Web Promotion Service

Ideas are hard to define, and more to buy and sell, so an Idea Marketplace is a tough challenge.
The globalized world is extremely open to idea flow, to dismay of a few dictatorial governments. But flow is not necessarily trade, and quantity does not imply quality. A good idea marketplace should have a way to tell the golden ideas from the sand, and deliver them to those who can appreciate them and turn them into profit.

A well-deviced but unsuccessful approach to the Idea Market

Around 2000 there was Ideaexchange.com, where ideas could be bought and sold. The ideas had a short public description, and a longer hidden explanation. If you paid the price, you would access the whole thing. Idea authors charged for their complete ideas and the website collected a percentage.  Buyers could call for an idea on a certain topic and also comment on the ideas they bought for others to join or beware.

To my deception the website did not last. I do not know why, because in my opinion it was a hell of an idea. Possible failure explanations: Ideaexchange.com did not have a mechanism to convert ideas into projects. The fact that idea posters had to pay a small fee beforehand probably prevented them to reach critical mass. Also, the ideas were too wide (proposals together with jokes, gossip and varied information).

The word “idea” has many meanings, and the marketplaces should limit itselves to measurable ideas, and to ideas that can have any useful follow-up or consequence.

Idea Futures

There is also the concept of Idea Futures, which implies prediction power about the truth of an idea. A nice website called Ideosphere tries to predict events using the reputation of the predictors. Those who earn points predicting accurately are more credible at predicting new issues. The site covers future facts or hidden facts, like science issues.

So, this site deals about Future and Hidden Facts, not just “ideas”. Predictions often deal with the stock market or sports results, and those activities are heavily regulated, which limits this peculiar subset of the idea marketplaces.

Got an idea? We will invest on it!

There are several inventor-investor matching sites, where business ideas can develop into projects. However, most of them are inefficient, with worthless ideas and false investors. Worthless ideas rank from perpetual movement to cold fusion in the kitchen, with better mousetraps in the middle. False investors include those who require a “fee” to analyze the idea and then disappear, and those who are willing to invest up to 10 dollars in your idea, plus those who demand the inventor to fill a 100 page form before anything, with no assurance that even the title will be read.

I have seen them all and I recognize that good matching requires many right properties on each part: financial, geographical, language, age. Also, like in romantic matching, there are many hard-to-define human qualities.

Regulating the entry of both parts (good inventors – real investors) would be an assurance of quality for these idea marketplaces, but that requires time and money. It is hard to find someone able to predict which idea will fly and which will not take off. Who could that be? An academic? A successful businessman? A psychic? Probably none of them. Most likely, a committee with the three of them.

The Web 2.0 is about filtering trash

The Web 1.0 had many data covering the valuable information. Search engines still post: “Results 1 - 100 of about 7,190,000 pages”. 95% of all email is spam.

The news aggregator systems like Digg.com, Reddit.com and Meneame.net (Spanish) became recently very successful as typical Web 2.0 mechanisms. They use qualified voting, social networks and automated quality rating for entries, usually news.

You probably are reading this article because you found it on Digg.com or similar aggregator.

Aggregators as idea marketplaces

Are News Aggregators feasible idea marketplaces? Can you post an idea and see if it catches on? I assume you can .

Business ideas can be filtered by the News Aggregator public and that could be a predictor of its future acceptance by the general public. If the idea is accepted by the masses, savvy investors will be able to catch them.

Political ideas can also have a similar mechanism. Anyone could launch a proposal and the politicians fishing for good ideas could profit from it. Conversely, someone who reaches Top-Digg user status (good Karma in the pligg-like systems) can become a good real-life politician.
 
Empty domain names are like business proposals, and are also subject to Aggregator treatment. Such Aggregator could be the ideal automated domain valuation system.

Aggregators could be used for painters to test their sketches, for advertisers to test their logos or catchy phrases, for models-to-be to expose their beauties, or for conferences looking for appealing speakers. The Barcamp geeky Web 2.0 conferences use such a system.

