OMG, time passes by so quickly! :) We wish you all an amazing year 2012! May at least some of your wishes come true!

We made our biggest dream come true! We built earthfaves, for End Users, Professional Experts, Business Owners! We built an iPhone App for End Users and soon we have the iPhone App for Businesses and earthfaves for Facebook ready, too.

earthfaves for End Users - a solution to always find the favorite places and insider tips from your social circles and experts, to support great businesses and to save some money there.

earthfaves for Business - a solution to grow cost-efficiently and sustainably by means of the most powerful advertising in existence: positive word-of-mouth in the social circles of satisfied customers.

We worked on it for almost four years. During this time, we could always count on the support from our families. You can imagine, doing this felt like being close to hell, more than once. But we used our talent, passion and our zen-buddhist-like patience to get through it. Friends stopped talking to us about it, external people thought we are crazy. But we knew we can make it, and we made it. We built earthfaves all by ourselves, with around 90.000 Euros from the founding team, from friends and family. All code was written inhouse, all designs were made inhouse, all ideas, decisions and features were made inhouse by:

Markus D. Schneider - Product & Project Management

Oliver Schneider - Art Direction, UI designs, Marketing

Daniel Stötzer - Development

Anna Roytburd - Web Design

Tim Klauck - Conceptual Design

Thomas Krämer, Barrett Conway, Markus Tetzlaff - Co-Founders & Legal/Concept/Dev/Sales

plus our numerous development interns, mainly from our great and beatiful IT-region SaarLorLux and from Madrid, especially:

Frédéric Klauss, Dorian Bauer, Rémi Sinicco, Markus Flesch, Pascal Jung, Fabrice Thiel, Moritz Strohm, Benedikt Kappes, Miguel Angel Escalona, María Lara Díaz, José Angel Garcia, Jesús Huerta and Diego Rubio.

So you might ask yourself, why did we do this? Here are some reasons.

• Because from the start, we believed in earthfaves.
• Because we believe that we all have the talents to do something special in our lives if we only believe in it - and put it into action.
• Because we believe that excellence can win over big advertising budgets if the right technology is in place.
• Because we want transparency about the good things in life so that we can all benefit from the talent, passion and creativity of those people who really provide exceptional products and services.
• Because we traveled a lot, and we know that every country has nice places and nice people to see and visit.
• Because we believe that together, we can chance the world to the better. This can work if we all share the best places and let others know why we love this place. This way, more and more people will visit these "earthfaves". Non-loved places will have to improve even quicker if they want to survive as positive word-of-mouth travels fast.
• Because we think that companies waste a lot of money on worthless advertising instead of investing in their most important people: their FAVERS and their FAVER FRIENDS.

We just updated the website with our new designs and all the information and tools about "earthfaves for Business", see footer menu. The direct link is www.earthfaves-prm.com .

Remember, it is all in D.I.Y. beta mode which means Daniel, Olli, Anna and Markus build earthfaves actually in their spare time, supported by our interns. So don't expect everything to work perfectly or to be superfast. Because of this DIY-Beta mode, we also never advertised earthfaves. We start to talk to investors now so that we can offer earthfaves to a broader audience.

If you are interested in trying out "earthfaves for Business" for free, send us an e-mail to info @ earthfaves.com . We are happy to get you into our "Pilot Program".

I just ran into two amazing articles I want to share with you – they tell you why our earthfaves location recommendation friend network and social local search engine are pretty clever technologies we will need to make fast and clever decisions we won’t regret in the future:

1. “Where is everyone?” by baekdal.com – a great, easy to understand journey through the history of information

…and a really worthwhile outlook into the near future showing through which channels we receive reliable information.

Some striking sentences:

“..we are currently in the middle of the most drastic change since the invention of the newspaper…”

“News is no longer being reported by journalists, now it comes from everyone. And it is being reported directly from the source to you – bypassing the traditional media channels.”

“We are already seeing an increasing number of services on mobile phones, where you can get information for the area that you are in. E.g. instead of showing all the restaurants in the world, you will only get a list of the restaurants in your area. This is something that is going to explode into in the years to come. In the world where we have access to more information that we can consume, getting only the relevant parts is going to be a very important element.”

