What I have learned from StockTwits

My previous post has briefly mention how StockTwits is pioneering a powerful new community model. There are actually more learning points to that. I want to share what I have observed from using the service and looking at its growth and strategies. StockTwits is pioneering something important and we can all learn from it.

Leveraging on abundance of content but scarcity in wisdom
Stocktwits has very smartly avoided being another platform for content production. We have already too much of that. What we need and what StockTwits has provided is wisdom. They have used a very elegant tagging system to intelligently filter content from Twitter.

Letting business model 'happen'
The blogging platform it has created lets the talent have a stage to do their thing. (Note: this platform is different from other content producing platforms because of the quality of the bloggers). Where the money will come from is not too certain. They may come from subscriptions, advertisements, sponsorships or some new models etc. That is not important. The critical thing here is to let things happen. Let the people at the edge create the models. Key question is how to bring the edge back to the core?
More efficient model for talent identification
What StockTwits is doing in terms of identifying and promoting talent is not new. Publishers and music labels have been doing that for a while i.e. signing up artists. What is revolutionary is the low cost and bottoms up model they have deployed. This has effectively stripped out the inefficiencies as well as the risk of talent spotting.


I really liked how the StockTwits model works. I think it has potentially to be used in many other verticals, of which healthcare is one possibility. I am sure there are other things we can learn. Why not share them in the comments?

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Why I used Twitter for market research on startups

As part of my job, I typically conduct market research on the Web to find out more about the markets that applicants of our startup fund are developing in. My routine would be something like this:

-Start with some random Google searches to have an overview of the market as well as to find out the key players
-Look at research reports (if available) that highlights the potential of the addressable markets
-Go to Compete or Alexa to see how the key players are doing in terms of traffic
-Search in crunchbase or other startup sites to see if similar services are available

All these are well and good but I feel that these information are not direct. There is a disconnect between what I have searched and the real pain points in the market. Where are the voices of users? Where are the people who are suffering the pain of current services?

I then decided to try Twitter because they host the most powerful conversation graph. This is what I did, using the specific case of a startup who is proposing a TopSpinMedia for ebook authors:

-Use Twitter search to identify authors or publishers
-Follow 5-10 of them to assess their thoughts about the market and the difficulties they are encountering
- Click on the articles they are linking. These are typically very relevant to the markets you are trying to research on

After 2 weeks, you can a real sense of what are the pain points in the market. The people you follow will articulate the problems they encounter and the issues that pop up for their businesses. More importantly, you can also read about their proposed solutions or their attempts to overcome these problems. All these information are very useful and are not available in any other services.

I really like this new approach and has been trying it for the past few weeks. Give it a shot if you are a startup and an investor. Your perspective of the market and its pain points will most likely be changed by it.

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Who wants to create a MyTopLinks with me?

Dave Winer has quietly created a very powerful service called TopLinks. It is a service that enables individual author to submit links, which are then voted by the community to determine how they rank. The author is the only one who can do the submissions, hence controlling the quality of the news.

I think this is a very elegant model. In effect, it has the curation ability of an editor while being able to tap on the wisdom of crowds. The resulting page is a personalised Techmeme, one which can be shaped by any author.

Toplinks is a solution for the Twitter attention problems that we are experiencing. It has effectively transform information flows into attention markets. That is a really powerful value proposition.

I really love this concept and has some ideas on taking it to the next level. So, I am asking if there is any developer out there who want to try this project with me. I am willing to put in some seed money to kick start this. I think this will be fun. Contact me if you are keen :)

Related readings:
My new news page (Dave Winer)
Links of Twitter, day 3 (Dave Winer)
Progress in the 40-twits app (Dave Winer)

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15 Twitter startups ideas from the Web

Micro blogging is becoming a land of opportunities. If you like to read what I have already blogged about it, here are the relevant posts.

i) Startup Idea #109: 6 Twitter ideas
ii) How do we create better conversations?
iii)Twitter is cooler when it becomes mainstream
iv)Twitter as social VRM: a big idea

Beyond this, there are tons of interesting ideas from the Web. Here is a list of what I have found to be the most relevant. Most of them are related to Twitter but can be applied to micro blogging in general. Note that those with * denotes my favorites.

