Technically Speaking

I’m going to re-open the EmbargoZone blog-PR site shortly. But for now, enjoy:

Friendgiftr First to Turn Multiple Social Media Sites Into E-commerce 2.0 Platforms

Friendgiftr first and only company to sell popular brand name gift cards through e-commerce storefront to hundreds of millions of social networking site users

Hollywood, CA. (Feb. 16) — E-commerce 2.0 pioneer and rising star Friendgiftr turned multiple social media websites, including Facebook, MySpace, iGoogle, Ning and Bebo, into commercial marketplaces for the first time with the debut of its new e-commerce storefront application network. Friendgiftr’s one-of-a-kind network is the first and only social media-based online storefront to offer actual purchasable retail and restaurant gift cards to hundreds of millions of social media site users.

Friendgiftr features the nation’s largest collection of gift cards for sale from a single source, with over 120 leading brand names like Gap, Dominos Pizza, Pottery Barn, Starbuck’s, Chili’s, Red Lobster, Regal Cinemas, Barnes & Noble, Applebee’s, Crate & Barrel, Marriott, P.F. Chang’s, Dell, Macy’s, Sephora, L.L. Bean, Banana Republic, and Overstock.com, among others. Through the Friendgiftr application, social media site users can now send gift cards in amounts from $10 to $100 to anyone in their network.

“Introducing our network of gift card storefronts across numerous social networking sites is a game-changing step forward in the commercialization of social media,” commented Rob Carpenter, Friendgiftr CEO. “It’s also a cornerstone of our unique business model. We partner with the companies whose gift cards we sell, which keeps our operating costs minimal, and unlike most web-based start-ups, we have multiple viable revenue streams, including commissions from cards we sell through a growing number of storefronts, slotting fees, advertisements and affiliate marketing programs.”

Another aspect of its unique model is that Friendgiftr is the only gift card merchant to allow card recipients to exchange the card given to them for a card they prefer from any of the merchants Friendgiftr offers, at no charge, and without the buyer knowing. Recipients can even split the gift card amount across multiple merchants’ cards, to make sure they get the gifts they really want. For example, someone who received a $50 Macy’s card can exchange it for a $25 card for Starbuck’s and a $25 card for Chili’s, or five $10 cards from five different stores.

With the simplest user interface of any online gift card source, Friendgiftr lets social media site users buy and send gift cards in just three simple steps: Â select the card and amount, enter the recipient’s name, email and a personalized message, then pay via Friendgiftr’s secure online payment platform.

About Friendgiftr, Inc.

Friendgiftr is the premier digital storefront company currently offering over 120 of America’s favorite retail and restaurant gift cards through its website and social media sites. Friendgiftr won the grand prize prestigious Henry Kravis Award in venture capital and entrepreneurship, and placed first in a VentureBeat.com technology trends competition held at the prestigious DEMO Conference for the concept of merging social networking and e-commerce. Friendgiftr partners with iCard Systems, a leading supplier of electronic and physical gift cards. Headquartered in Hollywood, CA, Friendgiftr is a Rob Carpenter production.

For Immediate Release: February 17, 2010

Contact: Rob Carpenter, (909) 851-8119, rob@friendgiftr.com

Press Info: Kendall Guimond, (909)262-2120, kendall.guimond@allterrain.net

Technically Speaking, look for the re-opening of EmbargoZone soon.

WooMe has a promotion running for Valentine’s day:

For the price of a tweet, WooMe is giving away an e-guide that will allow SINGLES to embrace Valentine’s Day as much as COUPLES do this year by giving them a play-by-play how-to guide on how to score a threesome.

While the rest of the world is focused on glorifying COUPLES this Valentine’s Day, WooMe is highlighting the benefits of being SINGLE by bringing you a how-to guide for a “taboo” practice generally accepted for SINGLES but not for COUPLES (well OK, that’s debatable). Hopefully our guide will allow SINGLES to embrace Valentine’s Day as much as COUPLES do this year! Check out the guide HERE

Valentine’s Day is typically considered a celebration of relationships, love, romance and monogamy throughout the world. COUPLES spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars proving to loved ones, themselves and the world exactly how much they care about their significant others, often showering them with gifts, chocolate, flowers, candy hearts, stuffed animals, overpriced sparkly rocks and cars with giant novelty bows. Unfortunately for SINGLES, Valentine’s Day is yet another reminder of society’s emphasis on relationships and its implicit scorn of the “single lifestyle” which can include dating, partying, casual non-committed relationships or simply enjoying life with a Japanese full-size body pillow.

