Linqia

Five ways brands click with communities of people online

2010-07-25T18:07:00.001+02:00

If two people meet spontaneously in the street and later get married, an entrepreneur presents in front of a panel of venture capitals and gets funded or an unhappy employee bumps into a former colleague and they start a business together, then this is because they click. It’s powerful and life changing.

It’s Sunday afternoon, very hot outside and instead of listening to my Ibiza landing collection on Spotify, I decide to walk up the mountain at the back of Barcelona, and start listening to Andrew Warners mixergy interviews I downloaded earlier. I select Ori Brafman’s interview How To Click With People as the first cab of the rank. As I listen to the interview, I think about how the guiding principals of people clicking with one another also apply to how brands click with communities of people online.

So is it really possible for brands to click with communities of people?

Before I attempt to answer this question, we need to shift our mindset from perceiving brands as we have perceived them prior to Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. In the context of social media, brands are people. If a brand reaches out to a community, they do so as a person – not a logo, an advertisement or a robot.

There five specific factors that create the dynamic for people to click:

1. Vulnerability

2. Proximity

3. Resonance

4. Similarity

5. Safe place

Vulnerability is opening up about topics that capture people’s attention and ultimately empathy. To the point when you demonstrate vulnerability people reciprocate and open up. It’s not always about appearing strong and in control. For example, with BP’s recent oil spill this has made them totally vulnerable. As part of their community outreach, acknowledging the severity of the disaster and how much they are hurting creates a bridge for the community to reciprocate and share stories about how much they are hurting too.

Proximity is about being close to your community. There was a study at an MIT dorm, and it was a series of dorms that were all on a line just like a motel. What they found out was that the people who had formed the most connections were the people who actually lived in the central dorms as opposed to those who lived at the edge of the dorm where you are a little bit out of traffic. How can this be applied to a brand? If a brand is consistently present and collaborating with important communities, people will start liking you more and just by multiple exposures they are also going to like you better.

Resonance is about being present and flow. Brands who show up, ask questions, express genuine interest have a higher resonance factor than those who don’t. How can a brand experience flow? Flow is about being in the moment and being so engaged that they find themselves being truly alive, truly part of the community and connected to their surroundings.

Similarity is about finding points of similar interest and discovering you share these. What matters most is the quantity of similar things. It takes about seven or eight similarities for people to start viewing each other as better human beings, as smarter, as more moral, more like us. This has been hard wired in us for 1,000’s of years and it isn’t going to change any time soon.

Safe place is the final click accelerator and it means to have a clearly defined community. Context is a critical factor for how people feel about each other and that taps into the notion of ‘we are in it together’. So an example would be a community of people engaging around the world cup. If they’re Spaniards who recently won the world cup, a brand would enter the community sharing stories about how they where there too perhaps sharing photos or videos from the celebrations that took place afterwards.

The purpose of a brand within any social channel is to build relationships. These five factors are key to the speed at which a brand can build these relationship and how the relationships will develop.

Ori Brafman is the bestselling author of Sway, Starfish and the Spider and now Click: The Magic of Instant Connections.

27.8% of time spent online is in online communities. Virgin territory for brands?

2010-05-17T20:30:00.007+02:00

From the 1.7 billion people online, 4.4% of time is spent searching and 27.8% is spent in online communities. What's astonishing about these figures, is that where people spend time online, with the exception of online communities, is decreasing rapidly. And yet, the billions of advertising dollars are injected into search.

Mark Zuckerberg put his finger on it. He recently said "Communities already exist. Instead, think about how you can help that community do what it wants to do."

So what exactly does a community want to do? Simple. Every community wants to maximise the quality of experience of as many members as possible. This could be achieved through vibrant, active discussions, compelling and engaging content, sponsorships and partnerships with access to exclusive offerings, opportunities to get to know other members. The list goes on.

Recently at the Lift2010 conference in Geneva, 37 curious people gained insights into how brands can successfully participate in multiple online communities that may not necessarily be their own. This is virgin territory and whilst brands are sold on the concept, they lack the 'how'.

The presentation and video explore:
• Evolution of online communities
• Approaches brands have taken to engage with online communities
• Opportunities and challenges brands face when engaging with online communities

Online Communities: How brands are edging their way into the heart of the conversation

View more presentations from Maria Sipka.

LIFT10 - Brands and Online Communities from netinfluenceChannel on Vimeo.

Thanks to Nicolas Fermont from NetInfluence who whipped this video together in 10 minutes.

How does the new FTC Regulation affect social networks and online communities?

2009-12-08T17:39:00.005+01:00

In summary: What is the FTC regulation all about?
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of the US recently published an updated guide providing "administrative interpretations“ for laws concerning endorsements and testimonials in advertising. For the first time, the guide also specifically mentions social media, particularly bloggers, and what their responsibilities are when endorsing a brand or product online. Basically, anyone who gets paid or otherwise compensated for writing about a product or service, has to disclose this relationship. Claims made by an endorser may not be misleading. This has mainly been discussed for bloggers, but these guidelines should also be adhered to in social networks, microblogging services like Twitter and in online communities, groups and forums.

What’s an endorsement?
According to the FTC, „an endorsement means any advertising message [...] that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser.“

„Endorsements must reflect the honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experience of the endorser. Furthermore, an endorsement may not convey any express or implied representation that would be deceptive if made directly by the advertiser.“

The guide gives an example of a blogger who writes about dog food:

If she just decides to try a new brand, likes it, and writes about it: not an endorsement
If she gets a coupon from her supermarket for a free trial because the store „...routinely tracks her purchases and its computer has generated a coupon for a free trial bag...“ and writes about the food: not an endorsement
If she joins a network marketing program and receives products periodically, receives a free bag of dog food and writes about it: this would be an endorsement.

When is disclosure needed?
„When there exists a connection between the endorser and the seller or the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement (i.e. the connection is not reasonably expected by the audience), such connection must be fully disclosed.“

For example, if a game expert receives a game console for free and reviews it: „Because his review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement. Accordingly, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received the gaming system free of charge. The manufacturer should advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be disclosed, and it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance.“

What is the advertiser’s responsibility?
„The advertiser is subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made through the blogger’s endorsement“
(Example: If an advertiser asks a blogger to test a body lotion and the blogger writes that the lotion can cure eczema, the advertiser is liable for this misleading claim – even if the advertiser has not made such claims). Advertisers must also make sure that any person that receives incentivization by them discloses this fact when writing or speaking about a product.

How can advertisers ensure compliance?
Advertisers should ensure that anyone who is speaking on their behalf or endorsing them knows about these rules beforehand. They should consider providing their endorsers with guidelines and suggestions on how to disclose the relationships. Additionally, advertisers must monitor for compliance and have the responsibility of halting publication of claims that could be considered deceptive.

What is the endorser’s responsibility?
While it is unlikely that the FTC will go after single bloggers, it states that „the blogger is also subject to liability for misleading or unsubstantiated representations made in the course of her endorsement. The blogger is also liable if she fails to disclose clearly and conspicuously that she is being paid for her services.“

How does this affect brand engagement in social networking services?
Whilst these guidelines have been discussed in relation to bloggers, the guide clearly also targets any other form of social media. An important point is that according to the FTC, consumers might not realize that messages in social networks or on message boards are from paid endorsers. Anyone who has a relationship with a brand or product, whether it be by employment or any kind of payment or incentivization, should therefore disclose their relationship to the advertiser when speaking about this brand.

