So I’m at le web in paris this week. The plan was to blog regularly about each of the topics throughout the two days of buzz words, business plans and stating the obvious. At least thats what day one has consisted of so far. Me and Ami started counting how many times we heard the word “community” and “user generated content”, it reach 60 communities and more user generated contents from just two topics. Still its a nice event, some good people are here and I’m enjoying my first big geek event.

Lukasz (Spreadshirt founder) was on a panel entitled ecommerce 2.0 which was okay. the panel “moderators” have a habit of talking more than the guests and the true point of each topic has not really been nailed. So alot of time is wasted pimping the panelists companies rather than engaging in discussion. I guess its inevitable that the commerical side of the business would need to rear its head, after all its what is funding it all. With 4 tv channels and over 160 press representives the pr opportunities are huge and being fully exploited. A community is not a solution, a business model, or the magic bullet of the future of the internet. They dont exist on their own, gated communities for the communities sake it will be okay everyone we own a community, there’s people on it and stuff and they talk and have hundred of “friends” they have never met. The question is do they actually care about that community, what are they contributing to it, and how much are you letting them shape it and your business.

They are driven by an interest, a specific unifying topic that unites the community. Its businesses and the platform providers job to make those participants more than just passing eyeballs. For myspace its the showcase of personal taste and the desire to date and meet the sex. A community of 5m people who all automatically got a Live account with MSN isnt a community, its a potential userbase of 5m. Within that there might be a community of 50k who actually care about the product enough to evangelise it, submit bugs and actively help to improve it. I guess for me the classic mantra of “size doesnt matter” is just as relevant to communities as anything else (unless you want to sell them to a tier 1 internet company of course). Im sure those in online marketing would dis-agree.

I’ve read a few comments on different messageboards about the overuse of cutesy animal style imaging on tshirts. I’m not sure if there are too many, I don’t really wear that style so I pay little attention.
The guys at La Fraise must agree though as they have just launched a “Kill all animals” competition. It will run for three weeks, one winner a week scooping the €2000 prize. The original aim was no little critters allowed. Whats actually happened is a slight hijacking of the original plan, as the community of La Fraise prefer instead to fulfil their sadistic urges by submitting illustrations of cute animal murder. Shocking stuff. I’m informed the original no animals rule will be inforced for weeks two and three of the comp.

Some submitted designs: 

Whats the future of the design contest format? Its a crowded market place these days, one company that I think could make it interesting again is Spreadshirt.

The Draw from spreadshirt looks intruiging and hints at a wider push towards design contests in the future. This is also the first venture I’ve seen under both the spreadshirt and la fraise banners. I thought that spreadshirt might rebrand La Fraise but I think it’s a smart move that they haven’t, after all the have different target markets and La Fraise has a great rep in its market space. I think this design contest (and I dont know how its going to run so I could be way off the mark with this) could be an evolution in the format because of spreadshirts one-off production capabilities. The design contest is an attractive format because:

1. It attracts community by offering involvement and discussion (you know my thoughts on community, if not read the community is king series here)

2. It reduces the risk for the host company, the voting allows you to see the popularity of a product before you’ve gone to the trouble of printed a thousand examples of it that you now have to try and offload. Threadless from years of experience and sales data can probably forecast better than anyone the likely interest in a design and configure production to match. Its a much safer investment to spend thousands of $’s on a run of t-shirts if hundreds of people have said its great.

Spreadshirts model is different, they own now own not only the format in La Fraise but the production as well (in spreadshirt) providing them with profit from producing one-off t-shirts.

Wheres the part where this gets interesting? Now…

Spreadshirts design contests can follow a different format. Take Threadless’ for example - like a design that was submitted? It didnt win? Oh dear, better wait for it to come to Yabbos or something.  

Spreadshirt on the other hand could build a store around every competition and although there are winning designs and the winner gets the £ and kudos why not offer every design for purchase? Write into the TOCs that every design submitted will be offered for sale (probably after the competition is closed) and that the creator will recieve x £’s per sale. The competition is still an interesting format, everyone that submits a design stand a chance to win but also make some £ in the process even if they dont win.

The only potential problem would be in deciding ownership of the rights to that design with it creator. The Threadless approach might work, by submitting a design you grant us the rights to sell it on La Fraise/Spreadshirt for 90days (with the creator receiving % of sale) after that period you have the right to request the removal of the design, at which time full copyright is returned to the creator.

Oh well I guess we’ll see soon enough…