As a site dedicated to helping people meet other people through LIVE video webcam chat for either long lasting relationships or casual friendships, WooMe.com believes both COUPLES and SINGLES should enjoy Valentine’s Day.

About WooMe

WooMe is the world’s largest in browser voice and video chat site. WooMe users meet live in timed sessions via webcam. Users can simply find a speed session that interest them, join and meet five people in five minutes. WooMe is easy, fast and free, allowing users to meet enw people around any shared interest for fun, too hook up, or for pure entertainment.

Founded in 2006, WooMe is an international company with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and London. Investors of the company include: Index Ventures, Atomico Ventures (founded by Niklas Zennstrom and JanusFriis, founders of Skype) and Mangrove Capital Partners. For more information, please visit http://woome.com.

–
@vlectronica on twitter
http://woome.com/vlectronica

WooMe on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/woome
WooMe on twitter: http://twitter.com/woome
WooMe Blog! http://blog.woome.com

Technically Speaking, wondering if I should fire back up the EmbargoZone?

A person I know is selling the following. If you are interested, please contact me for a proper introduction:

1) Ojeez

A social networking system (like Facebook) of enterprise level comprising of profile, search function, blogs, videos, audios, forums application

2) Ecommerce application

State of the art shopping cart system already empowering hundreds of online retail stores.

3) Content management system for websites

An easy to use content management system for managing website page content, publishing, with modules such as FAQ builder, newsletter, dynamic form builder

4) Lead generation system

A marketing/sales CRM type of application that manages contacts, runs campaigns, track results, filter prospects for effective business development

5) Job Portal Application

6) A system like Craigslist

7) MLM backoffice application

Technically Speaking a twitter DM or @ is preferred method of contact. Thanks, and I’ll put you in touch with this person pronto!

Facebook is more like a two faced bitch if you ask me. Awhile ago I use to be part of a small Facebook ad network called Lookery. Well even back then, Facebook’s constant rule changes annoyed the hell out our publishers as well as other ad networks we worked with. They were basically a big fat PITA.

Now one of the so called “rules” – or as I like to say – “it’s my ball, and I’ll take it home whenever I damn well please rules” was you can’t pull user info into a banner ad. Like the ones that were quite annoying, but intriguing nevertheless. The ones that said “Your friend Todd Sawicki is now playing Vampires R Us, you should too!” – those ads. Yes, while rather annoying, they made publishers and advertisers a ton of money.

Well a few minutes ago I logged onto my Facebook account. At the top I saw the below banner.

Facebook banned ad networks from running these type of ads, but now they basically steal the idea and put it into play for their own use – what is more annoying – stealing a great idea or first saying it’s illegal and then stealing it and using it for your own use?!

Technically Speaking, if you trust Facebook to do anything but make a ton of money, you really should look a little deeper at what they do. What they do is all for the benefit of Facebook only. Like any good enterprise company should do I suppose. Just drop the act, no one is buying it. You are not a startup. You are full on corporate American greed at it’s finest. Just re-tooled for the internet and 21st century.

Yes, I have been around. Busy, busy. Miss me?

Check out my Tumblr blog

My Twitter stream

My Facebook

AIM (rexdixon2006), Skype(rexdixon1), etc.

Yes, even still keep a MySpace page going.

And somewhere out there I have a Bebo, Hi5, and Friendster account(s)!

Technically Speaking, if you can’t find me, you haven’t tried hard enough – because I’m pretty easy to find! If you didn’t get the GeoCities vibe, you missed the boat sometime back in ‘99.

The news of the moment is that Twitter has been officially down for about 1.5 hours now, and looks like Facebook has suffered it’s own meltdown.

MySpace however seems to be rockin’ right along just fine. I haven’t checked any of the other social net’s – but it seems that out of the big two, the one that everyone has abandoned seems to be working just fine. A little too messy looking still, but hopefully in time the new leadership sees the error of the past administration that was in charge there.

It does bring up an interesting thought of maybe just possibly the social net revolution isn’t over quite yet. Stay tuned for sure, as with this mornings meltdown and people that can get in to update their fb status, all are crying that Twitter is down. Now I’m sure once everyone wakes up and the services come back, there will be a lot of analysis of this event.

