#swapshop

Just as SendSocial evolved from an idea on a blog, I thought I would blog an idea I had to see if it has legs.

The idea is #swapshop

I currently have 3 things I don’t need, these are:

1. Pantone Swatch Book
2. Apple 20GB 3rd Generation iPod
3. Apple iSight Camera

I’m willing to spend £3.99 using SendSocial to send each item to someone else. In exchange for this I want an item in return, other than the iPod (for which I want an Apple Micro-DVI Cable) I’m open to offers!

Try it yourself! Here is the tweet syntax:

Offered: [item description] [optional: twitpic]. Wanted: [item description] #swapshop #sendsocial

I’m really looking forward to seeing how this idea is received by the twitter community. Will it trend?

It arrived!

Here’s a photographic record of one of our first address-less parcels, which proves they really can be delivered!  This one travelled from Newcastle to Derby, and is just one of several test parcels we have been sending recently ahead of our launch.

140 characters and a few thousand emails later

We’re excited, to say the least, that SendSocial will be launching to our investors in just over 24 hours’ time.  I’ve just been reading through some of the very first emails that the team exchanged when Ben first floated the idea, and it really is remarkable that, in the 8 months since then, we’ve built and are preparing to launch this thing.

I had butterflies in my stomach when a myHermes courier turned up at my house bright and early on Monday morning to collect an address-less parcel.  Even the courier was impressed – the first time she’s collected something like this, she said, but most definitely not the last.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one of the things I love about SendSocial is that we’re all entrepreneurs.  We’re all passionate about what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve.  I glanced at my watch the other night to see that it was 4.30am.  Quite how I was still bursting with energy at that time, I’m not too sure.

It might have been the coffee, but even at that time of night, emails were flying into my inbox:  “What if we do this?”, “That could work…”.  There’s such a buzz within the team at the moment, I think it highlights the fact that launches are always fun and we’re really grasping this one by the horns.

Most people I speak to love the concept, but a concept is of course a very different thing from a business that people will use and appreciate.  That’s why tomorrow is very important to us – it’s the first time that real people can see what we’ve been working on, and you’ll be able to send and receive requests from the off.

We’re conscious, as well, that people are going to come up with ways of using SendSocial that we’d never even have thought of.  And, for our investors, it all starts tomorrow.  We can’t wait to hear your feedback – good and bad – on the site.

Oh, and if you’re not an investor, there’s no need to feel jealous (well, maybe a little): we’ll be opening our doors to you before long.

Preparing SendSocial for launch

As you might imagine, there’s a fairly complex website behind SendSocial, and it’s my task to ensure it all works as the SendSocial team wants it to.  Here’s an update to let you know how we’re getting on.

We are now in advanced stages of testing with Hermes, whilst doing a great deal of testing on our website. If you have been keeping an eye on SendSocial through twitter search, you will have probably seen some of these tests happening. Forgive us, we’re not trying to spam twitter, rather just carrying out the tests we need to make to launch successfully!

Security is perhaps the most important aspect of SendSocial, and certainly one of the greatest challenges in its development. One of SendSocial’s unique advantages is the fact you never see the other party’s address when arranging a delivery, and we will be promoting the anonymity aspects of SendSocial as much as the low prices and convenience it offers.

Needless to say, we take security very seriously, and have developed SendSocial with this at the forefront of our decision making. We will be securing the whole site using SSL (that means there will be a padlock in the corner of the screen), with the industry leader in Internet security, VeriSign. Not only does this mean your data is encrypted during transmission over the Internet, it also gives you and your recipients, who may be using SendSocial for the first time, the best possible perception of security and professionalism, which we believe is crucial.

Another area we are focussing on is performance – we know you’ll want a website that’s quick and just lets you concentrate on your task, so have been painstakingly refining the system to get the best possible performance for launch. We have taken note from other recent launches that not everything always goes to plan when you flick the big switch, so have built SendSocial on enterprise-grade technologies, allowing us to scale easily as traffic volumes increase. We want SendSocial to be a busy site, so have prepared for this!

Over the next week or so we will be finalising functionality and testing, whilst preparing our systems for launch. It’s very nearly there, and we can’t wait to hear your feedback and suggestions after you’ve given SendSocial a try.

Thanks for reading – @antonystevenson

Early morning inspiration

As anyone who has been in this position before will testify, the weeks before launching a new business are some of the most exciting, stressful, daunting and incredible times.  Writing this at 3am on a Monday morning – when I need to be awake in a matter of hours – my head is a buzz of activity, and it’s no wonder that everyone on the team could barely contain their anticipation on last Thursday’s conference call.

Antony and Marc are continuing to do a great job putting the finishing touches to the website.  Bug testing is going well and I’ve been busy putting the final copy text together.  We almost have a finished product now, and we’re just waiting to send out the first of many address-less packages.

A lot of our time over the past week has been spent discussing launch plans and working out how we can maximise our coverage, and we’ve come up with a few cool ideas.  The story behind how SendSocial began is interesting in itself, and we genuinely think that the innovative nature of our offering will resonate with the public.

