Although Techonomy is only in its 2nd year, it’s shaping up to be THE technology/entrepreneur event in Israel, giving 6 (7 this year) start-ups a prominent stage to present their product/service, before a panel of distinguished judges and a loving crowd. Techonomy is organized and produced by Orli Yakuel and Eddie Resnick.
Interlude.fm took 1st place, after a brilliant demo by founder, Israeli musician Yoni Bloch. Interlude developed an interactive platform for video, that allows users to interact with the video, choosing various paths, thus altering the original timeline of the clip. Each selection impacts both audio and video, but Yoni explained that you can put restrictions, such as pre-defined opening and closing scenes, director’s cut, and more. According to Robert Scoble, interlude could save MySpace and is a really cool tech for musicians. In a recent project featuring a 3min video, interlude technology tripled the average time on site, to 9min (!) with 1m unique visitors. Yoni’s demo (video below) at Techonomy was shot at his house in Tel Aviv and offers 256 options, complied of 38 different scenes shot on-location.
Fiddme
In 2nd place, very close to interlude.fm, came Fiddme, a social network for foodies, from founders Yosi Taguri, Eran Kampf, Naor Suki, and Udi Milo. Fiddme allows foodies to share their food, by taking a picture and uploading it to fiddme community, using iPhone app or the web. I’ve known Yosi and Eran for some time now, and their passion for the product (started capturing food roughly 2 years ago), along with a beautiful user experience, and the location-based buzz (@foursquare integration coming very-very soon), will make Fiddme one of the best viral apps out there.
You might wonder why would a restaurant decide to organize a free dinner to 25 people, that the only thing they have in common is: a) they love food; b) they twit. But this exactly is where most companies are wrong, especially if we’re considering the power of social media. Those 25 people made such a ‘noise’ last night, that at some point people took some drastic measures, because they started drooling over the keyboard.. The web is filled today (and probably tomorrow as well) with posts, pictures, videos and links to Forelin and Eat&Twitt. When a friend or colleague will ask me which restaurant to I recommend for fish and seafood, the answer would be obvious.
Forelin Rastaurant came to understand what companies are only beginning to realize – you need to meet your audience at their turf, in order to start a conversation with them. No matter how sophisticated your website is, no one will visit it without you making the first step. Liat has been very-very-very active with Forelin in that space, but convincing Chef Amir and the owners to organize such an event is a testimonial of the power social media has these days.
Liat, Yosi, Eran and Forelin Restaurant: THANK YOU!
