Crowdstorm

Hreview

2007-04-23T11:21:00.000Z

My thoughts on this phone after a year of use

Apr 23, 2007 by Whisper

★★★★☆ I really like this phone mainly because it is not too big, has a nice tall screen, and good colour graphics and interface. I mainly use it for voice, sms, some applications such as Google Maps, a few games, and browsing BBC news.

Battery life could be better - I can use it about two days before recharge, depending on how many calls I make.

This hReview brought to you by the hReview Creator.

This Blog is Moving

2006-08-18T16:17:00.000Z

I think we all find this blog quite moving.

Here's where it's moving to: http://blog.crowdstorm.com/

The Feature Arms Race in Social Shopping

2006-08-14T12:03:00.000Z

This post has moved to the new Crowdstorm blog.

The Tech Trance

2006-08-11T12:51:00.000Z

This post has moved to the new Crowdstorm blog.

CrowdTalk - new social shopping feature

2006-08-08T14:18:00.000Z

This post has moved to the new Crowdstorm blog.

Teaspoons!

2006-07-20T11:10:00.000Z

This post has moved to the new Crowdstorm blog.

PHP Programming - for beginners and professionals

2006-07-18T16:15:00.000Z

Did you know that co-founder Christopher Scollo is a published author? He'll hate me for putting these live but I can't resist :-)

That's Chris on the far right - bobbing up at the end.

In this one he is at the bottom on the left.

The book is from 1999 so not a recent activity but at least it shows we do have one talented programmer on board. The last time I tried to code something, I managed to create an infinite loop and brought the Kelkoo servers down.

I'm sure Chris will give anyone a free book if you ask nicely.. (err.. can't promise anything!)

Soaked "third & final" splash page version

2006-07-11T14:58:00.000Z

The final splash page image talks about the social network aspects of our social shopping site whereby you earn reputation amongst your peers, build a trusted network of people whose recommendations and opinions you trust, and will potentially get rewarded by being product beta testers.

"Soggy" Splash Page 2 - product wiki

2006-07-10T14:45:00.001Z

The second splash page image explaining how you can contribute to the product wiki by adding and editing products yourself. Help upload your own images, videos, add more descriptions, and change the specifications.

Next up - ratings, comments, friends...

A "very wet" Splash Page

2006-07-08T12:04:00.000Z

As social shopping is quite a new concept, we thought it would be nice to show a splash page (this is one version) to explain very briefly what we do and provide some quick links to either our tutorial, explore the site straight away, or sign up.

This particular version talks about the buzz and how the crowd can collectively work out the best and worst products on the market.

Technorati Tags: socialshopping, social, buzz, wisdomofcrowds

Chinese Crowd Stormers

2006-07-05T17:33:00.000Z

The economist has gotten around to covering the Chinese phenomenon that is picking up steam whereby a group of people meetup online, collectively work out a single product they want to buy together, then head down to the store at predetermined time and place to get a group deal!

"ON AN otherwise quiet Friday afternoon in Guangzhou, a city in southern China, 500 shoppers gather outside a Gome electrical superstore in the downtown district. They arrive en masse at the designated time—June 16th at 4pm—that they had previously agreed online. Several hours later, they emerge clutching boxes, having secured 10-30% discounts on cameras, DVD players and flat-screen televisions. “It was great,” says Fairy Zhang. “We just bought an apartment and this way we can afford nice things for it.” The previous weekend, over 100 locals visited Meizhu Central, a well known furniture outlet, to haggle over the prices of kitchen cabinets and dining-room furniture."

10-30% discount is not bad eh!

Read the full article at the economist

Buying a Mobile Phone (1): The Old Way

2006-07-02T18:05:00.000Z

I thought I would use a real world example now about actually buying something and discussing how the process currently works in our standard world (part I) and then how Crowdstorm will enhance this (Part II). I'm actually going through this process right now so it is very appropriate.

So..

Setting the Scene
I'm after a new mobile phone as my existing Nokia 6310i has been dropped about 15 times, gets full of dust, and seems to be a bit behind the times these days. I know I want another Nokia as I like the operating system and menus. So, what next?