1a. TweetSense
John Battelle's idea on force fitting Google's adsense model into Twitter. Will it work? Probably in the short term but as its costs overwhelms the benefits, we will more likely see marketing as described in (1b) below:

Marketers can play, both on Twitter (imagine a cars.twitter.com, with auto advertisers on the right rail and at the top, perhaps using contextual TweetSense - yes, it's owned, by...), and off (think about a feed of contextual Tweets and TweetSense next to conversational sites like Digg and, well, millions of others, as well as sites created simply from Twitter feeds on popular hashes...)

1b. Twitter as next generation marketing platform (hat tip to Ethan Bauley)*
Twitter has the potential to enable brands to build real value for users. The opportunity is to layer additional value services on top of its communication protocol. Brands need the publishing tools necessary to better target and more richly cultivate a conversation with their audience via this viral, decentralized and spam-free messaging/marketing channel.

2 A wordpress for micro blogging*
Group size matters a lot in social media. If we gain the ability to change group sizes in micro blogging, we can potentially see more kinds of social innovations. What happens when millions of micro blogs/comunities can be installed easily in anywhere?

Bonus: what would happen if a billion micro blogs is being applied in mobile? Will it change the way we communicate?

3. Products that Twits
Then there's the thought of our products telling us when they need things; cars needing servicing is something we have already, refrigerators needing replenishing is something that's often talked about.

4. Data driven ideas powered by Twitter
I could see models around Twitter news, traffic, weather, product information, dating (why hasn't that one been done yet??), politics... How about using twitter to actually power my newsreader, or go back the other way and use my RSS feeds to power Twitter user recommendations based on people who are tweeting the articles I read?

5. Mirco exchange for Twitter
Think of a situation where you want to exchange something of micro-value - but it’s just too inconvenient or socially awkward to actually do anything about it.

6. Tool for publishing financial research*
A good opportunity for somebody to build a lightweight blogging platform for analysts to democratize the financial research business. Twitter will be the default tool for publishing and community building.

Many if not most top sell-side research analysts will leave to set up their own shops, and leverage lightweight, flexible technologies for publishing and disseminating their research.

7. Dating service for Twitter
Basically, it’s just a big database that collects information on people that want to use @TwitterDating and then matches up people based on their supplied personal information and a magical contextual analysis of people’s last 1-2 pages of tweets to create potential matches.

8. Twitter for business connections
I think it is more potent for business connections, interest groups and flash invites to targeted events (tied to a mobile LBS). All of this, of course, is based upon the availability of real working software that delivers accurate text analysis.

9. Building better services on Twitter to assess social capital*
Enabling connections to build up one's social capital is going to be a very important business enabler for the 21st century. Twitter is primarily a publishing platform. You can extend your social capital on it but it takes effort. Some smart entrepreneurs can build easier to use services for us to amplify our social capital.

The more techniques we can design to make accessible social capital the better off we’ll all be.... Twitter are great platforms for this kind of work, but I’d like to see someone build something on top of those services to make connections even easier to make.

10. Better conversation filters for Twitter
Related to (9) is our inability to organise conversations. In real life, our conversations are rich, multi-dimensionally and integrate entertainment, facts, opinions, news etc into a coherent whole. All these are lost in the way our conversation tools have been built. This is the opportunity to develop something that better organises our conversations.

There is, however a natural part of our humanness that wants to discern who is talking to whom and what they’re saying. It’s a big part of what Social Media is all about but we’ve lost our way in a world of widgets, wikkis and web-apps.The apps today just aren’t able to filter and sort conversations yet.

11. Twitter as favor bank*
This is one of the few attempts I have seen of creating business models around attention markets. Twitter is such a market and this is an innovative attempt.

Every minute or so, there are several Twitter users asking their followers to “Please RT” a link they tweetted about, whether it is to promote an event, an widget, some marketing offer, or to find someone.This favor might be worth a lot, considering that many Twitter users have 1000s or 10,000s of followers. One way that Twitter users could earn something would be through a favor bank, or in this case a Retweet bank or Tweetbank for short.

12. Translation tool for Twitter*
We often forget that language is one of the biggest barrier to a global conversation. If diversity is key to creativity and innovation, then the ability to hear different voices is going to be a killer.

Someone should make a twitter app that translates your updates to other languages... so you can follow people who speak a different language.

13. Local search
Imagine using Outside.In mechanism for organising local information and applying to Twitter.

Almost everything on Twitter is inherently local. The simple question “What are you doing?” implies that because, unless you are at home watching TV, you are doing something that is local, whether that is local to you or to someone else.

14. Twitter as a time bank
The goal of the Twitter Time Bank is to allow people to bring the reality to the idea that “time is money”, and allow anyone to issue their own time-based money they can use to pay others for products/services or to donate to others.

