Graeme Thickins on Tech

Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

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BuzzLogic: The Science of Influence

One of the very coolest things I saw demoed today was an application that’s especially targeted at marketers and PR people: BuzzLogic. It’s one of the most elegant interfaces I’ve seen in any marketing app, let alone one so leading edge as far as enabling companies to determine what the marketplace is saying in this age of new “social media.” Buzzlogiclogo Sure, there are others trying to help people measure what’s being said about their company in the blogosphere, but they’re nowhere near as visually rich and powerful as this one.

“Social media may soon rival mainstream media in impact, yet there’s been no meaningful way to understand or untangle it,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO. “BuzzLogic turns the chaos of social media into a channel that can be understood and monetized.”

BuzzLogic is different from first-generation tools such as blog search engines, which only tell marketers who’s popular, not who is influential. Its proprietary algorithm determines who it is that’s influential, the company’s Thad Eby told me, through several tenets, including “relevancy, currency, attention over time, and traffic — not just a blogger’s, but the traffic of those who link to him or her.”

The service is built around a “monitor, map, measure, and engage model,” to support what marketers need to do to stay on top of potential crises and take advantage of marketplace opportunities. Buzzlogicmap One of the cool features it has is the ability to draw “social maps” of influencers in a conversation, which the company describes is “essentially a critical path of the relationships between key influencers.”

CEO Rob Crumpler said of the company’s pricing: “We will be disruptive in this market, with very low entry-level pricing that allows small and medium sized businesses to compete on an equal footing with big companies.” He told me that starts at $500 per month, and small PR firms find that palatable, apparently. But the first thing I asked was whether he had plans to lower that to address an even larger market, and he said he did. It’s funny, because another very smart tech marketer I know who’s here did the same thing: bitched that the price was too high. I think we both agree — this thing has broad appeal, and the price is bound to come down as more and more companies discover and use it. Oh, one more thing: BuzzLogic hasn’t even raised an A round yet, but a well known uber-angel is behind them, Ron Conway. The closing comment from CEO Crumpler, after he said to come see him in their booth, was “We’re opening our Series A today.” Yes, indeed, you are.

I’m signing up for the private beta, for sure. And I got an invite for my friend Steve Borsch at Connecting the Dots, too. Hey, if you’re a marketer that needs to measure influence, I would *beg* to get on that list! The guy to contact is Thad Eby.

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Koral Brings Web 2.0 Content Mgmt to Businesses

Enterprise content management is big business — a $3B industry, as a matter of fact, says Koral CEO Mark Suster, but it’s only at a 5% penetration. Lately, he said, there’s been a big increase in sites to help consumers manage their content, as we all know. Korallogo But what about the majority of businesses who still have a hard time dealing with all their stuff? Koral is out fill that gaping hole with a web app that looks a lot like a consumer Web 2.0 app. The DEMO folks describe it as “a lightweight, document-capable, user-focused content management sytem.” It’s totally free for busineses now, in the consumer vein, but moving toward enterprise work group licensing. It’s hassle free to contribute to, says Suster, and “you can collaborate with any group — the others don’t have to be on your system.” The app is self-built AJAX, and is “super fast,” says UI designer Jon Levine, “which was our first priority.” The app lets you subscribe to documents, authors, or tags. The UI is very, very nice. It’s in limited beta now, and you can invite your friends if you’re lucky enough to get in…

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Sales Reps Will LOVE Genius Interactive

How can a solution that allows sales people see exactly what prospects are doing online on their company’s web site, in real time, not be cool? It lets them deal with the hot, closing opportunities that make their whole world go round — right now. Genius_logo And they can even roll back to the last several hours or previous day, for example. “It’s been described as TiVo for web visits,” said David Thompson, CEO. Best of all, it’s “IT free,” he said. The sales folks can use it without even getting the geeks involved…

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MindTouch Hometown Boy Does Good

Aaron Fulkerson, VP and cofounder of Mindtouch, who’s based in St. Paul, did a fantastic job with his demo just now. He pitched his newly named “DekiBox” smart wiki appliance with aplomb and mega enthusiam. I can’t wait to ask him how much caffeine he consumed before he went on this morning… 🙂 And his San Diego-based colleague, Steve Bjorg (CTO and cofounder), handled his part of the demo flawlessly as well. More from these guys in a later post….

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MojoPac Separates and Virtualizes the App Layer from the Hardware

As touched on previously, this offering from RingCube lets you use any computing device, like an iPod, cell phone, or USB drive, as if it were your own personal computer. Mojopaclogo The difference from earlier attempts to do this is that it works with any application. And, when you use it, it’s totally isolated from your real PC. “What happens on MojoPac stays on MojoPac.”

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