Free Ideas

Build your own… everything.

This idea is for a Foursquare or Yelp style recommendations mobile app.

In advertising we often talk about how today’s world of unlimited options actually hurts the consumer in making a purchase decision. When we see a shelf in 7/11 covered with 20 different flavors of Gatorade, there’s a far more likely chance that our final purchase will be disappointing. The opportunity cost for that one Gatorade is 19 other flavors.This is why Apple only really sells one version of everything, in small, medium and large variations.

As a result we look for social and crowd sourced recommendations on Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. These recommendations stand to limit the chances that we will feel buyers remorse.

The app itself is for restaurants and fast food joints that give their customers the option to build their own sandwich, burrito, whatever. Effectively through the app a user gets their chance to create their own menu items and share them with their friends. (in the app or additional social networks) You simply open the app, and put together a list of offered meals and toppings. The focus here is on the power of the endorsement from one friend to another. As a first time customer, I could see a list of the customized burritos that my friends created at Chipotle. If none of my friends have been to a certain restaurant, I can see a list of most popular menu creations as voted on by all users.

The business owner doesn’t need to have any involvement whatsoever. But they can use an app like this to test new items and leverage trends to get people through the door. For example, when Jeremy Lin starting making it rain in Madison Square Garden a Philly burger truck created the “Linsanity Burger”. An app like this provides a platform to share these novelty food items and capitalize on recent memes in popular culture. As an additional benefit, establishment owners would have new information of the most popular creations by their loyal customers, and potentially could turn these into permanent menu items.

Finally this service has some potential in promotional celebrity endorsements. When I walk into Subway I should be able to see how some of my favorite personalities like their sandwiches. What does Rick Ross order when he really want’s a sub.

The question is, are users interested in sharing this information with their friends? A voting system could potentially show the most popular items among friends. Is this the kind of validation that users are looking for? Could we expect to see tweets and facebook shares that link back to the app?

Is this a product or a potential feature for Yelp and Foursquare?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

2012 New Years Resolutions

In no particular order.

1. Bring back Sample Minded as a Hip Hop music and apparel site. 

2. Kick ass this spring at the internship. GOAT

3. Kick ass this spring Peer Teaching at TU.

4. Work out 2-3 times a week. Audio book while I’m on the bike. 

5. Buy a plant for my room and take care of it.

6. Grow @AtownProblems to 1,500 followers.

7. Create a funny YouTube video by this March.

8. Simplify.

9. Organize every hour of my week days. Have one cheat day on weekends.

10. Cook more, eat better. 

11. Spend as little as possible, save as much as possible. 

What if you could generate income, just by existing?

The idea is simple. Everyday of our lives we share recommendations to our audience of friends on twitter, facebook, tumblr, youtube, whatever. Now if you go out and tell your followers that you highly recommend seeing the new Transformers film, that’s a free advertisement for the movie. If you tell them that you just had the best dinner ever at the the Greek Taverna on broad street, that’s a free advertisement. All our favorite social networks know exactly how much these “shares” are worth to them. I don’t know the official figures but we can estimate that a Facebook share is worth around 10 cents, and twitter about half that. The discrepancy is most likely a result of the two way relationships on Facebook being stronger than the one way “follower” relationships on twitter.

Now, we advertise for our favorite products all the time. Major companies have gotten wise to social media. Their focused now should not only be spreading product awareness but also teaching their customers how to advertise for them. I can work on one great television commercial, or I can try to figure out how to get 100 people to share my companies message to their followers.

Well as I consumer, a loyal customer, someone that REALLY loves a certain company, shouldn’t I get a cut of the profits that these companies are reaping from my passion?

Today if you run a a website, you can put Amazon Affiliate links to products that are associated with your site. A music blog might link to CD, when someone buys an item through that link the site owner gets a bout a 5% cut of the sale. Basic stuff.

Today on our favorite social networks companies can track whose talking up their products. We know who is sharing the links. We also have real numbers that show us who has all the influence online. If I tell 100 of my friends how much I love my Nikes and it gets 100 people to think about Nike, just for a second, I should get a couple pennies for the work I just did for them. Furthermore, if we can determine that a product has been sold through one of my links, or endorsements, as involved consumers we should feel entitled to a small cut.

Think of it like putting your change in a jar at the end of the day. You shouldn’t even have to think about it. You will naturally share your passions and interests but you’ll accumulate some change every time. The more followers you have the more money you could make.

Wheres the problem? Presumably once you start giving people money for clicks they are going to try to game the system. Twitter is already infested with cheap groups that artificially raise your follower count. The service is also crawling with unwanted bots that spam users @reply streams. How much worse can it get when we add real money to the equation?

I think the true sources of influence will rise to the top. That’s not to say you will need a lot of followers to appear valid, but on a long enough timeline machine learning can determine which “shares” are genuine and which shares are just farming for change. Google already has one of the most robust systems for defending against sleazy SEO practices, why not apply similar solutions to twitter bots and spammers.

Who wins in this exchange? If a consumer is getting even the smallest piece of a companies success, not only will they continue to use that companies product but they will be further encouraged to promote them publicly. We can think of it how publicly traded companies provided dividend to keep investors around in times of slow growth. Effectively a company can reward your loyalty to their product with a few cents.

How much is this worth to you?

This idea is a for an online network that is closely integrated with real life services. A user can go onto the network find his or her favorite restaurants/salons/shops/events and offer a price they would be willing to pay for that service.

For example. Lets say I get my haircut at the same place every month and I always tip $10 for a $15 haircut. To me that service was worth $25. I would go to the site, and set the price that I am willing to pay. Essentially I am using my assigned value to endorse a product among my friends and followers. I can go on and share how much a service is worth to me, to followers on my social networks. Conversely if I got a crummy ice cream cone from a shop in my town I could say that it was worth $2 to me instead of the $5 that I paid.

Eventually thousands of users on the site would assign their own values to what they are paying for. We could define an average price by aggregating how much a service is worth to a large group of users. A shop owner could give their standard price for a service, then they could also give the “average price” based on the “how much is it worth to you” network. This would encourage better products and services as the owners no longer have full control in deciding the price. 

Let’s take it a step further. With GPS and NFC technologies, imagine going into a store and the prices that are displayed are what the other patrons have been paying for those products. This ice cream costs $5 but the dude in line in front of you paid $10. That’s not to say you are forced to pay as much as anyone else, but this type of suggestion leads to a larger tip more often than not. Additionally opportunities come up for businesses as celebrity start to value exchanges themselves and share the with a massive following.

The concern is always that this system could be gamed. If shop owners do see a benefit from including the average user suggested value, what’s to stop a group of users purposely devaluing an object. The stores themselves could potentially have more control over who gets to assign value and not. 

The ultimate goal is to use this service to create a dynamic pricing model on the products and services we use everyday. In a farmers market, prices for certain fruits vary depending on the season, the farmers yield, or the prevalence of that fruit. What if the prices were also based on a collective social group’s assigned value. Ideally this encourages shop owners to continually work on a better product and an overall better experience for their customers. 

Yes? No? Maybe? What are some potential problems here? Has this been done before? Let us know what you think. 

Whats up

I plan to put up some ideas on this site. Some tech related, some life related. Some will be really crummy, some will be really awesome. Let me know what you think.