Employees of a brand can no longer go on message boards and praise their products without informing the community that they are working for this company.

How should disclaimers be made?
Disclaimers should be made „clearly and conspicuously“. There have been discussions about blanket disclaimers that would just appear on one page, for example a blogger’s „About“ page. This will probably not be considered conspicuous enough. To be on the safe side, it is probably best to include a disclaimer within a blog post or discussion post, where any reader can be expected to see it.

What happens if a brand or an endorser does not comply with these guidelines?
Violations – and this concerns the brand as well as the endorser - are punishable by civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. That fine is probably a smaller part of the damage though – considering how fast word travels in social media, the damage to a brand or endorser’s image could be much higher than that.

What is Linqia’s view about these guidelines?
We fully support the principals behind these guidelines. We encourage brands to engage in conversations and we believe this should always happen in a transparent and open way. The key driver to engaging successfully in conversations is to be authentic – and this includes disclosing who you are and who you are speaking on behalf. We will be actively encouraging and educating brands we work with to disclose such information and inform endorsers to do the same.

Further Reading

Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (the original text by the FTC)
http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005revisedendorsementguides.pdf

New FTC Marketing Guidelines – The Five Things You Must Know
http://www.trafficandconversion.com/new-ftc-marketing-guidelines-the-five-things-you-must-know/

You Can Make Everything You Want Come True – With Maria Sipka

2009-10-07T18:07:00.004+02:00

Mid August Jared Goralnick, Productivity Evangelist (and Founder) of Away Find visited me in Barcelona after being introduced by a common friend. After 35 minutes of sharing our stories, sitting in a back street bar in Ravel sipping a fresh juice, he said "I have to introduce you to Andrew Warner from Mixergy!" A month later I had one of the most inspiring interviews of my life.

Andrew asked his audience what the title should be and after listening 60 minutes to a very raw and intimate interview, one listener suggested 'You Can Make Everything You Want Come True - with Maria Sipka'.

Andrew wrote..."What I think is most inspiring about Maria is how she sees a goal and systematically finds a way to achieve it. I'd sum up her approach using a quote that I pulled from the interview: "Who you become depends on the books that you read and the people that you meet."

When she started a marketing consulting company, she gobbled up every book on sales that she could. When she got into real estate, she turned to an investor who was further ahead than she was for advice. As you listen to her story, you'll see how much you can achieve with the right influences."

Creating conversations in the social media space (not just campaigns)

2009-09-30T19:11:00.016+02:00

How does a brand even start their thinking re: creating conversations that make sense in the Social Media space?

Two guys are standing at the water cooler on a Monday morning. Jack needs new training shoes. His Nike trainers are well over their 6 months changeover date. Next to Jack stands Pete, an avid runner, and he’s commenting on how great his third pair of ASICS Kayanos are. He wouldn’t change them for all the Power Bars in New York. Suddenly Stu (a marketer from downstairs) runs into the conversation yelling something about 15% off all BBQs at Wal-Mart for this week only. Stu blinks at them and then stares blankly. He then repeats the 15% offer. Continued silence from Jack and Pete. Jack and Pete keep talking for a while and then leave Stu, who still hasn’t clicked they are not interested.

Sadly, this is how brands have behaved since the invention of the newspaper, television and radio. With the emergence of social media this scenario is slowly changing, the communication structure is flattening and ‘engagement’ is becoming the new metric to ROI.

This post looks at the world of conversational marketing online and asks the question “How does a brand spark relevant conversations online authentically, where the conversations are already happening?” Being a part of conversations that are relevant to a brand increases engagement and interaction with that brand and is the new marketing nirvana that can lead to increased sales. But how do brands achieve this beyond the banner (widget or VDO unit) and into the conversation?

We first need to start with a simple 3 step process where brands 1) listen 2) engage 3) monitor.

Listening & monitoring. It would be hard not to notice the endless hype around twitter, facebook and a host of other platforms. With over 2,000 social networks, 160 million groups and 750 million people globally engaging in some kind of conversation, brands are listening to what is being said about their products, services, competitors and future offerings through monitoring tools (see 20 top buzz monitoring tools).

Engaging means brands for the very first time are experimenting with sparing conversations amongst pockets of interested and diverse groups of people. The results are organic and eye opening for many. Leading brands such as Nestle, Virgin, McDonalds & evening highly controversial tobacco companies have the approach of ‘test and learn’. Traditionally, brands would engage market research firms and spend countless months and extremely high budgets to ask people all sorts of questions. The outcome? Sterile and, in most cases, totally ineffective.

To work through a real example of your brand and see how you would approach a conversation using Social Media, you need to start from a place of knowing who you are ‘Who are you? = Brand’ + ‘What do you stand for = Brand pillars’ (See diagram)

The next step is to expand out into what type of positive conversation you intend to engage in. Think of the types of positive conversations you have day to day. There are many elements to them, and in general, they have one or all of the following broad elements:

1. They make me laugh = Entertain

2. They tell me something I didn’t know before = Inform

3. They open my eyes that little bit more because of the opportunity/possibility they communicate = Inspire

4. They give me an added boost and make me feel good in what I am doing = Encourage and Support

Of course, there are many other elements in conversation, however these are typically negative and do not create a YES + AND conversational space where people want to contribute and grow.

The BIGGEST and best point to keep in mind is this: Picture you are the conversation you want to have and you are at a dinner party with a table of strangers. If you are tasked with engaging the people around the table, how would you normally do this? Before you say ‘I am going to say it like this or offer them this’ think about yourself at the dinner party again and ask ‘What reaction would I likely receive if I was to do/say that in the real world’. Now multiply that reaction by a million (as this is the online world) and then decide if you still want to share/converse as you had planned, or if you will try a different approach.

There are some gems in the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto to assist in this thinking process. While we won’t list them all, here are the most relevant to keep in mind as you work through this exercise:

1. Markets are conversations.

2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.

3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.

10. As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

11. People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

14. Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

15. In just a few more years, the current homogenized "voice" of business—the sound of mission statements and brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French court.

20. Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

21. Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.

34. To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their communities.

38. Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about human concerns.

And so, what might the outcome look like? Well, taking the above framework in mind, we undertook this approach for a brand you may know, IKEA. The following questions lead us to the diagram below. It is merely one possible outcome, however it ended with a framework of online conversational starters and approaches that would be at least authentic for the brand.

Key questions to ask:

1. Who am I? Your brand. The central point you want to converse about

2. What do stand for? What does your brand have a right to talk about? IKEA and DIY = yes. IKEA and None of your friends will have this = No.

3. How can I share this to...? Choose the type of positive conversation that you want to have. Think about your conversational objectives. Where do you want the person you are conversing with to be because of the conversation? i.e. happier, better informed, inspired, encouraged?

