I'm biased but I loved this post, and glad to see some traction here. There's been some discussion of HTML5/relevancy giving way to an appified website experience, but I really appreciate considering how that changes the most basic job-profile of the digital marketer.
Social media marketing seems like the only thing that even resembles this job, where your audience is differentiated and requires a real-time, context-driven approach, though the tools that surround it are still quite young (and in the long-tail mostly relate to group collaboration).
If that's true, I wonder if the role of "social media manager" looks a lot like the future of all digital marketing?
Okay I think I understand the concept much better now. The comparison to Fantasy Leagues (which is essentially another way of gamifying games) makes the value seem a lot more real.
The data part is still a bit puzzling to me, but intriguing. I still am not sure I understand the concept of getting more transparency (e.g. the data of who is betting on either side). My admittedly gut-response to the two examples:
a) Betting with the crowd - surely the team that is favored to win is the team with the "crowd" on its side, right? That's how the line on the game is established in the first place...
b) Matching the bet of a smart friend - this makes sense to me, that if a friend or expert can "beat the market" you could follow along.
I guess my uninformed skepticism is based on the idea that it would be hard to produce a system that could predict sports outcomes more reliably than the market. If such a system worked, wouldn't it destroy the entire gambling industry?
E.g., if such a system worked well, and could reliably beat the market, more than helping people follow along good bets, you could just make a bazillion dollars betting on sports games. Monetization strategy solved ;).
I'm not sure I fully understand this product, but I have to confess I'm left with a lot of questions on various levels...
Copy says it's unique in that it "aggregates all picks giving something no other site gives you... real-time actual pick trends" - I'm not sure how this is unique. Isn't this the most basic responsibility of a betting agent (aggregating all of his better's picks to draw a balanced line on the game, and then make $$ off the vig)?
Secondly, are potential customers looking for a social layer on top of sports betting? It seems like there's certainly monopolistic incumbents but I'm not sure I understand the added value. For example, I see how it makes sense to "gamify" or "socialize" a ton of things that are boring, lame, or important, but I'm not sure betting is one of them.
If I really force myself, I can see how the idea of a social layer as such on top of gambling is interesting (e.g. what games my friends are betting on and how much), but feels more like a feature than a product. I wonder if this exists already.
Beyond that, I suppose I would want to know more about how it intends to monetize its product, how it fits in the bigger gambling and entertainment space (e.g. is it a stand-alone product or meant to be used in partnership with other gambling platforms), etc..
In general, I would say I'm not super excited by the idea, but I think perhaps I need to know more before really deciding. It would be helpful to see a response to some of these questions.
Most embarrassing moment of the day was realizing I had (1) already seen all of those photos on Reddit and (2) already forgotten the context to half of them.
It seems like this is a great idea, especially since RSS advertising is not particularly profitable. But it also might be especially smart on Guardian's part since they're the first ones to jump to full text feeds, inviting a bunch of rss readers to take an interest in their content. But I wonder how are they supposed to monetize their news online, if they can't keep their users in their webspace...
What I found interesting is Tom's argument buried in the bottom of his post:
"Something you may have to spend cash on is making sure your product or service and the pitch for it are relevant to your prospects and customers in these tough times. Obviously, people are looking more for an opportunity to save than to spend. Can you help them do that?"
In my consulting experience in the corporate sector, it seems to me that while executives are interested in hypothetical savings, they are simply less interested in investing in products or services altogether. I'd be interested in how others target client's general risk-aversion mentality in bad economic times with something other than a good argument?