Last night, we showed off a first look of the soon-to-be-released beta for Lil’Grams.  The crowd was packed at SF New Tech’s Spring Jubilee! event.  Special thanks to Myles Weissleder for the opportunity to demonstrate the results of our hard work for the past 2 years to an audience of friends and technophiles.

I’ve come to the conclusion that no demonstration is complete without at least on “Oh Crap!” moment.  During this presentation, that came when I completely lost track of time before even getting to show the newsletters and baby book that Lil’Grams produces.  I blame the clock for going to fast! (photo credit: Ken Yeung)

The first 5 minutes were spent demonstrating all the easy ways Lil’Grams lets you get photos and videos online (at the moment that includes web, email, twitter, and desktop). Fortunately, there were many inquisitive folks in the audience and they helped tease out some of the even cooler parts of the system.   It’s hard fitting 2+ years of thinking and development into 5 minutes – no matter how finely tuned your presentation.

We’re truly humbled by the wonderful feedback and comments we’ve received.  Here’s just a small sampling:

• khartline: Alright…I may just have to make a baby so I can try @lilgrams. Its pretty awesomesauce! #sfnewtech #justsayin
• nancycole: @gregarious has the audience clamoring to have a bunch of kids @ #sfnewtech w his lilgrams!
• dpmoore: #sfnewtech: http:/www.lilgrams.com. Easily organize/share milestones, pix, video about your kids. I could really use this to update family.
• nipj: Tip for all tweeple parents, from #sfnewtech, check out lilgrams.com . well thought out, elegantly designed memory sharing and mgmt srvc.
• quepol: checkin’ out @lilgrams. cuz it’s making @khartline wanna make babies. :) also, it does look pretty cool.
• rrwhite: So glad to see @lilgrams is finally launching. A pretty kickass app for families to share the latest info on their little ones

Very special thanks to the tireless Jolie O’Dell who made it up from Palo Alto to see the demo and capture some footage for StartupLucky.  Last night, I don’t know how she managed to write this up, but she did:

With great breadth, depth, and versatility (compatible with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc., and with email, web, and desktop apps currently available and an iPhone app right around the corner), LilGrams is uniquely poised to take over the Gen Y parenting market.

Simply put, LilGrams allows parents to upload and share information and media of/about their infants (and soon, children) across many social platforms. Interested parties (friends, relatives, etc.) can opt-in to receiving updates, choosing the medium and frequency of these messages, including photo prints.

Source: Jolie O’Dell, “San Francisco New Tech: LilGrams Live Demo”

Thanks once again to you all for your continued support and affection.

I had the chance to sit in briefly on the “Why Social Media Marketing Fails” panel featuring Peter Kim, Charlene Li, and Jeremiah Owyang.  The discussion centered around the measurement of social media marketing efforts and the growing need for better accountability.

At one point, Charlene asked the audience to members to raise their hands if they were meaningfully measuring their social media efforts – a small sample went up.  The follow-up question, when asked how many were engaging in social media marketing in general, showed quite a bit more hands from the packed audience.  Her point was simple and spot on – start measuring your efforts or your budgets will be capped or cut.

Peter made an interesting point as well and brought back into focus the need to keep track of the bottom line. As he reminded us all, the marketing department has often escaped the traditional modes of accountability within the organization.  While there have been many successful measures taken to add structure to internal processes, the default position of marketing has been “we’ll make it up in brand equity” (love that one).

Jeremiah added some interesting insight into another aspect of failure – engagement.  He pointed to an example of a financial services client that they advised to not pursue a social media strategy.  The main reason behind the guidance was the internal protocols that prevented employees from actually engaging with customers via the social tools.  If there aren’t any real people at the helm, how social can it really be?

Jeremiah followed up with another take at the engagement model.  Citing Wells Fargo, he showed that engaging customers via their lifestyle or workstyle could actually be a very successful mode.  As he mentioned, Wells Fargo created their Guided By History blog which actually connected them with exactly the right kind of customer.

Tags: #w2e