Happy San Jordi’s Day! I’ve gotten neither a book nor a rose, which kind of sucks, but I’m trying to keep upbeat.

For those you outside of Catalunya, Sant Jordi (”Saint George’s Day” for English speakers) is a special day, similar to Valentine’s Day, but not quite as commercial. All around the streets of Catalunya, there are small vendors with small, folding tables selling roses and books for a few euros so that couples (or friends or even bosses) can express their love for and appreciation of one another. Women walk around town with roses, men show off their books and everyone enjoys the beautiful springtime weather.

Sant Jordi’s Day is the Day of the Book and the Rose in Catalunya, and celebrates a martyred Roman soldier who was decapitated when he refused to kill Christians. There are popular stories of San Jordi and a dragon. Through a random lottery, the king’s daughter was chosen to be given as a sacrifice to a dragon that was terrorizing the village of Montblanc, but San Jordi arrived just in time to kill the dragon and save the beautiful princess.

Giving roses in celebration of San Jordi has been done at least since the Rose Fair began in the 15th century. The book part came into effect around 1930. April 23 was chosen as the official day in Catalonia, because it was the day on which Cervantes and Shakespeare, among others, died. Quite logically, it’s also the accepted date on which San Jordi died in 303 AD.

Speaking of love, Mariah Carey is the queen of the love song, and I’m really loving her new hit, Touch My Body. It explains what happens after you’ve given your partner the rose or book for San Jordi’s day. Touch My Body was the number one song in the US for the last couple of weeks, only recently replaced by Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love. In addition to the mellow beat and sweet vocals, I like the reference to a web 2.0 start-up. It gives me something to which I can aspire.

First, Mariah tells her lover how she feels about him:

I know that you’ve been waiting for it
I’m waiting too
In my imagination I’d be all up on you
I know you got that fever for me
102
And boy I know I feel the same
My temperature’s through the roof

But then being the paparazzi-stalked star that she is (when she’s not begging for media attention, that is), she warns her lover not to try to embarass her on the Internet:

If there’s a camera up in here
Then it’s gonna leave with me
When I do (I do)
If there’s a camera up in here
Then I’d best not catch this flick
On YouTube (YouTube)

That’s when you know that you’ve hit the bigtime. Not when you get paid $1.65 billion for your not even 2-year old start-up. Not when important bloggers and analysts note that you dominate your category more than Google dominates search. It’s when a superstar like Mariah Carey name-checks you in her number 1 song without even asking to get paid for it or having to explain who you are. That’s when you know you have become an important part of popular culture.

In our effort to stay cutting edge and try out new things, we’ve launched our own video channel at nuroa.es and nuroa.de called “NuroaTV“. I think that this makes us the property search engine to delve seriously into videos.

And no, we’re not trying to be YouTube II, but we do think that video is just another format for presenting our users with relevant information and feedback from other consumers. I think that the results — that is, the video below — speaks for itself!

In any case, last weekend a bunch of us (along with our young video director, Xesc Estapé and his production team) hung out in the centre of Barcelona to see what average people thought about various issues, one of which was the effect of the real estate “crisis” on the Spanish elections, which will take place this Sunday. We thought that it was timely given that even the New York Times had written a story about real estate and the Spanish elections.

Our series is called: “¿y tú qué piensas? (so what do you think?)“, and it fits into our strategy of offering hyperlocal content that keeps real estate consumers well informed about current market conditions. For the moment, the video is on a separate page on Nuroa’s website, but we will soon integrate our videos directly into the search results page.

For this first video, we went to the streets of Barcelona to see what the Spanish public really thought about José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, and his conservative rival, Mariano Rajoy in the context of the housing crisis. Let’s just say that people were generally pissed about the current situation.

But don’t take my word for it. Take a look for yourself! And please let me know what you think about the video. (Warning: The video is in Spanish, but there are still quite a few very funny images that can be understood no matter what language you speak!)

Over the Christmas break in New York, I did one of my favorite things in the whole world: I watched a lot of TV in my pajamas without moving for 24 hours. Even though I love Europe, I crave American pop culture whenever I’m back in the US.

