As one who can’t stand the idea of golf-themed ties, I’ve always opted for an alternative Father’s Day gift.  Now, I know that if you’re a well-organized, responsible person, then you have already bought your Father’s Day gift and are set to go.  Though if you’re like the majority of sons, daughters, and wives that I know, then I just reminded you that Father’s Day is in two days.  Below, you’ll find five gifts you can give to Dad this year besides a tie or belt:

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A Fishing Trip

The Idea

Father’s Day is all about appreciating the Father – and hanging out with him is probably the best way to do that.  I used to love fishing with my dad when I was little, and something like this would be perfect to spark back old memories and good times.  Plus, fishing is never really about the fish, is it?  Fishing is an excuse to hang out and have some good conversation.  That combination sounds like a great gift to me.

Bar Stools

The Idea

So maybe the old man isn’t what he used to be.  Maybe he doesn’t have it in him to make it downtown to the bar.  That doesn’t mean he has given up on social drinking altogether!  Bring the bar to him.  Buy a couple of bar stools, a bottle of Jack, and a good CD.  Get a friend to bartend.  Spend the night catching up over some bourbon and good music.

Golf Pull Cart

The Idea

It might be my southern upbringing, but golf to me is a way of life for any man over 40.  Seeing as stubborn pride is a stereotypical powerful thing with men, your father or husband might not be willing to admit how hard carrying that bag has gotten for him over the years.  Save him the embarrassment of using a golf cart and throw in for an in-between solution.  Now he can still walk the course, but the shoulders and back get some much-needed rest.  Get out there and play a round with him Sunday.

Corn Hole

The Idea

Well-known among the pastel-wearing college crowd, corn hole is a game that requires a fierce competitive spirit, a spare hand for beer, and almost no athletic ability.  You toss some sacks into a hole a few feet away.  Sounds about right for the ideal Sunday in the sun.  The guy in the link above will design the boards however you want, so be creative.  Personally, I would design each one like a golf-themed tie, to remind Dad what I could have gotten instead.

Paintball

The Idea

Be careful with this one.  I set this last item aside for the father-son relationships with a bit of tension, as paintball will resolve all former, petty arguments.  Because really, what arguments with your father are really anything more than petty?  Ultimately you’ll get over it, and buying two paintball guns is effectively skipping part of the process.

This week we began working on Twitter integration for Oodle. Soon you will be able to easily share your listings when posting from Oodle. We will also bring relevant tweets into our classifieds search index, so that you will be able to see these listings when searching on the Oodle Network, which includes our 200 partner sites.

What else would you like to see us do? I’d love to hear your thoughts on what we should be doing with Twitter on Oodle — or how people can use Twitter for classifieds.

Give us a shout.

Everyone seems to recently have found religion on real-time search — which is great.   With this acceptance, however, many people are missing the big opportunity for Twitter and Facebook to revolutionize the way people discover information.

Internet search is in the mature phase of the innovation timeline.  While we occasionally see cool new advancements, it is pretty incremental stuff.  Many of the new features in Bing, we saw in Ask two years ago or at Excite nine years ago.

I’d put real-time search in the incremental bucket.  Twitter and Facebook are certainly enabling the development of real-time search, but I believe they are doing two other things which will revolutionize discovery: sharing & asking.

People are increasingly discovering things through sharing – a blog post to read, a restaurant to visit, a great movie to see.  In fact, Michael noted this trend on Tech Crunch earlier this week both here and here.  People are increasingly discovering TechCrunch articles because they are being shared by friends on Twitter and Facebook.

I believe people will increasingly discover content by asking.  If I’m looking to buy a new convertible, I may search for “best convertibles” on Google or Bing.  I’d probably get better results, however, by asking my friends on Twitter and Facebook “which convertible should I buy.”   Indeed, I’d probably do both — search publicly available content and solicit trusted opinion and advice.   While Twitter and  Facebook aren’t ideally set up to facilitate asking right now, it seems like a natural course of evolution.

Fun, disruptive times again in the world of search & discovery.  Needless to say, we’re focused on applying sharing & asking to classifieds.  More on this in subsequent blog posts this summer.

From a platform perspective, Oodle has a lot in common with Twitter…

1. We index a real-time a stream of perishable, unique “tweets” (800-900k new messages a day) in the form of classifieds listings. Actually, we do more than just index these listings.  Our real-time infrastructure tags, enhances and prunes the messages flowing through our system.  For example, if someone posts a listing a for “2006 Prius,” we determine that it’s a car listing (hybrid subcompact), year=2006, manufacturer=Toyota, make=Prius and enhance the listing with all the standard features, including a stock photo if one was not submitted.  (In other words, we auto-apply hash tags.)  Moreover, if someone posts a listing that is fraudulent or inappropriate, we have a range of proprietary technologies that automatically detect, flag and remove the message.

