The startup Smaboo is launching Facebook’s first offline campaign in Germany: they are looking for Facebook Ambassadors from Berlin or Munich. There will be also a battle between the two groups. Here is the information:

Berlin oder München? Hole die Facebook Party in deine Stadt!
 
Los gehts am 15.Oktober! 

Was erwartet dich nach dem offiziellen Recruiting?
1. Eine spannende smaboo-Kampagne für das weltweit größte Social Network!
2. Ein Kickoff Event für die ersten 200 Botschafter aus Berlin und München Anfang Oktober (mit Special Guest).
3. Das ultimative Berlin-München Städte Battle auf Facebook – in der Gewinner-Stadt gibts eine rauschende Party.
4. Die Chance auf einen Besuch und vielleicht sogar ein Praktikum bei Facebook in Kalifornien.
5. Coole Gadgets als wöchentliche Sachpreise (iPhone, Wii, u.ä.)

Marko, the Head of Marketing of Smaboo, invited us as a campaign partner. If you are interested in becoming a Facebook Ambassador drop me a line per email to martin.szugat _at_ snipclip.com or as a comment. And have a good time!

Martin

Consumption is often an act of communication. What we consume can say a great deal about who we are: the car one drives, the neighborhood one lives in, the clothes one wears, and the leisure activities one pursues all serve as markers of one’s identity.

Albert Lin, Virtual Consumption: A Second Life for Earth, September 2007, p. 22

This is incredible! So many friends and fans voted for SnipClip and posted so many cool comments about SnipClip on the Community Summit website! Thank you so much for your comments about SnipClip! Here are some of them:

• “SnipClip rocks”
• “SnipClip :) SnipClip :) SnipClip :)”
• “Snipclip rulez!”
• “SnipClip – cooles Geschäftsmodell!”
• “SnipClip gefällt! Die Jungs haben was drauf.”
• “SnipClip, weil virtuelle Güter the next big thing sind!”
• “Wow! – ich vote für SnipClip … hoffe das kommt bald an den Start!”
• “SnipClip muss gewinnen, die Idee und das Team sind super :)!!”
• “SnipClip: three points”
• “SnipClip wird es rocken”
• “SnipClip has got it!”
• … and many many more!

You still can vote here. To vote you have to leave a comment on the webpage telling which startup you prefer. You can mention up to three different ones. Please note that you have to scroll to the end of the web page. There is a form where you can enter your name and your comment. By the way, you can win tickets for the Community Summit!

Have a good time!

Martin

What a happy morning – SnipClip was nominated for the Community IGNITE:

Seit vorgestern nacht ist die Bewerberliste zum Community IGNITE (unsere Community-Beauty-Contest beim Community SUMMIT!) online – auf den ich an dieser Stelle gerne nochmal hinweisen möchte und jeder kann nun Teil der Jury werden. Wir hatten zwar eine Poll-Extension dort integriert, die allerdings irgendwie dann doch nicht funktioniert hat. Daher möchte ich kurz hier mal für ein Voting für die IGNITE-Kandidaten aufrufen: Jeder hat drei Stimmen, die er per Kommentar an diesem Beitrag abgeben kann.

Als Incentive verlose ich drei Freikarten für den Community SUMMIT im Wert von 990 EUR unter allen Kommentatoren … also los!

Now you have the chance to vote for SnipClip and win tickets for the Community SUMMIT (worth 990 €!). So let’s go: click here and leave a comment with at least the text “SnipClip” in it.

Good luck and have a good day!

Martin

PS: Please pass on this message to your friends and colleagues. Thank you!

A lot of stuff was written about the changes to the Facebook user interface. Lots of people including my colleague Martin think, that the new Facebook design is boring. Many people complain that you can not express yourself with the new Facebook design because there is nothing personal on your profile, not even your own apps. Apparently Facebook listens to the complaints of its users.

Now I can add my applications to my profile again. It does not work with every app. That makes me believe that Facebook is testing the the new (old) feature at the moment. As you can see at the screenshot, the apps appear at the left side below my friends:

So a little bit of the old Facebook is back. We will see, what is coming next.

