Agora Media Group Innovation Blog » Agora Announcements

Sunnywatches.com and Agora Media Team up

Richard Kastelein — Thu, 20 May 2010 15:47:29 +0000

SunnyWatches.com – part of Moho Internet Concepts BV – a private company that has a number of eCommerce properties in the luxury goods market – has hired Agora Media to consult on their social media and open source software strategy for a number of sites across the board. Sunnywatches.com specialized in the sale of Luxury Watches, Sunglasses and Jewellery online.

“We are really pleased to have Agora Media onboard, said Harry Drok, the Managing Director of Moho Internet Concepts, based in Groningen, The Netherlands. “They bring a vast knowledge social media marketing and are really on top of what’s happening both in the social media landscape online and on the emerging market around Social TV, TV apps and TV widgets – due to their work at Appmarket.tv.

Richard Kastelein, the CEO of Agora Media added, “It’s great to work with the team at Sunnywatches and Moho Internet Concepts – and we think they are poised to be a leading independent eCommerce player in the European online industry – mainly due to their excellent network with manufacturers and distributors in the luxury goods market”.

Agora Media will work closely with both companies in both building and executing an effective social media strategy to ensure tapping of the market.

AppMarket.tv & Agora Media Group – Blog update

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:33:07 +0000

As you might have noticed, the recent activity on the Agora Media Group blog is lower than usual and what you can expect from us.

Last week we launched AppMarket.tv, the TV Apps & Widgets Marketplace – The Future of Social Television and Connected TV, the first online portal with a focus on this new and emerging industry.

As a result, we’ve been focussing more on creating content for the AppMarket.tv website than for the Agora Media Group blog.

AppMarket.tv will be the place for information on Social TV, Connected TV and related topics.
The Agora Media Blog will have a more general character, discussing topics on Marketing Management, technologies, Mobile, Innovation and so on.

An impression of AppMarket.tv of what has been written so far:
* Google TV – The Future for TV App and Widget Developers?
* The £500 TV remote control… Will new generation of remote controls be the catalyst for connectedTV and socialTV
* Dynamics of Interaction and Social TV Experience Architecture
* Google TV – To be Announced this Week at Google’s I/O conference
* Google TV – Does Sony patent give us a view on how viewers could interact with their tv’s?

Visit AppMarket.tv for information such as an Industry Directory, Video, Docs, Events and more.
Do register and be part of the freshly growing network.

Please note that AppMarket.tv is in Beta and much will be tweaked and added in the upcoming weeks.

Agora Media’s AppMarket.tv – first online portal around TV applications and widgets

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:22:04 +0000

We are currently working on building AppMarket.tv, the first online portal, community, directory for the emerging industry around TV applications and widgets – an inevitability as TV and the Web come together full force in a convergence that will easily open new doors for the web and mobile development communities due to ported platforms such as HTML 5, Apple, Android, Flash and other technologies that will make up the future landscape on TV.

Please add your company in our directory if you are in the business. It’s free… Or even if you have relevant experience and ‘want’ to offer your portfolio of skills to the industry. If you want to write with us, contact us via the site. Share the knowledge. Brand yourself or your company.

AppMarket.tv Manifesto

We composed a Manifesto (click to read complete Manifesto), explaining our vision on the evolution of the industry.

Manifesto
Appmarket.tv is the Internet’s first portal dedicated to application and middleware development communities in the Social TV and Connected TV landscape.

We support open API’s, SDK’s, WDK’s and our own roots lie in Open Source communities. It’s our opinion that completely closed, proprietary development in this emerging space will fail and models that are built on more systems similar to the Iphone App and Facebook Application worlds will do well. Truly open source software like Google’s Android will likely be the winners.

Revenue sharing between corporate entities and small businesses around and a prevalence of freemium models will appear and flourish. And a new word will enter tech lexicon. tCommerce.

Future advertising models on TV will be dependent on interaction and creative ways to bring brands to viewers as future audiences will no longer accept ‘broken’ TV… or TV with a slew of interruptions. Video On Demand (VOD) and TV in the Cloud, ubiquitous and everywhere, will change that. I expect my daughters, in the future, to think it was novel how they used to have to watch certain programs at certain times when they were young.

