The first test of an entrepreneur is – can you spell “entrepreneur”?

So I think I passed that one. *whew*

I’ve decided to combine my passion for empowering women with my passion for video games. Its like the peanut butter cup of video games and its going to be awesome. As much as I’d love to spill the details, I know I can’t just yet — and its driving me nuts!

I have to say that I am amazed and in awe of the support I’ve been receiving for both my idea and what I’m going to accomplish. People really do want to help others.

So to that end, I encourage anyone with a great idea to start talking about what you want to do with that idea and see what happens. Perhaps you’ll be amazed too!

I would love to get my hands on analytics for Web sites that sell tea online just for today, April 15. I noticed this ad while reading a Huffington Post article about the Tea Party in Washington D.C.

Too bad they don't offer same day delivery!

This is an excellent example of real world events that effect online advertising. The web isn’t a vacuum, folks. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an uptick in tea purchases that are tangential to the Tea Party phenomenon. People do enjoy drinking tea as well as dumping it in protest!

Ok so 24 hours ago (April 11, 2008) I received the following email:

Thanks again, for signing up to download our Razer Gaming guide.

In approximately 24 hours time, we’ll be launching an exclusive
piece of news only to readers of this list(those who have downloaded
the Razer Gaming Guide).. and what can we say, we’re truly excited about
sharing the launch details with you, but I’m afraid that the *VERY
BEST* we can do right now is to give you a primer on what’s to come!

This launch will likely go down in history as one of the *LARGEST*
and craziest(and perhaps most fun) things that we ever did in our
Razer labs, and we hope you will join us in making this happen!

Some Razer fans have already realized what’s about to happen and
have already jumped the gun, but unfortunately we will still have to
keep it a secret till 24 hours later.

Some clues…

It’s 8 letters, blue and very likely, a world record.

Be part of this!

More news to come in 24 hours!

Best regards
Ryan C

I was so intrigued that I totally forgot about their attempt at the internet records! (Internet records are serious business.)

At any rate, this evening I received an update on their diabolical scheme:

24 hours are finally up. What are we up to?

Over in the labs of Razer, our team has always
pushed towards the envelope of innovation and precision
technologies in each and every one of our products.

We have always been meeting challenges in every step
of our product research, development and innovative
technological breakthroughs and today we’ve set forth
to achieve what few other companies have even tried
or attempted, and that is to forge a ground breaking
Facebook challenge!

If you haven’t already known (or have been hiding under
a rock for the past year) Facebook is an extremely innovative
company which has risen in popularity within an extremely
short period of time and has been on the forefront
of leading-edge social websites.

Facebook allows you to connect with your friends, family, schoolmates,
co-workers and best of all, allows you to be updated on the daily
happenings over at Razer. (In fact, there’s a whole bunch of
Razer folks online and if you dig around hard enough
you can find Robert Krakoff a.k.a Razerguy too – hint hint)

Our challenge is to hit 10,000 fans on our Facebook
page *within a WEEK*! Truth be told, some of us don’t even have
more than a hundred friends on our list each, but that
won’t stop us from doing whatever it takes to break
records.

Especially in just *SEVEN SHORT DAYS* and that dateline
ends next Sunday night, the 19th of April at 23:59 hours.

While such a challenge would probably scare away other
gaming companies (hey we don’t blame them), we embrace
them with much gleeful anticipation hence we would like to
extend an invitation to you to join us today and be part
of Razer’s history… for eternity to come.

As part of the Razer-Facebook groupie, you can view our upcoming
events, exclusive news, videos, Facebook- exclusive contests, giveaways
and upcoming product releases ahead of anyone else!

And if you don’t have an account with Facebook, you
can create an account here to get started – http://www.facebook.com

You can also upload your fan photos, wallpapers, videos
and basically anything you’re obsessed with Razer with. So
don’t delay another second and add us. Time is of the
essence here and speed is everything!

Can we hit 10,000 fans in *just* ONE week? Perhaps, maybe,
but you can make the winning difference by joining us today!

*AS OF RIGHT NOW*, there’s around 90 fans who have already
added us (you clever folks!) since the last email we sent
out 24 hours ago…and more are joining us every hour! This doesn’t
cost anything but a a minute of your time, so there’s
no excuse not to go ahead and join us!

Here are the steps …

1. Make sure you have a Facebook account over at
http://www.facebook.com

2. Ensure you’re logged in to your account and access
the Razer page online at the URL below.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Razer/13848807575

3. Select “Become a Fan” on the top
right menu and you’re done!

Once you have joined us as a fan, feel free to leave a message on
our wall, post a photo or video of yourself. Just don’t go around
harassing other people or we’ll send one of our hit men, or even
better, Razerguy after you.

Note: We’ll be keeping you updated on our challenge
progress during the week ahead, so sit tight and look out
for more updates from us.

Godspeed!

Best regards,

Ryan C.

I don’t know, all I can do here is /facepalm. I mean yeah Social Media is hot. Gamers are all over social media. Ergo – get on that social media. But a Facebook friending campaign? I don’t know, it doesn’t sound innovative or revolutionary. Its a pretty obvious ploy to get contact and demographic information from Facebook.

And I know I’m helping the Razer’s cause here by blogging about it… I gotta give the n00bz a lil love, you know? Their products are great even if their marketing team is a lil green when it comes to the online marketing.

Oooh look at this! The Razer Lachesis comes in white now… I gotta get one of these little babies.

I spent some time this evening at an event sponsored by Microsoft and MIMA entitled, “LIGHT UP YOUR BRAND: BUILDING A MEMORABLE ONLINE EXPERIENCE”.

The keynote speaker was Lou Carbone, the founder and chief experience officer of Experience Engineering. He had some really interesting insights into how people really behave and the different kinds of emotional expectations people have regarding products and services. He also spoke about how people need to rethink the traditional idea of brand and instead of being product focused, be more experience focused. I found his presentation to be fascinating and entertaining.

As I was walking towards the elevator I was thinking about this shift in the expectations to an emotional experience (of which I am guilty of from time to time) from a pure product thing. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Schaef book, “When Society Becomes an Addict”.

I think this type of experience marketing is a direct result of our addictive society. We consider less and less of the rational and factual and place more weight on the irrational and emotional/subjective feelings around products.