Technically Speaking, a new social world is in order about right now; well if someone can tune the cloud, but as someone once already stated “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish!” >:-?

As of this morning, the experiment with the twitter hashtag has been a big #FAIL. No worries, many of you are probably asking “Why Church Tongue?”. Well it’s a friend of mine’s experimental gothic music mix send up. He asked me to help him promote the page, and I said, “Sure, why not.” Church Tongue isn’t your ordinary band or even your run of the mill music offering. That is exactly the point of it!

I know that those who have listened to the tracks probably have an opinion. If they saw the tweet on twitter or even not, they could easily leave an opinion with the hashtag system. That is all that Church Tongue is asking for. Right now, there is exactly ONE opinion - and looks like @klasinski is going to win the $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees by default. Quite sad.

I thought that the tweeps out there would have an opinion. I watch people be opinionated daily via twitter. Here is the chance to just take a few listens to some interesting music, and if you don’t like it, all you need to do is say so. If you love it or have suggestions, leave that also with the #freeschtuff hashtag.

Again, to date ONE opinion, looks like the winner will be easy to crown! Here are the details of this contest that is an easy chance to win a $25 eGift Card:

i’d f**k elvis (ruff memphis demo) - JUST released TODAY!

SEX KISS – semi-NEW SINGLE!

impress us with your drugs

MySpace Page – Church Tongue – leave comments/friend if you have a MySpace account!

This is your chance to leave your opinion via a twitter hashtag – #freeschtuff – and all you have to do is check out one or all of the Church Tongue songs above and leave your thoughts on twitter. Simple!

You’ll be entered for a chance to win a $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees.

Technically Speaking, it’s one of those things like the lottery – you can’t win if you don’t play – I posted the original details of this contest right HERE!

Here are the latest ten posts on siliconANGLE. Be sure to start following us on twitter: siliconANGLE, John Furrier, Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins, Rex Dixon. Put us in your RSS feed!

Remember – Rizzn is reporting live from SXSW this week!

Blogging Lost Its Social Edge – How To View Communities – Worth Reading If Involved in Communities – John goes into more detail of why community blogging is important!

Ribbit: Powerful Developer Voice Platforms [video] – Rizzn’s first video from SXSW.

Inside A CEO Investor Pitch - Ever curious to see the inside stuff that a company shows at an investor pitch? Here is the PDF from Searchme’s pitch. They were nice enough to share it with us.

Twitter has Jimmy Fallon – Facebook has Oprah – You know it’s true!

DC Has Not Changed – Wow, I am getting schooled by an expert on the comments! Glad to see someone reading that knows the actual deal. Hopefully he will come write posts for siliconANGLE soon!

Broadband Stimulus Receives Positive Review – Of Course We’ve Been Waiting for This for 10 years – John talks about the broadband stimulus, and if you read the comments – I’d like to also know why the Asian region stormed pass America!

Breaking News: Google to Release GrandCentral Out of Beta as Google Voice – Hello Google Voice – For better or for worse, we did happen to get the news first from a reader who volunteered the information under no embargo clause, so we broke the story out there for everyone. Check out the comment stream on this post!

Starting Friday: SiliconANGLE’s SxSW Coverage – Rizzn letting everyone know he’ll be posting all over for SXSW.

One Poke Even Organizes Your Dating Sites – Weird how I come across sites, but figured I’d feature this site in a quick post.

Super Model Skype – Let’s hope things continue in the positive direction for Skype!

Now you have a quick summary of the latest Ten Posts over on siliconANGLE. One thing I have been helping other people with this past week is the twitter stream (thread-twitter) thing. I like the look of it, which you can see my twitter stream – but some themes such as @mrbusinessgolf was a real challenge to fix! At least I was able to get it working again after he switched to a more complex theme.

Technically Speaking, if you are seeking work – Sr. Java, Sr. Web Dev, Finance, Web Dev, Sr. Mgr/Dir - you really need to check out my post below, as the person that contacted me from the company is honest and trusted – meaning – they really have openings!

Friends On Fire, the new Facebook app that launched earlier today based off of the Yahoo! Fire Eagle. Along with the official Yahoo! blog post, there was really good coverage of the new app.

In addition to Friends on Fire, we’re also launching a new way to update Fire Eagle — a Firefox extension that adds a button to your toolbar. With one click, your location is instantly shared with your trusted friends on your favorite services.

