July 2007

According to BBC News, the BBC is gleefully jumping into the increasingly crowded internet video space with a service/platform they’re calling iPlayer:

The iPlayer allows viewers to download a selection of programmes from the last seven days and watch them for up to 30 days afterwards.

Viewers interested in the iPlayer can register for the service on Friday and will then be invited to join. The number of users will increase over the summer, before a full launch in the autumn.

The first thing I noticed, of course, is that the BBC is playing off of Apple’s branding efforts, a flaw in Apple’s naming structure that Seth Godin recently pointed out.

But like most of the bigger dogs jumping into the internet video space, I think the BBC is likely to try too hard to keep the consumer for sharing video. YouTube and its ilk succeed because people get to share content with their friends. Otherwise what’s the point of watching TV on your computer? You might as well watch it on TV.

Internet video is not, and never will be equivalent to broadcast TV. Companies that avoid trying to draw those analogies—TV to internet video, Newspaper to blogs—will see more success in the free-floating world of the internet.

Also, the service requires apparently requires Windows XP and IE 6.0 so Mac users (and…Vista users?), you’re apparently out of luck.

Contrary to what some might think, there are social networks beyond Facebook and MySpace. They take every conceivable shape and form — from microblogging apps like Twitter to community-building widgets like MyBlogLog to private chat applications like AIM.

Each one of these services has a unique value-add that you cannot afford to overlook when building a social media initiative.

• How to make the most of MyBlogLog in building a community around your blog
• How Flickr and Zoomr can help you find and work with your customers
• Why Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce are more than just facilitated diarrhea of the keyboard
• How chat can help your employees to be more productive
• Why Kyte, Revver and YouTube are about more than just viral videos

“Conversation” has become the buzzword of the social media generation, but what does it really mean?

In short, conversation is the natural thing that happens every day between your customers online, offline, on their cell phones, chat programs and in their browsers. You can’t possibly monitor all of the conversation. But you can put yourself in a position to overhear and respond to a great deal of it.

In this session, our panel will explain how any organization can put together a basic conversation monitoring initiative. Attendees will learn:

• The best tools for paying attention
• The mindset of listening and understanding
• When a response is warranted
• How to jump into the conversation without being intrusive

Software for social network building has proliferated in recent years as organizations the world over envision building their own MySpaces. But online community building isn’t just a matter of installing the right technology and providing the right features.

In this session, our panel of online community experts will address the features, culture and style of interaction that characterize successful online communities

• The questions you should ask before launching your own branded social network
• When it’s better to reach out to pre-existing online communities rather than trying to command & control your own
• How major organizations made the decision to launch their own social networks

Most discussions about social networking today begin with one of two sites: MySpace or Facebook. MySpace — which was acquired by NewsCorp in 2005 for $580 million — boasts 100 million users and is one of the most visited sites on the net.

Facebook began as a site for high school and college students, but quickly ballooned to 30 million active users after opening to the general public and launching a platform for developers to build applications within the site in 2007.

Marketers are absolutely salivating over the passionate users and fixated attention in these two networks. But is advertising the best way to reach the people that use these sites to connect with friends and loved ones?

In this session, social networking experts xxx and xxx will explain the user interfaces, features and cultures within these two powerful communities. Attendees will learn:

• How people use social networks to disseminate information to people they care about
• The most common mistakes that marketers make when attempting to engage with social network users
• How social network users respond to and interact with advertising
• The “coolest self” phenomenon and what it means for business

The rise of social media comes as no surprise to those who understand the inherent human need to be seen, heard, and understood. At its core, social media simply enables people — your customers, clients and employees — to do these things more quickly and easily than they have ever done so before. In short, social media facilitates relationships.

Companies that make an effort to understand and relate to this new world of human relationships facilitated by sophisticated and rapidly-changing technology stand to make tremendous gains in public relations, customer loyalty and satisfaction, and internal productivity.

In this opening session of the Social Media Bootcamp day, our panel of social media experts will provide attendees with a road map for the rest of the day, and for the rest of the conference.

• The major types of social tools and the needs that they fill
• The mode of thinking that characterizes all successful social media initiatives
• Some of the major players and tools shaping the space today

I recently posted about how the Firefox plug in Update Scan can help bloggers discover great non-syndicated content that Google hasn’t picked up on yet.

Here is another approach that’s even better at putting content in your hands that not only isn’t syndicated, but also may NEVER get indexed by Google unless you put it there.

Check out this recent post I made about taxes on private jets.

