscar for the Tech/Startup World, and is hosted by the dominant technology and startup blog Tech Crunch. Before the awards, people have selected from an ocean a startups and nominated one for each kind of award like Best CEO, Best Boostrapped, Best Innovation, Best App etc etc. Each award has 6 nominees, and in the actual award, they point out the winner and the runner up.

Some cool people who showed up were Mark Zuckerberg, Founder/CEO of Facebook. Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, Google product chief Marissa Mayer, Twitter founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Jack Dorsey, imeem founder Dalton Caldwell, FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, Seesmic CEO Loic Le Meur, and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis. In other words, this event is pretty important.

Continue reading The Crunchies 2008: Not that Great. (although the Myspace Afterparty was pretty cool)

A Rating for Popular Twitter Apps III: Tweeter Statistics

(A bird’s profile: Watch and be bored at your own risk.)

This is the 3rd part of my research and analysis of Twitter Apps. Its somewhat brief, but since there are so many I do not want to type out an elaborated report for each of them. If you want to know more, you gotta ask me 🙂 (Note: this is strictly my own opinion based on my experience and analysis.)

The Apps covered in this post is to Analyze yourself and other tweeters. It will help you understand the behavior better. Hope this helps!

Twinfluence (Measure your Twitter influence through tweets, reach of followers as well as second-order followers): This tool is really good. It is a sophisticated way of measuring how influential you are on Twitter. 9/10

Twitter-Friends (analyzes a whole set of data, especially focusong on how “sticky” you are, as well as inactive friends or those who are online now): This App seems to have a lot of great features and interesting stats. It brings up a lot of interesting information and quotients about a user. It mostly focuses on how “social” a user is, instead of how many followers he has. Slightly overboard but quite awesome. 8/10

Twitter Ratio (Find out your friend to follower ratio): I don’t find this one that great. Its just simple math: followers/followings. Yea, maybe you won’t know the EXACT number in 2 seconds, but who needs to know? It adds a little humor to the site though. 3/10

Twitter Grader (find out your twitter grade. Computed based on how complete your profile is as well as the number and influence of your followers.): I don’t necessarily find the Grader that great. It does factor in some interesting things like how complete is your profile, tweeting behavior and follower influence, but overall it is somewhat dull because it doesn’t show you anything besides a number. Nice interface though. 6/10

Tweet Stats (Graph your tweet activity): This is probably the best tool to measure how you waste your time on Twitter. It not only tells you how often you tweet, it tells you when you usually tweet, on what device. 8/10

Tweeple Twak (Track your friend gains and declines plus a whole set of functions): OK, this site is still in private alpha, but we’ll see if they have the next great app. ?/10

Twit Graph (Graph your tweeting activity): This is OK. Has potential, but can’t compare to Tweet Stats. The information is not particularly useful either. 5/10 TwiTemperature(Measures how “hot” are you by comparing you to what others are tweeting about): I find this somewhat meaningless. If you are saying what everyone else is saying, you are hot. If you can come up with original things to say, you are freezing. The humor and image makes a good laugh though. 4/10

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Thanks for the support. Take care all!

A Rating for Popular Twitter Apps II: Discovering Worthy Topics and Tweets

(Stay Informed: Keep up with Tweets.)

This is the 2nd part of my research and analysis of Twitter Apps. Its somewhat brief, but since there are so many I do not want to type out an elaborated report for each of them. If you want to know more, you gotta ask me 🙂 (Note: this is strictly my own opinion based on my experience and analysis.)

The Apps covered in this post is to find interesting and note worthy Tweets on Twitter. It will help you understand the world better. Hope this helps!

Topics by Search:

Twitter Search (Search for the latest trends on Twitter): Most basic. Difficult access, but fast and MOST up to date. Also updates real time. 8/10

Flaptor Search (A search tool that can be installed on your browser): OK. Less up-to-date. Fast. Nice going with browser. Unnecessary if you have TweetDeck. 7/10

Tweet Scan (Search keywords and people on Twitter): Very Slow. Doesn’t find relevant info. Not very up to date. Pretty bad. 3/10

Twitterment (Search Twitter users and topics): Fast but just does a Google search relating to Twitter. Pretty useless. 2/10

TweetDeck Search (Desktop App that also has Search Functions): TweetDeck is one of the most amazing Twitter Apps because it makes almost all your Twitter activities easier and faster. After the DL, its search is easy to access and updates real time. Highly Recommended. 9/10

Topics by Type

Tweetmeme (find out the latest Stories on Twitter by type of file): Well designed, very inviting, good topics, you can choose what type of files you like (image, video, audio etc etc). One problem is lack of info on how its compiled. 7/10

Topics by Hype

Twitturly (Find out the most talked about stories on Twitter based on Links): Good info. Nicely done. Does not show the content very well. 8/10

Twitscoop (A search tool that tracks trends as well as certain events): Well made. Tag Cloud finally put in good use. Easy to browse, easy to access and very up to date. Chosen by Tweetdeck. 9/10

Favotter (Find out the most favored tweets): This idea is very good . Fewer tweets get favorited than RTed, so it must be quality stuff. Not much news but some witty lines. Helps you be a better Tweeter. 8/10

Topics by Special Interest

Twistori (Find out what tweeter’s loves, hates, believes, etc.): This is awesome. It lets you understand the world better and connect with people better. However, it does not link to the actual tweeters. A big disappointment. 8/10

GoodBadMe (Keep track of the good and bad on the twitterverse): Interesting idea, but not very well executed. Hard to read tweets, and not very engaging. One of those sites that are fun to know about but wouldn’t really use often. 4/10

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Thanks for the support. Take care all!

A Rating for Popular Twitter Apps I: Searching for Tweeters To Follow

(Stalking tools make life easy)

So since I’m being paid as a Twitter Consultant right now, I’m doing some research regarding all the Popular Twitter Apps out there. I thought since I’m doing the work anyway, I might as well share some knowledge to my readers. Its somewhat brief, but since there are so many I do not want to type out an elaborated report for each of them. If you want to know more, you gotta ask me 🙂 (Note: this is strictly my own opinion based on my experience and analysis.)

This is the first post about the Twitter Apps I checkout regarding how to find Tweeples to follow. Hope this helps!

Twits like Me (Find out people like you): Not particularly good. Couldn’t find relevant people to me. 3/10

Twellow (A Twitter directory sorted by occupation): Excellent. Fast, gets the people you want ranked by followers, and shows all relevant data. 9/10

Just Tweet It (A twitter directory sorted by interest): Decent. A bit unfriendly. 7/10

Twubble (Automatically finds people who are compatible with your interests): Quite good. Fast and easy. Shows you who do people you respect follow. Doesn’t tell you details of person though. 7/10

Mr Tweet (Finds worthy followers that you are not following, and influences beyond your network): Excellent. Like Twubble but better and shows more info, including Tweet Frequency, Ratio, and Behavior(!). 9/10

Twittie Me (Creates a twitter ad for you on front page and allows you to find others): Not that good. Hassle to use. 3/10

Twitdir (Search for words in usernames, locations or descriptions): Quite complete. VERY slow. Average. 6/10

Twitter Grader Search (Search for top Tweeters with certain keywords): Excellent too. Fast and shows you the top Tweeters regarding each topic. Limited to top people. 8/10

TwitStat (looks at your tweeting behavior): Interesting App, as it can find the “most social” “happiest” “most tired” “most responded” people in the last 14 days. The interface is not very well built, and you can’t really get much of the info of the people. Interesting but not that great. 6/10

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Thanks for the support. Take care all!