Last month we launched our Skype contest and announced that we would give out Skype Buddy Kits to the five people who could give us the best answer to the following question: “What Social Feature Are You Missing in Skype?” We wanted to share with you some of the best answers we received:

1) Roy Rubin feels that what is missing in Skype is “better integration with other social media services. Skype should have a much stronger user’s profile page, with links to twitter and FB for example.”

2) Anat Eshel wishes there was Skype share – the abillity to share part of the chat on social networks, such as facebook or twitter.

3) Doron Sanders suggests that Skype add a Chatroulette feature that will allow you to talk to random people on Camera.

4) Ilan Yogev simply wants a “e-hugging” feature.

5) Oren Todoros would love if Skype had a “Record and Podcast It” button. He wants a feature that would allow him to record the conversation (video or voice) and enable him to publish it straight to his blog, hassle free.

6) Benyamin Shoham would like to be able to add his friends from other IM services to skype: Import friends from Gtalk, Facebook chat, twitter etc. and show which of his contacts has skype.

7) Ted Russ suggests: “I’d love for selected people to be able to message me on Skype and have it sent to my mobile phone.”

8 ) Jesper Åström adds: “I am missing the feature of “Person x is currently talking to person y”. I would like to have a “Join this conversation” button and a “Private conversation” button for those convos that aren’t open. Perhaps a bit intrusive, but highly social. That way people would “hang” on Skype for longer periods of time, just random…”

9) Nir Soffer would love to be able to preselect certain groups (Friends, Family, Work, etc.) and have the capability to assign different statuses to each group (busy to work, invisible to family, online to friends), assign different forwarding numbers to each group (have a work phone, family phone, etc.) and assign a different SkypeIn number for each group. He would also love to be able message the entire group.

10) Skype’s lack of integration with other social networks was the most popular answer. As Jonathan Ross comically expressed: “There are times u just want to be able to see all your evil henchmen and collaborate via video on your latest project for world domination, (or is that antisocial media?) It would make it infinitely easier if Skype connected my Twitter contacts/ friends/ followers.”

We enjoyed reading all your creative answers and will make sure to deliver this feedback to Skype. You might just see some of these ideas integrated in Skype’s next version.

So with no further ado, the winners of our contest are…..(drumroll):

1) Doron Sanders

2) Jonathan Ross

3) Ilan Yogev

4) Oren Todoros

5) Jesper Åström

Congratz to the winners! Thanks to everyone who participated from Buddy, Skype and the Blonde 2.0 Team.

I will contact the 5 winners via Facebook and get your shipping details so that I can get Buddy on his way to you.

On March 15th I organized a crowdsourcing session at the famous GarageGeeks venue in Israel. We had different companies presenting their concept of crowdsourcing to us and showing us how they utilize crowdsourcing in their own companies. For those of you who couldn’t make it, here are some highlights from the night in the videos below. Please note that the videos are in Hebrew.

Hope you enjoy them!

1st video - Doron Reuveni, CEO of uTest:

2nd video - Yael Elish, VP Product & Social Media Marketing at Waze:

3rd video - Yaniv Golan, Co-Founder & CTO, Yedda discussing what happens when the participating crowds have their own opinion about what your service should be like:

We are excited to announce that next month we will be launching our new service: Blonde Chatroulette. Think that Chatroulette is fun? Blonde Chatroulette is way better! We all love Blondes and our chatroulette consists of 90% Blondes 10% Males at any given time. That’s our ratio and we guarantee it. Our site has a unique algorithm which tracks each time 100 visitors enter the site and makes sure that only 10 of them are male. The 11th guy will need to wait in the “Waiting Area” until the next slot opens. Males are limited to 30 minutes each session. Once your 30 minutes are done, the system kicks you out. Blondes can of course stay for as long they want. Blondes can also decide to keep you on for longer than 30 minutes, if they like you. Next week we will share screenshots of the waiting area which can be customized to your liking – you can wait for the Blondes on a beach drinking a Pina Colada or in a Ferrari on the road. It’s up to you! No matter where you are, you have a clock showing you how many minutes approximately you need to wait until your next session. There’s no limit on how many sessions you can do.

See our Business Development Head checking out the new service in a sneak preview below. Each person that joins can randomly pick from hundreds of Blonde videochat partners. Not happy with your current Blonde? Click “next” any time, or if you’re happy, stay with your current pairing.

