Give us a break you guys : Groupon, Yipit, Living Social and all you people who want to suck my savings (right, as if I have a lot) by luring me to those cheap looking daily deals.

In the world of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare is it really hard to find out what I don’t want (I am not asking you to predict what I may like, want, need. I guess this would be tough and many smart people are trying to figure that out, but I think want I don’ want which is clearly “noise” can be determined easily)

Now don’t tell me we have a feature where I can put my likes, give my facebook account detail but I (as a customer) didn’t update those details. This argument is just LAME. Do something which will compel me to provide those details (Now don’t argue that your strategy is to send all these irrelevant details so that I tell you who am I)

I mean deal sites are good, but sending a blast email is so 1990. Why can’t there be a better way to filter the noise and have more targeted emails?

No?

I thought of putting up few thoughts of what more can be done. Really don’t know the complete business model and roadmap what Sandeep wants to take up for YAYE, but here is what I feel can be done.

# 1. Get a mobile app

This is like the simplest task. There are tons of DIY solutions which you can use and get a branded YAYE Iphone/ Android application. I have listed few below (Disclaimer : I am not affiliated with any of them)

AppMakr

Swebapps

Seattleclouds

#2. Community, Community, Community

You need to involve people. Getsatisfaction, Quora or as simple as putting up your own user driven community portal may help.

#3. Have a dedicated video section

Video section would make a lot of sense where instead of reading, I can also see stuff.

#4. Personalization using Facebook/ Twitter

There is a lot of news one can get. YAYE also offers a lot of news in Energy sector. Do you think you can ask users to login using their Facebook so that they can “subscribe” to specific topics and follow them – less clutter, no?

#5. Company database (Think Crunchbase)

Big fan of Crunch base. Or think of Angel.co. If you can create and maintain an exhaustive Company database around energy sector, that will be so valuable. All the financial updates, new announcements, gossip, investments, diversification news, board changes can be done on this platform.

#6. Follow Companies/ Exclusive Research material

A small extension of #4 and #5. You can also start letting people follow companies, bookmark particular activities around companies.

#7. Stock Track

I don’t think you need any explanation on this. Can you run Ticker of Energy related companies, their financial news, a particular news affecting all these companies, past trends etc.

#8. Infographics, Timeline story

So I noticed there is a special story. However, you can build some cool, useful Infographics around several such news.

#9. Bit.ly and Twitter Integration

Get Twitter feeds of all these famous companies or people who write on Energy related topics.

#10. Give it back to society

Tie up with services like Change.org. When I say tie up, it can really be a mashup. There are several such niche community driven sites as change.org

#11. Pitch more and harder

Promote your blog and site on

http://alltop.com

http://www.quora.com/Whats-the-best-way-to-promote-my-new-blog

Several other news promotional platforms

#12. Education

Tie up with TED. Or environmentalist. Let them blog, talk, refer you. May be you can have sections talking about saving energy. Invite guest writers to come and write on YAYE

#13. Misc

A. Special feature : http://youandyourenergy.com/~youandyo/gulfoilspillfeature/

I see this. It’s quite good but can I get a PDF of it? Out of 15 pages, give 5 and ask to sign up/ pay/ tweet for the rest of 10 pages. (or you may as well just give it)

B. Use platforms like Storify to write about events which are going around Energy or atleast controversies going on. They will at least bring you more readers!

Hope this is helpful.

In the age of internet, when people setup gadgets to control their microwave, lights, car garage door from a phone, why can’t I do that to record my favorite TV episode?

I do not know if in US, the service providers have already given this “app” to their users, but if not, they should think about it.

This weekend while sitting in a local cafe in Barcelona, I noticed it has free wi-fi. After checking my mails I suddenly remembered of Fring and Localphone. And then without waiting a minute, I was talking to all my people. All I was paying was the normal Localphone charge.

So all you Localphone users, why don’t you take advantage of Fring, while you are travelling?

Well, it’s all fair to use such social networking tool — but the downfall is, you are wasting time or may be turning off those customers who want to follow you to understand your promotions, flight announcements, last minute schedule changes, some critical security updates. Personally I feel, using Twitter for Saying Thank you, visit us again will flatter “that one” passenger, however will turn away several potential passengers who want to follow the business/ enterprise and gain more out of their tweets.