It’s based on an article contained in a magazine that is one of hundreds that still don’t get the Web. You know the ones — their philosophy is “hey, we work like dogs to research and write all this stuff for our subscribers, there’s no way we’re going to put it up on the Web for free!”

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Last Updated on 8/15/2007

Between the thousands of upstart Facebook developers and our very own (dare I say successful?) foray into Facebook applications with BlogTips, it’s becoming virtually impossible to ignore Facebook as a marketing platform.

And since Facebook is the magic everything-platform, there are already tons of great groups for discussing everything from the budding world of marketing in social networks to theories on web 3.0 (yes, 3.0 already!)

At this point however, navigating the group listings in Facebook is a bit of an exercise in frustration. The search feature is pretty limited, and unless you know what you’re after, it’s unlikely you’re going to find it.

So we’ve gone through by hand and compiled a gigantic, rolling list of the best of these groups. This is where the action is at on Facebook, so roll up your sleeves, clean out your keyboard, and get in on the discussion.

Or at the very least, you can look cool by joining them.

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Wired ran an article yesterday that encapsulates one of the biggest problems with the emerging Web. The money quote:

For people who’ve grown up in analog, Second Life is not that hard to understand,” says Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo, a consulting arm of the global ad giant Publicis Groupe. “I have a store in the real world; I have a store in the virtual world.” In contrast, the kind of digital marketing that actually works requires a conceptual leap. Successful online marketing is targeted and specific, like direct mail — but it’s direct mail in a fun house, where the recipients can easily seize control of what the mail says, where it goes next, and how it gets there. You need to know how to buy up keywords to maximize search returns, how to make the most of recommendation engines, how to use the viral potential of Web video, how to monitor what’s being said in blogs and message boards, how not to blow it by trying to be deceptive. Building a corporate pavilion in Second Life doesn’t require any of these things. It’s simple and it’s obvious.

The lesson here is pretty straightforward: online community building isn’t about fancy technology or flashy corporate pavilions in 3-D worlds. It’s about enabling people to connect with one another in ways that are meaningful to them. As Liz Strauss told me, you can’t have a community without people.

Our good buddy Jeremiah Owyang just got back from giving a business blogging presentation at the Frost & Sullivan conference in DC. He posted seven points today that I think are great advice for business bloggers:

1. Identify the bloggers in your community.
2. Read their blogs, subscribe to them, and really read them
3. Leave comments on their blog, or link to them from your blog
4. Build a real and human relationship with them, get to know them
5. Treat them with the same types of importance as other forms of influencers (media, press, analyst)
6. Grant them exclusives, invite them over for lunch, get to know them.
7. Be human.

We’ll be covering the practical how-to’s of this at our conference in September.

We’ve added some new features to our BlogTips Facebook application:

1) Users can now submit tips from the application page as well as on their profiles.
2) We’ve provided an archive of past tips and the people that submitted them.

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It’s becoming rapidly apparent that integrating online applications and services with Facebook is more benefit than detriment. It looks as though Facebook is contributing directly to the growth of online services.

This raises some important questions for companies contemplating online community-building initiatives. Should you roll your own social network on your site? Or should you reach out to existing communities through an application?

Given the stats that show Pareto efficiency when existing services build themselves into Facebook and add value, perhaps the best decision is to do both.

My prediction: the first company to build software for DIY social network building that comes pre-integrated with Facebook will quickly rise to the top of the heap.

Lots of big news today from iUpload. They’ve been a central player in the enterprise blogging game for years (and sponsored the very first BBS conference back in 2005.) They’re one of several players surging forward into the emerging enterprise social media market. They have a new release of the software which contains more “participation options.” We’ll get a demo and report back.

Since we launched our BlogTips Facebook application twelve days ago, several trackable conference registrations have been the direct result. I calculate a 43.75% net ROI in approximately 1/30 of a year. If you multiply that out, that’s an annualized 1,300% rate of return on the investment. Not too shabby.

By some metrics, it’s the single most effective marketing campaign I’ve ever been involved in — especially when we’ve only launched a 1.0 widget with limited functionality. Admittedly, we haven’t scaled to a volume where it’s a main driver of revenue (yet,) but it’s clear to us that this is an arena that shows great promise. It’s also a heck of a lot easier than fighting over AdWords terms.
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Bratz vs. Barbie has proven to be the seminal war in the rapidly changing toy industry. Today’s kids are more sophisticated. The toy industry must now compete with consumer electronics, fashion and entertainment purchases. The tarted-up look of MGA Entertainment’s Bratz dolls is a direct response to that demand. By contrast, Mattel’s Barbie seems positively wholesome.

