Xeequa

SRM - Social Relationship Management

2009-09-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

Nov 16 we will introduce and demo the first social relationship manager a new product solution bridging the chasm between internally administrated CRM / PRM / ERP type applications and the externally facing social engagement platforms.

Oct 6 we will share details to our current user community ofd XeeSM users. XeeSM as it is available today is just the tip of the Iceberg - see what is beneath. This event is by invitation only and only to users of XeeSM. If you are interested you may signup and create your free XeeSM any time. Http://xeesm.com

Public Beta is expected to start early 2010

Xeequa Version 2.4 Released

2009-07-10T02:28:00.001-07:00

Navigation and Feature selection
Communities that do not plan to use any of the main features such as Events, Discussions, Videos or Blogs can turn the feature of by checking the box in the community settings. Only admins (Board) will still see buttons.

Blogger Syndication
The Blogger API is expanded so that a community can syndicate content with a Blogger based blog. This feature is only available to Gold programs and up. Each post on the community blog will be posted on the connected blog and include the authors photo and name. If the author has a XeeSM, it will also post the XeeSM. (see Social Media Academy Blog) This Link or on our revitalized Xeequa blog at This Link

XeeSM Integration
XeeSM is fully integrated with Xeequa now. So if you have a SeeSM setup the social sites will be visible in the Xeequa settings and vice versa. Also the connection in Xeequa are synchronized with the "favorites" in XeeSM. Check it out if you don't have already http://XeeSM.com

Axel Schultze MyXeeSM

Revitalizing This Blog

2009-07-10T02:06:00.000-07:00

While we blogged on our own platform for the last year, we expanded our technology to be able to syndicate blog content with other blogs. As such we will bring this blog back to live.

The last blog entry

2008-09-10T01:09:00.000-07:00

Blogger / Blogspot farewell

You know how it feels: a blog here another blog there, a forum on this site and another forum on that site, now a group with Yahoo and another group somewhere else. No homogeneous appearance and information cluttered all over the place, hard for anybody to find it.

Hence this is my last post on THIS blog here at blogger.

Please see our NEW BLOG integrated in our community together with Forums, Groups, Video Library, Members and so much more at http://www.xeequa.com everything in ONE place.

Let me express my sincere thanks to Blogger for it's good service and innovations to the blog sphere. I was publishing here since 2004 for my own blog, later for BlueRoads, lately for Xeequa and actually some other projects. But having everything under one roof - I think - is just so much better.

I hope to 'xee' you all on our new blog right on our website and inside our communities.

Axel

Real reason for the media meltdown

2008-06-24T18:07:00.000-07:00

News media continues to lose business – blame the Internet?

Hmmm – isn’t the Internet just an information transport vehicle? Isn’t it that instead of information on paper the same information could be delivered online to more people at less cost? Isn’t then the news and media industry in a GREAT POSITION because it is a huge growth opportunity?

Well – Yes, it would be if the news and media industry would still be in the news business. But they are NOT. The swapped their news business where they did everything possible to perfectly satisfy the readers information needs with well researched and professionally written articles for a more profitable and less hard to create advertising business. The consumer can get a magazine for $1 shipped to their homes. That $1 is less than the cost to produce print the paper and ship it let alone aggregating the content. But the consumer likes it because it’s cheap and the media company get the real money from advertisers. Unfortunately for ALL PARTICIPATING PARTIES it doesn’t really work out.

THE READER:
They get what they are pay for. And it is exactly what it is: cheap. And so the readership get smaller and smaller.

THE ADVERTISER:
Because readership goes away, the advertising effectiveness is declining and less and less advertisers do print advertising in news papers and magazines.

THE MEDIA COMPANY:
Readership goes away because the content is cheap and the advertising is boring. I guess it has nothing to do with the Internet.

The alternatives:

THE ADVERTISER:
Businesses try alternative ways to advertise cheaper and wider. And while the effectiveness is still not there the business recognize they need to find new ways to attract customers: Media Industry good bye.