4. What elements do I share to spark and maintain this? The right digital elements to share and support this conversation need to be thought about. It does not necessarily need to be a full blown widget, it could be as simple as a series of images, some text and a link (it is most likely NOT a banner ad though).

5. What would I say to kick this off? What is the ice breaker? What do you say first? How can you start this in a way which is the most engaging and creates the most open space for discourse?

The only thing now is....how do you find and reach into the right spaces online to have this conversations?! That will need to wait until our next post. Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

_______________________________

Linqia works with leading global brands to drive social media marketing results through an online marketplace by connecting brands deep into the conversations of online groups and social networks.

This article was co-authored by Maria Sipka (Founder and CEO of Linqia.com) and Piero Poli (VP of Business Development and Strategy at Linqia.com)

8 Social Networks gather at London's 2nd Round Table on Monetization

2009-09-22T22:13:00.005+02:00

Today we hosted our second social network round table in London at The Hub Culture Pavilion (thanks Stan!) and shared insights from the past 6 months of interviewing 200 social networks.

Insights from 200 Social Networks on Monetization

View more presentations from Maria Sipka.

Together with 8 social networks including Fanshake, Ecademy, StudentBox, The Tuttle Club, Hub Culture, UnLtdWorld and former executive from MySpace, Monster and founder of Sportingo we explored the latest innovative techniques being deployed to monetize social networks and engage members. Highlights were:

Dana Al Salem - CEO and founder of Fanshake, spoke about recently releasing a white labeled version of their platform to enable any company, brand or organization to create a fan clubs. Fanshake has also become a magnet for discount ticket vendors to sell concert tickets at discount or face value prices creating a fair and affordable market for teenagers strapped for cas.
Glenn Watkins - CEO and co-founder of Ecademy shared the power of influencer engagement citing a recent event where Chairman Thomas Powers asked a question of the audience and received 100's of replies via twitter, facebook and his own platform Ecademy.
Carl Edouard Pihl - CEO and founder of StudentBox sees trends moving towards niche communities where broad based communities such as Facebook are not addressing specific needs of groups such as students.
Lloyd Davies - founder of The Tuttle Club has been able to tap into existing event brands such as TedX and host an event and create increased engagement amongst members.

Our host, Stan Stalnaker - CEO and founder of Hub Culture left us awe inspired with his innovative implementation of his virtual currency Ven. Ven is set to create a virtual currency revolution within business communities featuring an incredibly relevant and meaningful value exchange for members and vendors. Asian social networks are leading the virtual currency/ goods way with Tencent reporting a US$1 billion annual turnover - 95% attributed to virtual goods. Hub Culture's Ven has attracted global interest within the last 24 hours after announcing a new contest named The Ven Prize. It will be awarded to “sustainable, circular, cellular economic systems in Hub Culture and the world at large.”

Register your interest for our Munich social network round table in November.

200 Social Networks at Linqia!

2009-09-22T16:13:00.000+02:00

If you shoot for the moon and miss you land amongst the stars. 6 months ago we shot for the moon and today at 18:43 we hit our target exactly welcoming our 200th social network. Who was the 200th social network to register? An Austrian Social Network Uboot.com!!

Over the past 6 months, our team has extensively identified, sought introductions and approached over 300 Social Networks. We've interviewed a vast majority of our registered Social Networks to gain deeper insights into their needs and how we could best serve them. We typically spoke to the founder or business development executive who enthusiastically responded to questions around their business model, what worked, what didn't work and their needs. 95% of all Social Networks expressed a need to attract new members, fulfill on their Business Model (or even create one) and increase engagement amongst registered members.

We'd like to feature 3 Social Network who registered to Linqia today. Our team was beyond excitement leading into the afternoon realizing we could achieve our target of 200. Our supporters twittered like crazy to spread the word which enabled us to increase registrations from 195 networks to 200 within one day!

The lucky #200 is Uboot.com! Uboot is one of Europe’s largest and oldest mobile communities for young people accessing both internet and mobile. With more than 6 million registered members, it’s a meeting point for young people to enjoy conversations and meet online to share photos, videos and more. Marlis Rumler, the CEO, actually shared with us that Uboot.com is one of Europe’s oldest German speaking Social Networks, founded in 1999.

Lucky #199 is MyMusic.de. A German community founded by professional community builders Ekaabo, whose CEO Marco Ripanti is highly active in the community scene with Yiid and Communipedia. MyMusic is Germany's answer to MySpace where members share their passions like music, artists, DJ´s, or dancers, or even going to the same clubs and discos.

Position #3 is proudly held by AgencyScoop. Registered as number 198, its a US based professional network for the advertising industry with over 20,000 members from the creative, account, and production scene. AgencyScoop's CEO Jason Culbertson, having been in the advertising for many years, was able to grow the network exclusively through word of mouth to 20.000 members in six months. It´s a “Must Be“ place for people in advertising to find advice, access opportunities and receive insights to boost their careers.

By mid afternoon, we achieved our target of 200. Our fellow colleague Edwina Dendler with her ever-analytic outlook posted on yammer ... “We now have a marketplace with 200 networks and over 377 million members. Did you realize that we reach more members than Facebook does?“...

Let´s see what the future brings :-)

We're extremely excited for every social network and mega niche community who forms part of the 200! Thank you for your support!

Monetizing Online Groups: A Good Example

2009-07-23T10:18:00.004+02:00

Over the past 3 months, our team has interviewed over 120 social networks and online communities across the globe. The number 1 challenge they're all facing is monetization. Banner ads don't work - CPM rates have plummeted - in some cases from €20 to €2, members aren't paying any attention to ads and there's not enough inventory to service the combined billions of page views across these sites. Sites doing well generate revenue through selling virtual currencies, member subscriptions and integrating partnerships.

Whilst we estimate there exists over 2,000 social networks and online communities, there are over 80 million groups created by members, organizations and companies.

So how do you monetize groups?

Similar to social networks, some platform allow groups to embed advertising - such as Ning. The most common form of monetization is through affiliate links and direct partnerships.

I group I belong to on LinkedIN is the 30,000+ member Social Media Marketing group lead by Michael Crosson. Michael is a LinkedIN member passionate about social media and engaging members in a variety of discussions around this topic. It's the largest group on LinkedIn for this topic and serves a 'go to' place to connect with people interesting in social media marketing and learning more about this.

Michael has been smart and started integrating affiliate partners into his group. With a reach of 30,000+ people, he's able to blast a message to all of his members guaranteeing a high percentage of attention and 'eye balls'. This type of marketing is very different to adsense or embedded affiliate opportunities. Firstly - most if not all of the offers may not be something the members are proactively searching for now - therefor receiving a message from a trusted person addresses people are not searching. Secondly, whilst the group has 30,000+ registered members, they don't necessarily visit the group on a regular basis - meaning that any ads or offers presented won't be seen. The most effective form of distributing any message or offer is through email - from somebody the group members trust and will pay attention to.