I haven’t had time to try the Firefox Fire Eagle extension yet, as it’s been a busy Friday – wanted to write this post hours ago! Glad it was well covered.

Of course, if you’re out and about, you’re not necessarily going to be hauling around your computer with you. Instead, you’ll want to grab one of the mobile Fire Eagle updaters from Yahoo’s Gallery. These apps include simple mobile updaters like Fire Fone for the iPhone as well as more robust social networking apps like Brightkite.

I haven’t tried the mobile yet either. Now here is one thing that did come up in discussion in a call I had earlier today. There are a lot of 35 and older people online. In fact, here is a thought for you – most people that age and older would rather have a hidemenow.com function vs a “Here I am! Here I am!” mobile all the time find me everywhere network. Not saying there is failure here, but basically – you are not 23 years old forever is all I’m saying!

While Foursquare and Whrrl may have a good time this weekend at SXSW, how will it translate into the real outside of SXSW coming in the following weeks.

Just in time for SXSW, Dennis Crowley, one of the original developers of Dodgeball, has released a new location-aware social app (iTunes link) for the iPhone: Foursquare.

One of the main issues of Foursquare that I see out of the box is limited support or limited areas as described.

The app currently features a database for 12 of the larger metropolitan areas in the U.S., including Boston, New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Austin. We expect that Foursquare will add data for more cities in the next few months. If a certain restaurant or bar is not in Foursquare’s database, you can also add your own.

Like I said – after Austin and SXSW this week – what about the real world post SXSW?

Whrrl, I just never found it easy or fun. Maybe that has changed in the 2.0 version as outlined in this post, but still what about Loopt?

You’ve got options when it comes to iPhone apps designed to help you capture moments in time, but the Whrrl v2.0 iPhone app hopes to help you combine photos, stories, and your location with the photos and stories of your friends for a collective storytelling experience.

While there is even more written about Yahoo! and Fire Eagle, and Friends On Fire.

Despite the hype they get, location-based services have yet to catch on in the mainstream.

That above quote is the main issue of location based social nets in one sentence.

Of the two, Friends on Fire for Facebook is the more consumer-friendly.

This above quote sums up Friends On Fire for Facebook. It is quite easy to use, and yes, I signed up as shown by this picture below.

Technically Speaking, there are just as many 35+ age people online and technology savvy as I already stated above that would rather have some startup come up with the hidemequicknow.com vs the find me here! Find me NOW! COME HUG me TODAY! social networks of today. It’s not at all a fail, but a miscalculation of mainstream appeal. For complete coverage inside of SXSW – check out Rizzn unleashed, on twitter @rizzn, as well as posts that he will be putting up on siliconANGLE.

I assume by the end of the weekend, the 1138 (I was 1139) followers will be in the neighborhood of 10 times more. Have you followed @finkd yet? What am I talking about? Well if you somehow just woke up, @finkd is the real Mark Zuckerberg. Apparently this so called secret account is no longer a secret after VentureBeat broke the news this morning.

While VB maintains, like other people do that search is going to make them money …

Which is funny, because Twitter’s real-time, open search capability is one of the features that Facebook seems intent on redesigning its site around. Twitter search could be a key way for the microblogging service to make money, because it helps you find current information that you care about based on what others are saying. As with Google, some fraction of such services involve a user’s intent to buy something, which is where advertisers want to be.

… and it’s a damn good guess. I’m going to back the position of old school business meets new school and utilizes a tried and tested formula as I blabbered on about in this morning’s siliconANGLE post I wrote ….

Think about it. All the parts are there. The VC’s are looking for a cash cow with a high user adoption rate. They are looking for something that will provide a consistent flow of money like an open water spigot. The music business has a high adoption rate of listeners. At one time, they controlled the water spigot. Right now twitter controls the water spigot with the same high and growing usage rate. They are the only game in town, your basic monopoly of the API. Understand now?

…. and Eric was lucky to be number 45 …

Right now, a range of current and former Facebook executives and associated tech types are some of the 44 people already following him (I just made myself number 45). Perhaps Zuckerberg will go cold as more people follow him? Or perhaps he’ll enjoy public sharing.

… as I just made 1139 as stated above!

Technically Speaking, what do you think the number of followers will be by Monday morning? I’m sure it will easily be 10 times the number now, maybe more!