One of our social nicheworking pilots is proving itself right outta the gate… with no marketing whatsoever (save word of mouth and word of mouse ;-)). Thought I’d share a bit on this.
And for more directly from the product manager, read his blog post here.
My company enginetworked a web application called cooshoo. The engine is an SaaS (software as a service) that enables geo-social networking—essentially virtual “connective tissue” for *real world* interactions. It can be inexpensively branded and customized for any self-selecting community… and pretty much any application that is geo-contextual… that is, where “place” or “location” matters. In the future I’ll blog about some of the other applications to which we’re applying the cooshoo engine… but for not I’m gonna keep the focus on the season—winter!—and an application of our “engine of engagement” in our own Park City backyard.
A ski resort is a destination where hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of people gather in an ebb-and-flow over a season. Every day, thousands of folks are moving around the mountain. But the “niche” community, per se, isn’t just the boarders and skiers. It includes mountain operations, terrain park crews, mountain hosts, ski patrol and all the members of the food service and retail workforce on the mountain. It also includes sponsors of, and advertisers on the mountain.
The aim of a ski resort is to message their clientele (or potential clientele) BEFORE they get to the mountain (planning), RIGHT BEFORE they get to the mountain (topical and up-to-date info), DURING their time actually *on* the mountain, and, of course, AFTER their visit to the mountain. Resorts spend a lot of money on marketing and customer service—the combination creates a spark of engagement; significant expenditures in capturing attention that mostly evaporates when the boarders/skiers aren’t on the mountain, or focused on the mountain.
We used the cooshoo enginet to power an application called Tag the Mountain. Using this customization for a ski resort, the operators can continuously engage their constituency via the web and mobile wireless.
We chose a local Park City, Utah, ski resort as the pilot, though the aim is to offer the engine inexpensively to any resort; or to any location-based businesses where people aggregate like theme parks, cruise ships, stadium (stadia? ;-)) and others.
The mountain we chose has a strong boarder community, and some 30% of their patronage is from locals, where we focused our first efforts. We took their entire trail map and… well… didn’t just make it interactive. We networked it. That is, we enabled all stakeholders—mountain ops, retail, food service, sponsors/advertisers, ski patrol, mountain hosts and skiers/boarders—to connect in the only context that makes sense: the mountain itself. And they can user the web version BEFORE, RIGHT BEFORE and AFTER; and the mobile interface RIGHT BEFORE and DURING.
With only word-of-mouth… no on-mountain signage, no email blasts, no formal integration of messaging into normal resort marketing channels… we saw uptake rocket from the start.

Granted the initial focus was on locals, but indications are that the engine served a function missing from the skier/boarder experience, local or not; and serves as a valuable lightning rod for on-mountain messaging.
Some example usages we enabled, and on which we saw quick uptake:
- Skiers/boarders can use their mobile phones to turn on a sort of “SMS radio” (text messaging alerts), and can decide which “channels” they want to receive… e.g. terrain park updates, snow condition reports, lift operations (when a lift opens after a big storm so they can get the freshies!), etc.
- Skiers/boarders can use their mobile phones to post messages, pics and videos to tagthemountain.com; and “tag” them to a specific location on the mountain (ostensibly where an event took place, or a picture/video was taken).). Check out the moose pic. Nice grab!

Click Here to see the full-size actual moose pic!
- Mountain operations can message web and wireless users on what’s going on around the mountain… alleviating one of their biggest problems—“how do we move skiers/boarders around the mountain so they get the best experience?”
- Sponsors and on-mountain vendors and food service can offer skiers/boarders mobile coupons, special deals and generally message the community in a way they never could before (e.g. “no lines at Red Pine lodge… maybe good time to take a lunch break?”)
- Users at home preparing to travel (or post-travel), or just pining to shralp the gnar can see a pretty darn good picture of what’s happening on the mountain—posts, pics, messaging from operations, snow reports, etc.—and see in-context deals or offers provided by advertisers/sponsors.
The Tag the Mountain engine socially networks the niche community of those who frequent a particular mountain—whether present or not! And it maximizes the “spark” investment in marketing made by the mountain and its sponsors by providing an “engine of engagement” that doesn’t die with each messaging cycle. In fact, the more messaging that drives to that engine, the more self-sustaining the engine becomes, ultimately serving as a cost-effective platform on which to build on each messaging cycle.
In order to maximize our opportunity to receive and incorporate broad-based feedback into our TagTheMountain engine (powered by cooshoo), we’re moving on to our second short-staged pilot (and probably diversifying to another mountain). In this pilot, our goal will be to coordinate closely with sponsors to optimize the messaging relationship between sponsor/advertiser and skier/boarder. Following our agile management philosophy, the sponsors’ feedback will be incorporated immediately back into the engine to further improve the already amazing experience of TagTheMountain.com.
Stay Tuned!