Twitter reporting

Once again, this is not really an idea I had but rather a trend that seems to be emerging. But it seems to me that there is some potential...

When I first heard about Twitter several months ago, my first reaction was: Why would anybody want to post 160-character messages on the web just to tell the world what he or she is doing? The site seemed to be just another proof that Web 2.0 is all about shameless self-promotion and digital exhibitionism. And I still think that there is no need for an average person (for example, me) to use Twitter on a regular basis. But I think it could be a very powerful tool for online journalism.

Twitter, of course, is already used for liveblogging from (mostly tech) conferences. There are media companies that are posting there headlines to Twitter (which is very easy using Twitterfeed). The site would be a perfect tool for journalists all over the world reporting on current affairs. At the moment, for example, the correspondent of the Zurich-based Neue Zürcher Zeitung is (as far as I know) one of the few German-speaking journalists in Rangun, where tensions between protesters and Burmas regime are growing day by day. He could - in addition to his articles - send regular updates and informations to Twitter (and his newspaper could integrate the feed into its website). Twitter could also be used for communication between reporters and the newsroom. And, with Twitters just launched tracking feature, users can create personalized mobile news feeds.

UPDATE: Just read this very interesting post on how a pharma company could use Twitter for a marketing campaign. Not sure if this would work, but the idea is quite cool.

iPods DJs

Situation: everyone has an iPod or wants one. But not everyone has a huge collection of mp3s at home. You then have a few choices, most common: 1) you copy some music from a friend (which we would never do...) 2) convert all your CDs into mp3 files (which takes a long time and is a painful process) 3) you buy the music online, e.g. in the itunes store. It can be hard, to fill 80 GB of space with music.

Idea: why not offering an extra service to fill the iPod that you just bought with the music you like. The music would be legally bought online and individualized to your needs.

Target Group: upper class, older people (here is my favorite target group again...), bankers, consultants, guys who want the fashion tool iPod but would be grateful for some help to get good music on.

Trade your insight

Situation: In the last years, there has been a lot of buzz around Prediction Markets. These virtual markets work exactly like stock markets, only that instead of real stocks, the probability of future events is traded. Prediction Markets are already a very common tool to forecast the outcome of elections (here is one set up to predict the outcome of Switzerlands parliamentary elections held in October). You can buy and sell stock from every party participating in the elections. The final price of a stock will be equivalent to the percentage of the vote that the party wins. There are a lot of reasons why prediction markets usually work better than other forecasting tools, for example polls. First, because it is a market where you can win or lose, people have an incentive to really give the answer they think is right. Second, whereas in polls every opinion is equal, in prediction markets, people with more insight and knowledge will trade more (and more risky). This means that their opinion carries more weight in the forecast.
Prediction markets are also increasingly being used by businesses. Many companies have internal prediction markets where employees try to forecast, for example, sales. There are also quite a few companies who have specialized in setting up prediction markets.

Idea: To my knowledge, there neither is nor has ever been a prediction market for trend forecasting or consumer research. Firms still rely on marketing experts or focus groups to predict upcoming trend or evaluate new products. But I think that prediction markets would be a wonderful tool for market research, especially for predicting trends. The interesting part about a trend prediction market would be that traders would not trade with an existing and predefined set of stocks (as in the election market where the set of stocks is defined by the parties participating), but would be able to create their own stocks and sell them in the market. This guarantees that the market will not only tell the company which trends are likely to become big issues in the future, but also tells them about trends they maybe haven't even thought about before (an outcome that is, of course, also possible with a focus group, but much less likely because of distorting factors like group think).
The big challenge in creating trend markets or markets evaluating new products will be to find the right subset of traders. The set has to be focused and suited to the task at hand (there's no point in letting rural people from China trade if you want to predict trends for urban westerners), but it also must have a certain degree of diversity (if it doesn't, chances are that the group of traders suffers from a systematic bias and does not produce the right outcome).

Business model: Ideally, you already have an existing network of people (hint, hint) which could be used to trade in a trend market. I don't see trend markets as a stand-alone business, but rather as one of many different tools that can be used in trend research. However, a company or organization with access to a high-profile network of people (more hint) could sell access to this network and its trend markets to marketing and advertising companies (super-hint).

