The DLD 2012 conference in Munich was a great place to mingle and network with social media super stars and online entrepreneurs.  At the conference I had the opportunity to speak with Casey Fenton, CEO and Co-founder of CouchSurfing, who sat with me and discussed his company’s completely unique business model.

The idea of CouchSurfing was fueled by Casey’s own experiences while traveling the world.  Casey found  that by networking with people all over the world, he could rely on their hospitality and vice versa.

CouchSurfing is a community, and as such it focuses on spirit of trust and hospitality.  Members of the CouchSurfing network offer their homes to fellow travelers in order to help facilitate a truly genuine experience, from the perspective of a local.

Casey shares some of the crazy experiences he has had over the years using CouchSurfing.  From the Galapagos to Scandinavia, his stories are pretty amazing!

We have decided to take action, and to that end we are responding to SOPA and PIPA with a proposed legislative initiative of our own: the Stop Online Boredom Act (SOBA). This is a new law that calls for harsh punishment for those responsible for mindless, boring content that is posted to the Internet.

After all, if SOPA passes, everyone will be so terrified of the consequences that the Internet will be stripped of anything meaningful, interesting, or remotely provocative.

You can explore our press release about the initiative here: https://www.blonde20.com/soba/

The main thrust of the proposed law calls to protect Internet users from the theft of their Interest Property (IP). The legislation would lay out the following guidelines for IP theft.

• If the content causes drowsiness, sleepiness, or slight disinterest – this is IP theft. It is not the result of all-night, energy-drink fueled sessions of Call of Duty.
• If the content causes the user to say “Why the fuck would you post this?” – this is IP theft. It is not the result of the user being a superficial, elitist hipster.
• If the content makes the user nostalgic for the good old days of broadcast television – this is NOT IP theft. This is impossible, and most likely a drug induced hallucination.

We are also proposing an appropriate punishment for offenders guilty of IP theft: Blondification. You can see an example of Blondification here, this time using SOPA and PIPA authors Lamar Smith and Patrick Leahy.

Please join our fight against online boredom by adding a ‘Support SOBA‘ badge to your profile picture.

Remember: Stop SOPA! Support SOBA!

Starting tomorrow, each Tuesday, a different Blonde 2.0 employee will publish a guest post and share his insights. Posts will feature new apps, add-ons, reviews, tips and tricks and much more. You’ll have the pleasure of hearing many different views on the most innovative social media tools from the social media experts themselves.

Awesome new app? We’ll let you know about it. Cool internet add-on? We’ve got you covered. New search engine you need to try? We’ll direct you to it. Besides providing exposure to the most up-and-coming media services, the Blonde 2.0 team will be providing a plethora of information about the best social media marketing strategies. Get ready for some seriously exciting social media talk. Enjoy!

Illustration credit: Matt Hamm

In today’s world where we have an option of which search engine to use, we find ourselves perplexed regarding the question: Is Google the best that search can be? Even for those of us who consider ourselves to be Web savvy, finding the right search term can often be tricky. And once we get the search results, we must screen through an abundance of information in order to find one or two truly desired results.

To understand a little more about the world of search, let’s go through our time machine, and check back on how search started.

Excite was one of the most recognized brands on the net when the “dotcom portals” boomed in the 1990’s. Excite was founded as Architext in 1994 by six Stanford undergrad students who had the clever idea of using statistical analysis of word relationships to make searching more efficient. After years of signing exclusive distribution agreements with companies like Netscape, Microsoft and Apple, Excite went public in 1996. In 2003, Excite Italia (the operator of Excite Europe) took control of the Excite portals in most of Europe, and was later acquired by Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com). In October 2007, the GoAdv Group – a pan-European media company, announced the completion of its acquisition of the Excite Europe group of companies while IAC Search and Media acquired Excite in the US. Today, Excite offers a variety of services, including search, web-based email, instant messaging, stock quotes and customizable user homepage – with content that is collated from over 100 different sources.

Going back a few years in time, a small search engine named Google was started by a couple of Stanford University students in January 1996, who hypothesized that a search engine that analyzed the relationships between websites would produce better ranking of results than existing techniques, which ranked results according to the number of times the search term appeared on a page. The domain google.com was registered in September 1997,and the company was incorporated as Google Inc. in September 1998. Since 2001, Google has acquired several companies, mainly focusing on small start-ups. In 2006, Google bought the online video site, YouTube. The entry of Google marked a major milestone in the history of search engines, as it used a “page ranking” system on the basis of number of links to a particular site.  Google’s search engine became so popular that it led to origin of the term “Googling,” which means to search for information using Google.

