Category: Brand Evolution

Business social network LinkedIn places network updates in a personal RSS feed . This means that changes to business contacts can be accessed immediately from webpages, RSS readers or email clients. Changes include such things as: 'a new job', 'a new contact' or 'a new question'. This allows people to be presented such things in the same way as 'news', but with the difference that this is much nearer to them.

Familii.nl offers people the ability to hunt for ancestors and family members all over the globe. The looking, finding and keeping in contact with family are the most important features of the site. You can develop your family tree, keep the birthdays and addresses of your family members up to date and share photos and movies.

At Totspot (Dutch) parents of babies can make a profile with the timeline of their child. The time lines distinguish themselves by heights and lows and supplemented by photos, videos and music.

The British Open University offers its lectures through iTunes. The Open University has already added over 300 audio and video fragments. Examples include courses on art history or a lecture on how Sierra Leone is recovering from a horrible civil war. Other subjects that are treated in the podcasts are: cows that can choose when they're to be milked, researches who look up the very limits of humanoid computer interactions, the world of mathematical modeling or an ecological school trip in the English highlands.

At Rijschool Network (Driving School Network) people who are looking for driving lessons through Hyves (rijscholen.hyves.nl), a Dutch social networking site, can see where their friends learned to drive and what they thought of it.

Driving schools can make accounts for their instructors. With this account they can use email to invite students to share the driving school through their Hyves (or Messenger) network. Because of the link back to Hyves this can happen through a simple confirmation by the student. In the meantime over 100 driving schools have already registered for the new service.

Dutch restaurant site Iens no longer simply compares restaurants or diners, but also gives the consumer the ability to book a table immediately. On a restaurant page the visitor can enter the day, the amount of people and the desired time and see whether there's a table available. The first 150 restaurants have since connected their booking system to Iens.

Both Iens and Livebookings, real-time booking partner in this course, make money of these bookings. When a visitor books a table the owner of the establishment pays 2 Euros. If a reservation is cancelled, no costs are charged.

Iens used to earn as much from the site as it did from its guides, but it wants to earn much more from the website. The yearly revenue of about 1 million Euros has to be increased. That's why the organization is professionalized. The stock holders decided with founder Iens Boswijk that she'll step down as director. Since the beginning of this year Sander Klos has been in charge as the CEO.

Since recently, Google has a new favicon, a small icon that appears in the address bar of the browser, that's shown if you've added Google to your favorites. It seems a little clumsily designed and there's been quite some debating on the web. Now Google has invited people to contribute themselves: design the Google Favicon!

Boezoe (Dutch) searches through all Dutch webshops for used and new children's clothes. All you have to do is tell it what you're looking for and you'll see the results. Boezoe invites webshops to participate to be as complete as possible.

In Mentos KissCam, a crystal clear movie of candy brand Mentos, a beautiful lady emerges from the water whilst exciting music plays and she's looking for your lips. Who then activates the camera and actually shows a few lips can expect a kiss in return.

The famous 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' opens its online encyclopedia for contributions of internet users. People have to register to place texts on the internet. The texts will then only be adaptable by the author.

Through Deezer you can listen to 2.5 million streamed songs. Downloading is no longer necessary. You can mark what you like and Deezer just starts.

KFC collects hundreds of funny, notable or bizarre ringtones that use every imaginable chicken dialect and musical beat to make the brand Kentucky Fried Chicken heard in an original way. Through a special mobile website visitors can download the KFC ringtones for free directly onto their cell phone. The person who places the most original ringtone (the ringtone that's downloaded the most in a week) will also receive a reward: an LG KF600.

Supermarket chain Albert Heijn is handing out stuffed toy mascots for the European soccer championships. They're called Welpies (Dutch). For Windows Live Messenger (former MSN Messenger) a free Welpie Emoticonpack is available. With the animated Welpies of the Welpie Emoticonpack users can, with sounds and images, show that they support the Dutch national team during the coming soccer championships.
This package of wink and emoticons turns out to be a big success: in a week's time 300.000 Windows Live Messenger users downloaded and installed it.

The new housing site Brixter (Dutch) helps consumers appraise their own house or that of others. Based on an address (or looking it up through Google Maps) Brixter makes an initial estimate. By adding in further details (state of the kitchen, isolation, state of the paintwork, etc) Brixter comes up with a better estimate. The consumer can then publish this indication and the details of the house on Brixter. Brixter can also show actual housing offers.

Through a context for East-African students, Google has developed new gadgets, small pieces of software with which users can share things (such as movies, games or information) on their weblog. It's expected that this will lead to locally applicable gadgets that help the community. The first prize is $600 and the 2nd to 6th prize winners get $350 each.