The TV industry, like many other’s affected by disruptive and game changing technologies, is a mess. There are so many players and so many technologies right now which is both good and bad. Darwinists say the best will survive, but in the meantime… directional decisions we make now can really affect our futures. There are a lot of choices for developers, investors and consumers. And we want to help sort it out by providing a solid directory, consolidating events worldwide to help us all plan better, and even meet!

Collective Intelligence
We can’t build AppMarket.tv up without the collective intelligence on this industry which is out there, fragmented amongst many industry leaders, technologists, evangelists etc.

We like to write about the industry – and we welcome others who want to reach players in this targeted niche by contributing to Appmarket.tv with ideas, reviews and new analysis.

We can’t pay, but we can plug you.

This is, essentially, a labour of love. We love new, creative technology and innovation that empowers people and creates a better, more fruitful, active-rather-than-passive TV experience.

We invite you as well to submit your company in the AppMarket.tv Directory.

The Directory is divided in Connected TV, iPad/Mobile, Social TV, tCommerce Specialists, TV Widget & App Developers sections, select the best category which fits your company and add your listing.

Being Open Source advocates at heart, learning and sharing together will only improve the new industry and make it easier for all of us aiming to participate in it!

How Corporate Blogging got us from Google PageRank 0 to PageRank 6 in 8 months

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Sun, 02 May 2010 18:33:56 +0000

by Gianluigi Cuccureddu and Richard Kastelein.

That’s right. Unbelievable. Even to us. And it only cost us sweat. Making sure the copy was interesting and well written. Making sure we took a little extra time to tweet and retweet. Making sure we pushed it to Reddit and Digg. Making sure we used Facebook and Linkedin as well to disseminate our ideas to our friends and business partners.

Scroll down to the very bottom of this page and see the dynamic PR ranking.

A check three weeks ago, delivered us a marvelous sign that we are doing well with the Agora Media Group blog. After the Agora Media’s own Social Media case -> 16000% growth we pushed further in order to expand our visibility and expertise.

Corporate Blogging and an attached Social Media strategy to get our opinions and analyses out is practically the only Marketing we did to get the word out of the Agora Media Group.
Surely PageRank is not the most important metric, but what it does tell is that we’re linked back from important sites.

We achieved this by applying the Social Media Framework which we wrote about. In essence it’s about the Content, Context and Social Media Intelligence which enhances both Content and Context.

Content * Context * Social Media Intelligence = Powerful Social Media

The Cross Media Social Platform – functional highlights

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:31:39 +0000

In the previous post on our CMSP technology, I explained shortly what the system is, what it can do and why it’s time for this kind of technology which creates new cross media digital experiences.
The CMSP will bring people Entertainment 2.0 !

This post will be about the functionalities which were available in the previous platform based upon the CMSP technology.

From then, technology has evolved, one of our partners is able to transform calls into tweets or text which then will be inserted next to the avatar.
As you can see, the marketing opportunities from an advertiser/exploiter point of view are vast, think of “in-game” advertising, product placements, memberships and so on.

We are looking for early stage investors/angel to revive and redevelop this platform to the needs of current markets.
If you’re interested, have tips or potential leads, do let us know, we can provide an executive summary and business plan upon request.

Below you’ll find a screenshot with the highlights of the technology as it was deployed for that particular network. Click for full screenshot.

Gaming for a better future – EnerCities… a city builder which aims to educate players about energy issues.

Richard Kastelein — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:18:27 +0000

Today, February 3rd, game developer Paladin Studios has launched EnerCities. It is an online game in which players are challenged to build a sustainable city. It will run online (www.enercities.eu) and on Facebook, and is available in six European languages. The game is part of an educational platform dealing with energy issues, backed by European Commission funding of €1 million.

Casual City Building

The game starts with a small village and a bit of land to build on. There is a simple drag-and-drop interface, with which players can build structures and expand their city. They then need to balance People, Planet and Profit – all while supplying the growing city with sufficient electricity and minimizing fossil fuel use. When done well, players can level up their city, providing them with more room to build and extra building options. Dylan Nagel, product manager for EnerCities: “Each decision influences the score: for example, if you build a nuclear plant, you minimize impact on your environment. The downside is that if you put it close to residential areas, your citizens will get unhappy.” A similar example is with forests. “When clustered together, the environmental bonus of forests multiplies. However, when a forest is positioned next to a residential area, your citizens will be happier and healthier. This leads to interesting dilemmas.”

