Project 500 by a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Company (ALARM!)


By on November 30, 2009
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project500_logoVocanic Pte Ltd., Singapore-based company, is behind Project 500. Vocanic is a company specializes in word-of-mouth marketing, which “harness and amplify the conversations that consumers have about your brand, and use them to create highly effective marketing campaigns” (Source: Vocanic’s website). It started as a website, requesting social mediaphiles to sign-up for a secret project. A briefing was held to reveal the ‘product’ and it’s a social media streams aggregator. Think Ping.fm and Orsiso. Is this the aggregator referred to as “the next big thing to explode in the social media scene”? I’m doubtful. There’s nothing spectacular about the product, features-wise. It’s unimpressive that blogger Niki Cheong, wrote “it’s not ready for Beta even.”

Project 500_app

Instead of using OAuth, Project500 requires users to key-in username and password. Despite its assurance “Don’t worry, it’s safe with us”, I remain skeptical.

Project 500_twitter

In the Share Video page, this error appeared:
Project 500_sharevideos

So, why the application developer bother to launch another social media aggregator? OR the project by Vocanic, to build a database of social media users (and yes, my contact details are in the database too). Such database is certainly useful for a word-of-mouth marketing company. In addition to database, the company can also harvest conversations of its users using the aggregator.

I think the application launch is NOT the primary objective in this campaign. It’s what will happen next once there’s a pool of users on Project500 matters. The company is probably aggregating social media users, like NuffNang and Advertlets aggregating bloggers. We’ll see!

Oh yes, I just deleted my Project 500 account.

Project 500_deleted

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