I'd go into a shop and look at the Nokia phones on display to see which ones grabbed my attention in terms of shape and style. I'd probably then make a note of a few I liked and create a shortlist.

Next, I'll take this shortlist and try to read some magazines or find reviews and information on the web about the handsets. I understand the technical aspects so I may compare a couple and look at what they offer.

So, next I email a couple of them to some friends who I know get good phones and similar ones to me, and ask them their opinion. Some have heard about it while most haven't.

Lastly, I take a couple of the phones that look like the best bet and them compare prices on them at a price comparison engine before finally choosing the one I want and taking the plunge!

Phew...

So - what's wrong with that you ask? Well, it seems like we're trying to fit our buying requirements around the process that already exists in the market, rather than it adapting to us. For starters, the phone shops don't actually tell me which one is good or popular and I generally get an annoying salesman in my face who knows less than I do. Secondly, the magazine reviews are the opinion of one person and often are different between publications because of this. Who do I believe? Also, some gave it 3 stars, some gave it 4 stars, and 1 gave it 9/10. What does that mean exactly?

My friends also have slightly different views about their preference for phones and of course a few of them can't keep up-to-date with the whole market between them. Seems like I need more friends or to open up my network a bit :-) I think I may have bought the right phone now but I won't really know till I get it and become the guinea pig. All in all, it has taken me 5 days to find it!

Is there a better way? You betcha... (stay tuned for Part II)

The Adidas World Cup Football

2006-06-27T16:49:00.000Z

I thought this product was appropriate to show while the World Cup is on (some graphical and presentation elements removed), as it is a couple of people talking about the Adidas football that is available for sale. This is the actual one you see on the TV used by the players in Germany.

The product was entered directly into the system along with some details about what it is. There are comments from users at the bottom, a list of anyone whol blogged about it, and also a list of people who have recommended it. All this activity has actually propagated the football to be the 8th most buzziest product at the moment on Crowdstorm (based on 40 alpha testers).

Now - anyone going to spend the £120 and send me one :-)

Web 2 & Blogger Party - tonight in London

2006-06-26T13:36:00.000Z

A good friend of Crowdstorm called Roger Kondrat is running a really cool event tonight in London to get some of the UK bloggers and web 2 entrepreneurs together under one roof. (I know it is very short notice but hopefully the people I've spoken to about it already will see this as a gentle reminder :-) )

It will also give you a chance to meet and great people best positioned to help meet your current needs e.g. recruitment, investment, business advice, hosting, services...

Where & When?
From 19:00 at La Casa Del Habano 100 Wardour Street London W1F 0TN

How?
You can get an invite to the event by emailing Roger directly

You can also check out more details here of the Web 2 & Blogger Party

Watch out for the horse!

2006-06-23T13:41:00.000Z

Ok, so while technically this isn't a post about social shopping, Crowdstorm, or web 2.0 - I just found this in Wimbledon Village the other day and thought it really amusing.

When was the last time you saw a pelican crossing for horses?

Philip Wilkinson interviewed by E-Consultancy

2006-06-20T14:19:00.000Z

I recently did a good interview for an excellent company here in the UK called E-Consultancy who are one of the leading hubs for online marketing and web 2.0 right now. In it I explain what Crowdstorm is and where we are going with all this Social Shopping angle.

Read the Philip Wilkinson interview

Please feel free to comment and agree / disagree - I'm keen on a good debate from time to time :-)

What's this - a shopping blog widget?

2006-06-13T16:28:00.000Z

Er... yes, yes it is! On our list of 101 features, we are building a range of shopping widgets and tools that can be put on any website or blog to let people interact with the Crowdstorm proposition from anywhere.

In this example, your users can play around with the sliding bars such as no.comments or no. recommendations, and it will spit out relevant matching products to explore.

We'll also make these available in the "widgets" section of our "buzz" area.

There's a whole variety of things we can do with buzz and widgets and at some point we even want to open up the API's to let you freely build your own tools.

Buzz-tastic!

To join or not to join - what was the question again!!??

2006-06-06T18:51:00.000Z

A great post by Roger Kondrat earlier on whether you should start your own business with your own great idea or join another company who has one early on. You can read it here

It reminds me of an old saying I stuck on my wall years ago:
"It’s not how many ideas you have but how many you make happen."