15. Opening up miro blogging to designers*
This is beyond making a pretty site. Opening up the design elements in micro blogging gives creative people the ability to shape different forms of communities. That is necessary if we want to see a blossom of diversity in micro blogging.

Breaking the rendering into as many componenets as necessary to give designers over the appearance of a site... it is time to open it up so that all the creative people can have a go at it.

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5 startups experiments I like to try

I have been blogging for quite a while now. While many of the posts are ramblings off my head (thank you readers for willing to listen to these rants), I want to collapse some of them in this post into 5 startups ideas. Things that 1-2 developers can quickly code and experiment. These are stuff I wish I can do now. Unfortunately, I don't have the necessary time and resources. If you are somehow inspired by this post to do something, feel free to include me as a free advisor :)

1. Social payment for ecommerce
This idea came from a golden statement from betaworks:
there is a fundamental difference between “micropayments” (iTunes, I suppose) and social payments that are centered around a gesture, a social gesture, as a means of both giving money and openly stating a preference, and in that difference may lie new business models.

If I am a startup, I would use TipJoy's API to create a service for online stores to allow their customers to purchase their goods via Twitter. I will offer discounts to encourage such payments as that would mean the purchase can be broadcasted to the user's followers. I will allow users the option of making that broadcast.

2. Twitter VRM
I am very bullish on the concept of Twitter as a social VRM. What I would try is to create a command line such as #tVRM for users who want to receive offers from vendors when they twit about something they are looking for. The service would host the twit and the corresponding offers on another platform such that they will not 'pollute' the flow of normal Twitter conversations. Finally, I would like to link to something like Twellow such that vendors can be alerted to the tweets that are marked with #tVRM. (Example of Twitter as social VRM)

3. Firefox plug-in to provide real time analytics for your links
We are used to analytics for sites but when information is more like flow than destination, data for the bits and pieces is more important than for the whole. Bit.ly has shown us just how valuable real time analytic is for individual links. What I like to experiment is to make this service available at the point of your linking, not only at particular sites like Bit.ly.

I want to build a Firefox plug-in that provides you with analytics of what you have linked, in whatever destinations the linking occurs. It can be at your blog, at third party commenting systems, at Facebook etc. It doesn't really matter. Through the browser, you can track your links in real time. That is when the true flows of links can be revealed.

4. Conversation tags for web wide discussions
I always feel that the twitter conversation tags such as @, rt et al are very useful tools to organise our conversations. However, why do I have to go to Twitter or any other places to use them? Why can't I add a similar tag to my blog title when I want to address to someone in specific. Similarly, why can't I retweet a comment that I found useful by simply adding a tag. Why must sharing be so tightly integrated into a service?

Through the browser, I hope an application independent conversation tag system can be developed. A system that allows the sender to tag anything thing from the web and share it. A system that allows the receiver to choose which service he wants the content from the conversation tags to appear in.

5. Web to Mobile distribution
Increasing, people want to move their content across Web and mobile. They want it in the context that makes sense to them. For me, I want a distributed service that lets me (i) bookmark articles from the Web that I want to read on the mobile, (ii) converts the article to a format that is easy to read, and (iii) allows me to easily interact with the articles (i.e. commenting, rating etc) via some interface innovation.

I want to build this service in a way that is separated and relies on current applications the user might be using. For example, if a user is on Delicious, I want him to continue to stay on it rather than forcing him to switch services. What I want to build is just the lines that joined the three components that I mentioned above.

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Twitter as social VRM: a big idea

I love this idea of Twitter as a social VRM. For those uninitiated, VRM stands for vendor relationship management and is the converse of CRM. It is a powerful way of business engagement that levels the playing field for the customer. Check out the links if you want to find out more.

To prove that this is viable, I did a simple experiment on Twitter Search using the phase: I am looking for. The results are pretty interesting. This simple search alone has revealed the intentions of many people that ranges from dating, to products, to jobs etc. The opportunity then is to build tools that allow vendors to respond and for the user to control these responses.

This is a great opportunity and I want to spend more time thinking about it. What are your thoughts?

Related articles by Zemanta

• After the advertising bubble bursts (blogs.law.harvard.edu)

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How do we create better conversations?

My last post on local startups not leveraging on R&D generate zero comments on this blog. However, over at my facebook profile, lots of people commented on that post, or more specifically, the title of that post. That incident alone generated a few pondering thoughts that I wanted to share here.

