Enhanced Person-to-Person Messaging

Our development team continues to be working hard on lots of new features for the InXpo virtual events platform.  Last Friday we just put into production the 8.2 release of the platform.  As always don’t hesitate to send us your feedback or leave us a comment.

There are three major areas that I want to highlight:

We added a couple of features that will make it easier for attendees to communicate, connect and chat between themselves:

1)      Enhanced Notification: We have added an expanded communication notification bar that appears at the top of the event screen when an attendee has an inbound chat request, email, vcard, buddy log-in or other communication.  Instead of just a flashing indicator, this bar instantly drops down and shows more detailed information about the requestor/sender (such as Name, photo, title, chat, subject, etc) .  This feature will ensure that attendees do not miss any communications and that they have all the information necessary to prioritize communications.

 2)      Improved Responses: For attendees we have also added the option to add a short (250 character) message when declining a chat request – thereby giving attendees a more elegant way to interact even when declining requests.

Improved Search

We have a deep pipeline of features in queue designed to help virtual events attendees find the content they are looking for.

In the 8.2 Release we launched one of these improvements by adding blog search in the advanced search options.  This feature now gives attendees the ability to search specifically for blogs posted within the event. 

We have a lot more search and content discovery features coming; so stay tuned.

Live Motion Templates

This one is straight from the wow-factor department. 

We have added “Live Motion” templates inside XpoBuilder, our self-service, drag & drop tool that allows our event organizers, producers, exhibitors to build their virtual events.

What’s “Live Motion”?  Remember those background designs you see at our virtual events? Sure, they are functional, 3D, immersive & effective; but all those templates are static pictures. In this new release we’ve added ten new templates that now feature moving people, water, trees, windmills, and more.

In a world where it’s hard to get and keep an audience’s attention, this sort of movement magic can help keep attendees that much more focused on what’s happening in the virtual event.

The ten new Live Motion templates include:

1. Business Park Campus
2. Eco Valley Campus
3. Eco Valley Lobby
4. Grand Central Campus
5. Grand Central Lobby
6. Marina City
7. Millennium Plaza
8. Millennium Plaza Campus
9. Modern City
10. Modern Lobby

 Hold on to your hats, we have a lot templates coming.  Tell us or leave a comment if there is a Live Motion template style that you’d like to see.

Twitter Lists

Social Media Landscape by Ivan Walsh via flickr

In the early days (e.g. 2003 through 2007), social media was Missouri — in a “show me state”.  As Director of Marketing or CMO, your biggest challenge was not how to leverage social media – but rather, how to justify it to the CFO and CEO.  Return On Investment (ROI) metrics had not yet been established, so you had to “make it up” on the go – and then convince stakeholders that the metrics were valid.  In fact, you probably had to first educate stakeholders on what social media was and how it could benefit your company.

Here we are in 2009 and the world has shifted.  Social media and social networking sites are as much a household name as the “Big 3″ television networks were back in the 1960’s.  Today’s networks include YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  The C-suite has read numerous accounts of social media driving real business value (ROI) – and they’re seeing the competition active in social networks.  So now the tables have turned – the CEO is now in pursuit of the CMO to ask questions like, “what is our social media strategy” and “why aren’t we doing more of it”?

Social media is an ever-changing landscape – and that’s a good thing, as it reflects the fluid and dynamic nature of the associated technologies and communities.  As a marketer, though, it means that you need to stay on your toes to best judge how to adapt to the changing landscape.  How quickly do things change?  Well, let’s consider the developments of the past few months:

To quote the Twitter blog, “The idea is to allow people to curate lists of Twitter accounts. For example, you could create a list of the funniest Twitter accounts of all time, athletes, local businesses, friends, or any compilation that makes sense.”  For me, the launch of Lists will create a fundamental shift in the use of Twitter.  First, it creates more value for users – in the early days of Twitter, the challenge for the new user was finding the right people to follow.  Now, you simply need to find the right list(s) and away you go – no more need to seek out individual Twitter users to follow.

This changes the dynamic of “following”, as Lists become the new “destination” – I may follow a list religiously, but not follow individual users who are members of that list.  So we’ll probably start to track “lists with the most followers” rather than “users with the most followers”.  As a marketer, your goals remain the same: provide interesting and valuable content to your Twitter followers.  By doing so, you may be added to other users’ Twitter Lists (a good thing) – and, you may want to create a List or two yourself, since future users may follow your list instead of your individual account.