Starting a business is really difficult and I would never recommend doing it on your own. So if you can round up a team of co-founders or find other people starting a business you believe in (easier said than done)- join forces. Chris and I help each other when we're down and need an extra boost to keep going, and once you have a founding team then things become a whole lot easier.

Lastly, try not to think about the money aspect. Get involved with a business you are passionate about because you really believe in it and that it can change the landscape. Your passion for it will result in perservance and success after which the money will fall into place.

CSS & XHTML

2006-06-05T19:33:00.000Z

Well we've been having fun over the last few weeks trying to code up the site in XHTML and CSS, based on our very cool graphic designs.

As I haven't coded front-end web work for over 4 years now, it has fallen into Chris's hands once more. Now, this is not his favourite type of work in the whole world and I know he'd rather be coding the Crowdstorm API or enhancing our search results, but what can you do eh..

So while he's doing that, I'm drumming up a bit of marketing buzz while making sure we're setup correctly on all the accountancy and legal aspects (very dull!).

Right now I think we're a couple of weeks away from putting the whole thing live now and getting people to actually use it! I know I keep saying it but SOOON.

I think I'm going to read my CSS for dummies book now and see if I can give Chris a hand...

Buzz Page - new screen

2006-05-25T13:44:00.000Z

Another new page, this time the buzz area of the site where you can explore a range of fun stuff regarding the buzziest products for particular tags, most active users, most commented on products, least active products, and so forth.

We are also introducing a range of widgets and tools which you can use to help explore products further, such as a slider bar-tastic function for playing with no. of comments, no. of recommendations, and buzz scores to get it to churn out products matching those criteria. This one is best to see in action :-)

Bottom line - if you've no idea at all what to buy then this page is great fun to explore and see what is buzzy.

Want to join the Crowdstorm startup team?

2006-05-18T15:24:00.000Z

Yep - that's right. We're looking for entrepreneurial individuals who want to get involved with something potentially big and exciting, while we are still in the early stages. Start-Ups have pro's and con's so you need to be aware of those before getting in touch - but one thing we can guarantee is the opportunity to play a role in shaping the new web 2.0 and working alongside me and Chris who have made a success of things before. We're even quite generous with team members down the pub :-)

We're always after really good people and specifically looking in the following areas:

Marketing - do you know how to generate word of mouth and "buzz" about products and businesses without a massive budget? Can you identify all the opportunities for communicating what we do to the world at large and how we benefit customers? Have you had experience about building a userbase before and retaining people?

Commercial - are you familiar with setting up and building revenue streams for internet based ventures? Do you have experience with speaking to product brands and creating innovative deals that you can close?

If these sound interesting to you, then why not get in touch with me direct: "philip.wilkinson@crowdstorm.com" and we can talk more.

Trust me - it'll be a storm!

Our new logo!

2006-05-18T13:52:00.000Z

Well I think this is the final one after going through about 25 different versions! We really like the two shades of blue and the gradient texture that has been applied to it. Also, the lightning bolt is quite funky and plays a roll in the site for "points" and recommendations.

Right now we're also coding up the site with our new designs, getting ready for our upcoming beta launch. Both Chris and I can't wait to get this thing live and start building the community and our own team.

Kicking up a crowdstorm!

2006-05-17T10:27:00.000Z

Check out a post about us on the Mashable blog by Pete Cashmore. As he said, we should continue to work on some distributed features to let users take content and put it on their own sites.

I'd definitely recommend Pete's blog by the way, if you're interested in keeping up with web 2.0 businesses and trends.

What is Buzz?

2006-05-15T08:49:00.000Z

Buzz is the net effect of activity and recommendations on an individual product. Lots of actions can generate buzz such as viewing a product, blogging it, writing a comment, and many other factors. The net effect is that good products propagate to the top of the listings while bad one deservedly fall off the end. The crowd works out the best products on the market!

and another...

2006-05-14T17:31:00.000Z

Ok - one more...

These are the products with the most "buzz" around them based on user recommendations, views, comments, blogs, and so forth...

(note: you will notice the design is slightly different again here but that's because we are going through many different iterations before settling on the final design.)