The first thought I have was about the portability of conversations. Despite the fact that the comments on my Facebook might be relevant to this blog, there is no way (that I know of) to carry that conversation over here. This reminds me of the discussions on the portability of the social graph a few months back, which is resolved with Friends Connect. I think the same thing needs to happen but this time on our conversation graph.

























Secondly, I was using Twitter like tags to address my comments to different people. This again brings me back to the same point that we need such tags across all services that have a communication component. It will make targeted conversation more convenient and reduce attention costs for the rest of the people for which the comment is irrelevant. Such costs are not trivial. I am beginning to see some smart people talking about the conversation attention costs and what can be done to reduce it.

Finally, beyond sharing conversations, the more important point is how do I then turn the conversation to action? My post has brought me my readers' attention. How then do I turn attention to collective action? That step, to me is a big glaring gap. (VenTwits is a good start)

Conversations and the conversation graph is becomming more important. I think it is worth to spend more time thinking about where this is going.

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Twitter is cooler when it becomes mainstream

Alan Patrick wrote an interesting post that touches on whether Twitter is still 'cool', given that it seems to gaining mass adoption. Personally, I think the opposite. I feel that technology can only be cool once it becomes transparent and merges into our daily lives. This is when we can start to do interesting and useful things.

StockTwits, TweetDeck etc are only the beginning. They are early hints on what is possible when we move to real time, human to human conversations. In fact, we will see much more powerful changes as the web becomes more real time.

How will things change when we get real time feedback about our work? What would happen when companies can tap into conversations anytime to discuss about their product designs, the pain points of their customers, the way that things should be done? Will education be enhanced with real time conversations between students and their peers on the topic of their interest? Can we change how we are organised based on real time communications?

As I said, Twitter become interesting when it is mainstream. Only then can we have a platform to truly explore how things can be better with real time conversations.

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5 ideas for mobile ebook applications

With the rising popularity of the ebook readers on mobile, I think the ebook market might finally be taking off. If you are interested to do something in this area, I have listed some ideas for your you to consider.


A marketplace to create and sell non-text based ebooks: Japan has shown that novels which are written on and intended for mobile is a viable market. With the new touch interfaces, it is now possible to create a non text based authoring system on mobile for users to create image intensive books such as children's books, picture magazines, calenders et al. Attach the authoring system to a marketplace and you can create a Wattpad equivalent for non text based ebooks.

Mobile advertising in ebooks: Advertising on the mobile can be personal, engaging and useful if done correctly. Blyk has shown how successful mobile advertising can be with its user co-created advertising (pls read the 7th mass media for a detailed case study). Creating this form of advertising infrastructure for mobile ebook creators can lead to a thriving ecosystem that benefits content creators, advertisers and consumers. Imagine reading a emagazine on cars, and getting engaging car advertisements that is based on your preference of brands, car models and prices. Best of all, the reader can click the ad directly and booked a test-drive if he/she is interested.


A social ebook reader application: Seth Godin has pointed out how Kindle can be made more social. The opportunity here is to create an ebook reader application, rather than a physical reader, that reflects what he has stated.

--Let me see the best parts of the book as highlighted by thousands of other readers.
--Let me see notes in the margin as voted up, Digg-style, by thousands of other readers.
--Let me interact with hyperlinks and smart connections not just within the book but across books

In addition, the application should offer integration with the user's blogging platforms (wordless, blogger, twitter, tumblr et al) such that any highlighted text can be rebloged as a post or tweet. Fred Wilson has also echoed similar sentiments:

Its becoming more natural for readers to want to interact with the content they are reading. Computers have allowed this to happen and mobile devices need to support it. Its not just commenting, its tagging, sharing, reblogging, and a host of other interactions that make consuming content online a better experience than offline consumption.

It's gotten to the point that if I can't interact with content, I don't want to consume it. When I read books, I underline certain passages so I can blog about them later. If I were reading on a connected device, I'd simply reblog on tumblr and be done. I don't think I'm unusual in this regard but I do think I'm in the leading edge of behavior and that more and more people will feel this way.

Ebook readers with built in content for verticals: There are thousands of free ebooks on the web. You can built a ebook reader application that has already aggregates and organises free ebooks in vertical sectors such as travel, cars, gadgets, economics, science friction et al. In addition, ensure that each vertical has the relevant contextual services to enhance the book reading experiences. Some examples:

• For tourism related ebooks, link to applications like hotel finder, travel search engines etal. This will create potential affiliate revenue for the authors

• For cooking guides, link to online groceries services for users can purchase ingredients.