Our official launch will be next month, so stay tuned. It’s true, Blondes do have more fun and we will be giving away a few exclusive invites. During the first month I promise to make a few sneak appearances myself.

Skype’s FREETALK Buddy Cam is irresistibly cute. He’s also light and totally flexible. You can clip him anywhere and start sending stunning images as well as video conferencing with your friends and family. If you travel a lot like I do, you’ll find Buddy to be a great and very accommodating travel companion.

Here are some of Buddy’s special features:

• Automated Motion Technology constantly updates light settings
• Advanced colour compensation technology
• Innovative design fits on any monitor, laptop or desk
• 1.3 mega pixel for hardware
• 5-element glass lens gives high definition crystal clear images
• Snap Shot feature captures still images at 640×480 pixels.
• Video size: up to 1600 x 1200 pixels
• Plug & Play Instant Use USB
• 1.5m length cable
• Stunning video resolution with 30 fps refresh rate
• Great for recording video for YouTube etc
• Mac and PC compatible
• Does not have in-built microphone

Blonde 2.0 is giving out Buddy Cams that come in a complete Buddy Kit with ear buds and some Skype Credit to 5 special people who give us the best answer to the following question:

What social feature are you missing on Skype?

In order to qualify, please go to the Blonde 2.0 page on Facebook and write down your answer. The contest ends April 1st and we will announce the winners shortly after. Good luck!

Often time when I am traveling abroad, people ask me: “Why does Israel have so many startups? What is it about Israel that makes it so innovative and strong in the hi-tech industry?” Saul Singer together with Dan Senor have researched that question and have written a whole book about it. They believe the Israeli model can be copied elsewhere in less innovative regions and that other nations have much to learn from Start-Up Nation.

Here’s my interview with Saul at JVP’s Medialectica 2010 event:

When Blonde 2.0 began to assist HP Israel’s Personal Systems Group with their social media marketing efforts, we found they had no representation in the social media world. A community had not yet been built for the group and their customer base did not have a proper network to turn to for questions and answers. Over the course of a few months’ time, Blonde 2.0 and HP quickly exposed HP Israel’s PSG group to the social media world and began engaging with customers and potential customers in order to increase the group’s brand awareness in the community.
When you build a community from scratch, the target audience you primarily want to attract are community leaders, early adapters and other “movers & shakers” in your industry in order to gain some momentum. Blonde 2.0 launched HP Israel’s Facebook Fan Page in September and started with 0 lonely fans. Since close to a third of Israel’s population has a Facebook profile – 2.5 Million Israelis and the demographic groups we wanted to target were found on Facebook, this social network was a great place to start building a community around HP. We also turned to twitter to reach out to HP’s community, as no other network allows for real-time message updates nor engagement with Israeli industry leaders from the high-tech and digital marketing worlds as Twitter does.
By the end of first month, HP’s fan base on Facebook grew to 150 fans and we noticed an exponential growth each week. By the end of October, HP had 619 fans and by November we reached 810 fans. This quick growth was based on the interesting content we uploaded and our engagement with the fans on the page. We discussed computers, laptops and provided assistance with HP products. We also created all types of interesting activities and contests for the fans to take part in.

Providing incentives for fans and followers to take part in the community is a must when brands take a part in the social media world. A brand should be ready to compensate fans who promote its name both by social incentives as discussed in this post and also by giving fans prizes. In the end of November, early December, we unleashed HP Israel’s first giveaway campaign, asking our fan base to participate in a creative contest that would offer them a chance to win a new HP Mini laptop (the Mini 110c). We wanted to emphasize the product’s easiness of mobility and asked our fans to tell us where they would take their laptop if they won it. We encouraged fans to be as creative as possible, giving them the option to upload videos, sound clips, photos and graphic materials to the fan wall as their contest submission. The response rate was overwhelming and we were amazed at how much fans invested in their creations in order to win. We received over 630 entries within 3 weeks time. The winner of our competition was a creative song writer Nadav Harel who wrote an enthusiastic song about HP: HP song: Cute Little Computer. Nadav received recognition and praise from the community (social incentive) and a new laptop. The HP laptop contest did wonders for our activity and growth of the HP Facebook Fan Page. Our community grew to over 2,580 fans.