Problems: The idea seems somewhat obvious so I fear it has already been tried somewhere. And there is one problem within a trend market: Whereas in election markets the value of a stock can be defined very precisely (it's just the percentage of the vote the party got), it's more difficult with trends. Trend stocks would have do be defined very clearly. For example, it would be difficult to trade a stock stating that "social networks will be huge in the future", because it's not clear what "huge" means and when the "future" is. Because the final value of the stock after trading ended depends on whether the event it predicted really became true, stocks would have to be defined in a way that can be measured. To stay with the example, the stock would then have to state that "one year from now, 30 percent of the population in developed countries will be active users on a social networking platform".

Open canteens

Again, this is not an idea I had, but rather one I stole. But, hey, stealing is also a form of creativity, isn't it? Anyway, I was surfing the website of the "taz", a leftist german newspaper based in Berlin. The taz has, as many companies do, a canteen for their staff. But their canteen - called tazcafé - is more: It's a restaurant and café open for the public, and it's the place where the taz editors have their daily conferences. And it's a culture venue. Bottom line: It's, as the taz itself puts it, a "meeting place for the newspaper and its readers".

What a wonderful idea! There are a lot of companies in cities that have canteens only accessible for their staff. Why not open up the lunchplaces, invite your clients and the public to sit with you, talk with you and eat with you? First of all, this probably would generate some revenue - there is already a restaurant infrastructure in place, and while staff normally gets a discounted price, external customers could be charged normal prices. But more important, it makes the company and its staff more accessible, turns the company headquarter into a public place, which in turn gets the company more public attention; it allows direct contacts between staff and clients (or soon-to-be clients) on a very informal level, which is not only guaranteed to make the clients feel respected, but also gives staff a better feeling for the clients' needs. And encouraging staff to hold meetings in the open canteen ads even increases the transparency. Add some cultural events in your canteens on evenings, and your company will suddenly be featured in the "Going Out" section of the local newspaper.

To be sure, this idea is probably not suited for every company. Newspapers as the taz - and media companies in general - are among those who can profit from an open canteen, whereas companies whose business model is based on secrecy probably will think twice about opening up in this way. But for banks, insurance companies and many others, opening up their canteens could turn out to be quite a good idea.

Feeds in everything

OK, since other contributors here are getting senile (although the language schools for old folks idea is great!), I feel I can contribute something that isn't really an idea but more a trend that I think I'm observing: RSS Feeds.

Yes, of course, RSS feeds aren't exactly new. Every blog has a feed, almost every news site has a feed. And there's more: For example, there's a feed for your del.icio.us bookmarks, one for your Facebook status updates, and so on... (all of which I use to aggregate my lifestream). And yet, I think that we've only just seen the beginning of feedmania. Many people already use RSS readers (like the one from Google) that aggregate the feeds and thus become the one single place where all the relevant information is. So what's next? Of course: A tool that converts your mail into a feed. And maybe, after that, there will be a feed for your overall energy consumption, allowing you not only to track your consumption but also to share the information with friends and to show off your environmental side. And why not send invoices through a feed? Public alerts?

The future will not only bring more uses for feeds, but will also have feeds that are more customizable. When today you can subscribe, for example, to all items in the "International" section from NZZ Online, tomorrow you will be able to subscribe to all items that contain a certain combination of search terms; or to all items with the same tag; or to all items with a maximum length of 150 words; or to all items written by one author (you can already do this on ZEIT online); or to a feed combining all this criteria.

Distributing information through feeds not only allows aggregation on a very customized level - it also allows sharing the information, for example through a social network, or creating mashups with different types of information.

Oh, and of course there's a business model: Advertising. And the more customizable the feeds become, the more targeted (and thus lucrative) it gets.

ADDENDUM: Just realised that the last three posts on this Tumblr (including this one) start with "ok". We're really getting senile.

more stuff for old people, this time: language study trip

ok, I know I'm getting senile, all the time speaking about products for old people, but I just see a huuuge potential there (and yes, I'm getting senile).

Situation: old people, once they retire, start to realize their long time dreams. Some go travellling again, some start painting. One wish I heard now quite often is that old people want to learn another language before they die (which they should have done rather when they were young, but this is not the right place for that...). most often the language schools are crowded with 18 years old, fresh from high school, party, drugs and maybe a bit of language learning. some old people like that. most dont. the same thing with accomodation. they dont want to stay in a host family, nor be alone in a hotel room for 2 months.