Below, you will see the message I received this morning from Michael - which I spent 30 seconds reviewing:

Six key ingredients to effectively presenting opportunities to members in your group:

Source opportunities or offers which are highly relevant to your members. State why the opportunity is interesting.
The message must not be scripted or written in a commercial way. Write like you're sitting around a table with your members and sharing something exciting you came across that would be relevant to them.
Be transparent. If you're receiving a commission or kickback - make this obvious
Your message should not only be commercial in nature. Deliver some value at the beginning of the message - sharing some news, an article or something interesting. Append commercial opportunities or partners at the end of your message.
Plan the frequency of how often you will communicate with your members. Depending on the affinity you have developed with your members, if you send too many messages you will start to loose their interest. A very close knit group
Track how many people click on the links. For larger groups (1,000+) ideally you want 10% of members clicking on the links. For smaller groups 20% is healthy and indicative that you're delivering value.

What not to do:

Make it obvious that it's an affiliate link - Michael has included the link in it's entirety including his affiliate code. I would suggest that you shortern or disguise the URL. Whilst it's important to disclose that the links are commercial in nature you can avoid posting lengthy URL's

There are 100's of affiliate programs you can access. Many groups have embedded the Amazon affiliate program, LinkShare, commission junction, tradedoubler, adjug, adroll and so on.

It's worth testing and even speaking to members within your group to find the right balance.

Linqia Nominated for TechCrunch awards

2009-06-26T18:13:00.003+02:00

To our surprise this morning - after receiving an email from one of our partnering social networks SliceThePie - Linqia has been nominated for a TechCrunch award.

It took some time to dig through each of the categories to finally find our nomination. We're thrilled to be in the category The Europas: Best Startup Founder(s) (EMEA).

Please vote for us!

Taking Esther Dyson to The Moon and Back...

2009-06-06T12:39:00.006+02:00

As entrepreneurs we do things for different reasons. We're motivated primarily by our own dreams and with that momentum and passion we create a tail wind for others to join. Esther Dyson (pictured on right), an impassioned business angel, has a tremendous tail wind which 1,000's of people have joined. Being extremely humbled natured and unassuming, this lady is a rock star in her own right.

This week, Esther invited me to attend a fabulous NextWomen event organized by Simone Brummelhuis (pictured on left). An avalanche of attendees pounced on Esther as she arrived and sang her high praises thanking her for everything she has contributed to the technology space over the decades - in particular her impact on women in technology.

I would guess that Esther meets at least 20-100 people every day so over 20 years that's a lot of people to remember! Because she has impacted so many of these people when they cross her path it's like meeting a long lost friend. Most of the time Esther has no clue who they are and in a sheepish tone says 'please excuse me but who are you?'.

The first thing that amused me about Esther when we first met on a rainy afternoon in Barcelona back in March 2008 - was that her feet were sore from walking, we were drenched from the spring rain and she gave me approx 25 minutes to inspire her to investing into our company Linqia. With time running thin and no suitable cafe in sight, I whisked her into the foyer of a wanna be 4 star hotel, she placed her backpack to the side of the club lounge and swung her knees over the arms of the chair asking me 'so what are you all about?'. As I shared the purpose and reason why I started Linqia, she took out her camera and started taking photos. It felt awkward but this is how Esther Dyson remembers people and if they have a story to tell she'll anchor it to the photo. Otherwise it's just another face in her flickr stream.

Following the event in London, we again went in search of a place to sit and eat. "I'd prefer to sit somewhere quiet... non of these noisy pubs if we can avoid them". We found a nice Italian restaurant in Covent Gardens. She ordered Tomato soup and I ordered Spinach soup. When both bowls came out she wanted to taste mine and thought it would have been a good idea for the kitchen to mix the two. The green soup drizzled onto her red soup and it kind of looked artistic. These are the little moments you remember when you fondly think about an encounter with someone like Esther. It's not about the hard core business to be done and who can do what for each other. I've come to adore this lady for who she is and can comfortable proclaim that she's the Mother Theresa to entrepreneurs.

Here's my second dream (Linqia's social vision is my first). To enable Esther Dyson to fly to the moon and back.

With the reasonable investment Esther Dyson has entrusted in our company I would like to think that when the moment arrives to return this investment it's enough for a ticket to the moon and back. Esther has just completed a 6 month stint at Star City, Russia now proudly a fully trained cosmonaut. This type of training doesn't come cheap. At US$3 million it's either for the super rich or the hard core enthusiast. For Esther it was the later, driven by her desire to conquer her own reaction to the Russian system and survive it. She likened it to climbing Mount Everst. It was one of the proudest moments in her life to become a certified Cosmonaut.

I asked her - "so when do you fly to the moon?" and she told me it wasn't so simple. She'd need US$40 million to do so. My eyes opened widely and my response "We better speed things up with Linqia then".

Roundtable with 5 UK Social Networks: Monetization, Content & Engagement

2009-06-05T17:29:00.006+02:00

Every social network - even Facebook - are experiencing the same challenges. The key questions are 1) how do we monetize our membership base 2) how do we increase engagement 3) how do we attract quality content. If you were to prioritize the three you would focus on attracting quality content which would increase engagement and ultimately lead to monetization.

To date, 53 social networking platforms reaching over 42 million members have registered to the Linqia Marketplace. It's not so easy to register to the Marketplace - certainly not a 1 minute process, and we deliberately kept it this way. If we're to help crack this monetization nut and drive value into social networks we need to understand what they need and how to deliver this value to them. We speak to each social networking platform who registers for at least 30 minutes to an hour. But it's quite not the same as exposing these valuable conversations in real life around a table with a handful of people who are have similar stories and challenges to share.

So we decided to make a step in the right direction and start a series of roundtable inviting social networks to gather and openly discuss with each other. This week we were in London. Almost all social networks we approached enthusiastically accepted our invitation.

Katrin Janssen and Clare Rees from Second Life (Linden Labs)
Ze'ev Rozov from Sportingo
David Langer from GroupSpaces
David Courtier-Dutton & Grace Hammond from SliceThePie

Thanks also to Jonathan from VitalFootballUK who I spoke to over the phone and Chris Seth from Piczo & Stardoll for lunch. These guys contributed significantly to the conversation.

Monetization
Social Networks monetize through traditional banner advertising, google adwords, sponsorships, premium membership, premium features, content integrations (music, video, stills & editorial) & virtual goods.

Katrin shared how Second Life generates healthy revenues from selling land and virtual goods - although virtual goods are not where significant profits exist as most of the transaction value is distributed amongst members. Second Life has sold land equivalent to the size of Sweden.

Challenges
CPM rates have dropped significantly - on average to 20-30 cents per 1,000 impressions. Members of social networks generally don't pay attention to advertisements as they are focusing on interacting with other members and building their profiles. Social Networks have shifted their business development attention to attracting high value sponsors and integrating branded campaigns. Big spenders are Disney, Bacardi, Nike, RedBull, Cisco to name a few.

But what about the smaller brands and content producers? Well, the key insight is in the complexity to integrate. Many relationships are handled through expensive account managers where human contact cannot be avoided - the process isn't automated. Whilst times are tough, a Social Network may dedicate resources into an opportunity that's worth €2,000, the larger Social Networks tend to invest into campaigns/ sponsorships worth €50,000+.

And on the other side we have niche Social Networks who are too small for the big brands with the big budgets to pay any attention to them. They miss out on vital funding and potentially compelling content to drive engagement because it's not worth the time for the brands to develop these smaller relationships. The brands want to deal with the bigger Social Networks with millions of members.