Let’s get serious

The project is funded by the Intelligent Energy program of the European Commission, and aims to improve the awareness of energy issues among young people. It will be rolled out by the project partners on schools in the UK, Netherlands, Slovenia, Greece, Germany and Spain. There is an educational platform which allows teachers to sign up for the program and link their students’ accounts to their school. Nagel: “Players will be able to leverage green technologies and concepts in order to make their city future-proof. Players can improve their structures with innovations like solar roof panels and thermal storage. They need to power their city, and can pick a range of power sources. Would you choose a Coal Plant or Windmill? Each have their own pros and cons. This allows players to execute a strategy, and see the results of their actions on the long term. I think it makes for a great toolkit for teachers who want to embed the energy topic in their curriculum.”

The initiator of the project, Dutch organization Qeam, will investigate the results of the project. Erik Knol, director of Qeam: “By validating the project outcomes, we hope to answer the question whether serious gaming is a valid tool for raising awareness. The reports will be shared with the educational community, to provide more insight into the effective use of innovative platforms like gaming.” The research will be conducted in the course of 2010 and 2011.

Facebook

With over 350 million users, Facebook has proven to be a viable platform for games like Farmville. The farming game can boast 75 million monthly players. Derk de Geus, CEO of Paladin: “The potential of social networks is enormous, although we would already be successful with much lower numbers. Remember that EnerCities was not designed to be a truly social game, but an educational tool running on a social platform.”

The new release includes a Post To Wall feature, which allows players to brag to their friends if they reach a new high score. De Geus: “We decided to put the game on Facebook at the end of 2009, right after the initial pilot tests. Many of the Facebook users are in our target group, so it is an excellent distribution platform. The use of social gaming for education is relatively new, but already proves to be very powerful. The beta players either loved it or hated it. That’s a lot more emotion than you would get from an average educational tool, so I guess we are on the right track.”

During the two-month beta, the game was played 10.000 times on Facebook by over 3.000 people. At the regular website, the game was played only 4.000 times. De Geus: “This trend will likely continue during the rollout phase, even when schools get involved. The social aspects of Facebook get players involved. Students finally have a good excuse to be on Facebook during school.”

Out of Beta

The game will be out of beta on February 3rd. The official launch will be at Learntec in Karlsruhe, a German conference about technology and education. The game will then open up to players worldwide, both for educational institutions and just for fun. Nagel explains: “The first thing we said when we started the project, is that the game should be fun to play. The city building theme was great for a game which resembles a puzzle more than a simulation.”

Paladin’s social gaming adventure apparently worked out well for the company. De Geus: “We dipped our toes in social water with EnerCities, and liked it a lot. It sparked a lot of ideas, and we have another social game in preproduction. So stay tuned.”

The game can be played for free at www.enercities.eu. Educational institutions are welcome to register at the website.

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Additional information

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About Paladin Studios

Founded in 2005, Paladin Studios is a Dutch game development company based in The Hague. They have released several serious games and are currently creating games for social networks. With a portfolio ranging from hardcore offshore simulators to interactive visualizations and online games, they provide a wide range of 3D game development services. Their clients include Philips Design, EMI Music, and the European Commission. The 7-headed team consists of a talented bunch of programmers, designers and artists. Paladin’s motto is “Life is Play”, and their official mission is to make people smile.

The EnerCities consortium

Initiator: Qeam (Netherlands): http://www.qeam.com/

Coordinator: ROC Nijmegen (Netherlands): http://www.roc-nijmegen.nl/

Game developer: Paladin Studios (Netherlands): http://www.paladinstudios.com/

Lancaster & Morecambe College (United Kingdom): http://www.lmc.ac.uk/

Akademie Klausenhof (Germany): http://www.akademie-klausenhof.org/

Unified Vocational Training Centre of Cyclades (Greece): http://www.ncyclades.gr/

Ljudska Univerza Velenje (Slovenia): http://www.lu-velenje.si/

Agencia de la Energía de Granada (Spain): http://www.apegr.org/

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Links

EnerCities Website – http://www.enercities.eu
EnerCities on Facebook – http://apps.facebook.com/enercities
EnerCities Press Kit (contains high res screenshots and additional material) – http://www.paladinstudios.com/resources/enercities_presskit.zip

Paladin Studios – http://www.paladinstudios.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/paladinstudios, http://www.twitter.com/enercities

Dylan Nagel – http://www.twitter.com/dylannagel
Derk de Geus – http://www.twitter.com/derkdegeus

For more information about the game, please contact Paladin Studios at @paladinstudios.com" target="_blank">info @paladinstudios.com or via +31 71 513 2222.

