I’ve decided to start a new blog named Utelias mieli (its Finnish and means Curious mind). I’ve also changed to Finnish as my primary blogging language and will focus writing about communities. I might sometimes add something in English there too, but don’t put too much hope on that. So for the time being I say farewell to all my international readers. Maybe we meet one day again…

I’m living nowadays in a watershed of my life and therefore fighting to find any time at all for writing this blog. But I hope to be back soon with a changed focus and more active updating.

In the meantime I write about a little idea from the weekend. I was almost devastated to hear in the news that the sales of large SUVs has increased considerably here in Finland. In these ages of climate change at least I’m concerned about that kind of development even though in the same time diesel engines are also gaining in popularity. Bigger cars anyway mean more emissions.

I don’t know about all the reasons behind buying large vehicles but I’d suspect esteem to be one of the most important ones. That reminds me of concept I’ve been thinking about earlier: namely making small and efficient cars with a luxurity of a big one. I don’t think there is really such a concept available yet. Now if I want to show off I need to get a big car. What I would like to do instead was to show off with a notably expensive and high-end car that wouldn’t be the size of an elephant and with emissions sky-high. A car that would let everyone know that I’m part of the elite and in the same time contributing for the better future. Somehow I think the time could be ready for that. A luxurious Mini maybe?

I’ve posted here earlier some links to articles covering search engine optimisation (SEO) (e.g. here). Now I’d like to introduce you a blog by Lasse Larvanko from Inventive (only in Finnish, sorry). Lasse is writing about marketing in the web and also specifically about SEO. Definitely worth reading for anyone doing business in the internet.

I found today (thanks to Heikki Kauma, a colleague of mine) a Finnish study on eCommerce related issues. It’s a Master’s thesis from Anna Kiiskinen and published April this year (only in Finnish, but there’s an abstract in English too). The goal of the study is to find the main reasons for Finnish consumers not to actively shop over web. As such it’s an interesting read. Some of the references are fairly old, from the end of 90’s, and therefore probably not directly applicable anymore. However, keeping that in mind the study offers some interesting results and ideas. At least it lead me to think what could be done better within eCommerce, by shops or service providers, to attract more active users.

I’m just quickly posting here links to two articles I read yesterday. The first one is the part 2 in a series of articles about marketing for small eCommerce businesses. I think it’s not as good as the first one, but worth reading anyhow.

The second one talks about personalised experience, one of my favourite topics. This one has a more technical approach but maybe some of you find it interesting. Give it a try.

I just read an article I think might be useful for many small and starting webshops out there. Read it. It might help you to bring home some valuable dollars/euros. It also has links to some interesting books for further reading.

Last week Buy.com and Facebook launched a new service for private persons to sell goods online. It carries the name Garage Sale and is still in beta. The concept is interesting so I had to try it on my Facebook account. I added an item for sale and this is how it looks like in my profile:

Adding the item was very simple and fast. Now my contacts can see it on my profile and, should they find it interesting, buy it. For checkout there opens a section in the browser for the buyer to enter all the required information including credit card details. Buy.com will then process the payment and credit my PayPal account (requires Premier account) or mail me a check. I’ll get a notification when the transaction is completed so that I can ship the item. And that’s it – almost. Buy.com will charge me a fixed 5% commission on the sales price.

If you want to know more, I suggest taking a look at the one-minute video tutorials. It’s funny how they’re directly attacking eBay on those

Now it’s you’re opportunity to hit the limelight! Picnic Green Challenge is calling for world-saving new ideas for reducing carbondioxide. I’ll definitely throw in a proposal. Why wouldn’t you too?

Via Springwise

I was today giving a 3-hour presentation to a group of 10 Korean MBA students at Helsinki School of Economics. It was about the topics we will be covering in our online book on Corporate 2.0 (still only in Finnish). Altogether a very nice and refreshing morning session. Thanks to the excellent audience!

I try to live as I speak and therefore will try openness in gathering feedback from today’s audience. I’ve asked them to visit my blog, find this post and add their feedback as a comment to this post. Then it’ll be here for anyone to read and I promise I won’t moderate it Fair and simple. Now I’m just eagerly waiting for the first comments to appear. I’m hoping to have at least some.

Again there’s been a while since my last post here. In the meantime I’ve had a very relaxing of-the-grid-holiday and been occupied with all the stuff I’m working with at the moment. Now it’s about time to activate here too.

I was just having lunch at corporate canteen and ended up looking at myself as others saw me there. I was sitting there in a table all alone accompanied only with my laptop hooked to wireless network. Someone with traditional perspective would have described me as

a sad and lonely guy having a lunch alone

where someone else might have said I was

a happy guy having a lunch with the whole world.

I don’t know who’s right but I think both has a valid point there. What do you think?