If you woke up this morning thinking “if I could only read 543 words and find a really cool surprise at the end”, well then this is the post for you.  Keep going!

When I moved from New York City to San Francisco in May of 2008 I had no assumptions about the weather in the Bay Area.  Little did I know that it would be very similar to how my personal and professional network would grow: an overlapping microcosm of multiple variations, constant shifting and collisions.

A young Brazilian entrepreneur by the name of Marco Vanossi had dinner in my home last night.  Marco is friend of a friend of my wife’s (who is also from Brazil) and ALSO has a very strong working relationship with a number of my Social Media Colleagues in Silicon Valley that have no connection to my wife’s friend whatsoever.  You could use the cliché term “small world” or you could look at the simple truth of right place right time. I honestly believe the same applies to Crowd Factory’s expansion in group buying tools like Social offer.  If you understand the needs, desires and online behaviors of people then you know that the concepts of search marketing and group buying are expanding faster than the universe itself can contain them. 

The amount of web traffic, dollars exchanged and almost, what seems like to me, this – willingness and/or desire to be apart of a group that seems to be “cool” or “the thing to do” is driving consumer spending.  Bottom line, it’s freakin awesome.

OK so let’s go back to Marco.  He came for dinner because he is new in town and Brazilians love more Brazilians – and oh yeah, my wife is a private chef in San Francisco. Marco also has developed an application called ClickPic that I believe will change how image sharing takes place on social networks and at the same time provide some interesting benefits that are complimentary to what Crowd Factory is doing with our Social Offer application. 

The reason you are still reading this is not because I am taking bets on a new application or trying to distract you from the power of Crowd Factory – just the opposite.  There is a great deal of creative juices flowing through the pipes of the internet that are proving more and more everyday that we are evolving- as people and as a network online. I think folks like Marco as well as the group here at Crowd Factory understand that you can have an extremely powerful and beneficial experience online using social media, but at the same time mechanisms like group buying and rewarding your customers is allowing these networks to mature so that valuable time is spent offline. 

You may have reached this sentence and think…OK….NOW what.  Well, now you register.  You register for Crowd Factory’s April 28th webinar which has the very actionable title of: How to Deploy Group Deals and Social Offers.  After reading the last few paragraphs I know you are asking yourself “how can I build and deploy my own group deals without having to use a Groupon-style service? “  Well…this webinar is the quickest way to learn how to run winning social offers.  I hope to see and/or hear from you there!