To sign up for a teacher account, please contact project coordinator ROC Nijmegen or register via http://www.enercities.eu/project/

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Derk de Geus (www.twitter.com/derkdegeus)

Derk co-founded Paladin Studios, and has since been involved in both the business and creative sides of the company. As CEO he makes sure that the core values and commercial health of Paladin are preserved and developed.

Derk blends creativity with strategic thinking and entrepreneurship. The most important principle for him is “Good Business”, a concept revolving around respecting another’s rights, striving for mutual success and providing a healthy workplace as an employer. This dimension of entrepreneurship provides him with a purpose beyond making money, something he believes is essential for sustainable success.

Dylan Nagel (www.twitter.com/dylannagel)

Dylan has been playing and creating computer games from a young age. He is convinced of their potential and relevance to modern society. In his opinion, games enhance people’s lives, and can be used to enrich design, communication and training strategies.

One of Paladin’s founders, Dylan is Vice President of Business Development. His responsibilities include consultancy and account, sales and product management. He is the conduit between clients and the production team, ensuring optimal understanding.

Short-list Nominee for the LinkedIn European Business Awards 2010

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:20:31 +0000

Last Friday (January the 29th) I received the great news that I am selected for the next round of the Rising Star of the Year Award.
From the first of February till March the 15th the entries will be voted on by LinkedIn members, the three with the most votes -in each category- will go through to the final stage which will be decided by the judges.

Read my nomination here and do vote for me and the Agora Media brand.

A big thank you to Richard K. for the nomination, fantastic words and appreciation!
Thanks to all who supported me in acknowledging the nomination.
Please do so again

A prosperous 2010 to all

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:02:39 +0000

We wish you all a prosperous 2010, both private and business, in good health and success.

For Agora Media, 2009 was the year of the startling beginning of a new (ad)venture, carving out our proposition, strategies and more.
Many efforts are made to create and maintain the level of visibility of Agora Media through our blog, networking and adding value to several business social networks.
A strong network of partners is being build, which will be an important part of our way to thrive.

2010 will be dominated by refining our set path, concretizing strategies and getting ready to excel in what we’re good at!
2010 will also be a year of technology advancements in Augmented Reality and Social TV, further diffusion of these technologies within business opportunities and models, it are exciting -new- markets and we’re looking forward to be part of these.
Innovation, in the broadest meaning of the word, will be important, competition is increasing and boundaries blur.
2010 will be the year of media convergence, both in understanding and propositions.

On behalf of Agora Media I wish you a happy New Year!
Gianluigi Cuccureddu

Agora Media’s own Social Media case -> 16000% growth

Gianluigi Cuccureddu SMP — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:01:29 +0000

Social Media works, we’ve been deploying the Social Strategy for our own blog and content to prove and demonstrate its potential and effect on the company.

We have initiated the Agora Media Group blog at the end of August, two and a half months later, we have achieved a staggering growth in brand visibility and reach by the content we’ve written and our social media efforts to expose our content on relevant networks, social bookmarking sites, many articles have been picked up by other sites which further increases our brand portability.

I can assure you, we have not spend a single dime on paid advertising to get our word/thought-leadership out, we have invested heavily in our social media (architecture), even experiments with Google Wave are having effect on our brand and the way it’s perceived.

This has resulted in the following two figures which have been achieved in the short period we are live:

Traffic impact

SEO impact

Social Media will change the way companies will conduct business, will reach out, will engage with their target groups, do invest and explore the opportunities which lie ahead.
The abovementioned figures do point out to only one of the many aspects which Social Media has effect on and other examples will follow in the future to show the power of it.