Second installment of Companies I Wish I’d Thought of Starting

I signed up to ThisNext today. The site helps you keep track of products you think are cool and see what other people like the look of. It looks like it’ll be a great way for me to recommend products to friends (check out my ThisNext page) and to keep track of new products in categories I care about (search the community and then subscribe to an RSS feed of the search).

Basic functionality = Tag and save products you like – either through a link on thisnext.com or using a nice little browser plug-in (think del.icio.us). The products you like populate a profile page and the tags mean you can search for the most popular products being saved by the whole community. Nice.

The revenue model isn’t immediately apparent but with all of that shopping information the ad targeting potential is huge. For example, it’s very easy to find the taste-makers on the site – the ability to advertise to them, send them product samples or conduct research with them should be pretty lucrative.

Clever ad idea from Mini

This is a great little ad idea. Apparently select Mini owners were recently sent RFID key fobs and asked to pick a special personalized message that would play on digital billboards when they drove past.

This is a great way to get Mini owners talking to their friends about how much they love their Mini – and this kind of word of mouth is a great way to sell more of the little exports from Oxford.

Full disclosure. I’m a Mini owner. I drive it, I like it. But I’m not one of those obsessive Mini people.

Linked where?

Found this today on Linked In. It seems they are sharing info about their members with 3rd party sites to help them better target ads. Maybe I’m way behind on this, but it seems a little shady to me. I’ll bet this is a big revenue generator for them.