2. Users search and browse our stream. Due to the volume and structured nature of our stream, we enable users to quickly slice and dice the stream both through keyword search and by selecting attributes (or tags).   Moreover, we’ve applied our parsing technology to search, so if someone searches for a 2006 Mercedes, we convert the query into year=2006, manufacturer=Mercedes Benz to deliver the most relevant results.

3. Users post “tweets” (classified listings) into our stream.  And the post is a quick and simple process. Recently, as part of the work we did with Facebook Marketplace, we streamlined our post process to make it as lightweight as possible.  It’s not quite 140 characters but we’re getting close. More importantly, we bring the user’s identity into the listing.  So rather than a stream of anonymous content, listings are tied to the identity of the poster (on Oodle, Facebook, MySpace, etc.).  Someone can also see the previous listings posted by that user.

4. Users follow relevant topics in the stream. When you’re looking for a car, you want to see all the listings that are currently posted, as well as new listings as soon as they get introduced into the stream.   With a single click on Oodle, users can easily follow any search (e.g., Acura TLs for under $10k within 60 miles of Burlingame, CA).

5. Users share and discuss “tweets.” It’s easy to share an Oodle listing with your friends on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.  You may see a listing you think a friend would be interested in — or want feedback from a friend (should I buy this car?).   Having said that, we’re really only just getting started in this area.  There are a lot of interesting features coming soon…

It’s exciting to see users become more comfortable with metaphors around streaming, subscribing and sharing.  It not only enables us to better represent the cool stuff we’ve built over the last few years, it serves as a wonderful launch pad for where we’re going with “social classifieds.”

If the dad in your life expects more than a handmade card for Father’s Day (June 21), consider shopping online classifieds sites. In addition to finding one-of-a-kind gifts, gently-used is a greener alternative to purchasing new. Best of all, shopping slightly-used keeps extra dollars in your pocketbook.

Here are a couple of nifty green Father’s Day finds:

1) A classic or audio book: I found more than 465,000 used books on Oodle, including The Davinci Project at a bargain price $6.00.

2) A handmade wallet or accessory: I found this Tyvek wallet, which is made out of old coffee bags ($22.00), also perusing on Oodle.

3) Sports, theater or other event: Tickets to a baseball game or other event are a real treat. Even better — opt for two so that the event includes your time. I found a Burning Man Ticket for sale on the Facebook Marketplace ($260).

4) Alternative transportation: If the dad in your life is in need of new wheels to make emission-free transportation an option, consider roller skates, a scooter or a bike. I found a gently-used Trek bike on MySpace Classifieds ($125)

5) If the dad in your life prefers indoor sports, consider a gift that the entire family can enjoy: I found a gently-used pool table on MySpace Classifieds for $350. (And if you have a salt water tank, the seller mentions that she’ll trade you.)

Online classifieds is not only a greener way to shop, it’s also a lot of fun. Happy browsing.

Since the Facebook Marketplace launched in March, I’ve seen a lot of clever ways that users have leveraged the social graph for word-of-mouth marketing. Whether it’s a an agent selling a piece of real estate or a college student looking to fill a sublet, individuals have found that posting a social classified is a powerful tool to quickly get the word out.

Recently, I’ve also noticed a growing number of artists and designers who have been using the Marketplace to generate awareness to their one-of-a-kind creations, including personalized art and custom-made accessories. For instance, a woman in Tennesse is selling custom-made portraits as a unique Father’s Day gift. That’s a sound marketing strategy. Another woman in New York is selling hand-made clips and bands that can be made to match little girls’ clothes. Also, a very strong selling proposition.

In addition to being able to post these listings for free, there is another more compelling reason why using Facebook Marketplace makes a lot of sense for home-based businesses: Social classifieds allow you to share listings with friends, who can in turn, spread the word. And because you can explain why you are posting your listing, you can encourage your network to support these home-grown businesses, which as one woman in Georgia explains why she is posting the designer’s little girl outfits , “to help my friend start her business.”

Whether selling customized scrapbooks or Swarovski crystal-adorned sneakers, I think we’ll continue to see more and more ways creative users will find clever uses of the Marketplace to grow their businesses.

In 2004, I attended my first Inman Real Estate Connect, a wonderful conference that brings together thought leaders in the real estate industry. I remember being surprised to hear so much debate about search and whether it was a good thing for search engines to index their listings that were historically locked in MLS systems. With each passing year, however, the conversation shifted a bit further. The initial reluctance had turned into a feverish desire to embrace the “Google Web” through SEO, SEM and online lead generation.

Fast forward to a little over a month ago when I attended the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference, a venue that brings together thought leaders in the rentals industry. I was
surprised to see how the conversation had moved beyond maximizing your presence on the Google Web. Instead, it seemed that the big topic was how to best tap the opportunity of social media – and embrace the “Social Web.” Dan McCarthy of NCI (a large media company in the real estate and rentals categories) explains this enthusiasm well on his Viral Housing Fix blog.

