VivaBusiness 2.0

Figuring out how to sort through personal profile pages to target ads has become a top priority for both MySpace and Facebook. But in the new California gold rush to turn valuable information people reveal about themselves into advertising dollars, lesser-known social networking sites are getting left behind.

Next month Scott Rafer plans to launch a new ad network, Lookery on the web, that will rent out data it gathers from smaller social networks and market it to developers and other companies.

“Getting this kind of data is a marketer’s dream. What we do is aggregate the data to show, say, women in their 30’s who live in San Francisco with pets,” says Rafer, CEO and co-founder. “Getting a more detailed understanding of who your customers are makes your business healthier.”

Lookery, which started as a Facebook-specific ad network in July, may soon be competing with Facebook at its own game. Mark Zuckerberg’s startup plans to kick off its own ad network this fall (we hear in November) to let advertisers target users on Facebook. Lookery suspects that Facebook will go a step further and rent out its demographic statistics to other sites, meaning what happens on Facebook won’t stay on Facebook for long.

“This is what everybody believes they’re working on. If Facebook wants to be the next Google, they’re going to have to make a lot more money than they are now to take the company public,” says Rafer, the former CEO of MyBlogLog that was acquired by Yahoo for a reported $10 million in January. “If this is how Facebook is going to monetize, we need to get in the game, too.”

Lookery and Facebook both hope a better understanding of the general behavior of social network users will help advertisers target the right online audiences. But not everyone’s convinced that jumping on the behavioral targeting bandwagon will lead to significant profits. “The profile information that’s available on Facebook or any other social networking site doesn’t mean your clickthrough rate will be higher,” says Andrew Chen, an entrepreneur-in-residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures. “It’s really important to not confuse, ‘I’m interested in cars or skiing,’ versus ‘I’m about to make a transaction.’”

Of course this hasn’t stopped major players from following Facebook’s lead. MySpace is developing a new software to allow customized ads for its 110 million active users. Microsoft is considering buying a 5% share of Facebook, and last week TechCrunch reported that Google plans to unveil an open-source platform for Orkut and iGoogle in November to compete with the top social networks.

So while the major players are busy gathering data on their own users, Lookery plans to hit up sites like Bebo, Dogster and Hi5. 

Lookery, which has served 250 million ads on Facebook since it launched in July, has no plans to run ads on other social networking sites. Instead, it will pay the sites to collect its social network data and then sell it elsewhere. Says Rafer, “It starts off as worthless data. But when you put it all together, it turns into something really valuable.”

UPDATE: Under the headline "EXCLUSIF Orange et Apple au bord de la rupture" the French weekly Challenges reports on its website today that Apple (AAPL) and France Télécom (which owns Orange) have indeed come to loggerheads. At issue in negotiations that have been going on for three weeks, according to unnamed sources, are Apple's steep revenue-sharing demands -- as much one-third of sales and monthly fees.

Complicating the talks are France's telecom laws, among the strictest in the world, which forbid the sale of a service with another product -- a cellphone with a telephone subscription, for example. The cellphone subsidy system most carriers use allows them to circumvent the rules. But Apple -- unlike other phone manufacturers -- does not offer a subsidy. Orange might thus be forced by French law to sell a working iPhone -- with a service contract -- for the same price as a "naked" one.

Unless a settlement can be reached by the middle of next week, according to Challenges, Orange -- and Apple -- might not be able to get the iPhone on French store shelves in time for the big Christmas selling season.

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Despite the confident predictions that Apple would announce something in Paris on Sept. 20 -- or Sept. 24, at the latest. Despite the 70,000 Parisians and other visitors expected this week at Apple's largest trade show in Europe. Despite the fact that France Télécom CEO Didier Lombard told a reporter in Hanoi last week that he and Apple had a deal (which led InformationWeek to run a headline that read Apple's iPhone is Launched In France, Via Vietnam.)

