We are looking to take Social Gaming to TV via Social TV platform – think Mafia Wars, Farm Town, and even Second Life on TV.
We have developed and successfully broadcast Social TV in Europe bypassing the remote using telephony 2.0 (mobile and landline), advanced IVR and business logic servers, realtime 3D along with web integration.

We need partners. We need financial backing to redevelop the project.

… where viewers can create a virtual character, pilot it in the TV environment, meet, compete, play and even talk to other viewers/competitors via phone.

What is the Cross Media Social Platform (CMSP)?

The TV market is ‘on the move’ – competition is growing and digital channels via ISP’s and IPTV providers are now crashing through what was once the walled fortress of broadcast television. Interactive content and social media are the buzz and broadcasters are looking for both innovation and revenue generation models that fall outside of the traditional advertising box of the past. And the need for all types of content is growing exponentially, of which one is created by users themselves.

The Cross Media Social Platform is a unique product that not only offers a business model that encompasses current and widely spread advertising revenue – it also has added value by offering broadcasters the opportunity to earn money via telephony (Premium Rate Numbers and Premium SMS) via freemium modelling, as well as web and phone subscription models – where users can augment their profiles and characters on the web for TV and the web.

We created an interactive, virtual world on both television and the Internet that envelops social networking, community, user generated content, competition, and entertainment. And we are interested in developing this further with principles who were involved in the previous project. And it works on both standard broadcast or terrestrial TV as well as IPTV, Satellite, Cable etc.

See video of work we did in the past at Youtube

Visuals of the Cross Media Social Platform (CMSP)

Below you will find a basic CMSP architecture demo and a couple of screenshots.

It evens goes further, technology developments are evolving, partners have released an API enabling developers to create unified communications (telephone, cellular text message, instant message (Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, MSN) applications using traditional document-based web development flow. This sort of technology can be implemented in the Cross Media Social Platform, adapting to the needs and ways of nowadays communication.

Why Agora Media?

We have the experience and know-how, without having to invent the wheel and exploit this competitive advantage, we can respond very fast and accurate to the concretizing needs of the Social TV/Social Media/converging Media community and industry! We have a vast network of 2.0, cross media and technology pioneers, working closely with them to stay on top of trends and developments which will enhance the Cross Media Social Platform.

Why now?

The interest in Social TV is rising, the television landscape is changing, permanently. Media consumption is converging and increasingly socializing. More and more experiments, products and services are initiated and developed to meet these changes. Being on top of these trends and offering new digital cross media experiences to your target audiences and putting you permanently on the map!

Feel free to contact us if interested or wish to receive more information.

(Originally published at Atlantic Free Press)

by Richard G. Kastelein

If we all thought the Facebook and Twitter social media growth phenomena were extraordinary, wait until Social TV hits your screens.

And it’s not as far away as you think — not only with the logical IPTV market, but also terrestrial TV. I recently attended the International Broadcast Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam, which bills itself as ’The content creation management delivery experience’. IBC2008 attracted 49,000+ visitors and 1,300+ exhibitors from more than 130 countries. This year is expected to be bigger. Last year, I was part of a team exhibiting at MIPTV in Cannes, and was expecting something a bit similar… but this was almost all about hardware and software and less about the actual formats and programs. However, this was not a disappointment. For embedded in the show there were some jewels… which have profoundly altered my view of Social Media, the future and the implication of reach that will touch billions not millions.
(more…)

Information asymmetry is as an unequality in information, knowledge, expertise, network -etc-, which creates an imbalance where a company can make better decisions than another company.

Asymmetric information imbalances have always been competitive advantages -in any way expressed- for companies’ existences.
The Web’s transparency is changing this for good and worse.

The increasing tranparency of the Web certainly has challenges for companies to keep its advantages over others. Publicly available information which is accessible to anyone is the prime challenge.
The information widely available applicates to competitive intelligence, information on products and services, information on brands, information with regard to target groups, which all can be used to enhance -both- the internal and external processes of businesses.
Web 2.0 forces companies to be open, to be transparent towards the market and the players/customers. If this isn’t done, the consequences might be even worse, due to the co-involvement consumers demand in transactions.

Though, paradoxically, if processes are enhanced and adapted to the opportunities that Web 2.0 offers, bigger asymmetric information imbalance  and competitive advantages can be created!
Think of all the information available on social networks, bookmarking sites, Wikipedia’s, blogs, microblogs which can be used to create or enhance business and further increase the asymmetry. Networks of people or companies always have existed which added value to the competitive advantage of business, but the easier access to all this information is being facilitated by the Web, forcing companies to extract intelligence from it easier, faster and with more accuracy.

Because information is out in the open, companies need to be able to learn and adapt faster than their competitors. This is the skill that can be mastered. Learning curves will follow each other quicker, advantages don’t remain as long anymore and information overload is all around us.
Overcome the challenges of the Web’s transparency but at the same way, alter the company to new levels with help of its transparency.

