How feasible it is to build another Facebook if there are already so many people using it? How possible can you come up with another product to compete against Facebook like how it did against MySpace? And do you really agree that Facebook has a strong revenue model or you think it is powerful because it’s huge membership and traffic?

When we plan to start a new venture, the first question that comes to mind is what kind of resources or connections we can leverage on to make this possible and even competitive. Facebook started with the college crowd because Mark Zuckerburg was an undergrad at Harvard. So how about you? Look, SNS is not a cliché. It is a new way of how people are connected and communicating on the Internet. Whether you are in the tourism industry, or the movie industry; as long as you are familiar with an industry in which people need to be connected and communicate, there is a potential for a social network, and a profitable one too! Do you think you can ride on this trend to create a valuable social network too? We are going to showcase a social network with very strong revenue model.

Introducing i-Meet.com, a social network for the MICE industry (Meeting, Incentive, Conference and Exhibition). i-Meet.com is a social network to connect meeting/event planners and suppliers (e.g. hotels and restaurants). In i-Meet, planners can set up their professional profiles, similar to Linkedin but much more industry focused. Users can share their working experience, industry certification and showcase of past works in the form of photos, video and blogs.

As we can see, the information that users can present is very industry specific. If you are looking for a planner to work for you, would you rather look up this profile page or to sieve through one’s Linkedin or Facebook profile for relevant information? i-Meet definitely offers something more defined. Therefore, the first value proposition offer to planner is More Project Opportunities.

For suppliers, it can be an individual supplier like a photographer, who can setup a page similar to this or it can be corporate supplier like a hotel, having a profile page like this below.

So now we have a pool of planners and suppliers all of world that can connect to each other on i-Meet conveniently.

The working style and business model in the MICE industry is an excellent example of team work. You don’t work alone. Imagine you are planning the AGM of an international software company; you need to arrange the accommodation, transportation, meeting facilities, the wine and meals, the fun stuffs and so on.  It’s not possible to pull this off alone. You need to team up with other planners and suppliers to put up a good show.

How do suppliers benefit from here? The big keyword here is Qualified Lead Generation.

Let’s check out a feature called “My Requests” on i-Meet. If a planner has a conference to be organized in Philadelphia and he wants to find a suitable venue for this event with some specific requirements. He can use the i-Meet Request For Information (RFI) Engine to select all the relevant suppliers in Philadelphia at a few clicks.
Instead of contacting them one by one, the i-Meet RFI Engine allows planners to do this conveniently. Once the “Submit” button is clicked, an RFI notification will be sent to all the suppliers selected. Planners can manage all the replies and further communication easily on i-Meet.

i-Meet plays an important role in catalyzing and strengthening the searching process and communication between each entities in the industry’s value chain. This is a very strong value proposition to businesses. Think about what a Google advertisement can bring you. A click to your website? And what are the chances for an impression converting to become a qualified lead? While conversion rates are low, people are still spending a sizeable amount of marketing dollars on Google. In comparison, i-Meet’s RFI mechanism offers higher conversion to dollar ratio.

It is important to know that i-Meet is not just an online market place or a directory. It offers more than that. Firstly, i-Meet allows planners to get connected and communicate easily at a common place. Secondly, i-Meet allows business information to travel in a much faster speed. Let me show you another example which you should be familiar with. Most of us used to have a book to record all our friends’ contact ¬¬information, to which we refer to send Christmas cards or make phone calls to catch up. With the advent of Facebook, we follow our friends and we get notified of happenings instantly at our finger tips. In a social network, Information is pushed to users instead being searched and dug out. Same for i-Meet, members can receive information about the people and the companies they are interested in a much faster speed. For example, if a planner mentioned his pleasant experience of having an event at a hotel and was serviced with super quality in i-Meet, his peers in the industry would be receiving this information almost immediately. Because of this, the word-of-mouth effect can multiply in a much faster manner by using a SNS model. These are things which an online directory cannot achieve.
 
How then, does i-Meet make money at the moment? Cost per lead is the core revenue stream. In addition to that, suppliers that want to better promote themselves on the network can opt to purchase various types of in-site advertisements and enhanced profiles. In fact, more revenue tools are coming out but they are all derived from the same core need of the industry.

So do you think you can harness the power of SNS and using the resources you have in hand and your present industry knowledge, create a stronger value-add to your industry? Our suggestion will be – do analyze your industry to see if there is way you can strengthen the communication and flow of information in a SNS way. If there is, talk to us, we can help you to execute your idea.