Content
We're experiencing a tipping point with 1,000's of developers , brands, agencies and individuals generating compelling content bringing opportunities to monetize directly and indirectly. Whilst content is king - attention rules in the equation. Social Networks are investing heavily into developing their platforms to enable easy, automated content integration as well as establishing relationships with content providers. The types of content which are appealing to various audiences include videos, competitions, games, polls, jobs, offers, virtual goods and music. Product quality content, embed engaging offers or advertising and response rates increase significantly - after all - advertising works where the eye balls stick.

Engagement
Total number of members in a social network mean nothing if the members don't return often or at all. There's probably a good reason why a person has invested the few minutes or more to register to a Social Networking platform - particularily today where there are infinate choices where to hang out on line. In addition to a great usability - user experience is most important and finding ways to entertain and stimulate engagement is a big challenge for social networks. Whilst there's loads of content available, sourcing targeted, appropriate content is difficult. Second Life have attracted a dedicated, passionate group of community gateway leaders who act as a concierge to all new members. The gateways are geographic as well as interest based.

GroupSpaces has a significant upside through building their social networking platform from existing off-line communities who needed an online presence. It's widely known that if you can engage members to meet off-line then the social network is far more valuable.

Conclusions
I was surprised to hear that Social Networks were keen to find ways to cross promote and cross polinate offers. For example, bands on SliceThePie could easily promote their music and events in Second Life.

Looking into the future, syndicating value sources and enabling distribution of user generated content, profiles, friendships, paid content from large and small producers is commonly shared amongst the participants of our roundtable. Social Networks who offer more than a generic social networking experience and focus on their niche - whether it be hosting your second life, being a football enthusiast, a rock band looking for a record deal, a colleague or a teenager developing who they are will continue to thrive.

___________________________

Future roundtables will be held in London at Hub Culture, Barcelona, Madrid & Hamburg. If you are interested in attending please contact us.

Linqia Social Network Marketplace: Release 2

2009-05-21T14:18:00.008+02:00

After speaking with over 30 social networks in the last four weeks, we incorporated feedback and released an improved version of Linqia's Social Network Marketplace. Thanks for your valuable comments and suggestions. We're listening and iterating fast!

What's new?

Homepage
Our visitors wanted to see how many social networks had already registered.

You'll now see:

The number of social networks, reach to members & countries
A scrolling bar of registered social networks
A much better login tool

We're proud to report that during the last 3 weeks 37 Social Networks (e.g. XING, Ecademy, PinkSofa, Twidox, Sportingo) from 28 countries have signed up to the marketplace. In total they are reaching more than 35 million members.

Usability
Further we've improved the usability of the site:

For our commercial partners we've integrated a new filtering system to select relevant Social Networks.
For social networks, all information is captured during their sign-up to ensure we don't miss any important criterias

Coming up

Any visitor will be able to see detailed information of all registered Social Networks
Improved registration process for Social Networks to better select Countries & Categories
Featured Commercial Partners in the Social Network's opportunity inbox
General usability & design

Have your say!
If you have any further feedback or comments you would like to share with us, please reach out. We are eager to develop the marketplace according to your needs.

Bold, Courageous & Outright Fun! How P&G Immersed 200 Executives in a Powerful Social Media Experience

2009-05-15T17:21:00.005+02:00

They called it 'Digital Night' and the gathering happened Tuesday evening at the Proctor & Gamble headquarters in Geneva. Our primary mission was to raise £25,000 for saving babies from Tetanus under the UNICEF initiave by 2pm the following day using any social media channel or tool. The secondary mission was immerse executives into the digital world.

200 executives flew in from all parts of Europe - England, Germany, Spain, Portugal... along with 50 digital and social media experts from MySpace, Google, WPP, LABEL and a host of other companies we're invited to help with the extravaganza.

Absolutely mind blowing! Bold! Courageous! Incredible experience I've encountered to date.

Here's what happened.

I arrived with my colleague John Horniblow from the LABEL team (see John's blog post) - an agency based out of Geneva after being invited by Filippo Catalano from Proctor & Gamble. To be honest - I thought it was a gala ball so I kind of dressed up in a fancy dress and dusted off my makeup to 'blend' into the crowd. To my surprise it was a bunch of curious and enthusiastic people dressed in suits with laptop in hand and mobile phone in the other.

A pre-briefing session attempted to induct us into what we were about to experience over the next three hours. It was a tad confusing - which I believe was intentional - and promised to be fun and educational. The lights went out, a man with a funny hat appeared on stage with a Brazilian accent and held a technical gadget in his hand beaming it into the crowd. I had to chuckle when it didn't work and he managed to bridge to the next presenter without loosing his spirit.

We were seperated into four teams - each themed with a Pampers product. I followed John into the 'New Baby' room and sat at a table in the back. Our leader explained in greater detail what our next steps where, what the screen behind him represented and what tools we could use. He then prompted the room to start brainstorming how we would approach our mission to raise £25,000.

Wow! We are about to create as much buzz as 250 well connected and creative people can achieve in a little over 2 hours. How exciting!

"why don't we reach out to really rich people we all know!" said one participant..." what about convincing high traffic news sites to feature a link to the campaign" and another "what if we optimize existing sites to drive more traffic to the fund raising site" and "what if we reach influencers on Twitter?" and "how about creating a video and uploading it to YouTube?"....we had so many ideas within 8 minutes.

The leader was smart. He threw suggestions back to the room and asked how we should go about executing on our ideas. But first he said "we have to put our money where our mouth is... start by making a donation yourself"

Our strategy entailed each table to work on the following:

The big fish - reaching rich people
The influencers - reaching influencial people via Twitter and Facebook
Content creators - creating blogs, groups, videos and themes
SEO - optimizing existing sites
Media buyers - approaching high traffic websites to feature our links

And so we started.

The lady sitting next to met didn't know what Twitter was and had a Facebook account although wasn't very active boasting 15 friends. I suggested she download the Facebook application for justgiving.org - which was the hosting platform for donations, and invite her friends to participate. She also identified a number of groups relating to the topic of Tetanus and asked the group admins to spread the word.

I ran a little experiment myself. My idea was to use SocialToo to send a message to each of my Twitter followers and inspire them to RT the key message + link. My only challenge was - I didn't bring my laptop and didn't have my password! Rats! So my second idea was to reach out to the most influential people in my Twitter community and send them a message directly. This worked! Big time! 7 out of 10 requests Retweeted my post and many more retweeted their posts representing exposure to over 100,000 people. Thanks to each of you! You're true champions.

Every time something exciting happened, the leader announced it to the team.

"We just scored 100 million page impressions... take a look! we're on the T-mobile and Bilt sites in Germany!"

"Prominent tech blogger @mikebutcher tweets!"

"Salma Hayek just donated £500 pounds!"

"Join the group we just created on Facebook"

"Tweet about the blog we just created"

"Vote on the video we just uploaded to YouTube"

and so on....

