On Point

Viewpoints & Sears to Present at the WOMMA Annual Summit

Viewpoints is excited to be participating in the upcoming WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) Annual Summit in Las Vegas, November 13th-15th. I will be presenting with Rob Harles, the VP of Community for Sears in a session about how to build a successful online community to deliver measurable business results.

The session is at 4:15 on Wednesday, November 13th. We'd love to see you there! Check out the WOMMA Summit agenda for a full list of sessions.

Pictures of the new Viewpoints office

Now that the "bubbles" are in, our move in feels complete!  We are at 222 West Hubbard, Suite 310, in Chicago.  True to our mission, we will be reviewing our experience with Gensler (Interior Design and Architectual services), Urban Innovations (our landlord and general contractor), Interior Investments (furniture dealer), Herman Miller (maker of the Resolve line of furniture) and a slew of other providers that helped us move into our beautiful new space.

Viewpoints will be at the Shop.org Annual Conference in Las Vegas this week

Viewpoints will be exhibiting at the Shop.org annual conference in Las Vegas this week.  If you will be there, please drop by and say hello. We are at booth #103.

Viewpoints Update - August 2009

Here's a recent update I sent out to my email contacts but wanted to share here for those of you who aren't on the list but might find it interesting.

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It has been about ten weeks since our last update. Believe it or not, Viewpoints will celebrate its three year anniversary later this week.  I am pleased to report that even in this tough economy Viewpoints is a thriving, growing and profitable social technology and media company that is adding clients, hiring lots of new employees and doubling the size of its offices.   As you may recall, about a year ago we made the strategic decision to build a new product called the Viewpoints Technology Platform which enables us to  power private label communities for clients who are focused on helping their customers make smarter decisions by using reviews, guides, discussion boards, blogs and other tools of the social web.  This move to offer a social technology platform builds on the lessons we have learned building our own growing community.  We are happy to report that Viewpoints.com  continues to post double digit growth and attract blue chip advertisers.

Our unique user count has grown to 2.3 million users and we have registered more than 450,000 consumers who are actively creating profiles, writing reviews, participating in discussions and sharing their experiences with their own social network and other in-market shoppers who are actively researching a purchase decision.    

Here are a couple of the highlights of the last eight weeks that you may want to take a look at:

1.      We launched a completely new reputation and recognition engine that helps clients decide what type of social media and community behavior they want to track, encourage, recognize and reward.  Take a look at the leaderboard on MySears.com and see how powerful the new badging capability can be.

2.      We also launched a new "in-line" review integration capability that allows clients to seamlessly integrate community with commerce.  Now your customers (and employees!) can write and read reviews directly from your site while also engaging with your brand in ways they never have before by commenting, voting, sharing, discussing, uploading photos, and ultimately earning badges that recognize their level of contributions. Take a look at these examples of a Craftsman Drill or this Nordic Track Treadmill.  This inline capability also comes with advanced three tier content moderation and on-demand reporting to keep your merchants up to date on what customers are saying.

3.      For an idea of what we are talking about when we talk about social profiles and truly engaging your customers take a look this profile of jeeperpilot I get a kick out of the "Like father like son" lawn mowers.

4.      Speaking of social, in partnership with a company called JanRain, we also launched the ability for users of the Viewpoints Technology Platform to enable their customers to log-in using their Facebook, Google, Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, Twitter, Windows Live and Open ID accounts.Take a look here and feel free to give it a whirl!

5.      We have also been very gratified by the response we have received from leading brands (Proctor & Gamble, SC Johnson, Kraft, Kenmore, Whirlpool etc) who are looking to a) reach in-market consumers or b) those who are launching new products and looking to encourage reviews and peer to peer recommendations through our Social Influencer Programs.

So, as you can see, the team here at Viewpoints has been very busy!!

In keeping with our mission to help consumer make smarter decisions, I have a few recommendations of my own.  Check out my recent reviews of Google Tasks, the EarthBox Garden Kit and the Scotts Push Mower.  And, if you are drooling over the new MacBook Pro, here is a great review from our designer, Vytas.  And just because it will make you smile, take a look at our VP of Sales, Kim Smith Dolehide's pictures on her profile page from her recent trip to a wedding in Lagos, Nigeria.

