Hackers and The Social Grid...House of Hackers

On the topic of social networking and how it plays into the concept of open innovation, I was just referred to House of Hackers.

Hosted on the Ning platform, House of Hackers is a social network built for the global hacker community. Run by the GNUCITIZEN Think tank, a leading opinion making/forming body in the sphere of Information Security and the “Hacker Lifestyle”, the community supports the ethical hacker culture and provides a unique platform for hackers to express themselves.

With close to 5,000 members on the site and quite a bit of activity in the form of blog posts and open discussion, the network has a lot of potential for sponsorship opportunities as well as the possibility to be an effective recruitment platform for the security industry.

One feature that is getting a lot of momentum in the social networking landscape is the use of portable identity. House of Hackers has employed the strategy as it allows members to represent themselves on Facebook, Linkedin and others as House of Hackers community members.

House of Hackers is one example of how white-labeled social networking platforms can leverage the power of the social grid in the context of media.

I’m looking forward to learning more about the community and getting a deeper understanding of its impact as an important slice of the security industry pie.

User Generated Intelligence...Innovation Exchange

As the media application of social networking ensconces itself from both the local and national stand point, fortune 500 companies continue to grapple with how social networking could play deeper into their corporate strategies. To date, leveraging the social graph has provided a means for efficient media and a unique opportunity to observe and listen to chatter about brands but few companies have truly harnessed the power of networks to further develop their products and services.

One area that may help to bridge the utility gap for global brands is the use of social networking to create a platform for open idea innovation. Innovation within major global companies has historically been kept behind closed doors but the opportunity to gain valuable consumer insight and compensate big thinkers whoever or wherever they may be, for their big ideas is starting to come into vogue.

Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical about the concept. While clearly monetization is not an issue, the logistical hurdles behind this type of platform seem extremely complex:

• How do individuals protect their intellectual property - Is it possible to create a trusted environment?
• How does one motivate contribution and attract quality thinkers - after a few failed submissions, when do the ideas stop flowing?

To discuss some of these challenges, I had an opportunity to catch up with Mark Hadfield, CTO of Innovation Exchange. Innovation Exchange is one of the first online open innovation marketplaces. It has recently moved from being a private network to a public one. Community members from all over the world respond to challenges sponsored by Global 5000 companies and not-for-profit organizations.

Mark has been applying the latest social networking tools to create a trusted online community for contributors to shine. While only a select few will win the challenges and earn anywhere between $50K and $100K for their ideas, Mark explained that public recognition, progression and competitive ranking are key ingredients to the success of Innovation Exchange’s platform.

Mark went on to describe the legal details that were involved in protecting contributors as well as the security mechanisms put into place to provide a comfortable, trusted environment.

“The market has amazing potential and is in its infancy,” said Mark, “Global brands are realizing the tremendous value of open sourcing their innovation challenges”.

With a rapidly expanding client base of global brand name organizations and a growing number of regular contributors, Innovation Exchange is definitely on to something. Clients are willing to pay not only for the big ideas, but also for incremental innovations, that can be quickly brought to market.

The future will depend on how well the platform stimulates contribution and motivates community members to stay connected. Global brands will be attracted to a pipeline of creativity. Time will tell if the model will sustain the volume and freshness that is so critical to its success.

The Vertical Advantage...Know What I Mean?

Over the past few months I’ve had a chance to work in the local media planning trenches. It’s been a real eye-opener to business models in the local landscape and one of the benefits has been exposure to the “feet on the street” and the role they play throughout the media planning and buying experience.

Working as an agent allows you to delve deeply into a business sector while representing the company’s media spend. In booking across various business verticals within a multitude of directories/engines, there have been some highlights (as well as bleaker realizations).

Here are just a few…

• There is a major variance in sales service across the publishers. This includes differences in self-procurement, sales contact and follow-up techniques.

• User experiences across the landscape leave much to be desired. Some sites with the most visually appealing content suffer from poor navigation, glaring typos, horrible grammar or confusing messages.

• As new players gun for share in a difficult marketplace, the challenge remains one of positioning the property as a viable advertising platform while generating users to sustain client bases. Marketing budgets only stretch so far, making the right decision on budget allocations is essential to survive.

• Vertical directories, by the nature of their focused content, have great potential to succeed.

Focusing on the last point, vertical directories have an advantage over broader based directories in that they have extremely focused operations. They tend to have been founded by industry members. These members bring a wealth of talent to the table. A deep understanding of a vertical is key to targeting advertisers through personal contacts and industry event networking. From a selling perspective, the ability to speak the same language as your buyer is priceless.

Industry language goes deeper than just lingo like skids, plates or seats. Each sector has its own business owner profile. Profile variances run anywhere from attire and level of professionalism to hard factors like seasonality and peek business day hours.

In the buying seat, being approached by someone close to the industry goes many miles beyond a homogeneous sales representative. They come at the right time, say the right things and most importantly have customized products that simply make sense to the business owner. One of my favourite added features is the business-to-business angle.

Splitting into verticals may not be feasible under all circumstances but for publishers that have a sustainable mass directory working the front lines (granted, not everyone has that luxury), there is time to develop deep content with industry specific customized features. The challenge is in bottling the winning model vertically while not making the mistake of hastily cutting and pasting across various sectors and renaming – that would just be silly.

TrustPlus Mobilizes eBay Reputation Data

Building significantly on its offering for users looking to create portable reputations online, TrustPlus has just licensed eBay’s buyer/seller data to further enhance user reputation profiles. TrustPlus users now have the ability to add the valuable ratings they’ve built on eBay into their TrustPlus profiles.

Users of the TrustPlus system download badges that are visible on their profiles at partnering sites like Craigslist, FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn. With this new partner, existing users of the system are encouraged to securely import data from eBay and when they do, the eBay brand appears as part of the user’s reputation portfolio. Profile viewers are able to drill deeper into the user reputation details after clicking to display a slick profile dashboard.


The move is a timely one as TrustPlus has capitalized on eBay’s first forays into monetizing its reputation data. As an established player in the field of personal online reputation, TrustPlus remains a free service with upgrade services available to users. In April, TrustPlus surpassed the 1 million unique system users per month mark and Maggie Wells, Vice President, Business Development said that the recent deal has created an even greater uptake in downloads as well as user activity.

Deeply ensconcing itself in the trust game TrustPlus will soon be offering a payment service allowing users to pay for online transactions through its platform.