Our timing probably couldn’t be better either, with the postal service in the news daily at the moment.  It was announced a few days ago that there are going to be more Royal Mail strikes at the start of November, which means that post will remain a fiercely debated topic for the foreseeable future; or the coming months, at least.  And, whilst strike action is annoying and disruptive, it makes sense for us to try and capitalise on it; our launch date could not be better.

One thing that I’ve loved about being a part of SendSocial has been its open nature.  Ever since Ben offered Twitter users shares for re-tweeting his original message, I’ve been struck by your helpfulness and enthusiasm, both on and offline.  Regardless of how great a team we have, SendSocial owes its existence to social networks, and it is ultimately social network users who are going to define our success – so we’ve been determined to engage and take your views on board as much as possible.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than the feeling that I’m part of something big, something exciting, that has the potential to change the world.  It’s what being an entrepreneur is about, and I know that the others share my views.  I really hope that you’re as excited as we are, and if there’s anything you want to say to us, please say it.  If there’s something you think we should do, something you think we shouldn’t, someone we should be talking to, speak up and let us know.  Heck, if you want to recommend a blend of coffee (mine ran out the other day), we’d love to hear from you.

We want you to be a part of SendSocial as much as we are, and share our enthusiasm and excitement.  It would be great to learn a little bit about our investors and other well-wishers.

Postal Strikes and a New Communications Model

Another postal strike by Royal Mail staff brings so many questions to the forefront. The leading one must be that of a seemingly basic lack of logic to it all. If workers within a service industry decide to strike, apparently in protest against the process of modernisation that will ultimately result in some job losses, they drive further business volume away from their organisation and thus the overall result is the need to further reduce employee numbers. The world changes; one must evolve or become extinct. Ultimately it is the consumer (recipient of mail) who will decide the format that s/he would like to receive a communication (and I use the work communication rather than letter). This may by email, via mobile or indeed physically. It is not a monopoly, there is choice. This does not mean only as to whether someone picks Royal Mail, ViaPost, MyHermes or any other carrier, but also the format of that communication.

There is a place for Royal Mail today and in the future. We all love the postie and processing and delivering billions of items of mail every year is a big and complex job, but as with BT after deregulation of the Telecoms sector, change is needed. New entrants should be seen as positive and potential partners rather than direct competition.

It is therefore fitting that SendSocial approaches launch in the next couple of weeks providing a service that is at the extreme other end to the spectrum. SendSocial is creating a new niche in the postal sector encouraging people to send items they otherwise would not have been able to.

You will be able to send a gift, a letter, or a special offer physically to an individual that you have contact with online but not offline. Imagine being able to send flowers to a girl or boy you have been following on Twitter; a birthday gift to your favourite celebrity or a “guide to running the economy” to a member of the Cabinet! Christmas is coming…who will you surprise with SendSocial and who will surprise you?

There is a great team at SendSocial and I am excited to be involved, albeit on an advisory basis due to my full time commitments running ViaPost. There is a great synergy between the two businesses as both look to redefine the communications sector, taking advantage of technology and adapting to a world that expects a better service at a lower cost with minimal effort.

There are much broader applications for the SendSocial platform. Watch this space and get involved from Nov 13^th!

Who owns your data?

“Who owns your data?” – somewhat of an ambiguous question to ask, but seriously who does? How many times have you filled in a questionnaire, registration form, warranty card, store card application form etc … This begs the question, at least for me, who owns my data?

I can already ‘smell’ the blog comments citing various paragraphs from the Data Protection Act putting me firmly in my place. Through fear of rambling myself asleep I’ll not discuss the darker side of data protection but focus on the above-board side. Trust me, it’s for the best.

Okay, so if you ‘opt-in’ to marketing (you know, that box you ticked) you give permission to be marketed to. Here are a few questions that you probably didn’t think of asking before ticking that little box:

1. When will you send me stuff and how often?
2. What kind of stuff will you send me?
3. What happens when I move address or my details change?

I’m holding back here as it’s all too tempting to list more, but you get my point hopefully.

I wonder (maybe you know the answer to this?) how much money is wasted on marketing material being sent to wrong address and then re-posted back as ‘return to sender’? How much does ‘return to sender’ cost the Royal Mail?

Does all this get you thinking about SendSocial yet? I hope so!

Effectively SendSocial is a repository of addresses that can be used, at the permission of the owner, to send stuff to without the sender ever knowing the address. Marvellous! So yes, I’m saying that the owner of the data becomes you. It puts you in control of your data.

Wouldn’t it be great if the next time you went to fill out a form instead of a tickbox you see the trusted SendSocial logo and next to it you put in your favourite social media ID (or e-mail address, that works on SendSocial). That way, next time someone wants to send you something like a product sample, illuminating pen, musical mug or simply a brochure you can decide whether or not to accept it and then choose an address to send it to like home or work.

Okay, I’ll confess [sigh] … this has been an elaborate way of generating interest in using SendSocial for direct marketing purposes. It would be interesting to hear feedback.