I would also like to welcome Gauri Sharma, Amy Wittenberg, Kim Felix, and Rachel Aguiar  to the team.  Check out their profiles and send them a message saying hello!

Enjoy the rest of your summer and please reach out to us if you know of any companies looking to a) reach in-market buyers, b) create positive word of mouth and find hard to reach social influencers, and c) build online communities that drive business results, and provide customer insight and loyalty.

Regards

Matt Moog
Founder/CEO
Viewpoints Network
312-447-6111

 

Viewpoints Update - May 2009

NOTE: This is an e-mail sent out to my personal e-mail list.  I thought it might also be intersting to others who are not on that list but want to learn more about what is going on here at Viewpoints.

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It has been about 90 days since my last update about developments here at Viewpoints.  Wow!  It has been an exciting time and crazy busy.  On May 7^th we officially launched the Viewpoints Technology Platform and also announced the launch of MySears.com and MyKmart.com on the platform.   During the same time, Viewpoints.com continues as one of the fastest growing consumer reviews site on the Internet.  We had more than 1.5 million consumers using our platform last month and are on pace to have more than 2 million this month.  We are also about to cross the 500,000 registered user mark.  As we approach the three year anniversary of the founding of the company I am pleased to report that we are profitable and growing like a weed!

On the media side of our business we continue to work with a stable of blue chip brands such as Whirlpool, Kenmore, Kraft, SC Johnson, and several Proctor & Gamble brands to help them reach a) in-market consumers who are actively researching purchases and b) social influencers who are active online contributors.   Take a look at the results of a campaign we ran with Kraft  for Philadelphia Spinach and Artichoke Cream Cheese and one we ran with SC  Johnson for their Windex Outdoor All In One Cleaner.

And on the technology licensing side of our business, we are seeing tremendous interest in the Viewpoints Technology Platform.  You can read some of the great press we've received in the last few days and even check out the favorable write up in Tech Crunch.  If you know of any retail, travel or media companies that want to better engage their customers tell them to talk to us about ways that we can leverage the Viewpoints Technology Platform to help them collect reviews, solicit ideas, engage in discussions and ultimately create a vibrant and valuable online community for their customers and prospects.

Of course no update would be complete without a few recommendations:

·         Lost City of Z - A NYT's best seller written by a friend about a deadly obsession with the Amazon
·           Vitamix Blender - I make a smoothie every morning with this workhorse of a blender
·         Westin Heavenly Mattress -  Need a great mattress?  My review - 34,431 views and growing! 

And on a final note, we have been hiring new employees at a fast and furious rate.  Please welcome Paula Cooper, Laurel Stiles, Ashley Barthel,  Nik Krimm, and Rahul Matta to the Viewpoints team.

We are moving into larger offices later this summer, bringing several more people on board, launching more sites and releasing some innovative new enhancements to our platform.   Hopefully it won't take me another 90 days to write again, but just in case, have a great summer and don't be a stranger!

Regards

Matt Moog
Founder/CEO
Viewpoints Network

 

P.S. - for pure entertainment value take a look at Kyle's blog . Kyle is one of our developers.  He recently moved out of his apartment, bought an Air Stream and is now traveling around the country.  He stopped by the office this week and gave us all a tour.  He might have the only Air Stream with a Tivo, a Wii and a Mac Book Pro and  three different ways to get on the Internet. Check it out here: http://whereiskylenow.com/blog/

Quick update from Viewpoints

Yesterday we announced the launch of The Viewpoints Technology Platform. and also officially announced the launch of MySears.com and MyKmart.com on the platform.    This is a big step for Viewpoints and is the result of months of very focused efforts.  TechCrunch also did a nice write up of the launch. 

We are super pleased that Viewpoints.com is growing so quickly and is now solidly over 1.2 million users and that we have re-architected our technology to enable us to enter into private label and co-brand relationships with other companies who have large and engaged audiences.  In launching The Viewpoints Technology Platform we are taking the lessons that we have learned in building our own community and bringing those both to our clients and partners.   We have a passion for building communities and partnering with great brands so give us a call!   

