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.

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!” >:-?

This is your last 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 below and leave your thoughts on twitter. Made it a simple click operation (ie: you can listen right here on this page) since I just installed this WP-Plugin.

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

– i’d f**k elvis (ruff memphis demo) – JUST released in the past week!
– SEX KISS – semi-NEW SINGLE!
– impress us with your drugs
MySpace Page – Church Tongue – leave comments/friend if you have a MySpace account!

More info / background is here:

The Gutter : pre-Church Tongue (for a bit of a background)
– Casket mp3
– Outlook mp3

Church Tongue : Your Opinion could be worth $25 via – #freeschtuff

Technically Speaking, I’ll be drawing the entrants to the #freeschtuff (only 3 so far) out of a black top hat tomorrow – Wednesday 7/15/09 – Live on UStream! Here are the 3 that have entered (left their opinions via #freeschtuff) to win that $25 eGift Card from RizzoTees or FREE T-shirt:

@klasinski
@kopper
@jonconnelly

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!

I decided to do a fun little experiment of sorts over the weekend. I wanted to see if a tumblr site could actually get traffic. Wondering if people actually would read other people’s opinions on snippets of news stories. Now many of you have tumblr sites, and if you do, you probably are wondering if it’s worth clipping some news you saw and leaving your 2 cents.

Here are some results I thought I’d share from statistics that I am pulling straight from MyBlogLog. Now while your results could vary, I think by looking at the stats below, Tumblr can be a traffic driver or rather your tumbl could very well be read by many.

Yes, there was a perfect tie for the #2 spot of read posts yesterday. It seemed that people were equally enthralled Microsoft screwing over their fired employees (TechCrunch post), and MySpace China. Think that one was due to Rupert’s daughter’s picture? Not sure, but the offclick’s indicated that even though it was tech dominating the read, somehow the other bay area house snuck in there at the #3 offclick site.

One of the more interesting things I found was articles that I thought (I guess I shouldn’t think!) would be interesting to people, were not. Such human interest stories as the Iraq Veteran getting a gift pulled due to a marijuana conviction in 2005, even though that was re-tweeted by someone – it never seemed to gain much traction as a read story. In fact, you could almost considered it a buried story.

The sad thing is that this is a real person’s true story of having something taken away that he fully deserves, at least in my opinion – all veterans of the Iraq conflict deserve anything America can give back to them. No matter what past violations they may have committed. Sadly enough, the stories that ranked over this one were only interesting for a minute such as the Food Network star that F-Bombed in front of the King and Queen of Spain, that $700k house in SF from the day before – this must be quite a deal or something – and even George W’s visit to a hardware store where he was offered a greeter job.

Two more stories that started to surge and just went flat were the guy that was working 50 jobs in 50 states all in one year’s time, and the 11 year old kid that killed his step mother with a kiddie shotgun. Both of those stories were surging, and somehow at the end of the day, just fell out of contention for the top spots. Very strange how a story can start to take off, and just die.

Technically Speaking, I guess I do not know what people like to read about, or can only guess what might be popular or interesting. So far today – a story about saying good-bye to former employers I found in the LA Times is #1, while the #3 read story is providing the #2 offclick. Interestingly enough it’s a search site(Kosmix) I wrote about here.