Who owns your data? Well, in theory – you! But who has control of your data might be a more probing question to ask perhaps?

Idea to SendSocial

SendSocial was one of those ideas that had in one way or another been sitting in my head for years; maybe it is my dyslexia but I always thought address were a very stupid way to identify a physical location. I only know 3 or 4 address off my head and every time I wanted to send flowers or somebody’s birthday present I would have to go through the laborious process of finding the address, which sometimes meant having interaction with the postcode finder on Royal Mails site; not an ideal solution by any means!

So then about nine months ago I wanted to send my sister a present for her birthday, so I Twittered her, then in a rash annoyance about such a ridiculous process I twittered the community about a concept to send gifts just using your twitter ID, the idea seemed to strike a cord with a few people so I decided to take it to the next stage.

The next thing I needed was feedback on the idea so I thought well the best way to do this would be for people to share in the value of the idea if they like it; so I created a 10% virtual pool of shares and gave them to anybody who re-tweeted the idea.

Throughout this process there were a number of people who took time to add real value to the idea, so I picked the ones with the most passion and the greatest skills and that became the kick ass team we have working on SendSocial today. You see I would like to say that I really helped turn my idea into reality but the truth is the highly skilled and dedicated team that have built SendSocial are the real driver behind the business; I just try and keep a steady hand on the tiller.

We now have what I believe is a great product, we have great partners and personally I would like to get rid of the traditional postal address forever!

So there you have it an idea brought to life by a social network, a team brought together by a social network and hopefully a tool that social network users will love!

SendSocial sneak peek!

What is a launch without a sneak peek into what it’s all about? Exactly!

We’re very excited to see how SendSocial will be received by you guys, and we simply can’t wait to launch this. As much as we can’t wait to hear your opinion, receive your feedback and respond to your criticism, as much do we want to get everything in place before launch. Having this in mind, we still want to show you a bit of the app behind this service, which is why we thought this post would be appropriate. Below you’ll be introduced to a few features and design implementations, which we’ve passionately worked on for the last couple of weeks. We strongly believe in the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and have tried to design with that written on post-its everywhere… almost true.

Even if you want to see more (and I would like to show you more), I think this will be it for now; just to keep your (and our) excitement alive. I’ve heard though… it’s still a rumor…that another member of the SendSocial team will take you on a tour through the system, at some point before launch! So, you might want to keep an eye out for that. As usual we always welcome comments, suggestions and whatever you might have of thoughts about this (ad)venture.

Thanks for reading, take care – @marcfalk

Convenience, simplicity and service you can look forward to

Over the past several months, my task has been to realise the SendSocial team’s ideas and concepts into a website and service our users can use and enjoy. As ideas were refined and consolidated, it became clear how simple the process of sending parcels over social networks and e-mail could be.

We have constructed an elegant 5-step process from request to delivery. When we launch, it will look something like this:

Step 1. Send Request

Once you have signed up with SendSocial, you will be able to make requests to your friends. Simply enter their Twitter screen name or e-mail address and a brief description of what you would like to send them, and click ‘Send’. You can also add a private message to the request, which your recipient will only see when they log into SendSocial. We will even give you a quote for delivery based on the weight of the parcel you wish to send.

We will send an @-reply on Twitter to your recipient, or send them an e-mail asking whether they would like to accept your request.

Step 2. Accept or Decline

When your recipient clicks the unique link on your tweet or e-mail, they will see your item description and message, with the option to accept or decline your request.

If they accept your request, we will ask them to add or select their address along with a few other details ready for arranging delivery with myHermes. Once we have all the information we need, we will e-mail you to let you know your request has been accepted. You can then proceed with arranging delivery.

Step 3. Arrange Delivery

At this point you can select which address you would like your parcel collecting from, confirm your parcel weight and choose from a range of options you might find useful, such as requiring a signature on delivery.

You can even leave a note to the courier for instructions if you are not in when they call for collection. You can leave parcels in a safe place or with a neighbour – just tell us and we’ll make sure myHermes check before leaving a note to re-arrange collection!

Once you are happy with delivery arrangements, you pay by credit or debit card with our secure online payment system and we then generate a parcel label ready for you to print out and stick to your parcel.

Here’s the really clever bit – the label has just your recipient’s name, the SendSocial request reference and a barcode, and that’s about it – no address! myHermes have upgraded their systems to allow us to send address-less parcels through their network and ensure they still get delivered safely within their 3-5 day service.

Step 4. Collect Parcel

We will let you know when myHermes will collect your parcel. This will usually be the next working day so long as you arrange delivery before 8pm. Once myHermes have collected your parcel, we will keep both you and your recipient updated with our online parcel tracking.

Step 5. Deliver Parcel

myHermes will work their magic and deliver your parcel to your recipient within 3-5 days for mainland UK. Just as you were able to provide a safe place for collection, your recipient can also leave instructions if they are not available when their parcel arrives.

Convenience, simplicity and service you can look forward to from Monday 16^th November. Prices start from just £3.99 for parcels up to 2Kg.