Matt Baril

I'm finally reading The Long Tail, Revised And Updated (affiliate link), yes I know it was about time, and I realized Anderson explained very well, and in economic words, something I've been fascinated about and which I used a lot for my 28 business ideas: aggregators. After reading Anderson, I think I've come to a better understanding of the true power of aggreagtors for building communities, as well as its power for new potential ventures.

Aggregators are great for many reasons and they benefit everybody, people who create them, people who use them, and even people who get their content aggregated. Aggregators filter part of the junk out of the useful stuff and most importantly, they help build communities. But aggregators are only one part, and here is what I believe is a better overview of where aggregators fit in.

Anderson says 3 things have made long tail economies possible:

1. Better access: This is provided by new technologies such as Internet, cloud computing, cheap hosting, cheap Internet access, etc. New technologies have empowered your browser and it allows more people to easily reach out and connect with you.
2. More stuff: Here the aggregator comes in handy as it is its job to fetch the most relevant products/services/information and deliver them to you.
3. Filters: If you have no filters, it means you have an easy access to a great deal of stuff, which by definition will be mainly useless to you (it's an aggregate of niche products that don't appeal to the mass). You need tools to filter out what's not aligned with your tastes and a good CMS (Content Management System) will help you do just that.

What Anderson doesn't say however, is that once you have content, users and filters, you've created a platform. From a business perspective this is a very good news, because you can build a platform with little resources: a hosting contract, a domain name and a CMS (drupal, magento, joomla!, etc.) and you're good to go. The keys will be to find your niche and build up a community, two things that are easier said than done.

For the skeptics, there is definitely a strong business case for a platform, because you're adding value by offering a large selection of sorted products, connecting people with similar tastes to one another, and creating more value from the users through reviews, ratings, recommendations and word of mouth (free marketing). It also means that you are getting rid of the less profitable and more difficult part of creating innovative great content and focus on building a community around your platform and its products/services. It reduces risks in two ways, on one hand the initial cost is lower than a typical venture that creates content or goods, and on the other hand, a platform can adjust to new tastes much quicker since it can easily scale up its catalog.

To conclude, a good example of an international company who has been very successful doing just that is Amazon.com. They've even been a step further by offering what Anderson calls an Aggregator-for-hire. They basically offer other vendors to use their platform which means they don't even have to bother fetching content.

I've recently found my niche and I'm working hard at getting a platform up and running. Do you have yours?

Idea #28 Vancouver IT blog with interviews, latest news, videos, pictures, upcoming events, etc.

My idea is not completely new, but there is nothing quite like this yet and I find it odd. There is Techvibe who is close to doing this, but what I have in mind is a real complete blog completely dedicated to the IT sector in Vancouver and the business world surrounding IT. There should be many articles of the best experts in Vancouver, interviews with successful entrepreneurs, short video reports, pictures. It should be the place everybody interested in IT and business should go to. One thing that would be very useful would be to have a section of all the relevant upcoming events as well.

Money could be made with premium subscriptions, but it would be better to use advertising and conferences to finance the venture. Conferences make connecting with real people easier, add credibility to the blog and are a great marketing tool. Services for venture capitalists should also be provided in order to help young startups and Angel Ivestors connect. The blog, even though virtual, would be extended to real life and would help connect people.

Idea #27 Follow your favorite hockey team matches on a Twitter feed with pictures & sounds included

As I was watching the game Slovakia against Finland tonight (what an amazing game by the way, really too bad for Slovakia), I found myself checking my twitter feed to see what people were saying. That made me think of all the times I had access to twitter but not to a TV, a computer, or an Internet access fast enough to watch a live game. I thought it could be really fun if we could read a hockey game on Twitter, in real time with all the best of the game in many tweets. Pictures of the goals could be updated as well as audio files. It'd be nice to hear an almost live: "he shoots, he scooooooores!", it would make following the game on Twitter much more real. Tweets would have to be fast, concise and well written. Users should have the choice to follow the team they want, so it means one feed per team would be required. Eventually, all sports could be covered.

Money wise, they're could be sponsored tweets during intermissions for beer companies and cars for example, just like on TV. Hopefully the advertising would be better targeted to a Social Media channel and would tap into the opportunities it offers such as interactivity, comments, crowdsourcing. This channel would offer a richer way of delivering a hockey game than radio and would be very convenient for people who have only access to a cell phone for instance. It could also be used as a complement to TV.

Idea #26 Data mining for house/apt listings that would be delivered via email a la Google Alert

One thing Internet has made easy is the creation and sharing of data. What it has made much more difficult is getting information out of this data. For instance, there are dozens of websites listing apartments and houses and the data is out there for everyone to use. Now if you're looking for a 1bd flat which is pet friendly, in Yaletown, laundry in the suite, with a dishwasher for less $1500/month, well good luck! You'll have to visit and look through all the different websites and will have to go over the ads manually to see if the suite has everything you're looking for. That's painful, time consuming and plain boring. To be honest, it's hard to understand how come we still have to do these things manually in 2010.

My idea is to simply set up a website on which users could set up an account and make a list of the features they need their flat to have and enter a physical perimeter in order to delimit the boundaries in which the apartment should be. That website would do all the fetching from the most popular house and apartment listings to then deliver the relevant results by email. Just like Google alert, users should have the choice to receive emails as the ads are published (live) or as a digest every day or week.

Idea #25 Take pictures of tourists that can be purchased later on in a following-up email

This idea is not mine. As we were at science world today, selling chocolate bars for a project for an entrepreneurship class and taking a picture of our latest customer as a proof of our work, a bystander said: "You guys should take peoples' email and sell them the pictures." That reminded me different places in Europe where I've had the chance to go and where you can have your picture taken by a professional photograph and you can buy it on the spot. Most of them used polaroid and the quality was not the best, but people would still pay up to 5€. These photographs might exist in Vancouver, but I've never seen any in 3 years leading me to believe there is still room available in the market. All the material required would be a good digital camera you can buy for about $1000 and a license to do business on the street.

Once you find the perfect spot to work (e.g. Steam Clock, Capilano Bridge, Stanley Park, etc.) then you offer people to take a picture of them for free with no engagement required. They could then simply write their email address on a sheet of paper so the picture with a watermark across it can be sent to them. This is direct marketing and people expect your email, you've got the permission to connect with them when they wrote their email address. This opportunity should be fully tapped into. The email should contain a link to a website were other pictures of Vancouver landmarks could be purchased. Frames and even souvenirs could be sold through the website.

In order to attract peoples' attention, a small flat tv screen displaying some of the best shot ever taken could be set on a table close by. If a picture is sold for an average of $5 without a frame, and the cost is about $1 then not many pictures need to be sold per day in order to cover cost and salary. If the website is set properly and the marketing targeted enough, customers could even buy more than the simple $5 picture increasing average spent per customer.