How do you think the Web can contribute to information asymmetry?

Brightkite is deploying this kind of advertising in the US where Insqribe deploys it in Australia, read a previous post on the added value of Augmented Reality to Proximity Marketing.

It’s not only possible to see what friends around you are doing, but with the new app, advertising through Augmented Reality is displayed on your mobile screen.
The collaborative kind of Augmented Reality which is offered by Brightkite enhances the advertisements, because of the recommendations/comments by friends add a new real-time dimension to it.

This kind of advertising can be relevant and targeted, the challenge will be to enable the users to create simple filters of what kind of advertisements will be shown and which ones won’t.
These developments are next steps increasing the importance and opportunities of Location Based Services and Proximity Marketing.

You can download the Layar App from the app store here.

How do you think the amount of advertising can be regulated by the user in a easy way?
By checking boxes which specify certain verticals, or by filters, or by collaborative filtering?

Press release (part of it) on the Mobilizy website:

Lonely Planet, the world’s favorite travel company, has teamed up with mobile augmented reality pioneer Mobilizy to bring a world-class mobile AR experience to their renowned travel guides. Whether you are a seasoned traveller or fledgling explorer, Lonely Planet Compass guides provide expert recommendation and useful information to help you navigate city locations.

Lonely Planet Compass guides offer a unique augmented reality experience to extend your travel adventure with useful information about your surroundings, nearby landmarks, and other points of interest by overlaying information on the real-time camera view of your Android phone.

Looking for the ultimate guidebook? One you can slip in your pocket? Lonely Planet’s Compass Guides for Android give you interactive, personalized and fully searchable mobile access to Lonely Planet’s best-selling travel content .

Currently there are 10 Lonely Planet Compass Guides enhanced with Wikitude AR available for the Android market in the US: Boston, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Seattle and Washington D.C. More titles are coming soon.

Features of the Lonely Planet guides enhanced with augmented reality include:

• Enabled with GPS so you can see your current location and plot itineraries on dynamic maps;

• Augmented reality camera-view to visualize data overlays of Lonely Planet recommended points of interest;
• Hundreds of listings for places of interest – bars, clubs, restaurants and more – search by category, distance, or by address and
• Helpful information on the city, its history and events and more.

Visit the website for more screenshots of the application.
Good to see an application by a brand like Lonely Planet. Their books can be augmented as well to make an offline-online connection and intertwine their channels and business models.
The content was already available by Lonely Planet, thus extending this information to the mobile digital realm was a logical move which responds to the rise of Augmented Reality.

For travelers it’s a new and interactive experience to discover their travel destinations and address to the vast amount of information digitally to enhance their knowledge.
Who knows the Lonely Planet Guides will become 2.0 due to collaborative efforts by users, and what the effect will be for the product and information quality.

Is the end of traditional marketing segmentation in sight?
The process of segmentation is being reviewed and reshaped due to the Internet and available technologies which refines it.
This article continues where we left at the Personalization, Customization, Collaboration – Future Business Trinity article.
Personalization, Customization and Collaboration are the effects and executions arising from Self-Segmentation which takes place during the strategic analysis and moulding of the organization.

Segmentation within the marketing strategy
Segmenting is the first phase within the Marketing STP process, which is followed by Targeting and Positioning.
Segmentation strategies are often derived from market researches which define segments by making use of the statistical technique called cluster analysis. The challenge can be found here when making use of cluser analysis, it’s difficult to identify the segments in the real world due to its statistical characteristics.
Even if you don’t have the resources to conduct a market research, and segmenting the market is achieved through other means, it still remain passive or static characteristics which define segments. These static characteristics can be found within the demographic, geographic and psychographic variables.

The New Consumer
Unfortunately consumers are more complex, they are dynamic, evolving and simultaneously belong to a wide range of segments. The so-called New Consumer defined by Lewis and Bridger, seeks authenticity, is individualistic, independent and well-informed. This new type of consumer could explain the decreasing output by market researches who de-segments himself by actively destroying patterns.
Besides the complex human nature, external factors like the Internet influence the decision making cycle, by enabling the consumers to morph along its online journey being constantly in touch with the available information and other people. Segmentation seen from the New Consumer point of view is becoming an obsolete term. They can’t be predicted or labeled.

Self-segmentation by participatory media
The participatory Web is the eminent medium which enhances self-segmentation due to the co-creational powers it embodies, which effects the value proposition and the value chain of the company.  Customers who are able to dynamically define themselves towards companies which advances the relationship bi-directional, is the self-evident power that the concept beholds.
Self-segmentation is successful due to the active participation by consumers, which have the goal of achieving the characteristcs of the New Consumer as described above. Next to the self-segmenting techniques which are discussed in the Personalization, Customization, Collaboration – Future Business Trinity article , I want to emphasize the important role of social networks within this context.
Consumers are segmenting themselves when participating in social networks, based upon interests, needs and so on. Based upon the interaction between each other, the different roles a person can have within communities and the content which is generated by a user, it all can be analyzed to create a self-segmented model. An important role to do this are Social Network Analysis (SNA) tools which are able to give insight within the vast amount of information which is locked in a network.