So I spent a lot of time watching MTV, VH1, Bravo and a few other cable stations. With the remote in my hand, I came to appreciate just how much reality TV dominates US air waves, and with good reason: You can’t make this stuff up! Following in reverse order is a list of my top 5 US reality shows. If you can buy them on iTunes or find them on emule, I highly recommend that you do so. A lot of them are now available via streaming directly from the various channels’ websites, so you can get them for free if you are willing to deal with a few commercial breaks.

5. The Real Housewives of Orange County: When I lived in the US, Bravo was the high-brow arts and entertainment channel focused on wealthy people who love the arts. But after the success of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” (five gay guys help a clueless straight guy become “fabulous!“), it’s still focused on wealthy people, but with a generous bit of reality trash thrown in. Hence, “The Real Housewives of Orange County”. Orange County is one of the richest neighborhoods in the US state of California, so the show focuses on pretty silly rich woman looking for love and/or more money. It’s quite literally meant to be the reality TV version of Desperate Housewives, but after three seasons, the formula is getting a little bit tired. Reality TV begins to suck when it’s clear that the participants are exaggerating their reactions or, even worse, acting. I like seeing crazy people being crazy. Fake celebrities acting crazy to maintain their fake celebrity is not quite as interesting.

4. Project Runway: A simple formula now in its 4th season. A beautiful and appealing hostess who doesn’t get in the way (Heidi Klum). Successful designers as judges, including Donna Karan, Michael Kors and Nina Garcia (Elle magazine fashion director). And 15 young designers representing various demographics. The three finalists get to present their work on the runway at New York Fashion Week before real celebrities and the international fashion scene. The winner also gets an editorial spread in ELLE and $100.000 to start his/her own fashion line. So it’s a real competition with a meaningful prize for people whose main goal in life is larger than being a reality TV star. That realness is what makes the competition intense. And the fact that fashionistas tend to be bitchy and catty also help to keep the real-life drama factor way up! (Full episodes are available on Bravo’s website. Below is just an excerpt that I found on YouTube.)

3. Made: It’s MTV’s way of convincing teenagers that dreams really do come true if they work hard enough. The show tends to focus on issues important to teenagers but ripe with comedic possibilities — for example, the fat girl who wants to be prom queen, the Jewish nerdy kid who wants to rap like Jay Z, the cheerleader whose secret dream is to be like the skater kids, etc. Each kid who wants to get “made” reflects a high school prototype and is assigned a “trainer” who represents exactly what the teenager wants to become - a mentor/role model to show that the goal is possible. And the entire episode shows how no one believes that the kid can do it, how the kid also doubts herself, how the trainer kicks her ass, how she starts to falter before eventually fulfilling her goal through hard work and determination. It’s a great piece of propaganda to inspire kids to work hard and keep believing in themselves. And it’s funny along the way watching the nerds, cheerleaders and fat kids make fools of themselves in their attempts to fulfill their dreams. (MTV streams the full episodes from their website.)

2. A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila: No one in the offline world had any freaking clue who this girl was before this show. My sister had watched every episode and had read about Tila’s private life, but she had no clue why or how Tila was a “celebrity” with her own show, or why MTV had chosen to make her the host of their New Year’s Eve special. After a little bit of research on Wikipedia, I discovered that Tila is a former nude model whose claim to fame is that she has 2 million friends on MySpace. That’s it, folks. That bit of notoriety got her a recording contract and a television show on MTV. Now everyone knows her name. Fame. And the show itself added fuel to her whole Vietnamese Internet sex kitten image (the mix of subservience and sex goddess included) when Tila announced during the first episode that she was bisexual. So the twist on the traditional reality dating show format is that 16 boys and 16 girls had to convince her: i) which gender she preferred; and ii) of that gender, why he/she was the best candidate. She French-kissed and made out with pretty much each of the guys and girls, all the while claiming that she was really looking for love. She gave one finalist’s grandmother a lap dance, and then did a pole dance before the two finalists’ parents. She did this all without seeming like a slut, just like a nice girl looking to have “innocent” fun. The Vietnamese bisexual Britney Spears. Riveting TV indeed. (Full episodes are available on MTV online.)

