Category Archives: Social Media

Why I love @Airbnb

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I’ve been using Airbnb since August 2011 and there’s no way I’m going to rent a hotel room ever again in the future.

Yep… I just said that!

So far I’ve been using it in Barcelona, San Francisco, New York City, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam and each experience has been absolutely mind blowing.

The awesomeness of this service derives mostly by the fact that it was conceived by designers and not by hotel-related businessmen. This is a key point: only people with different mindsets can come up with fresh ideas that revolutionize a market. Airbnb brings together the coolness and the social aspects of the couchsurfing experience and the quality standards of an apartment/room rental service.

When you step into an Airbnb apartment/room you feel like you’re entering a new world. A world of intimacy and sharing at the same time. You get to see the house of a person and start wondering about her personality. It helps you discover common tastes and start conversations about anything.

In order to be an Airbnb user you need to have a particular predisposition to handle unexpected things and a lot of curiosity. Airbnb is not for everyone. If you travel alone or with friends it is perfect. If you travel with your partner (and your partner is adventurous) it is fantastic. If you travel with your partner and your little kids it might be a bit challenging because adults adapt more easily to unexpected situations.

Last but not least, Airbnb is very inspiring when it comes to style and furnitures. I’ve found myself browsing all the coolest listings just to look at how people decorate and style up their homes. There are so many design apartments on Airbnb (incredibly cheap ones) that’s almost impossible not to bump into one and scream: “OMG I want this too!”.

Give it a try and you won’t regret it.

P.S. only on Airbnb you can rent something like this.

#LeWeb11 in a post

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I’m back home after an exciting week in Paris. I was there to attend LeWeb (it’s my 5th time there!) and now that I think about it I cannot imagine being elsewhere on the first week of December. This time I won’t talk about logistics: LeWeb is a very well organized event and it improves year after year. Hats off to Loic and Géraldine for putting it up. What really struck me this year was the general atmosphere, which was extremely positive if you consider the hard times we’re going through.

As my friend Luca Sartoni pointed out in his podcast, I find interesting that most of the companies and products which had been talked about on stage this year are now deeply rooted in our daily life. Airbnb, Spotify, foursquare and Twitter are now 100% part of my reality and even the new apps (e.g. Uber) are so seamless that you can use them right away and still feel like you’ve been using them forever.

LeWeb also showed me that the startup ecosystem in Europe is changing. Until a few years ago it was all about London; now things are different because the Scandinavian countries and Berlin are becoming the new centers for innovation. Berlin in particular has proven to provide the right humus to grow a startup because of its cheaper cost of living (compared to other European capitals) and the cultural groove that makes it one of the top three most exciting cities in the continent along with Paris and London. If London is the European “New York City” Berlin is definitely going to become the European “San Francisco” in terms of lifestyle and opportunities.

The enthusiasm at LeWeb has always been contagious but this year I feel more optimistic about the future: it’s great to see that creativity and ideas can still capitalize and save/change the world. I’ve heard a lot of encouraging speeches about magic, passion, curiosity and hard work. They all came from successful entrepreneurs who really believed in the power of their ideas and somehow managed to turn them into great products. I was also very proud of my fellow Italian entrepreneurs who won the startup competition with Beintoo, a smart product that has a lot of potential.

That said, I can’t wait for the next edition to come!

Tutti in piedi! Web e TV si danno la mano

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Venerdì scorso sono stata a Bologna per seguire l’evento “Tutti in piedi!” promosso sempre da Michele Santoro in occasione dei 110 anni della FIOM e mi sono occupata del live Tweeting sul canale di @currentitalia. Current ha giocato un ruolo chiave predisponendo tutto l’occorrente per la diretta televisiva e inviando il segnale alle TV locali che avevano chiesto l’autorizzazione a mandare in onda l’evento. E’ stato fantastico ripetere l’esperienza di “Rai per una notte”, evento mediatico dalla portata eccezionale per il quale curai personalmente il live Tweeting. Le hashtag ufficiali di entrambi gli eventi (#raiperunanotte e #tuttiinpiedi) furono lanciate proprio da Current e scalarono subito la classifica dei trending topic su Twitter nel giro di mezz’ora.

Ecco un po’ di dati relativi a #tuttiinpiedi:

Current Tv Italia è stata la prima a diffondere le medie di ascolto di “Tutti in Piedi!”: il suo 1,46% di share medio al minuto (che sale al 3,15% sul target 20-24 anni, raggiungendo in complesso una media del 16,1% per il pacchetto intrattenimento di Sky, con il picco del 35,7% con Roberto Benigni) l’ha ‘promossa’ rete più seguita della piattaforma Sky di venerdì 17 giugno, con circa 700.000 contatti netti, quattro volte superiori alla media del canale.
Fonte: Televisionando.

Qui invece si parla del Web:

Per quanto riguarda la trasmissione in live streaming, il sito de Il Fatto Quotidiano (che ha aggregato tutti i siti che hanno diffuso la diretta) ha registrato una media di 45-50.000 utenti, con picchi di oltre 70.000 utenti unici contemporanei all’uscita di Benigni.
Repubblica.it, poi, ha registrato 250.000 utenti unici durante la diretta, con una media di 85.000 utenti e il picco di 30.000 visitatori in contemporanea durante l’intervento di Benigni. Da segnalare anche il dato diffuso da Corriere.it, che parla di oltre 50.000 contatti nella serata. Fonte: Televisionando.

Partecipare all’organizzazione di due eventi di questa portata mi ha fatto capire quanto possa essere esplosiva la miscela di Web e TV. Purtroppo la maggior parte dei network televisivi europei (non cito nemmeno quelli italiani…) è ancora ben lontana dall’aver realizzato il potenziale di questi fenomeni mediatici. Ho potuto constatare che il pubblico vuole essere parte attiva del successo di questi eventi e sta rapidamente imparando ad usare i social network nella maniera più efficace. Sarà compito dei network più lungimiranti investire in tal senso e cominciare a concepire programmi e format televisivi che siano in grado di integrare nella loro struttura una componente “social” di default.