Good bye and stay tuned.

The Allfacebook blog reports about the aversion against Facebooks new design:

The backlash against Facebook has continued to spread ad Facebook rolls out the new site design. One group, “1,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK LAYOUT!” has surged and will most likely surpass two million users later today. Another group, “Petition Against the ‘New Facebook’” has over 1.35 million members. It’s not just the group members that don’t like the new profile.

Via All Facebook » Millions of Users Dumbfounded by New Facebook Design

Wow, that is a large number of people who dislike the new design. I’m not sure whether it is good. My colleague Matthias likes it and he argues that it is more intuitive. For me it is just not cool enough – in fact it is boring. But this is how Facebook works: it is boring, because it is designed for ease of use. Now, it is even more boring, i.e. more easy to use.

Facebook resembles the Windows desktop and becomes more and more a social network-enabled webtop instead of a social network with web applications. However, where or what is the “Apple-style” webtop? MySpace? No, too chaotic. Is this is a market-gap?

Btw: do you like the new design of Facebook?

Whether or not, you probably have to life with it. Nevertheless, have a good time!

As a small team of young founders we do not cover every aspect of our business, but we have advisors who guide us:

• Christoph Klasen is a senior business development manager at Microsoft. He brought us in contact with content providers, gave us a lot of feedback on our business concept and gave us the opportunity to present us at the Xtopia conference in November in Berlin.
• Jan Schlink is a marketer working at Metaio – the German augmented reality company! He is well experienced in B2C as well as in B2B marketing and he is creator of “SnipClip”, our company name.
• Jochen Krisch is a well-known German e-commerce expert and blogger. We had several workshops with Jochen where he gave us valueable insights in how e-commerce in general works.
• Mark Möbius works at the UnternehmerTUM, our official partner. The UnternehmerTUM provides us with free office spaces and – more important – with advice from multiple sources.

Thanks for everything you did for us in the past and everything you will do in the future! And have a good time!

Martin

In the last week a lot of stuff was written about the Facebook gifts. First Lightspeed Venture Partners published  a home made analysis, where Jeremy Liew showed, that the sales figures of the Facebook gifts are growing. Mashable!, Venture Beat and Virtual Goods Insider picked up the same topic afterwards and released own articles in their blogs.

A really good article came from Nick O´Neill in All Facebook – the unofficial Facebook blog. He pointed out, that the reason for the growing sales figures of Facebook gifts is the growth of the user base of Facebook.

“So what’s the prime reason for gift growth on Facebook? The company’s rapid growth in their user base. The company has more than doubled since Jeremy Liew published the company’s findings back in January. This means that the rate of gifting appears to be staying pretty consistent.”

Another really good article in that context came from Vili Lehdonvirta on Virtual-enconomy.org. He reported, that the biggest daily in Finland had a full page devoted to virtual consumption. He attached a snippet of one of his papers, where he points out a very interesting aspect of consumption in general.

“One strategy is to note that everywhere in our economy, goods have a social life beyond their physical qualities.”

This applies also to the Facebook gifts. It is not about paying 1 $ for this little pictures, it is about showing your friend how much he/she is worth for you.

All this makes me believe, that virtual goods in social networks can be really successful. The future will show, how much the users are willing to pay for virtual goods.

Good bye and stay tuned.

I am currently writing my diploma thesis. The issue of it is the monetisation of social networks with virtual goods. The last few days I was searching for scientific literature. I found two very good websites, which I want to share with you.

1. Social Science Research Network

There is a huge amount of scientific papers and the most of it is for free.

2. Bibliography of virtual-economy.org

Virtual-economy.org is also a blog, which I can really recommend. The amount of the scientific publications is not that big, but with a very specific content.

If you know other places, where I can find scientific publications, papers or dissertations about virtual goods, virtual items, virtual economies in social networks, please keep me up to date. I really appreciate your recommendations.

Good bye and stay tuned.

We knewed it for one month, but we were told not to tell it publicly. Yesterday was the day: the German Ministry of Economics and Technology (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie) awarded SnipClip a prize for its unique and innovative business concept. Find more information on our (new) news site.