Idea: offer language tripps, especially designed for people above 65.

Maybe already offered, didnt check that.

More senile stuff to come ;-)

A wiki for student mobility

OK, it's tough to top the robbery innovation, i'm not going to be able to do it with this post - the idea is actually quite straightforward. But nontheless, it would be useful ;-)

Situation: I'm learning at the moment what it means to be an exchange student. I've just moved from Zurich to Geneva, so I stayed within Switzerland - and still, sometimes it seems like I'm the first guy to ever have come to the Geneva University from another city. After a few days, the fog is clearing, but I had to run around quite a bit to get all the necessary information. So, it's not that the information does not exist, it's just dispersed. On the other hand, there are approximately 200 exchange students that have just arrived in Geneva, all looking for more or less the same information. In situations like this, information tends to be passed on along informal channels - you get to know someone who has a friend who told her that... While this system may work quite well, it still means that the same questions are asked over and over again - and that is inefficient.

Idea: My idea, of course, is to aggregate the obviously wast amount of information existing on student exchanges. The best way, in my opinion, would be to create a wiki-style internet platform. The platform would be run by the universities, but information could be added or edited by anyone. This would allow to put ALL the information that exchanges students need in one place - starting with official information, such as regulations, procedures and deadlines, which would be posted by student mobility officials from different universities, and continuing with all those tiny bits of information you just need to have, like where and when exactly you have to sign up for classes, which professor has great courses and which parties you simply must attend, which would be posted by students who already did an exchange or are doing one at the moment.

Problems: The obvious problem is that, in order to set up a wiki and promote it across all universities participating in an exchange program, a certain amount of coordination is needed - which, if it existed, probably already would have been used to aggregate the essential information in another way. Once set up, however, I have very little doubt that students will participate and add information. But to be really useful, all the mobility officials from the universities would have to post their information too - and at the moment, I cannot think of an efficient way to get them to do it.

ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention this: Of course, there are already a lot of websites devoted to student mobility. But I could find none which really tries to aggregate the information in a wisdom-of-the-crowds way.

Robbery Innovation

Well, it has not been invented by me nor do I see direct use for it (at least at the moment ;-), but I just found it so amazingly cool that I have to post it: an innovative strategy for robbing a house. Apparently it is a true story, I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend (very reliable source......)

The story / strategy: my friends live in a house and go to work everyday by bike. One day one of their bikes is gone, stolen.

2 days later, the bike is back, standing in front of the house, with a big envelope to it and 2 expensive opera tickets in it. The letter attached says: "I am extremely sorry, I just needed super urgently a bike to get home, to make things up, I bought you 2 opera tickets, hoping that you might like it. I am truly sorry about that. Best regards".

They were happy to have the bike back, went to the opera and when they came home, their house was empty.

The NGO "Mechanical Turk"

(we discussed this last Monday)

Situation: There are a lot of business travellers flying from city to city and meeting to meeting - and often getting stuck somewhere for maybe 15 minutes or half an hour and nothing to do. That's basically wasted time - and, given that business travellers are often well-trained, its valuable time that's being wasted. We assume that business people would be willing to "donate" this time for a good cause.

Idea: Creating a service that allows those business travellers to complete small but interesting tasks, preferraly for an NGO. The tasks - which could include reviewing and commenting on documents, and maybe some "instant consulting" - would be distributed trough a website similar to Amazons Mechanical Turk. The tasks, which are uploaded by the NGOs, are categorized by subject, NGO and time needed for completion. The website supports Google Gears, which allows users to download tasks and complete them offline. Users could set up a subscription where they specify which kind of tasks they are willing to work on. Once a new task becomes available and the user is online, the information is downloaded automatically to the users laptop.

Business model: None, since it is for a good cause :-)

Problems: Maybe the effort needed to create interesting tasks that can be completed in such short time frames is bigger than the time savings resulting from the "crowdsourcing" of the tasks.

Trend Education Team

Situation: technologies are advancing at an enormous pace, for most people it is hard to keep up with the speed of technical innovations, new online tools, new platforms, new technology trends. However, knowing about those technologies and especially, knowing how to use them, might be an important advantage in competition.

