4th Mass Innovation Night Another Success

Posted in Cool Tools, General by redembermarketing on July 9th, 2009

I Headed down to Waltham last night for the fourth Mass Innovation Nights event, which is held in the very cool, Charles River Museum of Industry which is still chock full of interesting stuff even when MassInno isn’t in session.

As always, the companies participating didn’t disappoint. The events have taken on a strong software / technology theme, but that might be largely due to the heavy use of social media to promote the events, and the types of companies that are nearby.

July’s presenters included: two SMS Text marketing companies:  KaOoga and Jittergram
A resource sharing site for photographers: StudioShare
A Facebook app out of Intuit Labs: Lasso Deals
An iPhone app for wine: Drync
A start up for crowd-sourcing viral video production: Viralskool
And two others that I didn’t get to spend much time with: IBM Mass Lab and SpaceMax

My favorites were the SMS txt marketing solutions and the Lasso Deals app.  I was unaware that while I was working at Liquid Machines, just two floors up, Intuit wasn’t creating some accounting software tools, but rather innovating some wacky products like their Facebook app called Lasso. If the trend described in my post on the Facebook Suggested Bid Spiral Effect continues to alienate direct advertisers, perhaps Lasso just might catch on – perhaps it will regardless!

It’s in VERY early stages, so the number of local deals are limited in number and region, but if you’re looking for some restaurant deals in Cambridge, check it out. I like the idea a lot, but suggested that they allow the merchants that post deals to control the thank you message that is delivered to people that share or take advantage of the deal. We’ll see if they incorporate that idea.

I’ve been speaking with KaOoga, JitterGram and two other SMS text message marketing platforms about offering the service to small local retailers. JitterGram has a unique approach that incorporates a bit of a social aspect, whereby JitterGram “consumers” (people that are on a list to receive messages from a merchant) can seek out other companies offering text deals and sign up. This means JitterGram merchants can actually see their list grow just by participating in the program.

I hope to have a partner selected and start testing the demand out there for SMS text message campaign management soon.  Stay tuned.