In June 2009, Bing – formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search and MSN Search – became Microsoft’s current web search engine development. Advertised as a “decision engine,” Bing has a catchy “Stop Searching. Start Deciding” slogan made that allows its users to feel in control of their searches. Bing categorizes searches allowing for improved image and video searches along with preview searches, and its “decision engine” associates information on the Web to help its users make better decisions about things like travel reservations, shopping online, your health and more. In August 2009, only two months after Bing became public online, it gained 9.3 percent of the United States Internet search market causing Google to become somewhat worried about its market share.

Jumping forward to present time, Meaningo, a recent a startup company specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP) search applications. In simpler terms, Meaning is a semantic search engine, guiding users to find the exact products they are looking for in a more refined and efficient manner. Finding the right search term can be a time-consuming process, as many search results have little relevance with their goal findings. Meaningo was designed to increase the effectiveness of online searching, so users searching the Web can successfully find what they’re looking for without much name refining in the search engine.

Meaningo was specifically designed in hopes of overcoming common impediments Web users are faced with when searching for information online. Meaningo provides its users with an easier way of defining, refining and controlling the quality of the search while providing very accurate results even for complex inquiries. Watch my video below where I interview Meaningo’s Founder & CEO, Dr. Zach Solan, and find out the true meaning of Meaningo.

Save an Alien, previously a successful Facebook application with over 250,000 users despite no marketing, is an app that lets you save virtual aliens from destruction. Similar to the virtual pet fad of the 1990s but for the Web 2.0 age, SaveAnAlien lets users take care of aliens whose planet was destroyed in a meteor crash and now are sadly alone floating in space. Users can adopt virtual aliens and help save them from death. Until they do, the aliens will keep floating in space waiting to be adopted.

In an interesting move (I wonder, will this become a trend?), SaveAnAlien has recently moved off Facebook, and is now available as a standalone experience on the SaveAnAlien website. The founders say the move off Facebook was a strategic decision, which enabled them to provide a better experience for the adopters. In addition, the move opened the door to previously-untapped potential partnerships, like SAA’s recent integration with SkyRock, a leading French social network.

Red 2.0 and me in Paris having fun!

Three months after the launch of the new platform, with no marketing, and even before the SkyRock integration, there are already 40,000 users on the site. The monetization system built into the platform, based on virtual goods, is already outperforming what was possible for SaveAnAlien in the world of Facebook applications. So, it seems that the move off of Facebook was the right thing to do for the Alien guys. “This is just the beginning though, “ said Raz Friedman, CEO and founder. “We are continuously enhancing the experience and adding additional activities like a home and a garden with ‘Space Plants’ for the aliens, activities which have already proven to be very attractive and highly monetizable on other platforms. ”

Red 2.0, Scoble, Blodgett and Me in a London cab

SaveAnAlien is a “virtual pet” platform with a unique story line. The original Facebook application took its users on a journey to save the aliens before the meteor hits their planet. The new SaveAnAlien continues this story line after the meteor hits, and with 10 million aliens floating in space waiting to be rescued, users are finding endless opportunities to adopt new aliens, take care of them and fulfill their every need and whim.

Once you adopt an alien, you can let your friends interact with it by pasting the Alien Widget into your blog, Website, Facebook, and any other place that you can post HTML or Flash code.

Red 2.0, Aviv, Motti and me at a party

“Our users have turned out to be real do gooders,” says Friedman. “We are truly moved by the emotional connection we see between them and their adopted aliens. In fact, many of them take the time to feed tens and even hundreds of aliens or help them find a home. The current saving aliens record belongs to a 16 years old girl from Netherlands, who helped save 164 other aliens.”

Talking with the Save an Alien team is quite an experience. All these guys ever speak about is aliens, feeding, adopting, petting and dressing up. Clearly they are having fun, and it’s quite amazing when you realize they’re actually generating substantial revenues while doing that.

Hey, before you go, mind petting my alien a bit?

master Yoda

This week we asked you “What would Yoda tweet”?  Just like in previous weeks, we found our contest hero already has an active twitter account: @yoda, Quite an entertaining one actually. In his last tweet he dissed the twitter community saying: “RT you all do. Original force there is little of”.

So let’s see what you guys thought Yoda would say.  @ilan_peer wrote: “i feel the tweet is strong with this one”  @HeziAbrass said: “Powerful you have become, many followers I sense in you.” Perhaps he was referring to my tweet about finally hitting the 5000 followers mark on twitter.  @Mottipeer responded to him: “”Number of followers matters not, … Look at me. Judge me by followers, do you?”

@EyeView_Inc expresses a frustration that we often face in twitterland. Due to twitter’s 140 characters limit, users often find all kinds of tricks to get all the words in. EyeView writes: “What would Yoda tweet? Half the tweets I read sound like written by Yoda they were!”