• For fanfiction, mangas, comics and celebrities' biography, link to wallpapers, ringtones, videos, merchandise et al where users can click to buy these items;

• For novels like science friction, integrate your reader with a related online community so that whatever the user has read, rated, commented, reviewed can be shared with the community, i.e. user generated context.

• For investment books, a CNN News ticker (scrolling news headlines on the bottom of the 24 hour cable TV news on screen) like mobile service where relevant stocks or investments that is related to the ebook's investment themes can be scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Users of course have the option to turn the service off if it is too much distraction. This can be a Zemanta type of play where authors have to first insert a script into their ebooks.

A playlist.com equivalent for reading list: Reading list to books is what playlist is to music. It is a powerful way to create and share context for books. What is needed is a way to share reading lists from ebook readers, both within the same application and across different readers. Such an service is more powerful on mobile because of its built-in payment channel. Readers can now look at the reading list from friends, and buy any title that they like immediately. It is magic!

Be a topspinmedia equivalent for authors for ebooks: Create applications that help authors better connect with their fans. These applications should be easily integrated into ebooks such that their services are embedded, rather than requiring readers to download another application. How are a few examples

• Mobile is, first and foremost, a communication device. Leverage that to create real engagement between reader and authors through real conversations enabled by the phone. The idea is to create Twitter widget that any ebook author can embed with their ebooks. Using this widget, readers can converse with authors in a Twitter like manner. Authors can also use this channel to send relevant links, short stories or blog posts and even answer questions from their readers;

• A book tour mobile mapping service that alerts the reader if any of their favourite authors are visiting their nearby locations;

• A mobile meetup application for fans to organise meetup sessions either between themselves or between fans and authors.

• A DIY ecommerce mobile site for authors to publish and market their ebooks. Imagine mobisiteglore but with a focus on authors.

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Startup Idea #109: 6 Twitter ideas

Happy thanks giving and here are some ideas for a lazy post-Christmas morning. They are all based on the concept that Twitter has become a growing platform. We need context to make sense of all the talking that is going on. This, I believe, will spawn many niche opportunities that a startup can pursue.

Some of these are trivial and some may seem totally unrealistic, but hey, it is post Christmas right?

• Sports Talk: A stock twits equivalent for sports. Let users tag their tweets with the club name. MANU for manchester united, LIV for liverpool et al. Create a chart to show the level of support from the strength of the conversations. You might even allow users to place small wagers via tipjoy....

• A Weebly for creating Twitter-based community sites: This idea came from a Techcrunch post mentioning why Twitter needs a group function. The example used was Twitter mums. What if you made it easy for non-technical people to create their own Twitter mums equivalent? A site/group builder that integrates into Twitter and offers all the community features such as blogging, forum et al.

• Twitter for education: Edmodo is leading the charge here. How other things can we do? How do we turn the phone into a mobile learning tool via Twitter?

• Twitter as an invitation tool: Most the invite systems are too time consuming. Twitter can be a light weight invite tool for simple events like lunches, small gathering et al. Just type in the place, time and a brief description of the event, and send. People can used rsvp via the reply function and the software will keep track of who is going.

• Platform for mobile novels: I post about the emergence of Twiller a while ago (see post here). Coupled this with the successful model of Japan's cellphone novel and it is not hard to see Twitter becoming a platform for a new wave of book writers. What we need is a few simple functions added to Twitter's API such as payment, search and fiter (to find these books) et al to make Twitter into a publishing platform for cellphone novels.

• A Twitter version of Flirtomatic: Flirtomatic is a successful mobile dating site that focuses on light weight virtual gifts that make flirting a fun activity. Can we add the virtual gift component to Twitter, plus some dating mechansims, to make Twiter into a dating service with virtual gifts as the revenue model?

That is from me. Have a great thanks giving!

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Idea generation #49: Yammer, flood of camera date

Flood of camera data: The below para makes a verrrry interesting point. With millions of data points on pictures, enabled by mass penetration of camera phones and digital cameras, what kind of business can this resulted? Food for thought..

The bigger point is that cell phones and cameras add literally billions of minute-to-minute images of what's going on in the world. Millions of us now carry the tools to report on each other. And whether it's fighting crime or targeting potential Macy's shoppers, the Numerati are gaining more data that will lead to new businesses and services.

Yammer: Yammer just won the TC50 which should give them some attention for a while. More interesting for me is the line below:

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you working on?”