Everybody was awe inspired, excited, tapping away at their keyboards, calling friends. One P&G executive received 4 emails from other participants asking him to donate money! One colleague was giving away tickets to the Blue Man Show for the person who donated the most money from his network.

By the end of the evening we had raised £2,650 and collectively with the other teams over £10,000. We created so much buzz appearing on the Twitter Trend Topics.

To sum up the evening, the key takeaways were:

Create a social media event within your company to raise awareness and a real life experience around social media
Incorporate a powerful story or drawcard that gives people a reason to spread the message
Provide some basic guidelines around do's and don'ts so participants don't go completely crazy
Invite experts to participate and help those who have little experience around the tools they could use
Offer real time reporting about the progress of the event, what people are doing that's working & celebrating success

You'll notice that one of my followers responded with a slightly negative comment:

Soph@mariasipka sad world. P&G gets more publicity by not pay 25k by themself, instead they make a social media campaign and let others pay.

My response to Soph:

@Soph It's actually a fascinating initiative to educate P&G execs about giving up control & adopting sound social media practices. Amazing!

This is perfectly OK! Everybody has their own opinion and you'll never have everybody on the same page.

Collaborative Communities at Next09

2009-05-08T12:06:00.005+02:00

Our team attended the Next09 conference in Hamburg this week and rate this event as amongst the best in Europe. With over 1,300 participants, 100+ speakers and moderators and a host of innovative sponsors and partners, the event exceeded our expectations.

We were invited to present to a group of more than 200 people on the topic of 'Collaborative Communities' focusing on the role of an online community within the sales process/ cycle of a company. One of Linqia's key missions is to increase the % of vibrant, active and engaging online communities drawing on the wealth of knowledge and experience our team has accumulated over many years.

Collaborative Communities by Maria Sipka

View more presentations from mariasipka.

Following the presentation, feedback and comments again proved that companies are still in the early days of exploring the possibility of integrating social media and online communities. There's uncertainty around where to start, what type of resources are needed internally and externally, the cost to setup and manage, which technologies to use and how to deal with the level of transparency the web has lead people to expect.

We were thrilled to meet so many wonderful people and companies including Petra Vorsteher from Smaato, Lars Burk from Tesa, Jeff Jarvis author of What Would Google Do, Erik Hauth from Wer-Weiss-Was, Tim Leberecht from Frog Design, Philippe Wyssen from Red Bull AirRace, Jurgen Ahting from Wer Liefert Was, Judith Andresen from Sinnerschrader, Nicole Simon for organzing a sell out Girl Geek Dinner, Thomas Stehle from Gutscheine, Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK and being the first to officially blog about our fund raising success at Linqia, Endru Tedjasukmana from Universal McCann , Henriette Weber from Toothless Tiger, Johannes Haus and Jackson Bond from the XING team, Chris Messina and Florian Wilken from Blog.de.

The Social Network Marketplace Beta is Live

2009-04-10T12:53:00.000+02:00

In addition to securing our second round of finance early April, the Linqia Marketplace has launched in Beta. To date, 28 Social Networks have registered reaching 31,013,411 people globally.

The Linqia Marketplace connects commercial partners to Social Networks. Linqia's Marketplace acts as a supporting business development arm for key decision makers (CEO, Business Development, Key Account) at Social Networks.

Offerings from Commercial Partners could include:

Sponsorship
Content (Videos, Photographs, Editorial)
Merchandise
Market research
Applications
Advertising and much more!

Key decision makers at Social Networks are invited to register for free to the Linqia Marketplace and specify what type of offerings they are interested in receiving. Commercial Partners select relevant Social Networks, create an offer and send their messages to key decision makers via the Marketplace.

Whilst Social Networks are invited to register for free, selected Commercial Partners pay a small fee to send their messages to selected Social Networks - paying only for response. Over the next six months, Linqia will work with qualified Commercial Partners to present their high value opportunities to Social Networks.

Today, there exists over 2,000 Social Networks and Commercial Partners have limited ways of finding, identifying and presenting their offerings to Social Networks. Furthermore, the process of searching, filtering and contacting the key decision maker takes considerable time with low responses. Simultaneously, Social Networks experience challenges in sourcing relevant and high value offerings from Commercial Partners to enable them to increase engagement from their members which inevitably leads to monetization and growth.

If you are a key decision maker at a Social Network register here.

If you are a commercial partner who would like to participate in our pilot, please contact us or register your profile at the Linqia Marketplace.

For general information or inquiries, contact us or visit the Linqia Marketplace.

Linqia Closes €850,000 Financing Round

2009-04-03T12:31:00.004+02:00

Starfish Community Group S.L closed it's second financing round April, 3rd 2009 raising €850,000 from private individuals including prominent business angel Esther Dyson. With an initial seed investment of €500,000 from friends and family in October 2007 the total capital raised is €1,350,000.

Incorporated July, 4th 2007 and based out of Barcelona, Spain, Starfish Community Group S.L has invested heavily into research and development, pioneering services and solutions in the social media arena. It's core product - the Linqia Marketplace was launched early April this year. Additional products the company has developed include The Moderator Community and The Linqia Group Directory.

The company's vision is to facilitate connections and transactions between commercial partners and key decision makers of online social networks, communities and groups, enabling content, advertising, sponsorship, partnership and value based opportunities to reach pockets of highly targeted people.

Today, there exists over 2,000 social networking platforms with 750 million registered people participating in billions of conversations within 80 million+ online communities and groups.

Starfish Community Group S.L. is also proud to announce an exclusive partnership with LABEL - THE brand.intelligence COMPANY offering marketing services in Switzerland. LABEL will represent the Starfish's line of products and services in the French speaking markets: Switzerland, Belgium, Luxemburg and France.

For further information and inquiries please contact us.

The first 50 days at The Moderator Community

2009-03-12T15:02:00.014+01:00

It's been 50 days since we launched The Moderator Community and applying our extensive expertise in community building to our own community has had it's ups and downs. It's been a bumpy ride navigating around the infinite Drupal modules, uploading 100's of resources, structuring the various offerings and speaking for hours with our patient and brave early testers. As any technology company would say - 'launch the thing!' and iterate along the way.

So we feel it’s time to share with you what's happened over the last 50 days and offer a preview of what's in it for you...

Resources
Imagine spending hours, days and months searching for everything to do with online communities. Well that's what our community manager Edwina Dendler did along with the help of our members gathered more than 700 resources related to the online community sector. The top category is community management with 203 articles listed. There are loads of interesting articles which help you grow your knowledge around online communities and social media.

My all time favourite which took my learning to a whole new level is the new Nielsen Study: “Global Faces and Networked Places: A Nielsen report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint”. Also "25 Innovative Ways Companies Are Using Twitter (That You May Not Have Heard Of Yet)" has been a great post - especially these days as social media insiders are starting to hype the micro blogging service Twitter as the new Google. So there’s no way around it anymore ;-)

On Twitter
Hot off the press! If you are one for keeping a watchful eye on the latest and greatest you can find The Moderator Community on Twitter! We'd be honored to have you follow us @themodcom to receive our daily updates and off course we'll follow you back.