Despite all this, Steve Jobs is not at the 2007 Apple Expo in Paris and neither is the iPhone. And it now seems likely that the annual trade show, which opened on Tuesday and ends on Saturday, will come and go without a word from either Apple or Orange about their plans to roll out the iPhone in France. (Requests for comment from Apple have not yet been answered.)

"Could it be," writes Victoria Shannon in today's International Herald Tribune, "that there actually is no deal with Orange, which is owned by France Télécom?"

Shannon's piece explores several speculative theories -- including possible pique in Cupertino over passage last year of France's so-called iPod Law -- before settling on what is likely the real explanation:

It is probably that Apple and Orange simply have not yet come to terms on their business relationship over the iPhone. Maybe Orange is not willing to share as much revenue with Apple as O2 and T-Mobile are for the cachet of being the exclusive iPhone operator. (link)

Meanwhile, lacking an iPhone to pin it to, France's MacGeneration ended up bestowing its best-of-show award on the iPod Touch.

And although there were no iPhones on display at the big Apple booth that occupied center stage at the show, there were plenty to be seen on the floor of the Expo and on the boulevards of Paris, according to 9to5Mac:

If you come to Paris with an iPhone, don't expect anyone to be impressed.  Many have seen hundreds of them.  Every single one we've had the opportunity to inspect has been hacked. (link)

[Photo courtesy of 9to5Mac.]

Almost lost in the cries of pain and dismay from users who "bricked" -- temporarily or permanently -- their iPhones by installing Apple's (AAPL) September update onto devices that had been unlocked, modified or activated on a Windows machine (see Techmeme this morning for the ugly details) is what the update does for the vast majority of users.

The summary of new features provided by the company includes several improvements people had been calling for from iDay one:

• iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
• Louder speakerphone and receiver volume
• Home Button double-click shortcut to phone favorites or music controls
• Space bar double-tap shortcut to intelligently insert period and space
• Mail attachments are viewable in portrait and landscape
• Stocks and cities in Stocks and Weather can be re-ordered
• Apple Bluetooth Headset battery status in the Status Bar
• Support for TV Out
• Preference to turn off EDGE/GPRS when roaming internationally
• New Passcode lock time intervals
• Adjustable alert volume

Apple has provided a cheery video in which several of the new features are demonstrated by the same actor who did the original iPhone guided tour. Anybody with a nonfunctioning phone will probably find it too painful to watch.

As many commentators have noted, it's not as if Apple didn't warn users who had unlocked their iPhones that update 1.1.1 could render the devices inoperable. What it didn't tell its user community was that the update might also disable hundreds of third-party applications that independent programmers had written to make the device more useful.

Some of these problems may go away in the weeks ahead.  Jailbreak will probably get updated to allow third-party apps to be reinstalled. The creators of iPhoneSimFree and anySIM may figure out how to repair whatever damage they might have caused to iPhone's firmware.

Repairing relations with the fiercely loyal core of its user base may take Apple a little longer.

Quite a few airline and travel companies are making concerted efforts to distinguish themselves with more web features - just take a look at KLM's networking sites for business travelers in China and Africa, Travelocity's vacation planning beta site, or Amex's online marketplace for corporate travel.

American Airlines today took a small, but shaky, step into the trend today with the launch of a site specifically designed to provide "women travelers online content."

Here's the idea behind this site as articulated in a press release issued today: "American estimates that if the company is able to raise the number of women traveling on the airline by 2 percent as a result of AA.com/women and its emphasis on women travelers, the airline would garner an additional $94 million in revenue annually while providing additional value and travel information to female customers at no extra cost to them."

This might be a good plan...except for the fact that the content isn't consumer created. The travel tips and safety recommendations (which are supposed to have come from fellow female business travelers - they actually came mostly from American flight attendants) are about as commonsensical as they come: Save time by checking in at a kiosk, "make sure you know where you're going and have directions" and "write down where you park."

Meanwhile, the other content that is supposed to be appealing to women is unfortunately rather dull and uninspiring like the Q&A profile of American's senior VP of customer relations marketing, which reads like a press release.