1. I Love New York: For the record, it’s almost embarrassing to admit that I love this show. It is the most popular reality TV show in the US. The original idea was that Flavor Flav, one of the ugliest guys ever created and a former rapper with Public Enemy who was borderline homeless before the show began, would give a group of “lucky” women the chance to fight over him and possibly become his bride. The show was a runaway hit, as the girls were straight-up ghetto. These women were definitely not ladies, and their ghetto trashiness made help make the show a huge hit. Tila Tequila’s show is almost a direct copy of Flavor of Love, except with a bisexual sex-kitten twist. New York is the star of this spin-off, and she is hilarious. She is always smoking her Newports (cigarettes arguably found only in the inner cities of New York), has big fake breasts and is absolutely crazy. But she’s entertaining. There’s absolutely no way to get bored when watching I Love New York. It’s obviously somewhat staged (did anyone really think New York would end up with a “small person” who didn’t even reach her left breast?), but there’s enough real craziness there to make it worth it.

Here’s another viral video making the rounds. I first became aware of it when Kara Swisher posted about it, noting that it had made Robert Scoble spew Diet Coke out of his nose. Then Iñaki mentioned it when Oriol and I had lunch with him and Dani on Wednesday (btw, really nice guys. I’d invited them via Facebook to meet up with us. They quickly said yes and then even paid for our lunch! We chatted for about 2 hours about nothing and everything. A good time was had by all, and we will pay for the next meal! We’ll probably even invite them to our next party, though they’ve made us promise to keep the video cameras off . . . .) And then today, I noticed that various VC blogs were posting the video.

So I could no longer resist the peer pressure.

I think the video’s mildly humorous and relevant only to tech geeks (have I become one of those?). But in the end, I’m a bit of a lemming (i.e., easily influenced). If influential people say it’s important, I guess it must be important. And if the makers of the video recommend that I put it in a blog (and important bloggers have done so), then I guess I should do it too.

Maybe that’s what Dan meant about content not being the key factor?

I promise to try to be more original going forward . . . . I’m not in high school anymore . . . If the cool kids jumped off a bridge, I wouldn’t jump. Would I? . . . .

Next week, Sophie and I will be heading to Paris for Le Web3 and a couple of business meetings. I will be taking my trusty video camera, with the hopes of posting some of the highlights. According to the folks at Le Web3, 1300 people from 40 countries will show up. I can’t wait to see what the party will be like!

Anyway, Loïc Le Meur, France’s best known blogger, video-blogging entrepreneur and organizer of Le Web 3 is now on a major marketing campaign to promote Le Web 3 (and his new project seesmic.com, which is still in alpha). I get daily video updates from him on Facebook about what’s going on at Seesmic, all of the major tech blogs are offering free tickets or discounted tickets to Le Web 3 to spur attendance, and major newspapers like the Financial Times are writing articles about Loïc and Le Web 3.

Watching his commitment to self-promotion is cool, because I’ve gotten some interesting lessons about what we can do to promote nuroa.

Highlights from the FT article:

• Seesmic.com, a video-blogging platform, is Loïc’s fifth start-up, and he moved from Paris to San Francisco, because he thinks that Silicon Valley is the only real destination for entrepreneurs that want to launch global Internet brands. It’s a bit ironic that the person responsible for organising one of Europe’s biggest Internet events firmly believes that the US is the only place to be if you really want to be relevant in the Internet space. But Loïc justifies it by saying that Europe’s 22 languages and geography complicates deal-making, while San Francisco is at the epicentre of deals. In his words: “The way you do partnerships here, everyone’s a block away or 20 minutes away in Palo Alto. If I need to set up a partnership with [micro-blogging service] Twitter, I call them, we have coffee, and two hours later the deal is done. If I were in France, there’s a nine-hour time difference and it’s like you don’t matter.” If even marquee-level European entrepreneurs with direct access to world leaders feel irrelevant if they are not in Silicon Valley, what does that mean for the rest of us?