A sneak preview of the new site

2006-05-14T14:50:00.000Z

Well, this was about two weeks ago and although it has evolved even more since the screenshot below - it gives you a good idea of the feel and usability styles.

This particular screen is a "product details" page which has the most information about a product, with ALL the data entered by our users.

Team Buying - "Tuangou"

2006-05-13T19:18:00.000Z

A new shopping craze has sprung up in China which embraces the direction Social Shopping is heading in and really starts to show some of the power behind it.

"Tuangou" is where a group of people use the internet combined with flash mob stealth tactics in order to meet up somewhere offline and drive hard bargains at an agreed store.

Imagine 15-20 shoppers congragating on a single store for the exact same LCD TV screen - how could they not give everyone a discount in order to get the 15+ sales! Genius.

Our site Crowdstorm will offer similar group buying or team buying experiences over time. After all, if a large group of people are buzzing around a group product - who better to organise the best deal for you than us :-)

You can read the full article on this at:
this site

The problem with price comparison sites

2006-05-01T21:02:00.000Z

It has always been the case that shoppers have been expected to know what they want when it comes to buying online. Searches and navigation have always been geared around typing the exact product name in or refining by brand and general item characteristics. Price comparison sites are very useful tools when you want to find the cheapest prices and where to buy the product you actually want, but they are hopeless in helping you browse around.

I often see bookshops as a really good example of how to try to help people find what to buy as it is not often someone enters these places knowing exactly what they want. As soon as you enter a bookshop, you see a large section dedicated to "bestsellers" to see what are popular with other people right now. You will also see a "just released" area where you could find something new and exciting which no one has really discovered yet and thus be one of the first. "Editors Picks" are there to give you some encouragement that a known expert has rated those particular books and help justify your decision to purchase. After that, you can then choose to browse by topic or author in the rest of the shop.

This fascinates me as you see it all the time across the web anywhere there is a large amount of content or range of products that you need to encourage people to find something they like within. Often you also bring judgements and perceptions to bear on the problem from your own individual experience. In the case of the bookshop, I will be thinking about books I have seen advertised elsewhere, reviews I may have read where a magazine or expert rated it, and any recommendations from my friends. I will use all of these to help me browse and find something that I think may interest me.

So, if you take all of the factors above as key in helping you find what you want - then the real question is "why would you only ever care about something that showed you the best price?"

Ultimate Online Shopping

2006-04-28T15:12:00.000Z

Years ago when I was at Kelkoo, I thought about what would make the ultimate online shopping experience and drew a diagram to visualise it.

What we have seen since then is the gradual evolution into this nirvana by the major shopping players. Price comparison can find you the best price and show you where to buy and now even do product comparison to compare features. There are some opinions sites such as Ciao that let users submit merchant and product reviews too.

So, is there anything still missing? Does online shopping have anywhere to go now? Of course it does...

The trick now is helping people find what to buy by leveraging the power of crowds and showing the buzz around products. How many of us go with recommendations from friends or trusted people (colleagues or magazine reviews)? What about when we go into a music store - how many of you go the bestsellers section first to give you an idea of what everyone else is buying?

Bestsellers can also be misleading as why would the product with the most sales necessarily be the best one for you. Sometimes we see a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the top product is the most visible, sells more, and thus stays in the top slot. What if product buzz was measured by active recommendations from users and how much discussion was based around it?

Social Shopping 2.0 - here we come!

Men in Black (grey)

2006-04-22T14:03:00.000Z

Yes - we're actually in suits! We call it "a day with lawyers" where we travelled all over London to discuss representation of the business in terms of privacy policies, and terms and conditions. Rivetting stuff.

It is an interesting topic as all the talk of web 2.0 sharing of data is great for users and businesses alike as long as the legal side of things are taken care of.

We have also secured a nice new office in Waterloo too and turned it into a Starbucks hotdesk. I'll explain more when I get a photo to show you what I mean :-)

New Design

2006-04-17T11:47:00.000Z

I hope everyone had a good Easter and you are still enjoying your long break of chocolate munching and sunshine bathing. I also had my birthday yesterday which makes me feel older as I enter my last year of the 20's. Sigh!

