Insight Community

As a Fortune 500 company considering a consumer-focused branding campaign that incorporates user-generated content, we are an office equipment and services provider looking to maximize the benefits of an online video campaign using YouTube and other online video communities. Obviously, we are aiming for a fresh and vibrant (and perhaps viral) response, but we also realize there may be somewhat negative portrayals of our brand.

1) Given our broad audience of consumers, how can we best encourage positive entries and on-message responses? Suggest online venues where the prevailing tone is upbeat -- or virtual locations that should be avoided if they are known to be too crass. How can these characterizations be determined?

2) Suggest creative ways to promote the collected video materials, after the submission period is officially over, that leverage online communities.

3) Other than ignoring or deleting content that may be negative, how should we handle submissions that are not entirely favorable to our brand?

From the point-of-view of a startup music recommendation service, we're considering expanding beyond music recommendations into other fields, as well as more geographic regions.

1) How should a mobile recommendation service best target the North American market? The European market? The Asian market?
2) What do you think the top 3 mobile recommendations services will be (other than music)?

With the introduction of the iPhone coming soon, there's been plenty of talk about whether or not it will succeed. Many analyst firms are weighing in and giving their thoughts on the iPhone. However, a much more interesting discussion may be about how it changes the rest of the market. Given the various strengths and weaknesses of the iPhone, how will other device vendors and mobile operators respond? We, at Techdirt, are raising this issue ourselves, and depending on the results, will help promote the winners on Techdirt, highlighting your analysis as a guest post while providing links back to your own site.

Flurry.com would like some blogger perspectives on mobile RSS feeds. Flurry offers a free mobile RSS reader (non-WAP) and is looking for feedback to improve its service.

1) Describe your view of the mobile RSS market. Who do you see as the leader in mobile RSS readers? Why?

Please check out Flurry.com (and try out the mobile RSS widget, if you like).
2) As a blogger, what would motivate you to include Flurry's RSS Widget on your blog?
3) What are Flurry's strengths/weaknesses, and how can they best promote/address them?

eBay is known as one of, if not the, largest advertisers on Google. After the recent squabble between the companies, eBay briefly removed all its ads from Google. If this continues (or happens again in the future), it could significantly impact both companies' bottom line. Presumably, eBay would get less traffic, and Google would lose one of its major advertisers. How much do you think it would impact each companies' bottom line and how would each respond to try to either repair/restore the relationships -- or replace the revenue from other sources?

As more and more devices add GPS capabilities, what features will really differentiate personal navigation devices (PNDs)? What location based services will be most valuable to drivers? To pedestrians? What will GPS devices look like in 5 years?

Several video-on-demand services are ramping up, allowing users to download TV shows and movies onto a variety of devices. From the perspective of a traditional content producer, which video-on-demand services will attract the largest viewership in the next year? How will TV studios need to change what they do as these services grow?

If you were advising a private equity group that had an interest in consumer telecommunication services, where would you invest in the next 6 months? What areas have at least double-digit growth potential? Restrict your responses to North America.

The nimble development teams that create small and useful mini-apps sometimes face a point when acquisition by a much larger software firm is desirable. A moderate-sized blog tool firm is looking for the track records of its potential suitors (eg. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, IAC, etc) for dealing with culture clashes and maintaining the usefulness of its products post-acquisition. From an insider's perspective, personal experiences and cautionary tales are welcome. From a users' viewpoint, describe how your loyalty to an acquired service was affected after your favorite widget-like software was bought.

We would like to compile the current size (# of providers, customers, revenue), historical growth, and potential growth in the wireless broadband internet market on two scales: 1) municipal wifi and 2) rural fixed wireless -- on a state-by-state breakdown.

This issue is clearly a tall order, so the first 10 acceptable responses to provide data and/or suggestions for obtaining this information will be chosen as winners. A follow-up issue to this project may be posted based on the responses gathered here.

Two big topics these days are SaaS and wireless. Obviously the two are on a converging path. Already, Blackberry email is considered an essential wireless SaaS offering. What other opportunities do you see coming into this space. If you were investing in wireless Saas, where do you think the biggest opportunities are today?

Mywaves has created a unique embeddable video player (available at http://www.mywaves.com) with complete mobile capabilities. In addition to all the usual features of embedded players, it's designed to integrate with mobile phones and can be used as a viral marketing tool. With mywaves, users can send content from the web to their phones or to their friends' devices. Videos can also be uploaded directly from mobile phones and sent right to other users' handsets, as well as the web.

Mywaves is interested in the following feedback about its player:

1) What are the obstacles to adoption? How can they be overcome?
2) How can mywaves be marketed so that potential users can better see its value?
3) What groups of potential users should the company be targeting, and who can benefit the most from the player?
4) How can mywaves better reach that potential audience?
5) Mywaves is in the process of redesigning its site -- What are the top three ways the mywaves site could be improved to better attract and support users?

Please rank the following companies' media device strategy on (a) vision and (b) ability to execute: Apple for the iPod, Microsoft for the Zune, Creative for the Zen, Samsung, Archos, Sony. Rank each on a one to ten scale (1 to 10 for vision, and 1 to 10 for ability to execute), with one being the lowest, and ten being the highest. Please provide a short paragraph explaining your rankings.

If you had to bet on one single wireless technology to dominate in the next five years, what would it be and why?

The telecom space is facing an interesting convergence challenge, between mobile technologies, broadband technologies and VoIP. Recognizing that the trends for these technologies is inevitable, as a traditional telecom firm, what's the best strategy to embrace these technologies without completely destroying our core telephony business?

The computer security game seems like a continuous tug o' war, with security firms reacting to each new trick from malicious hackers. Can there be a better way to design security so that we're not always one step behind?

Developing applications for the mobile world is incredibly tricky. Unlike the PC world, where the choices are pretty obvious, the complexity level for mobiles is exponentially more difficult. You basically take carriers multiplied by OEMs/handset vendors multiplied by operating systems multiplied by development platforms to set the base level of complexity. Add to that the rapid churn rate of users, and it becomes even trickier.

So, for a company that's developing mobile applications, and wants to maximize coverage while minimizing integration costs, what is the best strategy? We recognize that it may be different for enterprise apps and consumer apps -- but are interested in both areas, so please give thoughts either on both markets. Feel free to think outside the box, but hopefully the answers are practical. As a secondary question, if the strategy is to attack one platform at a time, what sequence of carriers/platforms/vendors makes the most sense, for each of the consumer and enterprise markets?

Now that Apple has finally announced the iPhone, plenty of attention has shifted to the potential for Google to make its own revolutionary mobile device. If you were in charge of such a product at Google, how would you design such a device? What features would it include? How would it work? What would you do to make it a valuable addition to the Google product portfolio?

Cisco has recently purchased two different sets of social networking technology (FiveAcross and assets from Tribe.net). What do you think Cisco's strategy or thought process is in making these acquisitions?

Samsung recently came out with its Blackjack handset for Cingular, targeted at competing with RIM's Blackberry device. Can it really compete? If not, why not (and what can it do to compete)? If yes, why?

Wireless broadband is coming in one format or another. When the world shifted from dialup to broadband, it opened up plenty of new applications and uses (many of which were not widely foreseen). What new and different uses will widespread wireless broadband allow? Will they be bottom up (designed by users) or top down (designed by carriers) and why?