Social Search

Google and bing recently shared some details behind their social search initiatives.  The basic concept here is that search engines will now index social networking activity (e.g. Twitter tweets, Facebook postings, etc.) and make that content available in search results.  This immediately elevates the value and impact of your social networking initiatives – to date, the content you post within a social network largely remains inside the “walls” of that network.  Now, that content becomes accessible across the entire web.

Expect more traffic to you (your Twitter account, corporate web site, etc.) and higher page rankings – if you do things right.  If you’re effectively tweeting today, keep up the good work and expect wonders from social search.  Now consider a second aspect of social search – inclusion of friend and peer content within search results.  If I search for a restaurant and Bob (a Facebook friend) recently posted some restaurant reviews on Facebook, then I may see Bob’s comments in the social search results.  Since I always trust a friend’s recommendation (for restaurants, movies, etc.) over anything else, social search will further empower the user, taking some influence away from marketers and publishers.

Consider a b-to-b purchasing decision – with social search, I may be more interested in what my former colleagues purchased compared to the latest product comparison guide on a web site.  For publishers and marketers, this shift requires you to become even more active in social networks, so that your message and brand retains (and maintains) “relevance” in social search.

Inter-Connectedness

It’s great to see that social networks are not being formed as isolated islands – on the contrary, it seems like every network is connected to every other.  Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) like Facebook Connect, OpenSocial and OAuth help forge these connections.  I was struck by this inter-connectedness the other day when I went to comment on a blog posting – I used Disqus to post my comment and associated the comment with my Twitter ID.  I allowed the use of my Twitter profile via OAuth – and my image was automatically pulled from my Twitter profile.

The benefit here is similar to social search, as a “multiplier of goodness” to your social networking initiatives.  Social search multiplies your ROI by creating a much wider audience to your social content – and inter-connectedness has a similar benefit, since it, too widens the distribution of your content.  For end users of social networks, of course, there also tremendous benefits – namely convenience and security (in the example with Disqus, I never once transmitted my Twitter password).

How does this relate to virtual events?  Consider inter-connectedness when registering users for an event – rather than prompting potential attendees with a blank registration page (that they need to fill out from scratch), consider inter-connecting with their membership in social networks, where they’ve already provided profile information.  A convenience provided to users will result in more users.

Mobile

In the days of Web 1.0, “presence indication” was all about my status on AOL or Yahoo Instant Messenger (e.g. online, away from my desk, etc.).  Today, “status” is still important (e.g. am I available?), but “presence” is not about whether I’m online or not – it’s now about the GPS coordinates of my location!  Services like Google Latitude and Foursquare provide social services that include physical location awareness of your friends (i.e. where they are right now – or, where they’ve recently visited).  Imagine the possibilities of a physical/virtual hybrid event – one can leverage these location-aware social networks to bridge attendees of the physical event with those participating virtually.  A virtual event attendee may visit a booth and see a presence indicator of a user visiting the physical booth – they can connect with one another and chat – and perhaps the physical booth visitor streams a live video (from her smartphone) to show to the virtual attendee.

Additionally, be aware that mobile-only social networks are forming (e.g. MocoSpace), which eliminates the corresponding web site – users interact solely on their mobile phones.  This makes sense, as more and more computing is spreading outward, away from the PC/laptop and over to smartphones.  A significant portion of social network usage these days comes from mobile devices (e.g. iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phones, etc.).  As a marketer, you’ll want to stay on top of mobile technology and start planning for how you extend your marketing messages to it.

Conclusion

The world of social media is both dynamic and exciting – there will be lots in store for the balance of 2009 and into 2010.  You’ll need to stay current and continually adjust your strategies and tactics.  Check back here periodically for updates from us on the changing landscape.  Good luck and have fun!

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Changing Social Media Landscape: How to incorporate into your #marketing and events by @InXpo: http://bit.ly/35Qg1W #eventprofs

This is a guest post by Kenny Lauer,  Executive Director, Digital Experience at George P. Johnson, where he leads GPJ’s worldwide Digital practice.

When asked this question, I have to say there are two elements to how virtual events have changed: 1) Mindset and 2) Technology.

The first thing to note is that the mindset around virtual events has changed. There is now much greater corporate acceptance and appreciation around delivering an entire event or a partial event virtually.

Virtual Events are not new. Since the dawn of the internet, people have been coming together online to consume and interact. Back in the 90s I lead group chats where hundreds of people logged on to a chat interface and interacted with a celebrity. Not only was there one-to-many communication (from celebrity to everyone logged in) but also many-to-many conversations since everyone could see everyone else’s comments. In fact, I would venture to say Tim Berners-Lee and Jarkko Oikarinen were the pioneers of virtual events and virtual event technology. Berners-Lee for inventing the internet and the “WiZ” Oikarinen for creating IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in 1988. IRC was really the first real-time Internet synchronous conferencing technology. It was mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums.