And there is no way for travelers to communicate with one another. Travel tips and stories are simply supposed to be emailed to the company.

I'm told by American that possible features like a chat room could be in the works if the site gains popularity, but shouldn't that have been in place first? American is telling readers what the company thinks they want to know, instead of letting women do the talking - not the best way to really help travelers or to reach that hypothetical extra $94 million in revenue, if you ask me.

Earth Day is on Sunday. One of the reasons I know this is because travel companies - yes, travel companies - have been reminding me all week.

First it was Delta, with the fanfare surrounding its carbon emissions offsetting program with the Conservation Fund.

Then it was Orbitz touting its partnership with Carbonfund.org and its new "eco-travel microsite."

Expedia and Travelocity already offer ways for consumers to donate money to environmental projects that aim to reduce travelers' environmental footprints.

Planting trees is a great thing. So is raising travelers' eco-awareness and encouraging them to make donations to renewable energy projects. Call me crazy (and I know the airlines would), but wouldn't it be more appropriate to use Earth Day as a way to encourage people to take a day off from traveling rather than using it to promote flying as a way to purchase eco-benefits?

I know, I know. There's no money in the no-flying business. But jumping on the offsetting bandwagon hides the fact that we could do more by actually traveling less.

(The lovely Flickr photo is by stargazer95050)

There are the good, the bad and certainly the ugly when it comes to travel booking sites. An international research firm, the Customer Respect Group, recently undertook the task of examining the sites of 14 different hotel chains to determine which ones provide the best online customer experience.

The group's Customer Respect Index is based on usability, a company's willingness to communicate with travelers and data privacy.

Without futher ado, here is how they scored:
(7+ is considered excellent; under 5 is poor)

Global Hyatt Corp. 7.3
Marriott International 7.1
InterContinental Hotels 6.0
Starwood Hotels & Resorts 5.9
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts 5.7
America's Best Value Inn 5.4
Hilton Hotels 5.3
Ramada 5.3
Red Roof Inn 5.3
Choice Hotels International 5.1
La Quinta 5.1
Radisson Hotels & Resorts 5.1
Preferred Hotels & Resorts 4.9
Best Western 4.7

The good news for the hotel industry is that compared to the overall travel industry, hotel sites tend to be better about responding quickly to customers. The vast majority also provide a "best-rate" guarantee if you book directly on the site. The hotels are also strong on personal data protection.

The bad news?

The sites need some work. Many of them lack a search function and they have more pop-ups, broken links and pages that require scrolling. And despite many hotels' efforts to catch up to travel resellers like Travelocity and Orbitz, hotel chains still lag far behind.

What do you think? Are hotel sites up to snuff or do you book mostly through all-purpose travel sites?

TripAdvisor took travel sites to a whole new level last month by going video. If you missed it, the review site, which boasts the "largest travel community in the world" with more than 20 million unique monthly visitors, began letting its users upload clips of film - everything from destination reviews to personal travel diaries.

Now a Paris-based video production company called Videoagency is offering its own video travel site in Europe. The company launched Trivop.com in beta this month as a way for travelers to take a look inside a hotel before booking a room. Currently the site features walk-through tours of only 154 hotels in just France and England. So far all the videos have been created by the company. But in the future, Trivop.com will host hotel-created and user-generated clips to expand the site's geographical reach. (The company is also marketing itself filmmakers: make a video, stay in a hotel for free.)

What I like about this site is that the videos take you not only down the street in front of the hotel, but inside the lobby, past the breakfast bar and into each kind of room that the hotel offers. Each portion of the video is indexed by tabs. You can search videos by location, price, star rating and most viewed. I also like the Google maps mash-up and the tab that offers recent reviews of the place via TripAdvisor's RSS feed.

CEO Thomas Owadenko says he wants Trivop.com to be the "YouTube of the hotel industry."

I only hope that when the user-generated videos join the mix, the straightforward and helpful filming style remains intact. (Though maybe something could be done about the bland elevator music...)