LetsBuyIt Blog

Almost everybody has watched some YouTube Videos and several videos tend to pop-up again from left, right and center. The list of the 10 most viewed YouTube Videos of all times (as of September 2008) therefore is particularly interesting. As Richard MacManus pointed it out in his article on ReadWriteWeb, the fact that hardly any of these successful videos is User Generated Content (UGC) but rather professionally produced videos gives a clear sign for the future of online content.

Does that mean that content production companies like Blinkenlichten, the German startup that produces professional, journalistic video content, is the way for the future instead of UGC?

Our favourite video:

Since this morning our Big Challenge has been online. In order to participate in this game to test your skills, just log-in at LetsBuyIt.com! You have the chance to win one Sony VAIO laptop every month and many more other gifts!
The participation in the game is free and not contractually binding. Just take a little time and enjoy the “Ant-Challenge” .

The rules are really simple: You have 10 seconds to catch as many ants as possible! Just watch out and pay attention because the ants are quite fast! Every ant caught increases your chance to win. You can double your winning chances by challenging your friends to participate as well!

Are you up for the challenge?

The next draw will be taking place on the 15th of October 2008 so you got to hurry!

Our entire team has been testing the game and the largest amount of ants caught has been 13 ants!

And you? How many will you be able to catch?

In case you were wondering about whether we will be present at the E-Commerce Convention 2008 in Paris this year, we are glad to announce that Billy, our Ant, will take us along. Many of you will be able to see Billy very quickly because he is presenting himself in his best manner and at the same time it is difficult to oversee him

Don’t hesitate to talk to Billy or our team and ask about our new Letsbuyit, the new innovative way of shopping! You can also find out what Billy is doing by following his twitter and check out his facebook profile (Billy Letsbuyit) or our posterous!!!

With the introduction of Yammer we are getting a serious company now! This enterprise version of twitter has won the price as best start-up entry at the Techcrunch50 2008 competition (which took place from the 8th until the 10th of September in San Francisco).

Yammer is just like twitter however a corporate version for only colleagues and log-in, which makes it much easier to communicate with your colleagues and see what they are up to. Makes the team work more efficient! You will always be up to date what you are colleagues are working on, how everybody is progressing, when the next meeting will take place, etc.! This small intranet works well however the question is whether the users will animate it, like always!

As long as your colleagues are not trying to spam, control or bully you it is all good and a really good team-work tool!

This TechCrunch-certified tool gets our thumbs up and the account is set up.

First judgement: only useful when you are colleagues are using it (along with skype, msn, twitter, gmail chat, icq, etc.

Last Thursday we participated in the OpenCoffee Roundtable in Hamburg, which treated the topic “PR for start-ups”. It was an interesting get-together because entrepreneurs from Hamburg met to discuss how the PR should be handled for start-ups. Those exchanges of experience in a small group are very inspiring because it gives you the chance to also see what others are thinking, who they know and what mistakes have already been made. These were the participants of last week along with their companies:

• Frank Felix Debatin www.1000mikes.com

• Monte Miersch www.mikestar.com

• Lars Wehmeyer www.formatune.com

• Achim Schnell www.formatune.com

• Ulrich Tekniepe www.tekniepe.com

• Anne Arndt www.digicol.de

• Tobias Caldeweyher www.letsbuyit.com

• David Cordes www.sightseaing.de

• Christine Stumpf www.weblin.com

• Jonas Bandick www.docinsider.de

• Mirco Beisheim www.postalo.de

• Paul Watzlaw www.meetya.com

• Matthias Henze www.jimdo.com

• Jan Milz www.sixgroups.com

• Thomas Promny and Jürgen Lankat www.gimahhot.de

• Tobias Worzyk www.hamburg-startups.de (organiser)
  

Without getting too much in details our conclusions are somewhat the following:

1) When you want to do PR then you better be well prepared for it and have a significant impact on the agency, in case you use one, because only the founders can really communicate and reflect the “spirit” of the company.

2) Only when you are really creative will the PR be successful because nowadays every is overloaded with great ideas, events and stories so it is difficult to stick out.

3) When you want that a journalist writes a story about you then you must deliver them a story, that can mention you as an example, because they will definitely not write an ad about you for you.

4) In case you want to use an agency you better a get a good one that actually knows all the individual journalists and bloggers, one that does those tedious follow-up calls and knows WHEN to contact the press (Mondays and early mornings are just the worst time, according to this great Techcrunch article).

There are uncountable videos on YouTube and its impact cannot be measured, which makes it definitely one of the most mysterious and influential mediums on the web. After having watching countless hours of videos on YouTube we found this very interesting video, which gives a little background information about the Anthropology of YouTube. It is a must-see!!!

Most probably you have been noticing the increasing number of video ads because more companies see this is as way to draw attention. In addition to the nice little Visa Ad that we recently shared with you, we found this strange little ad/teaser/viral of Old Spice Aftershave. Check it out because we are convinced that you would like it (we had some issues with the site but maybe it works for you: OldSpice

Don’t forget to also check out our Letsbuyit Posterous Blog

Have you noticed that Letsbuyit.com is also on Twitter? In case you have never noticed it we have put a special candy on the Twitter on the 24.07.2008 at 15:58h EST we are sure that you will like it for those who are interesting in knowing some inside information of Letsbuyit. Tip: Beta Launch!!!
check it out here on twitter.com/letsbuyit

We would like to draw your attention to a new Blog, which is called Posterous. Posterous is very interesting because it makes the posting of content much easier in comparison to other Blog Management Systems like Wordpress, etc.. You don’t need any log-in because you only email your content to posterous to publish your content. There is only one unique email ID (post@posterous.com) where you send your email (incl. photos, hyperlinks, Youtube Videos, etc.) to, which is then resized and formatted for you and it will be posted to your individual page based on your email ID. We have set up our own Posterous page for Letsbuyit.com that is also to be watched now: http://letsbuyit.posterous.com/

An article of Cédric of “Woweffect” has given us some great links to truely unforgettable ads. Check out all these great ads as listed on DezineHQ, Toxel, SmashingApps and Tumblr.

We would also like to add this Adidas add to our favourite adds because it is really unique (here). This unique ad made us look for other handwritten designs, which made us tumble upon this list of excellent handwritten designs: Smashing Magazine site.

Are there any other great ones that you would like to recommend?

By the way we were inspired by this movie:

Source: youtube.com