• On a more optimistic note, Loïc provides his top 10 tips for entrepreneurs. I’ll re-post them here and comment on them in more detail in the future. In general, I’d just say that they are very insightful, but as with most things, much of it is easier said than done.
  1. Don’t wait for a revolutionary idea. It will never happen. Just focus on a simple, exciting, empty space and execute as fast as possible
  2. Share your idea. The more you share, the more you get advice and the more you learn. Meet and talk to your competitors.
  3. Build a community. Use blogging and social software to make sure people hear about you.
  4. Listen to your community. Answer questions and build your product with their feedback.
  5. Gather a great team. Select those with very different skills from you. Look for people who are better than you.
  6. Be the first to recognise a problem. Everyone makes mistakes. Address the issue in public, learn about and correct it.
  7. Don’t spend time on market research. Launch test versions as early as possible. Keep improving the product in the open.
  8. Don’t obsess over spreadsheet business plans. They are not going to turn out as you predict, in any case.
  9. Don’t plan a big marketing effort. It’s much more important and powerful that your community loves the product.
  10. Don’t focus on getting rich. Focus on your users. Money is a consequence of success, not a goal.

A few weeks back, there was athunderstorm at TechCrunch regarding an article about how to make videos more viral. The guest post was written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, a 22-year old Stanford graduate student and CEO of a company that helps make videos viral. His stated goal was to give the reader an insight into how to make videos more popular — he likens it to SEO for videos, arguing that companies need to understand video virality optimisation strategies as part of their online marketing campaigns.

It seems like he knows what he’s doing. His company has helped six videos to achieve:

• 6 million views on YouTube
• ~30,000 ratings
• ~10,000 favorites
• ~10,000 comments
• 200+ blog posts linking back to the videos
• All six videos made it into the top 5 Most Viewed of the Day, and the two that went truly viral (1.5 million views each) were #1 and #2 Most Viewed of the Week.

Among his key insights is that content isn’t king (this is what makes his job seem a little slimy). In his words, although great content is cool, it’s not essential to making a video really viral. There’s a process to making a video viral, and that process is often a lot more important than the content itself.

This seems somewhat unmeritocratic and counter to the point of community-based voting systems. You want the see the best content, as voted by an objective set of your peers, not as manipulated by clever viral marketing experts.

The post got 515 comments, a second post in which Dan responded to the attacks that people like him corrupt the purity of video sites like YouTube by manipulating users into viewing mediocre content (I guess the general reaction was that it’s like those SEO people who try to trick Google and eventually get punished for corrupting the results.), and an interview with CNN.

Michael Arrington posted a somewhat dramatic comment noting that “frankly I’m disgusted by this”.

But as they say in politics, “all press is good press”. Controversy is an effective marketing tool. This kid is now on the map, and I’m sure that lots of companies will be calling him. Random people like me are blogging about him and thinking about how much we need someone like him for our companies, even if there is something slightly unsavoury about “artificially” making your video popular.

But isn’t that the definition of a marketing campaign? Artificially making something popular? Isn’t all marketing/advertising on some level invasive/misleading/untruthful/manipulative? Maybe that’s what Mark Zuckerberg is learning given the backlash against Beacon . . . .

When I first heard about SEO, I thought it was “shady”, because it tried to manipulate Google’s results for corporate gain. And I guess I have the same feeling about Dan’s company.

But now I realise that start-ups like mine live or die by SEO. Manipulating Google (within their self-imposed limits) is the name of the game. And the same will probably be increasingly true about videos.

That’s marketing, folks!

So with that in mind, I’ve posted two videos:

• Dan’s interview on CNN explaining his vision of SEO for videos; and
• a video that various French friends have been sending me about a musical group that performed on the subway in Paris. Their video already has more than 1 million hits on YouTube! It’s obviously a viral marketing campaign to promote an upcoming album, as was the performance on the train. It’s a cool little video that cost absolutely nothing to make, but who knows. Maybe Dan’s company helped them make it popular on YouTube . . . .

Naturally 7 (live on the Paris subway)

Dan Greenberg on CNN, SEO for videos

I came across this video while surfing the “Spain” page on Facebook. It’s hilarious and shows how transgressive culture is, particularly in the age of the Internet. White kids in the South dancing like black and Latino inner-city kids in Los Angeles, all being watched via Internet by various nationalities in Spain.