The Axiom of Self-segmentation
The initial comment made in this article, that traditional segmentation is ending, has a long way to go, precisely because the organization has to transform fundamentally in order to make fully use of self-segmentation benefits. Outsourcing the value-proposition to the consumers is a new ball-game which changes the internal structure and focus.
Next to the organizational challenges that self-segmentation brings along, impact on the evolution of the New Consumer -in relation to the Web- and of course customer behavior must be analyzed. Just because technology offers a wide range of new abilities, it does not necessarily mean that consumer behavior is changing by it in full potential. Generation Z will grasp the offered opportunities better, as these consumers are grown up by ubiquitous technology.
The advantages of self-segmentation therefore are self-evident from the marketing and technological point of perspective, self-segmentation offers definately new ways of customer satisfaction, retention and engagement.

The fact is that most consumers are not making use of the self-segmentation abilities which are offered to them, i.e. will customer behavior intrinsically change just because technology is evolving? That needs to be proven.

View the short introductory video by Google where it announces you can discover breaking news on the web with real-time updates from news, blogs and social networks! After Bing has introduced Twitter results in its search results, now it’s time for Google to show its abilities.

Finally, it was bound to happen that Google is displaying real-time results from microblogs, blogs and social networks, next to this news, Google announced as well partnerships with Facebook, Myspace to get real-time data and not to forget, the deal from October with Twitter.

What are the effects and implications of Google’s real-time search and what questions are being raised?
* Will SEO be expanded with optimizing tweets and other public data as well?
* Will all this real-time data be available in Google Analytics, the social media monitoring market will have a new worthy competitor?
* Is Google Search the right place for real-time data (in combination with ‘historic’ data)?
* Will users make use of Google as an aggregator more and more (kind of Friendfeed), or will they make use of each network because it’s more relevant contextually (Google in time will integrate that as well)?
* Will real-time efforts be mechanized just to make sure that people or companies rank high in the search results?
* If Google will prove its importance to real-time search, what about SPAM just to make sure that people or companies rank high in the search results?
* How will real-time results weigh against ‘normal’ search results?

When Google launches new tools, it almost always reshapes or at least shakes up the established Internet landscape.
This is not so bad, it keeps companies focused and it ignites creativity and innovation to come up with solutions for questions as the abovementioned.

If you were the devil’s advocate, what questions would you raise?

What is your top 3 with regard to Marketing, Internet, eCommerce etc, which we need to look out for next year, or where you think emphasis will be put on?

My personal top 3 is:

* Mobile marketing/applications (Social & Augmented Reality)
* Social TV, with a focus on concepts to further develop convergence of the TV, Mobile and Computer screen (“whatever screen works”)
* Further diffusion and software development for social media purposes

Do discuss in Google Wave as well, below.

Kudos to our fine friends at Paladin Studios in Leiden for their release today!

Facebook, one of the leading social networks with over 350 million users, got a Serious Game on its platform today. Called EnerCities, it gets serious about the energy issues of our world. It is a casual city builder created by the Dutch game developer Paladin Studios. The project has a €1.4M budget, and is funded by the European Commission’s Energy Agency.

Rock-Paper-Scissors

“The game is about managing a virtual city”, says Dylan Nagel, who is product manager for EnerCities and co-founder of Paladin Studios. We took several elements from other city builders, and brought it down to the bare essentials.”

Players start with a small grid of nine squares and a limited choice of buildings. They then place structures like industrial plots and residential areas. When done well, the city levels up and grows in size. Each level brings more complexity, but also more opportunities for improving one’s score. Nagel explains:

“We tried to model the game after the real world. The triangle of People, Planet, and Profit is a balancing act which is at the heart of the game mechanics. If the player gets this right, it will reflect in the scores. This makes it essentially a rock-paper-scissors dilemma.”

Facebook

While EnerCities was originally designed for a standalone website, the choice for Facebook could be the driving factor for making the game successful. Says Derk de Geus, co-founder
and CEO of Paladin:

“We want to create a thriving community, where players compete for the highest scores and share their experiences with the game. Social Networks have the potential to make this happen.”

While the game does not have a persistent world like most Facebook games, there is a simple scoring system that allows players to compare their scores and rankings with friends. De Geus:

“Players can experiment with different scenarios. One time you play the industrial tycoon, the next an eco-friendly city builder. Either way, the decisions are tough and you will need to compromise. The idea is that you play with the world and experience the outcome.”