It indeed is an art how to distribute your tweets between tackling customer complains, building rapport by saying thank you on their good experience, sending our promos, delighting travelers with useful announcements etc. Well I feel the sooner an enterprise learns this art, the more useful such social tools will be — after all it is all about ROI.

What makes me write this post is the recent tweet by Sashi Tharoor that Oct 2nd, should be a working day instead of a holidy in India.  He said on Twitter,

Gandhiji said — Work is Workship — and we enjoy holiday on his birthday. He would have wanted us to work harder today.

In political circles this might have created a controversy but the work-is-workship believers indeed cheered up Tharoor’s tweet. What amazes me is the speed at which social media is connecting the politicians and the people. A politician who wants to connect cannot give loose excuses and visit only once in 5 years. And the young India is liking its leaders speaking their mind on such platforms. As long as this constructive effort is underway on Youtube, Twitter, Facobook and other social media giants, the next generation would hopefully find itself close to it’s leaders.

I feel what Twitter should do (and guess youtube did it very well) is opening up dedicated streams for current events. Youtube captured presidential elections, live symphonies and what not very well claiming it’s leadership in the video space.

What made me think was, to pickup the car at cheaper rate, I (the customer) have to travel for almost 1.5 hours in a public transportation. I go to this location because it is connected by public transportation (which I came to know from a different site – njtrasit.com)

Now all I want these guys to do is when they present me the Search page, can they not have a search criteria which says “Show location accessible by public transport?” There are tons of APIs available which can be used in their website to present the information and filter out the data.

Am I asking for too much, or should I start paying whopping 60$ per day rent for a small size car?

John Britton (the organizer and the host) was right when he said that weather was responsible for people who registered and did not show up. I think we were around 50-60 people, but it seems actually more than 250 of them said they would come. I had some interesting conversations on how Openess and sharing would make a difference in the fields of music, journalism, education, enterprises.

We also had some wonderful speaker like LESLIE HAWTHORN, Schuyler Erle (btw, I just liked the way he presented RapidSMS, very innovation idea.)

I was impressed with the spirit of openness and the urge to spread it in so many different sectors. Being a techie, I always thought does open source makes sense in other areas. Well it totally does or else Youtube Symphony wouldn’t make sense or take place.

We had several sessions on topics posted by the attendees themselves. I had put a topic “How and Why Enterprise can become more Open?”. All the participants chipped in their views and opinions and had a great time networking. (I shall write a different post on this particular topic)

I am still waiting their Wiki to get updated with the photographs and the videos.

I would definitely recommend others to attend this event next time.

And BAM, as soon as I land on WSJ, they ask me to register. Duh?

Isn’t think story about newspapers themselves — which means you WSJ?

If you want to know, which you should, whether Eric’s thoughts makes sense or not let this story be public — your readers will post their thoughts (collective intelligence) which you can use to come up with the next 2.0 for Newspapers!

Similarly, and it might not be right away, we will face similar issues originating from these social networks/ information getting generated from the web. I mean look at the time we spend online — it’s increasing day by day. Sure the idiot box (Television) was considered harmful few years ago, because it made you couch potato, but Internet and it’s friends are just taking it to the next level. All work/ browsing/ socializing/ reading and NO PLAY!

Here are some trends by Online Publishers Association (OPA) 

Look at Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and hundreds of other social networks/ junk data generators. What good are they doing to us? Do we really need this much information in real time? I am not sure!

Well what triggered this blog, is the new service started by Google — Tip Jar . Is Google feeling insecured about people adopting Twitter? I don’t get it. And well, I know they want to organize world’s information, but look at the data coming up there. Here is one .. 

“Take advantage of free entertainment in your community – parks, museums, exhibits, etc. Go to free park concerts and other community activities”

Who doesn’t? Whoever posted this, didn’t he/ she come to the Central Park during free concerts and see the number of people hanging out there? Here’s another one

“Quit smoking. You will save tons of dollars and my favorite: you will save tons of years”

Ya right! You said it and now whoever reads it will quit smoking. 

My point is simple! I think there will be time when so much information will be floating around that we will find it tough to get to what we are actually looking for in the given amount of time. Noise is just spreading all over. Just noise!

And I don’t think building faster machines, better search algorithms or intitive user interfaces will do the trick. Look at the planet and think again, as to what we really need to do.