THE READER:
Doesn’t trust media anymore. Not only that the content is badly researched and badly written and too much advertising – even worse, much of the content is done in conjunction with advertisers, sponsored or even paid for. In contrast to the new media like blogs, forums, communities where the professionalism may not be as good as it could be (I.e. this blog) but there is at least honest information – may be shaded and opinionated but still much better than "controlled" information.

THE MEDIA COMPANY:
Struggling more and more. Many go out of business, many get absorbed in roll ups from larger companies, only a very few handle the information stream in close cooperation with political and industry leaders. But most of them will extinct like so many other jobs including brush makers, horn maker, wool dyers and hundreds of others who extinct over time. Sorry there seem to be no alternative – the law of evolution takes over.

Well maybe unless the media industry finds new ways to create premium content in excellent quality and delivers it instantly over the internet to my email or RSS feed - assembled to my personal interests and needs, with no advertising and from an organization that is exclusively paid by the readers, not by sponsors - an organization that has only one attribute: TRUST.

But that would be hard work and who wants to do that? Technically a "No-Brainer" but the species called journalist is already extinct.

American Entrepreneur Idol 2008 - the contest presentation

2008-06-15T13:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Aline Dinoia here is the video clip of the final presentation.
Please excuse the partial strong language.

axel schultze on Xeequa from aline dinoia on Vimeo.

Who told you that life is fair

2008-06-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

One of our partners just asked me to help.

...Lauren is my daughters best friend they have been friends since they were small children as they were raised together (Lauren’s Mom helped me found my company). Lauren who is 14 is fighting a malignant Chorodoma for which there is no cure and she is trying to raise funds to help find a cure (she was given a terminal diagnosis last year and is on experimental therapy now) she is hosting a golf outing to raise money this year and I was hoping that you or someone you know could help...

It reminded me not only how things change in life within moments, it also reminded me on the enormous energy we have to fight, like Lauren - AND it reminded me that mankind wouldn't be where we are if we not helped each other over and over again. Of course we become a small sponsor - If you want to help too, please join the Golf event Lauren is putting together
2008 Lauren E. Richmond Charity Golf Outing
Bridgewater, NJ 08807
Benefiting The Chordoma Foundation

Call Laurie or Dean at 908-429-4385 with any questions. larichmond at optonine net

American Entrepreneur Idol 2008

2008-06-05T00:39:00.000-07:00

WE WON !!!!! We means me, Xeequa, my business friends, partners, customers, Xeequa community owners. The votes and the jury decided to make me winner of the SF Entrepreneurs contest and American Entrepreneurs Idol 2008.

T H A N K Y O U - all of you who voted, participated and helped in many ways.
More tomorrow.

Top 5 at SF Entrepreneur

2008-06-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to all who voted for me :-)
Here is the official result of Phase I :

It was a really close call last night! With almost 3000 votes received, we are pleased to reveal the first annual SFentrepreneur Challenge Finalists below:

All five of them will be invited to present live in front of you and our three influential entrepreneurs and power judges : Kevin Hartz - limited partner of Sequoia Capital, seed investor of Paypal, and co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite; Christine Comaford-Lynch- angel investor of Google, former VC and bestselling author; and also Claudine Cheng - attorney & president and chair of the Treasure Island Development Authority.

The winning entrepreneur will not only win the prize of being featured by AMEX Open, but, he or she will also get the opportunity to be on Vator.tv and written up by the San Francisco Chronicle (yes - they are coming too!)

Get Your ticket now, be part of the fun and help determine who will be the 1st SFentrepreneur Idol:

When: Wednesday June 4th 6:00 p.m.

Where: Westin Hotel SOMA

Again T H A N K Y O U A L L

SFentrepreneur

2008-05-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

I decided to run for SF Entrepreneur. This is an interesting idea and I'm excited about interesting ideas. More so it resonates with a program Tim and I are planning to go for an "American Business Idol". Check it out and may be register to get on the spot.