There are a few necessary conditions for an aggregator to be successful: good coding, critical mass and some of the features described above in IdeaExchange and Ideosphere.

Finally, I started one aggregator for business ideas at www.business-ideas.com.ar and one for local political ideas at www.ideaspoliticas.com.ar . I am ready to start others by request.

Ideas have a complex, little-known dynamics. As humans do, they are born, grow, reproduce and die. In the struggle to survive they fiercely fight other ideas. Being slim, original, useful and fertile are good attributes for them, while complexity, similarity to others and poor expression are forces that keep ideas in the obscurity.

We idea-marketers are in charge of dressing-up ideas and send them thru the appropriate channels into the battlefield. Digg.com is one of the preferred channels, because of the wide exposure for winners. In addition to sending my fighters to Digg, I optimize them for Google and Yahoo. In the Web business that activity is known as SEO, search engine optimizing. To advance the comparison, getting a good position in the search engines is like a long tournament between 2 knights, where horse, armour and other weaponry play a heavy role. Digg is  more like box: only pure idea strength leads to victory, in no more than one hour.

Speed is critical in our times. Today, the 100 Year War would be a 100 Minute War.  A Digg posting titled “Let’s Declare War on Britain (or France, or Iran)”, will soon get a couple of diggs with several buries, and that would be the end of it. A huge bullet saving.

It happens that many ideas in Real Life, as in Digg, are faced more often with indifference than with opposition. If my boxer is good but unknown, he will probably never reach Madison Square Garden. On the other hand, a John Doe pushed by Don King will get immediate exposure.

Digg has the “celebrity effect” built into his algorithm, privileging the known, successful coaches. Once you are famous, you blow your nose and you are in the news. If you are a Top Digger, your crap will always be noticed. It is a combination of good diggs and buries, good submissions and good friends, what gets Digg fame. As any politician knows, if you vote for the proper guys, and against the bad ones, and you have many powerful friends, you get to the top. Again, life follows Digg…

Do box promoters ever fix matches? Do actresses ever sleep with a producer to get a role? Quite likely.

Do Web Promotion agencies ever force a Digg story to the top, using Black Hat techniques? Also true.

Black Hat, in SEO terms, means doing what the search engines, or Digg, do not want you to do…

In both lives, virtual and real, those with a decent budget and a good manager have an edge against the immense competition.

I wrote an article about the winners of the Innovation contest in Argentina, with images and a brief description of each invention.

http://www.domaingrower.com/innovar-contest.htm

Since it was full with the photos I preferred to publish it as a separate page, with tables, in this website.

I also submitted the article to Digg.com, to see if an original article with quality contents (not mine) could climb to a decent ranking in Digg.

The poor results confirm that you need a little “push” from paid voters in order to get decent exposure in such a croweded unspecific social network.

This looks like the solution for many sea side communities with scarce drinking water. The plant is called Salicornia, and the experiment of feeding sheep was performed by an Argentine scientist, winning the Innovar prize.

The lambs had 50% less colesterol when fed with salicornia, pointing to an original, cheap and abundant natural resource.

Project Developer emails:

cadicush@speedy.com.ar

cadic@cadic.gov.ar

 Now, I am posting this article here in order to submit it to Digg.com. Since I am sure the news is real, original and innovative, the results should reflect it. Otherwise, I will lose my faigh in Digg.com and start favouring other networks. 

 ———

Spanish version:

Salicornia: agricultura con agua de mar

Oscar Alberto Bianciotto

Desarrolla las posibilidades de cultivo de una especie vegetal halófita nativa de Tierra del Fuego. Regada con agua de mar, tiene potencial nutricional para el hombre y podría conferir características especiales a la carne de ovinos engordados con esta especie. El colesterol se redujo. al 50% en corderos alimentados con pastizales de Salicornia, que resultan más magros para consumo humano.