The kids in this video are “krumping/crunking“, which is a style of hip-hop dance popularised in Los Angeles, based on music from Southern rappers in the United States.

Dave LaChapelle’s documentary Rize focuses on this kind of music/dance. (Ironically, I frist saw the documentary on Canal+ in Barcelona.)

Whatever.

This video is hilarious and endearing at the same time!

(By the way, for those of you not as old as I am, the reference to “White Men Can’t Jump” is from the 1992 movie of the same name. It scares me to think that that Carlos was 3 when this movie was made, and I was his age!)

After receiving some feedback about our “racy” video — “Basic Instinct”, as interpreted by the staff of nuroa — I’d re-edited a “lite” version. The prevision versión was the “beta” version.

Enjoy!

To be honest, I don’t really remember that much about Oriol’s birthday party. It was a beajoulais noveau birthday party (9 bottles for 15 people!) mixed in with 6 bottles of rosé Lambrusco for all of the guests that didn’t like young red wine, plus some Tequila when Victor and I started doing shots before attempting to liven up the dance floor. I remember that the party was a lot of fun, but until I saw the videotape, I didn’t even remember that I’d been recorded. There were no Paris Hilton moments, but I’ve nonetheless edited the official version to maintain some self-respect. My mom might see this!

As you will see, Victor Aloi, one of nuroa’s star employees and one of my closest friends, is undoubtedly the star of the video. His dance solo in the middle of the video is priceless. In general, he’s a lot of fun. A bit like Clark Kent — very timid and quiet in the office, but after a couple of drinks he’s the life of the party.

The main thing I remember from Saturday night is that I got into a “Breakin´“-type, 80’s style New York street battle with Victor (luckily, it was not captured on tape). He’s 25 and I’ve 33, so at first he was beating me. His moves were younger, fresher. A crowd had formed to see who would win.

“Go Gary! It’s your birthday!”

“Did you see that move that Victor just did? It was incredible!”

Things were getting tight. I think we were dancing to some diva or the other. My iTunes playlist tells me that it was Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay.” Apt words indeed. I was being eclipsed, and it wasn’t right, but it was okay.

I’m too old for this shit!”, I thought to myself. The youngster had more agile movements and more confidence, and it was clear that I’d soon have to retire my crown. I walked over to Oriol, and he gave me a nod of sad agreement that said: “Yeah, we’re getting old.”

But luckily I went over to my other best friend, also named Victor, and he gave me a look of utter disgust, but with an extra bit of bitchy French attitude, suggesting complete and utter contempt.

“Gary, what’s wrong with you?” he said. “You don’t normally give up. You’re better than this! You can beat him! Just believe in yourself!”

That Rocky-like pep-talk saved me that night. I was reinvigorated. I went back to the dance floor to take on my Brazilian arch-nemesis. Suddenly Amerie’s song “One Thing” came on. I’ve never danced to it before. I usually just listen to it on the stairmaster in the gym.

I still don’t remember which moves I did or where they came from. I just know that I FELT that song. I was a man possessed. Like a black John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

Four minutes and three seconds later, I felt vindicated. There’s still some life in these 33-year old bones.

That being said, I’m still a little sore today . . . .

After a very exhausting weekend (Oriol’s birthday party and a horrific flight to Munich — 30 minutes of heavy turbulence under the direction of what appeared to be a trainee pilot), Oriol and I are now preparing for a meeting and enjoying the snowy views of Munich.

Since I’m now interested in video blogging and videos in general, we bought a video camera last week. I must admit that I thought it’d be a lot easier, but after reading lots of different forums and learning a bit about video formats, I’ve now produced my first video, which we shot last Thursday since there was not much else we could do — we had no Internet service for most of the day.

So this is my first ever video with some of the marketing staff of nuroa (including Victor, Carlos and Kirsten) serving as guineau pigs.

My task for tonight will be to be edit the video footage of the party. That was a lot of fun! Work hard! Play hard!