Special event discounts for our members
Our aim is to bring to you a listing of all online community related events globally and as a special treat we've negotiated special offers and discounts for members of The Moderator Community to the following 3 events taking place this spring:

* Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco (31st March - 3rd April): Receive a 20% discount! (contact us for the discount code)
* The Next Web in Amsterdam (15th - 16th April): Receive a €150 discount!
* Next 09 in Hamburg (5th - 6th May): Receive a 20% discount in every ticket category!

Check our Events section for details on these events and more taking place throughout the year. Our aim is provide as much value as we can for our members, so this is our first offering which we can pass on to you. We are working hard on more offerings for you guys, so stay tuned ;-)

Special interest group: Women Who Lead
Last but not least, as we have expertise in women lead online communities we’ve created a special interest group Women Who Lead for managers of communities and groups geared towards women. We offer a place tailored to the specific needs, questions and challenges community managers of women’s groups are facing. Of course we do our best to help and support you!

We're bursting with ideas on how to take the community to the next level and there will be many new exciting features coming up. So stay tuned for our next update in 50 days!

Data Portability for Conversations

2009-01-21T00:49:00.001+01:00

This past year at Linqia, we have been going deep into the conversations of the web. We have been collecting public conversations from discussion forums and communities such as Facebook Groups and looking across these islands of conversation data for insights. You'll hear more about that area of our work in the months to come.

Back in 2007 I was a founding member of the Data Portability initiative. This is the idea that our data - our contacts, our pictures, our videos, our blog posts, our lifestreams, etc - should not be locked into a single platform. Flickr, for example, is just one application for managing and sharing my photographs. I should be able to open my Flickr photographs in other applications and not be locked into a single site. Data Portability continues to evangelise this principle.

While we were looking at our conversation data we noticed something interesting about Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups are closed. It is not possible to get an RSS feed of new messages to be flowed into a viewing application of choice. So you can't view your Facebook Groups in Google Reader, or Outlook, or FriendFeed. Instead you must go to the Facebook site and explicitly look at them. We could see in our data that Facebook Groups often begin life with an explosion of engagement from their members but then withered before the spammers moved in.

We wanted our Facebook conversation data to be portable. So we created a little app called Group Feed that allowed us to bring in our Facebook Groups to a common place, slice it in different ways using tagging and then consume it via RSS in our application of choice.

So now I can:

Get a single stream of all my latest Facebook Messages from public groups in RSS format, see new messages in Google Reader and click back into the group to engage when I see something interesting. No more withering groups for me.
Tag all my startup groups and feed them into a 'startup' label I have in Google Reader.

We are sharing it for your interest. Give it a try and please let us know what you think.

All the data comes from our conversation data store and is accessed via an API that we will be making available to you in the months to come. If you think you can make something awesome with conversation data like this, we can give you something to play with so please drop us a line.

The inauguration of Linqia

2009-01-20T10:30:00.001+01:00

It's no coincidence Linqia incorporated on July 4th 2007 and officially launches its beta site January 20th 2009 - the historical day where the world celebrates the inauguration of the 44th President Barack Obama.

Politics aside. The Linqia site is live!

You'll now be able to access Group Feed where you can track the activity of your Facebook public groups (we'll be adding more platforms as we go along), The Moderator Community - a gateway for community managers, moderators, leaders and enthusiasts jam packed with 100's of resources, groups and jobs, and Linqia Labs for developers to access the deep data we mine, organize and make available to build powerful new tools that to date are not possible.

Last year we launched a search engine indexing 1,000's of communities and groups mainly from XING, ecademy, LiveJournal, SixGroups, Viadeo, Meetup, Raising Them and more. Many people signed up as members and added their groups to the index. You can still access the Linqia Group Directory and find interesting online groups to visit where people gather around a special interest topic.

It's still early days where we've only scratched the surface of what we want to achieve with Linqia. There are billions of conversations hidden deep in the web. Today there are over 2,000 community platforms, 40 million groups and 250 million people who frequent these places. Our mission is to share as much value with the data we uncover and the relationships we form with people, businesses and developers.

Come join us on our journey and drop us an email if you'd like to share your thoughts, comments or questions.

Managing your community successfully - Insights from Tribalization Study of Business

2008-08-24T12:10:00.001+02:00

How can you create a successful community? How do you approach people to become active members of your community? How do you make sure you enter into a dialogue with your members? Thousands of community owners, marketers or consultants are trying to find answers to these questions.

There are no simple answers. There are very few studies and analyses related to this topic. An interesting one is "The 2008 Tribalization of Business", a survey which has been conducted by Deloitte, Beeline Labs, and the Society for New Communications Research. They measured responses of more than 140 organizations, B2B, B2C, and non-profits which have created and manage online communities.

So, what is the greatest value of online communities?
The greatest value of online communities is increasing word of mouth (35%), increasing brand awareness (28%), bringing new ideas into the organization faster (24%) and increasing customer loyalty (24%).

The study showed that the greatest obstacles to making community work are not technology-related or getting funding, but getting people involved in the community (51%), finding enough time to manage the community (45%), and attracting people to the community (34%).

What I liked to read was that the main motivation drivers in a community are: people giving and getting help. The main drivers to community effectiveness according to the study are:

Ability for community members to connect with other like-minded people: 54%
Ability for members to help others: 43%
The community is focused around a hot topic or issue: 41%
Quality of the community manager/community management team: 33%

Further, they share their eight emerging best practices to consider then setting up a community:

1. Start with the end in mind: Be aware of your business strategy and your purpose.

2. Focus on the value to the members: Make sure you are really serving their needs and know what motivates your members.

3. Don’t start with the technology: “Too often people get drunk with Web 2.0 tool excitement and then try to push their business and customer goals into the wrong tool.”

4. Keep it simple and intuitive: Make it easy to navigate.

5. Keep it fresh and active: Constantly add content and create excitement in your community.

6. Have dynamic community leaders: Make sure you have some leaders in the community. Avoid to control the community.

7. Think through who to involve – or not: Ensure commitment from top management and help from other sides but keep them out of active management.

8. Get a passionate core of participants active before launching: Make sure you have a critical mass of passionate users before you launch.

You find more details on the study here.

Linqia Stars running with the Bulls!

2008-07-20T18:18:00.010+02:00

A remarkable weekend in Pamplona celebrating San Fermines ..

The Linqia Team took off exploring famous Spanish traditions - we went on a 2 day adventure to Pamplona on the occasion of the Festival San Fermines.

It's a deeply-rooted celebration held annually from noon 6 July, when the opening of the fiesta is marked by setting off the chupinazo to midnight 14 July. Its most famous event is the encierro, the running with the bulls. Throughout the whole week you see special street shows of dancers and street entertainers, such as carnival giants and the week-long celebration involves many other traditional and folcloric events. During this week, every person is dressed in traditional clothes in the colours of red and white!

The outcome for the Linqia team was:
Our clothes were NO LONGER white - sparkled with obligatory red wine!
After celebrating the whole night, we had two team members run at 8 a.m. : our Aussie Jay (he made it for 30 seconds) and our Belgian Star Greg who could not get enough of it and ran straight into the arena with his bull friends. So glad you both came back safe!!

