Quick peek on Brainstorming

I’m working with a project that combines the good possibilities of recommendation engine and ease of travel planning. Internet and the rise of DIY travelers have really taken the share from travel agencies: people devote humongous time to search for perfect hotel and cheapest flights as well as to inspire from new travel locations. It’s not really effective and the information given may not necessarily be specific enough. Not to mention the advertizing spam that you have to deal with search engines - a lot of time is wasted to dead ends.

I’ve been playing with hunch with couple of friends of mine and sure, it’s really entertaining but in the end (at the moment) the app is too general and without worthy information behind the recommendations. Travel agencies have noticed the possibilities of recommendation engines, too. For example, Loma-aparaatti by Aurinkomatkat that they call “Ihmekone” that recommends a location based on 183594 customers.  On scale 0-5 you can define what kind of vacationer you are on areas such as shopping, family situation and culture etc. After the simple questionare, you get the recommendations or you can try again. Again, fun to try out but doesn’t really provide anything new for the customer that s/he wouldn’t find through search engine. The interrelations between different areas and the context are missing. Plus never mind the branding.... aparaatti!

Travel agency websites don’t take into account social aspect at all. They don’t provide forums, customer experiences nor recommendations. People don’t commit themselves to a travel service and thus a company specific social platform in travel business is kind of fool’s errand. But what is surprising to me, is that they don’t even link to social media advocates! This recommendation and planning service with no doubt is for the whole tourism/travel business, no use of every agency developing their own.

So the travel recommendation and planning service provides added-value in the following areas. A) Making the search process more effective by filtering the relevant experiences and information. B) A social platform where you can plan together with your friends. At the moment it seems to be handled through various means: email, face-to-face and on the phone. C) information provided is based on users and search engines D)  By generating your own profile you get recommendations based on a)  you know what you want b) what your friends prefer c) I’ll try my luck.

What I’m working on now: the role of travel preferences through life, how travel planning occurs online and the gaming perspective of generating the profile.

So let me know if you’re interested. More information incoming, so stay tuned!

Brainstorming

One of the main areas of MediaBizLab program is to develop ideas of future media services. This brainstorming hovers between new ideas and improving current ones especially from the perspectives of monetizing and consumer socializing. Needless to say, that all these ideas start from a scratch. So all are more than welcome to comment along and the progress of the coming year will be collected under the tag idea reports. Without further ado, let's get started with the ideas!

This week's mission is to reflect ideas upon existing transmedia services, justify why the selected examples are interesting and important from both user's and company's perspective.

1. REAL-TIME AUDIENCE

Video stream consumption (online, off-line, mobile, at home, elsewhere and on-the-go) over multiple platforms is a emerging global trend. People don't just watch them from their TV-sets and if they do, they are more likely to multi-task in Internet at the same time. When most studies argue that time spent online reduces time available for other media, younger generations that have grown up with the Internet prove these wrong by their multifaceted, overlapping media consumption fashions.


'The more they love it, the more ways they explore it.' is the basis of transmedia storytelling of products and brands. What is important is a) the relation of TV viewing, Internet and mobile usage of your service or brand b) how to make usage social and c) how to monetize it. 


A good example of point a is the social TV service Sofafanatics. It's promise to sport fans is You'll Never Watch Alone and reminds that telly wont be social. Spectator sports is a lifestyle that has many features from gambling and bar nights to engaging sports team fan clubs and debates with own friends. At the moment early birds see the greatest potential for real-time co-viewing, commenting and socializing in live events, such as sports or fashion shows. It would work for reality TV as well or what do you think about Big Brother season 2010? What are other features that can gather enough real-time consumers together?


As for b, from the start watching TV has been a social practice. If not always at the time of watching, the stories and reflections nevertheless continue the next day over lunch breaks or nowadays in social media. Today net natives want to share the experience real-time and companies should consider providing the channel and logic. Differentiating the content depending on the platform or different price models?


How to monetize social entertainment is a tricky question as the quality of streams is truly the key. In general, commercializing free Internet content has used advertising but interrupting the stream has its limits. On the other hand, when online ads are effective, links motivate and ease the shopping process. Contests, promotion tickets and breeding opinion leaders within the community? Added value service for subscribers in addition to free content? In the case of online monetizing, I also want to ask who is the winner? The producer or the mediator? 


I find this topic fascinating especially from the perspective of monetizing. How can advertising and making consumers more involved be re-designed to make online content profitable?  When it's online where the infinity is the limit and especially if it's not mainstream, the advertising revenues are kind of cold comfort.