The limiting factor was really Technology—both evolutions into making it readily accessible and easy to use, as well as broadband adoption so the install base for using that technology was significant.  Consider the analogy of the first person to have a fax machine who couldn’t do anything until someone else had one to receive the fax. Same is true for common adoption of technology. Even in today’s times, Twitter has become successful because it has reached a threshold of users. If it only had 6 people, Twitter wouldn’t be a growing household name.

Just a few short years ago, no one gave any attention to these Virtual Trade Show Platforms. In fact some had to create their own shows just to demonstrate the ability.  As of late last year, things changed and the spotlight was shining brightly on these providers. Why? The Perfect Storm.

The anchor force is the economy: budgets are slashed and business travel put on hold. There are also other forces that play a role. Technology that enables virtual events is here and easy to use. Broadband adoption and maturity levels are there. Business today interacts with a distributed audience all over the globe. As Peter Friedman says, the world is flat.  And, of course, the need for companies to be environmentally friendly is still important. You’re reducing the carbon output by not only the fabrication of products, but also the transportation - the cars to get to the airport, the airplanes, and everything that needs to happen within a physical event.

So, those four things taken together (see photo), with the economy being the strongest, is why we’re seeing this pendulum swing from physical events to virtual events.

"You're Hired!" by sssteve.o via Flickr

I’ve been with InXpo for 7 months now and am glad to announce that we’re expanding our sales and marketing organization! We are looking for an online marketing manager, product marketing manager/director, global account executive and major account executive.  

What type of people are we looking for?

• You’re not afraid to roll up your sleeves and jump in to get the work done
• You have initiative. You take a project and run with it with minimal supervision but know when to check in to make sure you’re on the right path
• You live, breathe and eat technology and are familiar with SaaS. Bonus points if you play in the cloud
• You understand the nuances of social media not only for promoting your personal brand, but also in using it as a strategic business tool for marketing and sales purposes
• You’re located in the San Francisco/Bay Area or New York – sorry folks, no relocation
• You want to join a venture-backed, fast-paced company

If this sounds like you, then check out the detailed job descriptions on our website.  If you have any questions, leave a comment and we’ll respond as quickly as possible.
 

This post was co-written with Dennis Shiao.

Merv Adrian recently wrote a blog posting about Kalido’s virtual event (note: this was powered by InXpo) and I noticed a comment about how can one effectively attend a Virtual Conference. Well, here are seven tips to maximize your next virtual conference:

Determine your objectives before attending: It’s a simple step, but one that few virtual event attendees do – write out on a piece of paper what you want to get out of attending.  Use this list to then guide your actions and activities within the event.

Complete your profile: Take a few minutes to add some information to your profile, such as your role, who you’re seeking to meet and what your objectives. This information will help others know whether or not to connect with you. So instead of spending the first few minutes figuring this out, you’ve established everything upfront. Also mention how people can connect with you via your social networks, such as Twitter or LinkedIn.

Add the event to your email/calendaring system (e.g. Outlook): After all, you can’t get the most out of your next event if you forget to attend.  Use the virtual event platform’s reminder system,  if available.  And, place reminders in your calendar for those sessions that you don’t want to miss

Use two monitors: Ideally, I would recommend using two monitors: one to do your day-to-day work such as email and writing and the second to monitor or participate in the virtual conference. If you don’t have two monitors, then consider having a separate browser opened up to the event. This way you can tab back and forth as needed.

Engage in the Group Chats: Besides the content, the best parts of a virtual conference are the group chat and one-on-one chats within the virtual environment. While the presentations can be viewed on archive after the live event ends, the conversations are not replicable. I recommend spending at least 1-2 hours chatting with others in the various group chats.

Speak with Exhibitors: Unlike a physical event which would mainly be staffed with sales staff, vendors can staff a virtual conference with more subject-matter experts. Take the opportunity to speak with these experts especially if you’re researching or even in the final stages of selecting a solution.

Prioritize the Presentations and Exhibitors: The great thing about a virtual conference is that the content and exhibitor information will be available typically 90 days after the live events. Instead of feeling compelled to watch all the presentations or visit every booth, prioritize those that you want to watch or visit. The rest can then be accessed during the archive period.

Are there any other tips you would recommend?