Linqia Star at the top of Europe

2008-07-13T19:14:00.000+02:00

The team has been using the metaphor of mountain climbing to track the progress towards our quarterly goals at Linqia. This gave me the idea to take it a step further and to attempt the ascension of Mont Blanc whose 4,808m summit makes it the highest mountain of Europe.

I took the opportunity of a long weekend in June to leave the office and to head up north with David and Octavi, two friends from the Club Excursionista de Gracia. Taking into consideration the unusual quantity of snow at that time of the year and the associated risks of avalanches, we decided to go for one of the classic routes of Mont Blanc called The Voie des Cristalliers.

We arrived in Chamonix on Saturday morning (21/06) where we had breakfast (yummy French croissant are so good) followed by a short session of shopping (boots, gloves and climbing gear). We then drove to Les Houches, a ski resort located at 6km from Chamonix, where we left the car and started the ascent towards the Nid d'Aigle. After 4 hours of walking, we arrived at the Refuge de Tête Rousse (3,167m) where we spent the night. I keep wonderful memories of the landscape at sun set.

On Sunday morning (22/06), we left the refuge around 8:00AM as the snow was still hard and this facilitated the ascent towards the next shelter called Le Refuge du Goûter (3,817m). That section was the most difficult (and fun) part of the route with a mix of snow and rock climbing. I would have loved going down and going up again. During the afternoon, we practised crevasse rescue in a safe place above the refuge. One of use would simulate a fall on icy slope while the other two would rescue him. On Sunday night, we went to bed at around 8:00PM as we would have to wake up at 2:00AM the following morning. We did not sleep very well due to the altitude and of the promiscuity in the dormitory.

On Monday (23/06), we were out of bed at 2:00AM sharp, ready for a quick breakfast and eager to reach the top of Europe. There were about 75 people in refuge and everybody was busy to get equipped with the usual gear including harness, crampons and ice axes.

We got out of the refuge at 2:40AM and started the walk following the headlamps of people who had left shortly before us. I was so excited to walk at night in such a peaceful environment. I could not see the surrounding mountains but I could feel their energy and I had a lot of respect for their majesty. We reached the Dôme du Goûter (4,304m) within 1.5 hour and headed towards the Vallot cabin before attacking L'arrête des Bosses, the ridge that leads to the summit. The wind was blowing a lot while we were exposed on the ridge.

We eventually reached the top of Mont Blanc at 7:10AM. I felt very happy to get to the top with David and Octavi. We walked at the same rhythm supporting each other during the whole ascension. We stayed on the summit during 15 minutes, enough time to contemplate the scenery towards Italy, Switzerland and France and to take a few pictures.

Unfortunately, it was time to go down. I would have loved staying there a bit longer but we were getting cold and there was a long way back to sea level.

The ascension of Mont Blanc means a lot to me. I wanted to do for a long time, actually since I saw it for the first time in 2000, and I am proud to have done without a guide and with my Catalan friends. In addition, this personal achievement was a great opportunity to live the Linqia values such as Passionate, Team Player, Fun and Healthy outside the work environment.

Advertising in Social Networks

2008-07-11T19:20:00.000+02:00

It's well known that Social Networking Activity is growing enormously worldwide.

An interesting study provided by Datamonitor predicts within the next four years there will be 107 millions members of Social Networks in Europe - compared to a current total of 41,7 mio Europeans.

The European Ranking is:
No 1: UK is the leader with 6 million users growing up to 27,1 mio in 2012.
No 2: France follows with current 8,9 mio users increasing up to 21,3 mio in 2012.
No 3: Germany currently has 8,6 mio users growing up to 21,7 mio of users in 2012.
No 4: Spain has 2,9 Social Network users and is very likely to reach 7,3 mio within the next four years.

This enormous growth introduces significant opportunities for today's marketers assuming that they have the right strategies in place. Marketers who would like to be successful need to know which kinds of advertising formats are effective within Social Networks.

The survey Community Effects 2008 has verified that sponsored music, viral videos and games are most accepted by community members. "A particularly promising strategy is a combination of decently communicated advertising messages, a high fun factor and the possibility to communicate indirectly with other users."

More than every second questioned participant evaluates music-clips (59%) and video-campaigns (51%) as a throughout positive advertising medium. On the contrary, most community users reject classic contests (30 %) and implored Flash-Layers (31 %).

Linqia's Chief Happiness Officer

2008-07-08T12:36:00.000+02:00

Hi! I'm a new Linqia team star. My name is Ana Carolina and I am from Patagonia, Argentina. It´s been already two months since I became the “Chief Happiness Officer” at Linqia.

The best surprise in joining this team was to realize how everyone lives the company's culture & values. We organize ourselves to live each value every day. This is shown during our daily morning huddle of 10 minutes, where each Linqia Star provides a brief overview to the team about his or hers “what’s up”, “metrics for the day” and “stucks”.

Every Friday we have an extended team meeting adding our highlights of the week and talking deeper about operations and projects such as our values. I find this meeting very special since each one of us has the opportunity to share his or her personal and/or professional highlights with the rest of the team.

Moreover we enrich each other with special contributions from different team members e.g. an inspirational message in form of a video clip. Last week JC, our Interim COO, has inspired me deeply by showing us this video:

Last but not least, I love the weekly team meetings because Maria (Linqia's CEO) brings delicious croissants for everyone!

Linqia is giving me the discipline to organize my daily tasks in order to be more efficient and to better structure my day. The question is: “It's not about being busy. What are you busy about?”

Also, more and more understanding the way in which Linqia highlights the potential of online communities & groups, encourages myself to be the moderator of my own group. It´s called Eco Snowboarding. I believe that loving the mountains demands participation in the struggle to prevent that global warming melts our snow.

It´s a pleasure to work with such a wonderful professional team.

Thanks Linqia!

Ana Carolina Vicente

Founding CTO of Kazaa Phil Morle joins Linqia

2008-07-07T23:53:00.000+02:00

How does a young start-up based out of Barcelona attract a world class CTO such as Phil Morle?

Synchronicity. Diligently reading blog articles circulated by mavens. Digging deeper.

Late last year an email highlighting the work of social networking expert Ross Dawson landed in my inbox. What aroused my curiosity and immediately prompted me to schedule a meeting in Sydney over Christmas was Ros's Web 2.0 framework. During this meeting Ross recommended I meet with Mick Liubinskas who was working at Tangler. We were keen to feature Tangler's groups at Linqia and over a coffee in Pyrmont we shared our passions to leverage social networks to connect to developing countries. Mick promised to follow-up with interim CTO of Tangler Phil Morle to see how he could squeeze Linqia into their tight development schedule. Three months later Phil was in Barcelona for a one week technology assignment which eventually lead him to joining our team as acting CTO.

With the Linqia team, Phil will take on big challenges as well as an equally big opportunities. He will be working with our engineering team based out of Barcelona, Pisa (Italy) and London juggling an Australian/ European time zone.

Phil describes himself as a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) with experience running massive scale consumer internet businesses. He was the founding CTO at Kazaa where he was part of developing a technology strategy which saw 5 million users online at any one time, millions of downloads per day and a total global user base of over 100 million, all this powered by innovative technology, a globally distributed team and a sprinkling of imagination.