Apple iPhone customer satisfaction survey

Ever since the Apple iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs, it has been a constant source of discussion here in the Viewpoints Network office.  One of our web designers was among the first in line at the Chicago Apple store and upon using it for a day he declared in his review "This Will Change Everything" .  Since then we have had 140 other Viewpoints members review the iPhone and 51% of those gave it five stars and it received an average of 4.26 which is very good, but not with out complaints.

So, because we are curious little critters, we decided to poll the 140 people who had written their reviews and ask them to complete a survey on their satisfaction with the phone now that they have had more time to really use it.  Had the luster worn off?  Was the bloom off the rose? Or, was Kyle right.  Did it change everything?

So the first thing we did was the survey.  Click here to see the all the questions we asked.   (feel free to take the survey yourself!) We had about a 20% response rate to the survey request, which while maybe a research professional might think we need a larger sample size, we think this is a pretty good indication of what iPhone users think.   One obvious self selection bias here is that we only surveyed people who took the time to write a review of their iPhone. In the interest of complete transparency here are the full results.   

I have attached the press release we wrote up on this but let me first highlight a few of things that really jumped out at me:

1. Right off the bat an impressive 88% of people said that the Apple iPhone exceeded their expectations. For a product with incredibly high expectations that is pretty amazing.
2. What is even more amazing, is that 70% of the respondents said they told everyone they knew about their iPhone.  70%! wow. And 65% of the respondents report that at least one person purchased on as a result of their endorsement.  In Kyle's case it just might have been 20+.
3. I was also surprised to see that 72% of the respondents said that they were already an AT&T customer.   What that says to me is that when people start rolling off their two year commitments with Verizon the iPhone is likely to see another bump in sales.

We also surveyed non iPhone customers so that we had a benchmark.  The levels of satisfaction are about the same with a 4+ rating at 69% for non iPhone customers vs 74% for iPhone customers.  I was shocked to read that 50% of the respondents had not had any exposure to the iPhone.  However, I do think it bodes well for Apple that 15% of our non iPhone respondents stated their intention to buy one in the next 12 months.

Download apple_iphone_press_release_from_viewpoints.com.pdf  

New video about the Viewpoints Community

For the past several months I have been looking for a way to better communicate our core value proposition to both prospective reviewers and members of the press.  Since starting Viewpoints In August of 2006 our vision has remained consistent.  We want to put the reviewer on a pedastel and help feature their personality so that readers could better appreciate where they are coming from.  When you are reading reviews, don't you really want to find reviews from people like you?  You have particular in books, movies, restaurants, and very specific needs when it comes to buying a car, picking a school and even finding a home service contractor.   So, you tell me, does this video help communicate that vision

Viewpoints Fox News Chicago Story

In mid December Fox News Chicago ran a segment about the Viewpoints launch party.  As you can see we had a lot of fun.  Thanks to Mark Saxemeyer from Fox News for coming out and putting this together.  And of course thanks to all the reviewers who came in from all across the country!

Viewpoints.com official launch!

Today we are having our official launch party.  Last week we finished a major overhaul to the site and integrated a strategic partner into the site. (currently unannounced... can you find them?)

It has now been just over a year since the whole team came together.  I am very proud of both the product, the company and the team we have built.  We launched our private beta in February, public beta on April 30th and our official 1.0 version on Sept 13th.  We now have what I belive is a first class, competitive user driven reviews site.   The next year will be all about innovation, differentiation and scale.   We believe reviews are at there most useful when the reader knows more about the reviewer.  We hope you agree and see the power in what we are building.

Be sure to take a look around the site to see how things are shaping up.  Check out some of these great reviews in  Electronics, Travel, Home & Garden or on the lighter side see what TV Shows, Movies,  Music or Books you could discover.  Of course we also have a great section for Local Places that features local Restaurants, Shopping, and even local Doctors & Hospitals.

See you on the site!  http://www.viewpoints.com/aboutme/Matt