On the other hand, there are many young people who spend a lot of time in front of their computers, knowing about most innovations and if not, have no trouble learning how to use them.

The web offers more and more useful tools that might help to increase productivity and becomes increasingly the nr. 1 information channel.

Idea: offer a service where on a regular base (lets say monthly) a trained "trend guru" (= a student who knows how to use those things and can communicate this to the audience) gives an update about the latest trends on the web and trains the people how to use the newest technologies, for example: what is an RSS feed? how to use a feed agregator? how to search for good blogs? VoIP and its possiblities, Skype and its functions, online project management.

The Trend Guru would come monthly into the office and teach people in their conference room for 2hours at lunch time. A coordination office would define what the different trend gurus would talk about and create standard documenation.

Target Clients: people who want to be up to speed, but cant spend a few hours every day to find out about the latest trends: lawyers, architects, management consultants, doctors, bankers, people working in insurances....

Business Model: Charge a flat fee to the company for the Trend Guru per session, we would offer packages of 3, 6 or 12 months.

Potential Problems: What is difference to reading a good tech blog such as techcrunch.com? Infos would be personalized and especially the trend guru would train people how to use all those tools (how to setup, how to use main functionalities etc)

Working on wheels

Situation: You're in a train, and you'd like to get some work done. That's not impossible: You can take out your laptop, put it on your knees and try to concentrate. But often, it's too loud and crowded. And there's no additional place to put, say, some papers that you may need for your work.

Idea: Business compartments. Actually, the Swiss and Austrian train companies have started something like that, but not with all the features I'd like... Trains should have work stations, featuring wireless internet, good cell phone reception and enough space to place all your materials. And there should be meeting compartments, equipped with a beamer, to hold presentations. Reservations could be made over the internet for an additional fee.

Problems: I'm not sure about the wireless on a train, but I guess it can't be too difficult. Demand may not be given on all routes.

Selbstzusammengestellte Webzeitung zum Offline lesen

Situation: oftmals finde ich spannende Artikel im Web die ich gerne lesen würde. Meistens finde ich beim surfen selber weder Muse noch Zeit um einen längeren Text online zu lesen. Ich habe dann 2 Möglichkeiten: ich merke mir die Website für später oder ich drucke mir den Text aus und lese ihn zu irgendwann (vielleicht...). Hypothese: meiner Meinung nach lesen viele Leute nicht gerne grössere Texte am Bildschirm, sondern lieber ausgedruckt. Ich persönlich gehe zudem selten zu Texten zurück und lese sie dann online.

Idee: Entwicklung eines Tools, das mir erlaubt, spannende online Texte auszuwählen, die ich später lesen möchte. Das Tool speichert die Texte nicht nur, sondern es baut diese in einem Zeitschriften- oder Zeitungslayout zusammen. Aus den 10 ausgewählten Online Texten entsteht dann eine schön gelayoutete PDF Datei, welche ich mir zuhause ausdrucken und lesen kann. Dadurch entsteht meine eigene kleine Webzeitung und vorallem eine sehr angenehme Art und Weise, längere Texte zu lesen. Ich könnte dabei wählen, ob ich es am liebsten à la NZZ lese, oder à la Economist oder whatever.

Business Modell: Würde man die kostenlose Variante des Tools benutzen, hätte es unaufdringliche Werbung drin. Für 99 Dollar monatlich könnte man zudem die Pro Version kaufen ohne Werbung und nix drin.

Stolpersteine: manchmal sind Texte über mehrere Sites verteilt, Copyright?

Website speziell für alte Leute

Situation: Eine Studie von ARD / ZDF zum Online Verhalten der Deutschen zeigt ein riesen Potential bei älteren Surfern. Immer mehr Leute über 60 entdecken das Internet. Doch scheint es - meiner Einschätzung nach - bis jetzt wenig grosse Portale zu geben, die sich speziell an diese Zielgruppe richtet.

Idee: Website mit speziellem Content für ältere Menschen. Darauf könnten Freizeittipps, Anlage Tipps, News, Gesundheitstipps angeboten werden.

Andere Zielgruppen die potentiell viel Zeit haben aber noch nicht direkt angesprochen werden: Hausfrauen, gelangweilte Mitarbeiter von Grosskonzernen