Campaigns held on twitter also encouraged HP fans to become more involved in our community. We asked our followers to tweet us a personal experience they had with an HP product. The creators of the three most creative tweets of personal experiences they had with HP products were awarded a bluetooth mouse known as “The Dragon.” During the two weeks of our twitter campaign, HP Israel’s twitter community grew by more than 140 followers.
With twitter, we continually monitor what people say about HP PSG’s products and provide assistance in real time. Below, a user complained that he had not received his computer from the service lab on time. HP Israel quickly intervened to fix the problem and everyone came out of this story happy.

It is always exciting to build a brand’s community from the ground up and watch our marketing efforts and activity grow within the social sphere.

We have learned a few lessons along the way and continue to learn daily from our valued community members.

A few tips for the newbies who haven’t yet led any social media campaigns:

1) Listen to what people have to say about your brand and be responsive to their needs. Don’t be defensive. Be attentive.

2) Always remember to be transparent and honest with the members of your community. Make sure that if you promise something, you make it happen. Don’t be afraid to admit when you’re wrong – people appreciate that from a brand.

3) When creating contests, make sure the rules are loud and clear. There’s nothing worse than bitter fans angry after a contest’s rules weren’t made clear in advance.

4) Remember that building a community takes time. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is an online community. Enjoy each one of the phases you go through when building your community and learn from them.

We live in a wonderful age today where brands can interact and have an open communication channel with customers and potential customers. I am happy to share our experiences with the building of one such community. An online community just like an offline community needs to be nurtured with delicate care and fed with content, activity and live discussion at all times in order to keep it buzzing and this is what we aim to achieve above all.

While Biz Stone was in Israel this week, I was interviewed by Globes TV regarding twitter’s role in my life and how twitter can help both brands and individuals in building and enhancing their online image.  The interview was also broadcasted on Channel 1 in Israel. Please note, the interview is in Hebrew. To view, click here.

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

TC50 was a blast. Lots of startups, action, Geek celebs, the works. My favorite part of the trip was reuniting with my good mates from the Silicon Valley and London tech scene. Below you’ll find two videos. The first showing Robin Wauters’ (TechCrunch Reporter) and Mike Butcher’s (Founder of TechCrunch Europe) feedback regarding this year’s conference.  I shot the video in a beautiful Chinese restaurant we ate at, the oldest Chinese restaurant in SF’s ChinaTown, overlooking the beautiful SF view. Wauters and Butcher talk about their impressions from TC50 this year, what startups they liked the most, what they felt was different this year than last year and more.
The second video is a short interview I did with Randi Zuckerberg at the Digg Swigg event that I was invited to. We discuss what’s new on Facebook, what’s coming up in Facebook’s future and more. Randi is one of the sweetest gals I know. We met at the DLD conference in Munich last year and have kept in touch ever since.

Hope you enjoy ‘em!

This past weekend, Qype expanded its European presence and launched its Italian site.  For anyone who hasn’t heard of Qype before, the site originally  launched in 2005 in Germany. Qype now boasts over 350,000 active users, who have contributed over 1 million local reviews. I previously wrote about Qype when I visited them at Seedcamp.

You can now access Qype in the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Brazil and Italy.

Qype lets users discover places based on user generated reviews. Qype provides tips and recommendations about locations, so you know what to expect before you even walk in the door. Qype provides user generated reviews of restaurants, bars, shopping outlets, theaters, movies, clubs, spas, and other venues throughout Europe. Similar to Yelp (which only operates in North America and the United Kingdom), Qype and Yelp both share the UK market. It will be interesting to see which site comes out ahead in England.

Stephen Taylor, CEO of Qype, said “We’re very pleased to announce the arrival of Qype Italy, the tenth market in our growing brood. The launch comes after an overwhelming demand from our growing Italian user base, who will now have access to local reviews and experiences in their own language – and the ability to find Italian reviews for destinations all over the world.”

For Qype Italy, the launch not only provides a useful site for Italian users, but it also brings Qype Radar, the company’s popular mobile application, to the Italian market. Qype Radar is a smart mobile app that lets you find the best places around your location. According to the company, 1 in 4 people with an iPhone in Germany have installed Qype Radar.

Qype Radar has also been featured on the iPhone ads in Germany.

As Qype takes over the Italian market, it seems that they are poised to conquer Europe and keep Yelp out of the European market. I wonder if they’ll succeed.