Not only is the shift towards social media by local advertisers (real estate agents, property managers, car dealers, etc.) well underway, but I expect this
transition will happen much more quickly than it did with search. The benefits of social media are more intuitively obvious to this crowd. Local advertisers have
long known that their best form of advertising is word-of-mouth marketing.
The Social Web presents an amazing opportunity to drive word-of-mouth
awareness.

It’s critical that local advertisers quickly figure out how to:
1) get their listings into social environments;
2) get people talking about their listings;
3) figure out how to participate in the conversation.

Needless to say, we’re excited to help local advertisers successfully navigate this journey.

There are two big benefits to social classifieds.  First, by moving from a world of anonymous communications to one based on identity and reputation, we can provide a more clean, well-lit place to buy and sell.  Second, by integrating the marketplace within a social network, we can turn classifieds into a form of conversation.  Now people can share and discuss listings as easily as they do with photos, music or links.  They can also share what they’re looking for as easily as what they’re selling.

Since launching the Facebook Marketplace a few months ago, we have been learning a lot about what sparks conversation around Merchandise listings.  As the number of comments per listing continues to climb, we have learned, for example, that your friends are often more interested in why you’re selling something than what you’re selling.

We’re excited to begin applying what we’ve learned about sparking conversations as we expand the Marketplace into Homes, Cars and Jobs. Whether you are looking for an apartment, car or job, there’s plenty to share, ask for and discuss. It’s our job to make this easy and compelling.

There are two types of classifieds listings: private party listings, where consumers buy and sell with each other, and professional listings, where a business (car dealer, landlord, real estate agent) is selling to a consumer. When you’re looking to get the best deal, it’s important to see both types of listings so that you can evaluate all of your options.

A few years ago, I was shopping for a used Suburban. It was extremely useful to see both what other people in my area were selling, as well as what was for sale at the local dealers. I only needed to pay a little more to get the car from a dealer (which is what I did). If something went wrong, they would be a lot easier to deal with.

Every category has its own natural ratio of private party to professional listings. Merchandise & Personals are made up almost entirely of private-party listings. About one-third of Car inventory is private-party (the other two-thirds is made up of dealers and independent lots). In contrast, Real Estate is almost entirely professional listings (except for a small, albeit growing list of for-sale-by-owner listings). Rentals and Employment are similarly comprised of almost entirely professional listings. Interestingly enough, however, small landlords and employers act a lot more like consumers than professional sellers (but that’s fodder for another blog post).

Across our network, we continue to explore ways to better integrate private-party and professional listings to provide the best user experience. One area we are currently working on is better integration of the seller identity in search results. Private-party listings are increasingly tied to a person’s online identity (on Facebook, MySpace, Oodle, etc.).  Similarly, professional listings will be increasingly tied to the local advertisers brand and online identity.

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll buy a home or rent an apartment directly from another consumer. So as we roll-out new categories in the Facebook Marketplace, such as Cars, Homes and Jobs, we’ll also be experimenting with ways to best introduce professional listings into the mix. Integrating professional listings into Oodle’s community marketplaces such as Facebook and MySpace goes beyond figuring out ways to appropriately mix the two types of listings, however.  We’re experimenting with ways to present professional listings in a way that makes them more social. More on that in my next blog post…

Here at Oodle, our support team has recently received an influx of questions from eBay sellers who are posting an online classified for first time. As a result, we’ve developed the following tips to help this group better navigate and leverage the buying and selling process using online classifieds sites:

• Take Advantage of the Free Service(s): Most classifieds sites are free to post. Nor are there any seller or transaction fees. Because the transaction is most often conducted offline, you can also save money by eliminating the shipping fees.
• Post Everywhere: Post listings to as many classifieds sites as possible, including Kijiji, Craigslist and Oodle. On Oodle, your post is automatically syndicated to more than 200 partner sites, including AOL, Walmart, and MySpace.
• Build a Presence via Your Social Network: Facebook Marketplace and MySpace Classifieds allow you to build an identity — and get friends talking about and sharing your listing. In addition, because personal profiles are attached to each listing, users know who they are buying from, selling to or trading with – creating transparency and trust.
• Develop a Local Market: Local classifieds allow you to create your own local market. Buying and selling in your area allows you to eliminate shipping costs, as well as the opportunity to meet customers and develop a client base.

Keep in mind that online classifieds sites do not assist with transactions or guarantee payments or deliveries of items. A general rule of thumb is that buyer and sellers accept or make payment in cash and handle the transaction in the usual way classifieds ads have always been completed: with a meeting; inspection of the item; payment in cash and a handshake.

For more tips on how to conduct the local offline transaction, please see the Oodle Safety Brochure that was developed in conjunction with the Better Business Bureau.