What is we asked different questions? Will that result in different type of yammer like services? Questions like:

i) What is your most hated products/services?
ii) What are you eating/wearing/drinking/seeing/listening right now?
iii) What is your boss/husband/boyfriend/ doing now?
... and more!

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Applications of Twiiter (Part I)

I am always interested in how microblogging as a whole is evolving. So, I will posting these stuff as I continue my discovery of what Twitter and its cousins can do.

Twiller: New forms of medium eventually spawns new forms of media. This is the first example of such a media. A good startup breeding ground for people that focuses on culturally relevant ideas. I think this is worth following.

Twitter and branding: A natural application. This is part of the continuing transformation of branding as a one-way broadcast to a two way interactive medium. One of the new potential investment we are looking at involves doing a proper Twitter for enterprises that includes aggregation capabilities and a very cool twist that I can't disclose right now.

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Idea generation #23 (Part II): Product conversations: new form of social mediation

See the first post here and related startup idea here.

A useful article that highlights the value of product twittering and lists some examples. This article deepens my understanding of the value of product twittering: it is beyond mindless broadcasting of information. Rather it is about:

agents that circulate food for thought, that “speak on” matters from an altogether different point of view, that lend a Thing-y perspective on micro and macro social, cultural, political and personal matters

Hence, things will get more interesting when twitterbots goes beyond their one directional boardcast and allows for meaningful conversations.

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Startup Idea #56: Small idea-Platform enabling feedback from micro blogging services

As micro blogging services such as Twitter becomes more mainstream and influential, there will be a need for businesses to engage their customers in this new area. As highlighted by Micro Persuasion, forward looking companies such as JetBlue are already using Twitter as the frontline for their customer service. The opportunity here is for a new type of customer service support company that makes it easy for the rest of the companies to do the same.

The bundled services this new company can provide include:

1. Design of template: preferably through a network of designers
2. Automated search for company evangelists from services such as GetSatisfaction. This person or group of people will become the customer service support for the company's micro blog. Companies can of course assigned their internal people to manage the blog.
   
3. Dashboard and data metrics for the company to monitor the activities on the blog, highlighting any potential concerns, similar to how SNMP works

With scalability built into the system through a network approach, this idea can potentially become the dominant design for customer support 2.o : )

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Startup Idea #54: Small idea-Platform for creating TwitterBots

Well, twitter as a group communication tool. About time.

Somebody should build a simple interface for non-technical users to easily set up their TwitterBots applications.

I would build more intelligence for this system so that it can add relevant information to the 140 words. For example, if the TwitterBot is about food reviews, the system will generate a dashboard type of page where there will be addresses of the restaurants, reviews from other services such as Yelp.com.Users can then have more information on these dashboards, beyond the 140 words.

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Idea generation #23: Product conversations: new form of social mediation

Found this link through rebang (one of my favorite bloggers btw). The idea here is simple but powerful: what if physical products can relay simple messages? Such conversation starter cannot be overlooked. Many a times, conversations lead to replies, actions, recall et al. The implications are huge!

For example, in the blog post alone, this was mentioned:

A group that represents the elderly in Australia is looking at some technology that can send a message from a kettle.

The thought being that every time the elderly person makes a cup of tea a message is sent to their children, letting them know that they are OK.

This simple message can trigger the children to send messages to their elders, let them know how frequently their parents are drinking tea and whether they are running out et al.

I think lots more value can be created from this.

Updated: 26th April 2008
Terrific example of how a product Twitters.

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Startup Idea #24: Comments and services

The idea stuck me while reading this
Sad to say, my queue at Netflix is empty.

Okay, so you've been reading this blog for years, you know what movies I liked, probably don't have much insight into movies I don't (hint: I like most movies).

And now that we have easy comments (thanks to Disqus), it's easy for you all to tell me what your favorite movies are.

What if the recommendations from your comments are linked to actual services. Say, if I receive recommendations for a movie title, can I order immediately from NetFlix? In order words, can I mash the APIs for a comment system like Disque with the API from Amazon or Netflix to give you services when you are most likely to purchase it?

The idea goes beyond the simple mashup application scenario. If services are decoupled from their destinations and flow to where they are likely to be purchased, it makes a very powerful way of doing ecommerce. Can we accomplish this?

Updated: 1 Dec 2007
Facebook's Beacon is sort of what I am suggesting (see this post). The difference is that while Facebook's system is closed, our system will be open which is a huge strategic advantage.

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