@jrmk wondered if I am a Starwars-freak enough to understand the following Yoda tweet from him: “ afk #Dagobah”. Yes Jeremie. I got it. Funny For anyone who didn’t get the joke,  here’s some info for you about Dagobah.

@Guybendov notifies me that I dont need to run an @darthvader campaign because he’s already on twitter (not that this fact ever stopped us before).

On Facebook, Ephraim Rattner writes: “Powerful you have become, the Tweet side I sense in you.” And last but not least,  Raanan Avidor starred this week with a record 7 straight (and may I say, very creative and intelligent) answers. Here are some of them:

1) “ You must feel the Twitter around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes”

2) “That is why you fail – RT @Luke: I can’t believe it”

3) “Remember, a #Jedi’s strength flows from the #Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they”

4) “May the Twitter be with you”

5) “May the #Force be with you”

You rock Raanan! Great job! You always star in our contests. Glad you like the subjects.

My personal favorite was @LiviuLica’s tweet: block spammers you must, spam is for the dark side, yes, blocked i have the jerk @darthvader

Monday we announce the next character. This time I already know who I am picking. Stay tuned…

‘Master Yoda’ photo by: Thomas Hawk

Most people thought that Lennon would turn his songs into tweets. @welfeld wrote “Imagine all the twitters, twitting in your face. Your tweets are of a dreamer, but you are not the only one.” @niron had a different take on Imagine, writing instead, “You may say I’m on twitter, but I’m not the only one, Oprah and Ashton have been there long B4 I’ve tried” @reggriffin tweeted “Imagine there’s no facebook…it’s easy if you try.” On Facebook, Jim Woods responded, “Imagine all the Tweeple living life in peace.” Ilan Peer wrote “all i am tweeting, is give peace a chance” Michael Mullins wrote “Imagine There’s no Heaven.” Alex de Carvalho wrote “Imagine There’s No Facebook”. Neil Osman wrote “Imagine there is no middle eastern August.”

When asking what Lennon would tweet, Guillaume Decugis “I can’t IMAGINE ”

Blue Nim Rod referred to another Beatles song (although this one was actually written by Paul McCartney), “Let it be!”

Ben Pashkoff says Lennon would tweet, “We are all together – kuku kashoo”

@amitkurtz thought that Lennon would tweet “…there’s no heaven” @Mottipeer wrote “All you need is love” @niron had a similar take, tweeting that “John Lennon might have said: “Imagine all the people tweeting out for PEACE, yoohoo uhoohoo”.”

Raanan Avidor wrote that “Lennon has a lot of quotes that can be twitted like:

♫ All you twit is love. ♫

♫ All we are saying is give twit a chance. ♫

♫ There’s nothing you can twit that wasn’t twot. ♫

♫ Yeah we all twit on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun. ♫”

Gil Ruda “For those of you in the cheap seats I’d like ya to clap your hands to this one; the rest of you can just rattle your Blackberry”

Other twitterers referenced Lennon’s untimely assassination. Frequent participant LiviuLica wrote that ‘he might of twitted – “there’s that loony that’s been stalking me, it’s time for us to have a chat”’ One user grimly mentioned both Michael Jackson’s death and Lennon’s. @welfeld, referring to Jackson’s ownership of the Beatle’s library, tweeted “Maybe now that Michael Jackson is dead, I can get my music’s rights back. Wait, I am dead too.”

@sageeb has another entry with this philosophical statement: “@god is a concept by which we measure our pain” ~@johnlennon

@Rubin is clearly not a fan of Twitter – or at least he thinks Lennon wouldn’t have been, tweeting “John Lennon would probably dismiss Twitter as useless.”

My own entry is “Twitter fields forever.”

Twitter is a relatively new tool that is changing the face of communication. The world would look very different if Twitter had existed back in the stone age. Could you imagine the Bible being tweeted? How would that look? A lot shorter, for sure! What would fictional characters  and classic celebrities tweet if they had Twitter in their day? If Darth Vader had Twitter, do you think he would have said “@luke I am your father”? Would Marilyn Monroe have wished “@jfk happy birthday” on TweetDeck? Would she announce her engagement to Joe DiMaggio to her tweeps first just as @IvankaTrump announced her recent engagement on Twitter?

Blonde 2.0 is excited to launch a new weekly contest “What would they tweet?” Every Monday, we are going to pick a character – real or fictional – from historical times to today and ask you to come up with the most interesting and creative tweets. They will be posted on this blog each Thursday. Blonde 2.0 will then handpick the best tweets and highlight them here.

For the first week, let’s start with this classic blonde beauty and the original Blonde 1.0. If Marilyn Monroe had Twitter, what would she tweet?

To participate in the contest, post your entries on Twitter with the hashtag #wwtt.

Go ahead, go wild! Show us what you’ve got!