Monat: Januar 2006

Experiencing the internet industry currently struggeling for new advertising models, one of them is „Pay per Call“: a bill is only generated when a potential customer is making a phone call to the advertiser – so it sums under the performance marketing tools. Currently I can´t see many solutions here in germany, but there are some in the US which look promisingly: Ingenio, Jambo, MIVA, VoiceStar (from which Webdesign point of view I like Jambo the best). MIVA is working on the german market, too, but I can´t find a „Pay per Call“ model on their german corporate site.

I´m not quite sure if this model will work here, but it fits into my thoughts of the „live“ – web: the connection between reality and web will become closer with raising bandwith and faster technology – as „Pay per Call“ will raise with the integration of Skype and VOIP in general, the acquisiton costs of new customers will decline. With new technology the „Cost per New Customer“ will never be as high as in the old times again: if companies invest their classical-media budget into new technology solutions, like „Pay per Call“ or performance based advertising, they´ll get tools to exactly control their acquisition costs. What does this mean for the „live-web“? There´s a new advertising market growing, which is available for everyone – theoretically: for the big players as well as for the small ones (small merchands,…). The only difference will be to be able to buy the leads – who controls the traffic, controls the distribution of the leads. Will there be a kind of open-source advertising-network? Will internet users be able to chose in the future from which they want to be phoned? From whom they want to get an offer? Will we be able to chose between the big companies and the small merchands? I think the lead-costs will lead to a separated market – the big players are already in the business – the small ones need to find solutions so that they can find their place in the market and offer their individual solutions.

Inspired through John Jantsch

….not for me… but why?

….as Steve just told me – and now I know, why I´ve broke a mirror of a parking car this morning on my to the office 🙁 I should have stayed in bed…

So Loic, you know what you have to do 😉

in the last months bloglines was down several times – this sucks, even though it´s a free service. Now this morning all my language settings are set to deutsch – I don´t no why. The system doesn´t accept a switch to english again… furthermore I got this strange error notice. It just sucks because I was used to use bloglines as RSS reader for my basecamp feeds so I automatically keep in touch with all the stuff that is going on. Maybe it´s time to find another service…

UPDATE: Sent an email to bloglines via the contact-form. The answer: „Please give us 2 days time to fix the problem…. Pardon???

UPDATE 2: We are online as usual…

Now, my girlfriend just told me we need that, too! Oh damnit… Highly recommended: this trash-movie 😉

enters Tokio (Hotel) ….

No, I don´t know anything about such a deal, but it would make perfect sense: while Yahoo Go is for simple syncing all your adressbook and standrad stuff, Avvenu is to „sync“ an get access to any file from your home pc. So a combination of both services, maybe built on a robust J2ME client, would be a great start for the melting of the different internet worlds „desktop“ and „mobile“.

and please stop complaining 😉

What have we learned from the internet-bubble? A lot! For example that if you are buying things in an online store you want them to be delivered asap. The internet-industry needed the crash in order to get back to serious business.

Now, what has happened since those days is, that you have „backchannels“ for better service, that you hava a voice with blogs, and that internet companies in general try to deliver better and better service every day. So far so good – but what about the „old“ industries. Are they getting better? What are they doing in order to improve service? I sometimes think: nothing. An example: I´ve just founded another company and wanted to open up a new bank account. Because this is a company account there was no bank I could find in germany to do this stuff online – it´s always just for private accounts. So, I went to Dresdner Bank. Dresdner Bank´s claim is „Die Beraterbank“ which is something like „Your good bank-consultant“. It took the man in front of the desk about an hour to fill in all the forms needed to open up an account. Unfortunately I forgot to take my passport with me – I only had my driving license, and several other documents with my photo on it – so my bank-consultant knew I was „Ingmar“. Ok, but he needed my passport. No, problem – „I´ll send it by fax afterwards“. I did so, but my passport was out of date since 11/05. „No I can´t open your account – your passport is out of date – please send my a new one!“.

Dear Dresdner Bank!

How can it be, that I´m spending about one and a half hour in your rooms, showing you several documents that I am who I am, sending you my passport which is out of date since ONE MONTH – and I can´t get an account? Why do I need your damn consultant? Every internet-bank with NO FEES, INSTANT DELIVERY could have told me the same: <check date>OUT OF DATE </check date>“sorry, your passport is out of date“ – where is your advantage when a „human being“, a bank-consultant, is not able to decide whether I may open an account at your bank?

From this I learn that your bank will go bankrupt in the next two years – so will all the old industry which has not learned yet, that paying human beings for doing computable stuff is just bullshit! A micorprocessor, which can decide the same, costs once about 70 EUR, a form asking a database of all passport numbers is max 1000 EUR – ONCE.