Strategic Alliance with Nexgen Singapore

2008-05-28T23:21:00.000-07:00

Xeequa and Nexgen enter a strategic alliance to bring business community systems and the Xeequa Social Business Suite to the Asian market. For full details see our PRESS RELEASE

Xeequa goes channel only

2008-05-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

While it wasn't quite clear to us how we start our sales organization and at the same time grow a channel, we finally decided to go channel only. Xeequa community software service is sold exclusively through business partners around the world. In just a few weeks we were able to build a world wide channel with representation in the US, several European countries and Asia.

With a new compensation model we are going to not only conquer current SaaS channel models but also the traditional multi tier distribution model.

New website up and running

2008-04-25T15:29:00.000-07:00

Our new Xeequa website is ready - actually our refined website. After all we finally desided to work with a local web designer who created the new site. The focus is on providing some ideas why a social business suite helps businesses to do better business and about the functionality of a business community. You also find our latest price list.

Big Brother with 25 years delay.

2008-04-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

Stopping unwanted calls, like the ones from T-Mobile and register that with GrandCentral? So that Google not only scans my emails but also my phone? Ehhh - not really such a great idea. Today I had a conversation with a partner of ours in Europe about why Google failed to get more business in the corporate world: They failed to disclose that they scan every traffic through their enormous network of search, mail and all other services.

The good news is that Big Brother finally has a name: Google

The most embarrassing cold caller: T-Mobile

2008-04-21T12:11:00.000-07:00

So we tried to get rid of the daily cold calls from T-Mobile: Tried customer care: ended in another call center that has nothing to do with the other call center. Can we talk to T-Mobile? We need to call another number. Where do we land? At another call center of course. How can they help - oh refer us to customer care which is yet another call center. 1-888-382-1222 We asked if this is T-Mobile: Yes, she convinced us this is a T-Mobile number - but it is actually the national do not call center. Where we placed our number long time ago.
So : The most embarrassing cold caller of the week: T-Mobile

TimesOnline: The Death of Google

2008-04-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

An interesting article from Bernhard Warner at TimesOnline (the UK times) about the "Death Of Google" I thought I comment on it as follows:

In 2002 Joe Schoendorf from Accel venture predicted at a high level executive briefing a bubble burst even bigger than the one in 2000 - just not knowing when and why.

Maybe the Advertising Industry Bubble? The Google meltdown would be just a tiny side effect. But the close to 1 trillion $ advertising industry is a bubble. And it's burst will indeed dwarf the Internet bubble burst.

Here is why:
Consumers and corporate buyers alike not only ignore but avoid advertising - the producer still ramps up to catch at least some business. And still millions of VC $ flow into new advertising networks. But the day we realize that even by offering $1 Million to a person to only remember 10% of the adds that person saw in one month (over 1,000 on average per day) ...
That bubble will burst and faster than any before for a very simple reason - lake of economic benefit.

The advertising industry meltdown will happen and Google is only one victim.

Socialized Networking Training

2008-04-05T17:34:00.000-07:00

I had a very interesting conversation with Janet Schijns this week, CEO of TheJSGroup, about training for social networking. Isn't it sort of second nature to all business people? Do we need training for this?

Well, how about some questions:
Do you know how to best apply social bookmarking?
Do you know how to get referrals through a network easily?
Do you know best practices in blogging?
Do you know how to leverage the various social media tools?
Do you have an idea whether Twitter is just for kids or also for business?
Do you know about the economic value of your network?
Do you know the impact of your business community to the market?
Do you know..... what you don't know?

Check it out - this is REALLY something you need to know about!!!
http://www.socializednetworking.com/

Vote for one of our new web designs

2008-03-18T22:30:00.000-07:00

We are going to have a new website soon. Please vote for one of our new web designs. We are not planning to win the award for the coolest website ever but are going to have a new site that fits our budget. Xeequa is all about the experience - yet we need a place to explain who we are and what we do.
Thanks a lot for your vote!