Today’s WSJ reports on the latest front in this war: the Web. Both Mattel and MGA Entertainment are in the process of launching online social networking sites aimed at their 6-13 year-old market. Mattel has a social network in beta, while MGA’s site is yet to launch.
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The Wall Street Journal has written today about how (and why) the Democrats are leading the Republicans in presidential findraising by some $100 million dollars. They specifically cite how the Democrats are embracing the blogosphere while the Republicans struggle more with Web 2.0 tools.

Democrats have also benefited because of their comparative strength with Internet activists. While Republican voters tend to gravitate toward traditional media like talk radio, Democratic voters with strong opinions are more likely to go online to read blogs. That, in turn, has led to an explosion in online giving to Democrats, who are building lists of thousands of small-dollar donors for a fraction of the cost of traditional direct mail.

In a memo sent to Republican campaigns earlier this year advising them how to engage bloggers, the NRSC said: “In comparison to the left, the center-right has an underutilized online fundraising apparatus.” An NRSC spokeswoman confirmed the authenticity of the memo, which is posted on Politico, a political Web site.

I’ve noticed a similar trend in some local races I’m following. The promotional/fundraising sites built by established, older, business types are frequently static HTML with no feeds — resulting in lousy PageRank and Alexa numbers. Meanwhile, the lefty activists are often using WordPress and are big-time into RSS.

Michael Gray from Graywolf’s SEO Blog has a wonderfully helpful video up on YouTube that shows the search engine optimization downside of using WordPress and how to get around it.

According to Gray, one of the biggest issues with WP from an SEO standpoint is that it puts content in a lot of different places:

• Main Index
• Categories
• Date Archives
• Author Archives

Duplicate content is a major problem in SEO because it confuses Google. When Google is confused, it gives lower priority to your content. You want to keep nice little silos for all of your information.

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I’ve never had much fun with anti-virus software. In the past I’ve called McAfee Malware. But according to the Wall Street Journal it looks like those with an active scanner are doing a little better than those without:

In May, a virus in a banner ad on tomshardware.com automatically switched visitors to a Web site that downloaded “malware” — malicious software designed to attack a computer — onto the visitor’s computer…users of an online forum hosted on the Tom’s site discussed the case, with some people noting that their antivirus software had protected their computers and others lamenting that a virus had been downloaded onto theirs.

[begin deep portentous rumble]

So…wait? You can get a virus by loading a page that has an infected ad on it? This is bad news indeed. Needless to say the rest of the article has quotes from a variety of ad networks touting their screening features. But that virus-laden ads will probably continue to slip through the system.

In fact, the article mentions that almost 7% of all sponsored link ads—those are the text, google kind that physically can’t carry a virus themselves—lead to suspicious sites that might automatically stuff a computer full of malware.

[Insert ominous music and possibly thunder].

As a blogger this raises an important question: should you worry about ads on your site?

Many online bloggers rely heavily or entirely on ad revenue to cover their costs, ads that are automatically served by Google, RightMedia, or some similar service, and serving a bad ad could go a long way towards destroying your traffic.

…but realistically, I think this issue is more or less a non-issue. Let’s think about it. It’s a known problem, and one that if unchecked, could create serious roadblocks for a multi-billion dollar industry’s product. Guess what? They’re going to stay on top of it.

And that scary 7% statistic? That’s for ads that link to sites that might download malware. And they’re sketchy looking. You can trust people to be smart enough not to click on sketchy ads.

The kind of ad that infected computers from Tom’s Hardware is not likely to happen nearly as often as 7%, and if you serve only text ads, it will never happen. The gaps in ad security will get smaller and smaller as flash/ajax/whatever’s next technologies make it harder for ads to inject malware into your systems.

Go blog. Be happy.

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As we continue to filter though “The BBS Vault,” bringing old classics to DVD at extra-high prices, we’ve been uncovering more snippets of really useful stuff to throw up for you.

If you like what you’re seeing, be sure to sign up for our Chicago conference.

This particular clip is of John Furrier, the Founder of PodTech, as he explains how the iTunes podcast directory ranks its listings, and gives a few suggestions on how to make sure your podcast doesn’t get pushed into obscurity. Have a gander:

As I understand it, John is telling us that the iTunes listings are based largely on consistency, the same way that Google tends to rank blogs. Post more often, podcast more often, and rise in the ranks.