SaaS Marketers on Twitter

Sometime last month I read about a lawyer and a doctor who created lists of lawyers and doctors using Twitter. So I thought it would nice to have a similar list of marketers' pedaling Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). So here it is, my first crack at the SaaS Marketers on Twitter list. The list is arranged alphabetically.

Now, let me clarify my position on marketing. I have an expansive view of marketing as described by Jaworski and Kohli (1993) and similar to Seth Godin's. Marketing is creating products and stories (about these products) that people desire to use and talk about. Given this somewhat non-departmental view I have of marketing you will notice this list includes traditional non-marketers, for example Product Managers, CEOs etc

Just as all the other content on this blog, this list is reusable as you please as long as you share alike and attribute (Creative Commons).

Once again the list is here. If you want to add yourself to this list just do so by filling out this form.

Merry Christmas & Happy New year - claim your One Day gift

A Twitter mate and fellow Torontonian, @vasta tweeted about the One Day gift campaign. I signed up and was able to get 136 lbs of carbon offset.

I wish all my blog visitors a very happy new year and merry Christmas. Please claim your One Day gift by visiting the badge below.

For tips on conservation check this link.

Clickpass and Disqus

I am an ardent user of many web2.0 tools. I especially appreciate tools that simplify and enrich user experience. Yesterday I signed up and started trial of two services - Clickpass and DISQUS.

Clickpass makes OpenID easy to use and brings the benefits of single-sign-on to everyone. Did you know 60% of us use the same password on every site we visit! Any way, the single sign on and multiple identity world is approaching sooner than later thanks to competition between Facebook's Facebook Connect, and Google's Friend Connect to control the socialweb.
Long live competition.

SaaS + OpenSource

I have had this post sitting in my draft folder for about a month and half, but fatherhood is funny and busy. Arun and Colleen are away at his grandparents, so this weekend is for blogging!

Now back to the post on SaaS and OpenSource. I am a big OpenSource fan and try to use OS software when ever possible. GIMP is a recent favorite raster design application of mine. Needless to say I was very excited when I read the following on the SourceForge forum

... SourceForge.net Service Operations team is pleased to announce the launch of the first version of a new service offering, "Hosted Apps".

....the cornerstone of this offering is a scalable and multi-tenant efficient model for hosting Open Source web application instances for the Open Source Software development projects hosted on SourceForge.net.

With the launch of this new Hosted Apps offering, SourceForge.net projects may opt-in to use any of the applications we currently support: phpBB (forums), MediaWiki (a wiki platform), or LimeSurvey (a survey tool).

This is the original forum post . I fully agree with them that "Open Source software development can be accelerated, and more enjoyable to developers, when the soft right tools are available;" moreover I think SaaS is the right model for efficient commercial deployment of Open Source software.

I feel this combination is a match made in heaven! SaaS is the easiest paradigm to take OS software to public. We all know navigating Sourceforge and other OS repositories can be a bit challenging to say the least.

To see the hosted applications go here and check it out.

Corporate blogs are more trustworthy than spam-email!

It looks like Nigerian spam emails narrowly lost out to corporate blogs on trustworthiness...just kidding, but almost true. People trust direct mail more than corporate blogs.

According to the author of Groundswell, Josh Berneoff, "People don’t trust company blogs." This is the result from a 2008 Forrester research (report available here after registration).

The data suggests

• "blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and message board posts. Only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them."

• "among regular blog readers (at least once a month), 24% trust company blogs. Among bloggers themselves, 39% trust them."
  

Josh's own view is "don't give up on blogging," but be thoughtful about why and how you blog. After the diagnosis of the situation he prompts corporations to have non-corporate seeming blogs! I will let you think about that for a moment while I offer my take on the situation.

Regular members and contributors of the groundswell, to use Josh's term, won't be very surprised by this data . I hope Josh was not surprised either, that is not clear from his post. Like the groundswell member next to me, I visit blogs like "blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/" and "http://thinkitservices.blogspot.com/" periodically. I trust these blogs and engage with the respective authors who are surely not Mr.Burns type, but are authentic individuals willing to partake in a discussion.

In my view corporate blogs can only improve if corporate policies at least (1) facilitate percolation of thoughts from the groundswell to decision makers inside the firms four walls and (2) encourage current employees to blog. After all isn't a blog just the venue to share authentic thoughts among individuals? In my view

blog = human beings + dialogue

When I looked at the data presented in the study my surprise is not that corporate blogs are untrustworthy. I am surprised that they are less trustworthy than company emails, direct mail, and online classifieds! This I think is the result of construct validity of the instrument used for this study.

Link

SaaS can mitigate the 5 challages you face in this economy

I believe SaaS is especially pertinent during this tough economic time because SaaS can overcome the five key challenges faced by most companies today. I also believe it is imp for SaaS companies to reach out and apprise their constituents now!

In my opinion the five challenges faced by all companies today are:

1. Shrinking top-line
2. Dwindling and unpredictable cash-flow
3. Expensive capital
4. Customer pressure to reduce cost, and
5. Customer desire for higher performance


Being a SaaS evangelist I applaud the enthusiasm of the folks at Zuora and others who push the SaaS concept. Read a recent post by Zuroa’s K.V Rao outlining benefits of SaaS model here. I agree with his views outlined in the post.

At QLogitek we have been pushing against the grain and promoting SaaS. As I before, I believe the current economic times makes SaaS ever more important and as SaaS companies it is our duty to enlighten our clients and prospective clients to this superior alternative to help overcome the above five challenges.

At QLogitek, we started a cost savings club to reach out to our key constituents interested in leveraging the SaaS model. I think that by outsourcing their supply chain IT solutions they can focus on their competency and top-line. The flexible and predictable pay-as-you-go model offers good control over that dwindling cash flow. Moreover, SaaS does not encumber you with the high cost of capital investment that typical on-premise software calls for.Thus SaaS facilitates firms' to deliver focus on their core-competency to deliver greater value at lower cost to customers.

All this increases a companies ability to deliver greater value to customers at lower cost.

I would like to hear about outreach initiatives by SaaS companies and evangelist to their constituents.

If you are interested in the state of the Canadian economy check out these three sites Bank of Canada, Statistics Canada, and The Conference Board of Canada.

Twitter & Rise of citizen journalism - Joel Mitch's thoughts

Joel Mitch of Six Pixels of separation has a new post on the rise of citizen journalism. I had arrived at a similar conclusion in two brief posts on the rise of micro blogs, especially Twitter, during the aftermath of the Mumbai attack.

Joel's post
My 1st post on Twitter power
My 2nd post on Twitter power