Xeequa's new website

2008-03-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

We are in the process to design a new website. Our shortlist is 4 out of 32 contenders of which we will chose one. We will ask you, our community for your opinion. If you have any suggestions or inputs, please send it to office at xeequa com
Thanks a lot

Cease Advertising

2008-03-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

You know our position about advertising and instead network with your business community.
John Todor pointed me today this awesome clip I'd like to share with you all.

It was composed by Geert Desager. Here is his blog.
Thanks Geert.

Business Community Training

2008-03-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

After successfully launching Xeequa 1.0 and the first webinars we now start providing trainings "How to launch a business community". While technically it is a "nobrainer" - it is still a new way to engage with customers, alliances, channels and suppliers. March 26th begin our first trainings for customers.

Requirements:
You should be a customer or in the decision process and have joined one of our webinars in order to make sense for you.

Here is the agenda:

Business Community Objectives
- Purpose, objectives, goals
Motives to join
- Why should you customers join
- What is the advantage for your alliances
- What is in for your channels
- How to leverage suppliers
Execution
- Creating a sound concept
- Leveraging existing resources
- Setting up your presence
- The Xeequa “Launch Pad”
- Step by step from setup to success
Results
- Measuring value
- Leading your community
- Leading your market space

More details and registration can be found at xeequa.com

The All SaaS Enterprise

2008-02-28T08:29:00.000-08:00

The ASE movement (All SaaS Enterprise) continues. You may remember, I blogged about our own internal IT about a year ago.

Today I came across another company - in Singapore - who turned out to be an ASE. Nexgen's Stephen Pech put up his list and it is quite interesting to see how other companies build their entire Information Management structure on SaaS.

The SaaS industry became a multi billion dollar branch of the IT industry, and continuously growing. Sometimes, when we explore integration into existing IT with customers, we get reminded how cumbersome life is with onpremise internal iron. I just can't imagine ever going back to internal software update and upgrade, backup, user management and internal support centers, huge capital expenditure, customization and all the rest of it.

And if you look into the other statistic on Stephen Pech's blog you realize WHY SaaS must take over the onpremise software world:

With over 3 Billion people, half of the worlds population live in Asia - with no interest to invest in onpremise IT. With an Internet growth rate of 265% per year and still just at 11% coverage, SaaS almost have to become the dominate place for SaaS and by it's sheer size make SaaS the dominant way to use software.

Next Webinar March 5th.

2008-02-27T00:26:00.000-08:00

It turned out to be very successful and interesting for the participants. So we run 2 more webinars:
March 5th and March 19th.

We will explore ways to create a professional business community for medium to large enterprises, discuss ways to build more trust, loyalty and reputation and actually show how it works.

You can register for the free 60 minute webinar here.

Webinar - Building business communities for corporations

2008-02-20T12:25:00.001-08:00

Corporations begin to build online business communities. Those social network based constructs will have an enormous impact on the companies ability to build a more trustful and loyal community of customers, alliances, channels and suppliers. Leadership is not determined by a company but by its ecosystem. And as such the business community is moving into the forefront of corporate strategies.

We began to conduct bi-weekly webinars to inspire and demonstrate the ability to create professional communities for corporations. Those communities have one simple business goal in mind: "Become a market leader".

And while many theorize how to do that, some actually took the first steps and began to strategically build business communities. The companies benefit is to get closer to their market and get better feedback to build a better company and the participants benefit is to get better products and services.

The next webinar is on March 5.

Business openness

2008-02-13T11:45:00.000-08:00

We are exploring the industry and found a user group seeking contacts and names to the responsible sales people of the company they deal with. YES the customer is looking for sales people. In an unprecedented effort, the user group tries to collect that information for the members to get in touch with that vendor who seems to have a hard time to open to their customers and is almost unapproachable. At the same time, the vendor spends multiple millions of dollars to upgrade their CRM system ....

The only group of people information is hidden from is: customers. The competition is smart and spend a lot of energy to find out what they want to find out. Your customer in contrast won’t put up research to find out all the details about our business, products, technology, future development, pricing and organizational structure. And while your customers, rightfully, expect all of us to serve up all our knowledge - you hide it.