European Commission

The game is funded by the Energy Agency of the European Commission, specifically the Intelligent Energy Program of 2007. The €1.4M budget covers not just game development, but several other aspects.

De Geus:

“Roughly 20% of that money goes to the game itself. The other 80% is split between educational material, marketing and impact research, with most of the funds going to the roll-out of the game. It is essential that schools and teachers embed the game in their curriculum, and this requires significant effort. It deserves a big chunk of the project’s budget.”

In fact, Paladin Studios is part of a larger European consortium. The partners include educational institutions from The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Slovenia and Greece. In addition, there is an energy agency in Granada and an innovation agency in The Netherlands.

“So far it’s working very well, especially considering the international nature of the team,” says De Geus. “The one thing we had to get used to is the pace of the project. We are a small, agile studio, used to working at a fast pace. Working with the E.C. and educational institutions turns weeks into months, and months into years.”

Public Beta

The game is in public beta now on Facebook and on www.enercities.eu. While the current focus of the game lies on electricity, other energy topics will be included soon.

“There are several topics, like peak oil and energy saving, that still need to be added to the game. We are working hard to add these to the next release,” says Nagel. “The official release will be early next year. By then we will have the educational platform in place, and the rollout phase will begin.”

Links

EnerCities Website – www.enercities.eu
EnerCities on Facebook – apps.facebook.com/enercities
Paladin Studios – www.paladinstudios.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/paladinstudios, www.twitter.com/enercities
Dylan Nagel – www.twitter.com/dylannagel
Derk de Geus – www.twitter.com/derkdegeus

For more information, please contact Paladin Studios at @paladinstudios.com" target="_blank">info@paladinstudios.com

These are the three concepts/components how -in essence- future (online) business will be shaped and how new opportunities, models and markets can be created.
Seen from an abstract point of view, personalization is the front-end of the process, customization is the back-end of the process and collaboration is how these two interact and ultimately benefit from co-creation or at least create a win-win situation.

Personalization
Basically it’s a market need and demand, a consumerist trend to want it the way the customers want it, when they want it and where they want it.
Users get personalized content/products/services served based upon preferences specified in the process like interest, location or any other measurable characteristic which can be used to describe the personalization.

Besides the benefits of personalization, which are relevancy and time-efficiency amongst the most important ones, personalization still has many challenges to overcome.
The most important one is privacy and the acquisition of data, on which personalization is effectuated.

There are three methods to achieve personalization, through the implicit, explicit and the hybrid way.
Implicit personalization makes use of tracking the users’ purchases, or click paths or any kind of habit that characterize the user.
Explicit personalization makes use of explicit information which can be found in forms, itineraries and other means of extracting information.
Hybrid personalization is a combination of the two abovementioned methods and is -for instance- deployed by Amazon.com .

Examples of personalizations are:
* eBay’s Selling form which adapts it functionalities based upon the learning curve the user is going through
* Amazon’s product recommendation engine
* Google Reader
* Google Search and its increasing personalized SERP’s

Customization
Customization is the back-end of the production-process. It are IT abilities that make it possible to serve and produce content/products/services on the personalized needs and demand of the customer, it’s not yet always profitable, due to scaling and the market, but the first steps are being made.(Mass) Customization can refer to two areas of application:
First of all, customization refers to the context within the same range as personalization, that users can modify the website to their needs and only display what is wanted.
Secondly, Mass customization can be defined as a complex business strategy, which goal is to produce goods and provide services on a large scale, customized to the individual needs of every customer with the efficiency of mass production. (Mass) customization can be aimed at maximizing customer satisfaction because they purchase their content/product/service customized by their individual preferences.
The Internet is the perfect medium to support mass customization in keeping the costs at a minimum level.Areas of application for mass customization are:
* Travel
* Content delivery
* Transport means; cars, bikes.
* Shoes
* Software
And many more.

Both personalization and (mass) customization are powerful means to attract users and customers, increase loyalty and retention, which paradoxically is achieved by the input of the customers themselves.

Collaboration
Collaboration is the –already- initiated way of conducting business amongst each other and towards end-users.
Think dialogue instead of appointing, think prosumerism instead of production.
Having in mind personalization and customization, collaboration is the effect of the two. Throughout the process the customer mingles in, to get its personalized needs, and co-creates together with the producer the content/product/service which is enabled by the customized infrastructure and processes, fully customized to individual preferences.

Whilst the utopian hypersegmentation or 1-on-1 marketing might be far from reality, but more and more markets are becoming niches based upon refined corresponding characteristics which create smaller and smaller segments and inherently become more hypersegmented.

What is your opinion, will these three concepts shape future business or are it are other or extra ones?
What will the impact be of the three in terms of competition?
What pre-conditions needs to be altered before real mass customization can be effectuated?