2. The Future of Search – Social Relevancy Rank by readwriteweb.com

In our world where everyone creates news, the sheer amount and complexity of data and information a person has to deal with is a lot more than it used to be back the old days. Therefore we will use our social contacts as trust filters. Google, Microsoft et al are already working on technologies that make this happen. The perfect information filter might look like this:

We already did it with our earthfaves “Social Trust Rank”TM algorithm. If you search our local seach engine for recommended places i.e. earthfaves, we rank the results according to so-called “social trust levels” – the more “trustworthy” a person is that gives a location recommendation, the higher up in the search results it appears. This ensures that you can quickly find the hotels in New York recommended by your friends, their friends and other people you can trust and make a well-informed, quick decision instead of wading through 1000s of advertised hotels on Google, Expedia, Tripadvisor etc…trust friends instead of ads because this is what people do as studies show:

Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to ZenithOptimedia. (AdAge, April, 2008)

Adult Internet users surveyed chose recommendations from friends as the one type of promotion they consider most worthwhile. (DoubleClick, May 2007)

86.9% of respondents said they would trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic, while 83.8% said they would trust user reviews over a critic. (Marketing Sherpa, July 2007)

Build your own local recommendation search engine: sign up at earthfaves, add the places you love (to visit), tell your friends to do the same…then your search results will be “socially trust-ranked” like mine, see below, and you can be among the first to use a “social relevancy rank” local search engine.

We will improve the ranking in the future and add taste neighbors and influencers, btw.

“Increasingly, the Web offers tools that enable travelers to get customized information for trip planning.” writes Jane Wooldridge.

In her article, customized information refers to the extra bells and whistles (services) that booking sites are offering in addition to the standard “find me the cheapest rental car or flight.” Information like, “where do I get cheaper gas?” or “where’s the next BK?” And of course, those hot mobile services for road warriors with Smart Phones and PDAs that enable then to get real-time information about hotel room availability and the like.

We have a different slant on the meaning of customized information. We like to think of it as information organized AROUND YOU meaning your experiences, interests and social network. Imagine you could check ALL the location recommendations you ever got – IN SECONDS, NO MATTER WHEN AND WHERE YOU ARE? All in one place: recommendations you read about in a newspaper, your favorite magazine, a travel guide, all tips from your friends, colleagues, family – maybe even from experts or pop stars! Wouldnt that be a great help and inspiration source?

Think of it like when you’re going out to buy new golf clubs. Naturally, you have have a different swing than the next guy/gay and that standard set of expensive Titleist irons may not be your best bet. Ever heard your golf pro say, ‘ You should check out customized clubs that fit your height and swing type.’

blog reader thinks: “My golf swing vs. my travel profile…nice try, Barrett…I don’t even play golf.”

OK, OK…wait…indulge me for a minute, then I’ll quit it. earthfaves allows you to “pin” your favorites places on a freely accessible digital map. Let’s say you’ve “earthfaved” 20 places. You’re golf swing is starting to develop. Three months down the road, you’ve earthfaved 120 places. You’re swing has slightly matured, you’re not just hitting balls at the range anymore. Now you’ve advanced to the Par-3 course. Six months in, you’ve pinned up over 300 earthfaves. “Nice swing, Scotty, let’s take a look at those clubs” says your Pro. Over time, by continuously adding your earthfaves, you essentially build your earthfaves profile and lead us to provide you with better information based on what your interests are; just as developing your golf swing over time leads your golf pro to help you select the best customized golf clubs. But that is not even the best aspect: imagine your 50 best friends do the same. They all add 300 earthfaves all over the world in half a year. If you add someone as friend at earthfaves, you can instantly see and browse through all his recommendations – and the earthfaves of her/his friends! That makes 300×50 = 15000 recommendations only from your friends already in six months! Guess what: you will never use any other guide than YOUR earthfaves to find your way!

Don’t you hate it when you end up some place you don’t like (and you picked it), plus, you know you could have done more research beforehand? What about this one, even more painful: making a travel decision that was an educated one, and the experience still turns out to be a disappointment. Man, that really gets my goat. How do you avoid that?