Enough of that! Chris and I thought it was about time we got a really good professional designer on board to create a look and feel for the new business. Things sound promising at the moment but we'll see what comes out of it over the next few weeks. Everytime we get a good example or screenshot to show you, we'll put it right here.

There are some great ideas for improving usability and incorporating some better features, based on the last month or so of seeing everyone use the site.

You may also have noticed that we have closed the Alpha sign-up process for now as we have acquired enough trialists at this stage. Hopefully after the new design and a few more tweaks, we may be ready to open it up again.

Enjoy the rest of the bank holiday!

The Voyage of the Alpha

2006-04-13T12:18:00.000Z

Well, sorry it has been so long since our last posting. We've been beavering away on some new functionality and getting some loose ends together in order to make ourselves into an official company along with a small office!! Wahaay.

We've signed up over 40 close friends and family to test out the product and want to say thanks to all of them for their help and time so far.

Some of the new features that Chris has put live over the last few weeks include:

Buzz

Who recommended this..

Tag Cloud Improvements

User Stats

Breadcrumb Trail

Feedback Button

You may also have noticed that the digital camera space is now getting very populated and we'll be asking everyone to start commenting and recommending some cameras very soon to see which are the buzziest.

Alpha Launch - Stage 1 Live!!

2006-03-24T17:05:00.000Z

We have finally bitten the bullet and put Crowdstorm live in the status of "Alpha Trial", meaning that we want to get some initial feedback from a limited number of close friends and family to help the development process. That and we just wanted to type a shorter URL instead of the long complicated one we use for development!

Both Chris and I have sent off a few emails to see if people will start registering and interacting with the system. It is really quite exciting to see other people entering and recommending products right now. I must stop pressing the "refresh" button too as it is getting quite addictive.

So, we are now looking forward to all sorts of feedback (good and bad) as we continue to improve the site, add and enhance features, improve on the design, and a whole host of 200+ items to tackle.

Alpha Update

2006-03-22T20:59:00.000Z

Well we are so close to launching Alpha now - I can almost smell it. We have had to push back even more of the feature set so we can get something out there for our friends to try out, but rather that than waiting for much longer. I've retired to Starbucks for the evening as I felt like paying their excessive wireless hotspot charges with a big expensive cup of tea! Chris has gone out for a well deserved meal and a break from coding as he said he was seeing the Crowdstorm logo in his sleep, in between bits of PHP code....

Honestly, we don't know how people will react to the product yet. Will they like it? Will they use it? Have we got enough features in for Alpha? Will they forgive us that the design is still a month away from being good? Will it catch on? Will it make any money?

The perils of a new business eh!

Friday should be the big day now, followed by many days of testing, feedback accumulation, and bug fixing. We might just go down the pub then for a well deserved drink or two!

Our new venture...

2006-03-20T13:02:00.000Z

Wow, where to begin!

Both myself and Chris came up with the idea for this last Nov (2005) and been working on it ever since. It was one of those ideas that we knew we could be passionate about again, endulge our love of gadgets and shopping, while leveraging past experience with Kelkoo and Ciao.

We have also been following the web 2.0 natural evolution too and found some really great innovations that we want to bring into the shopping space.

At the moment we are both working from our highly exclusive North and South London"home offices" with unlimited food (as long as Ocado stays in business, skype conference calls, iTunes music, instant messenger, free heating (sort of), and great views of nearby houses.

So, what is it and who are you? One step at a time little one... I'll answer the latter for now.

Philip Wilkinson
Philip is one of the country’s young and upcoming entrepreneurs, and is best known as a founder first of Shopgenie and later of internet heavyweight Kelkoo UK (now part of Yahoo!). Philip has also worked as commercial manager at Telewest in the blueyonder broadband internet division. At 28 years of age, he is trying to avoid becoming 30 at all costs!

Christopher Scollo
Chris is a self-taught technologist with expertise in PHP web site development. Previously a co-author of several PHP programming books for Wrox Press and the VP of Technology at Ciao, he is now turning his talents to the Crowdstorm project. Originally from the US, Chris recently moved to London from Munich, Germany. His favourite hobby is eating, which he has been practising for some time.