Do I dare answer?

Sign up for our beta launch at http://www.earthfaves.com and find out!!

“Customers are tired of spending two or three hours trying to find the airline or hotel or vacation package that meets their needs,” said Henry Harteveldt, Forrester analyst, in the Times.

This is pretty old school thinking.

Let me tell you, earthfaves is going to change all that endless poking around for hours, especially when it comes to thinking about where to go in the first place and where to go when you are there. If you as earthfaves user do a good job in creating your recommendation network of friends, you might end up with a 5-digit number of reliable, trusted and really good recommendations for places to go all around the world!

Just imagine you have 30 friends at earthfaves, each has 30 earthfaves and another 30 friends with another 30 earthfaves = 30×30 + 30×30x30 = 900 + 27000 recommendations! This means: the “collective intelligence” of your network will lead you to the best destinations for you!!!!

It’s your personal guide to the world…that’s what make earthfaves so special. Your recommendations, your friends.

I bet you can’t wait. Neither can I!!

Or maybe it’s both? How many stories around your travel adventures can you come up with off the top of your head right now? Oh geez. It just took me 5 minutes to write this sentence ’cause I was thinking of answering my own question. Keep thinking about that question — and we’ll come back to that later.

So yes, that’s a long title for a blog entry. Why Barrett, why (and btw, where have you been)? Yeah, sorry for the not-so-daily updates – we have a bunch going on right now. So, I’m going to keep it short and sweet today.

I’d like to get into what everyone seems to be taking about these days: Facebook, Google, MySpace, Open Social, and how to save the North Atlantic Wedgemussel. Seriously now, what do they all have in common? First and foremost, they’re all taking part in the “who’s got the hottest internet app” popularity contest. Secondly, they control the some of the most widely-used social platforms for mass communication on the planet. Let’s start with Facebook: they are hot and, uh, well…Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said “the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today.” Whoa there, Mark, calm down big dog! Modest guy, right? I guess he’s allowed, they just priced the company’s value at $15 billion. Let’s face it, Facebook’s offer for businesses to advertise, market their products, track customer purchases and customer trends is pretty darn sweet. Facebook members have always been able to post ads, select how and to which demographic the ads should be targeted to, among other neat little customizing options. Now, their new application takes that same concept and includes the component of track and gather, offering the ability to gain insight into new marketing data never before available to businesses — enabling them to really nail down there audiences and spend those advertisement budgets wisely. By the way, this is something that the guys at earthfaves already thought about a long time ago.

Understanding that your time in the limelight is limited after winning the popularity contest is just good business knowhow. You have to keep innovating to stay on top because that number one seed can be slapped away very quickly. I already read a blog this morning entitled “Facebook is so last week“. Well, is it, cool guy? Google: Or should we call them, “I want to throw yo’ Book in yo’ Face!” Google announced the Open Social platform this week: it provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network’s friends and update feeds. Advantages of Open Social? For starters, multiple companies and social networks are already involved, open platforms tend to be quickly adopted by developers that can create “write once, install many over multiple social platforms”, and they potentially create new business for 3rd-party dev teams. Disadvantages: security and the question if users of one community want their data dragged into other communities. Your user profile, your social engagements, and your social activities are all stored on these networks. That info is precious to some folks, right?. I ask you this, Mr. LinkedIn user – if an Open Social app is developed that allows your connections and activities to show up or be accessed from another network – is that OK with you? Are you going to be notified if this happens? What if this application gets hacked by the bad guys? Hmm.

So just because Google creates some brilliant platform doesn’t mean that Facebook users are going to jump ship overnight. The fact of the matter is, all of these amazing Web2.0 innovations that continue to pop up every day are a clear force in this Internet-age evolution. What does this mean for us at earthfaves? Well, a lot of exciting things actually! Very soon, it’s going to be our turn to demonstrate the power of word-of-mouth marketing in relation to the travel industry. “Markets are conversations.” And as a part of Travel2.0, your adventures and stories continue to transform the market. Speaking of transforming the market, after you finish reading this entry, check this out, you European travel lovers out there will love it.(http://www.eyefortravel.com/index.asp?news=58122)

The static Web has already matured into a highly mobile, very social, and amazingly intelligent collective community of minds. I purposely didn’t use the the phrase “collective community of people” because you can’t replace the physical person on the Internet. Like my buddy Lars said today at lunch, “Online poker isn’t just the same.” He’s right, you know, it isn’t.

Oh man, I almost forgot to ask you about recalling your travel stories! So, what’s the verdict? How many? 5, 10, 20? Which ones did you recall? Can you remember the name of that restaurant, the waiter’s name, the hotel, the flight attendant, the guy sitting next to you, the ocean breeze, where that hiking trail led to, or your best friend’s first words when saw you again for the first time in years? Did you smile when you thought about this stuff? Those memories are worth quite a bit, aren’t they?

Talk to you tomorrow.

…there were a lot of things…a lot of things floating around in Markus Schneider’s head, that is. But before we get to those ideas and business concepts floating around in his head, let me introduce you to our earthfaves captain:

Markus Schneider, straight out of Völklingen, the ugliest city in Germany (the German TV channel RTL did a competition several years ago asking people to name the ugliest city in Germany, and his home town did win! Today the city still is quite ugly, but has a UNESCO world heritage site, the Völklinger Hütte, which is quite impressive), loves his wife and son. He’s a dedicated “cool dad”, and his closest friends will tell you that this guy has a serious passion for travel and the good life — and loves to share travel stories, adventures, tips for great restaurants and amazing places in nature. Even to the point where one time a couple of years ago, he invited my friend Jenn and I to his apartment for a 2.5 hour “viewing” of his South American travel adventures. You’re probably thinking, cool – digital slide show. Uh, well…yes, but remember science class and the slide projector with those little slide cartridges? And every time the slide changed it made that noise “ch-chek”…that’s what is was like that evening.

There are only so many times you can hear “ch-chek”, but you know what, we loved it. We loved the stories, the pictures, the conversation, and we (well, at least I) wanted to hit up South America after that old school travel sharing session. And soon into the show, that science class noise just faded away, and I was captured by the amazing pictures that Markus brought back, more amazingly, the detail at which he could talk about every shot.

But, you see, that’s Markus. It’s all about good content and good experience. Sure, he’s all vinyl and 35mm non-digital SLR, but that’s what’s special about the guy! Who does that anymore? I’m not talking about the method or technology that goes into capturing the experience — but the taking the time out of your busy life to share your favorite things about life with the people you care about.

Today, it seems like just posting your 1 line “status update” on Facebook is enough. We know the Internet is a powerful device to share and market our ideas…but sometimes I feel that forces us down that “hurry up and die” route of life. What’s all the hustle? Slow down — turn off your Blackberry, go for a walk outside, take the boat out without your GPS devices, bring your digi-cam, snap some shots of the horizon, and then come back and tell us about why you loved it.

That’s the beauty of it all — recommending good places is something that we’ve always done, and sharing those positive experiences is something that everyone loves to do and that has a huge impact on the business world. Marketing experts found out: recommendations from friends, colleagues and family are the basis for more than 60% of all purchasing decisions! Brain scientists found out: giving recommendations to others makes both happy, those who give, as they can be of value, those who receive, as they get trustworthy information quick so that they can make the right decisions in a very short time frame. Recommendations make us “future fit”, they help us to be successful, everybody needs and wants them!!! So this is why we created earthfaves…

In a nutshell, earthfaves is about sharing Leisure & Lifestyle-related location and business recommendations with your friends, experts, professionals and other earthfavers so that you can create your personal worldwide recommendation list that leads you to the right spots whereeever you are. So the more you travel, the more helpful earthfaves will be for you, but it certainly is also helpful if you want to track interesting things in your neighborhood or if you want to have a place to store, share and recommend the highlights from your last trips.

Together, world, we’re going to revolutionize that old-school concept of simply sharing the good life via word-of-mouth recommendations – with earthfaves word-of-mouse.