From Robert Scoble, the #1 FriendFeed user according to FriendFeed co-founder Paul Buchheit:
This is Facebook firing a shot at Google, not at
Twitter. Twitter is mere collateral damage but Facebook knows the real
money in real time is in search. FriendFeed has real time search.
Google does not (although it’s bootstrapping there very fast, some of
my FriendFeed items are showing up in Google within seconds now).
Facebook has 300 million users. FriendFeed and Twitter do not. Google
has Wave coming, along with some other things this fall and that forced
a shotgun marriage between FriendFeed and Facebook.
“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team
for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share
information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "As this
shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best
engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use."
With these additions Facebook's quest for real-time search may have a driver. It probably wasn't a coincidence that Akhil Wable of Facebook
announced improved Facebook search functions last night on Facebook's blog, while using the FriendFeed announcement as an example of these new functions.
FriendFeed, appears to share the same aspirations,
although they'd rather talk about open, innovative communication's
platforms for the time being. Their service will remain open to its
users, but their founders were very clear to note that this is for the
"time being." The engineering team will likely be working on bigger things than the FriendFeed platform.
FriendFeed's growth has been flat over the summer,
and although they have not disclosed actual users (Likely around
100,000) , their unique traffic has been around 1 million for the last
several months. Running into these issues with scaling may have opened
the eyes of their founders to the opportunity to work with Facebook's
250 million + users.
It's also something the industry should look closely at when
considering the future path of Twitter and its ability to scale. Even
investors in Twitter have been heard saying that it may never scale
close to the size of Facebook. However, they also note in passing, that
it could be as valuable as Facebook - in the sense of providing a
valuable service to its smaller userbase (Think Craigslist).
The whole idea behind the search functionality is that some photog's are trying to get their work out to a larger audience and there are a lot of people who would use it if they knew it was available. Yahoo! had it's advanced image search up-and-running with creative commons' filters in May and I've used it a few times to grab usable Flickr Photos. Google will also search through Flickr and across a seemingly larger index.
But how valuable is a canned photo to bloggers and online outlets today? Yes, it can make for some funny posts due to random art, but I think most bloggers would rather embed a random YouTube video or pull a screen shot. The future of online publishing and blogging will be weighed more towards visuals than text after all.
Why is this strange? Well for one, six days after the iPhone 3G S launched, mobile video uploads to YouTube skyrocketed 400%. Why wasn't Qik invited to the party? It has been endorsed by Nokia within its app store and is even shipping on the Nokia S60 devices. It has been made available for BlackBerry Bold and Curve devices. I even have an alpha build on my BlackBerry Storm.
However, despite several submissions to the iPhone App store, and even the backing of Kevin Rose, Qik hasn't been approved by Apple.
The main reason? It seems that Apple and AT&T are worried about the bandwidth (just like they were with Skype, XM, etc.) that the service would take up. However, with investors and backers like Marc Benioff, Andreessen and Horowitz, and now Quest and Camp Ventures they won't be able to shut Qik out for much longer.
The story appeared to catch Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth and Executive editor Marcus Brauchli off-guard, as they hurried to kill the story and the event all together. Although Brauchli made it clear that the planning of the event was not vetted with the editorial staff in telling Politico: “You cannot buy access to a Washington Post journalist,” Weymouth pointed to events of this type as key revenue streams for the company moving forward:
“We do believe that there is a viable way to expand our expertise into live conferences and events that simply enhances what we do - cover Washington for Washingtonians and those interested in Washington. And we will begin to do live events in ways that enhance our reputation and in no way call into question our integrity.”
As I've mentioned before, the current "media meltdown" has accelerated the media industry's crash, and publications like the Washington Post (which lost $19.5 million in Q4) are scrambling for dollars. In fact, the crash of large publications has been underway for some time now, as Alan Mutter noted today in stating:
"Profits fell 100.1% since 2004 at newspapers with circulation greater than 80,000."
With media companies trying to innovate new revenue streams, the lines between church and state (advertising and editorial) continue to blur.
Which brings us to Dan Abram's latest Web venture. Mediaite.com (Media-ite), launched yesterday to much fanfare (while being down for much of the day), is a media commentary and news aggregation Website.
According to the Website, Mediaite is the site for news, information and smart opinions about print, online and broadcast media, offering original and immediate assessments of the latest news as it breaks.
In addition, Mediaite’s “Power Grid” objectively ranks media professionals across a dozen categories based on their real-time relevance. Power Grid rankings rely on an array of metrics, including anything and everything from circulation to Twitter followers to Google buzz depending on the category.
Now, with the site being down much of yesterday, I didn't have a lot of time to play around with it, but I must say the innovative digital rankings are pretty cool, and as Howard Kurtz noted: "they call out the celebrity journalists" (which a media-junkie like me loves).
The only problem with all this is, Abrams wears many hats. He's NBC’s former Chief Legal Analyst and last November he opened Abrams Research, a media strategy firm which utilizes journalists to advise Fortune 500 companies on media relations.
This creates some blurry lines.
With these connections, how can Abrams run a media outlet, which curates, aggregates and even produces content, objectively? It's a very fair question and one that remains unanswered, despite the spin which Abrams and his team have tried to use to address it.
So while I'll continue to play around with the Mediaite ranking system, which could serve as a good communication's tool to rank today's digital influencers, the ethics of it all remain cloudy.
Jeff Jarvis made the similarities between the Mediaite launch and the WaPo fallout all-the-more-clear with a simple tweet over the weekend:
"WaPo access program sounds like a Dan Abrams' production."
Tweetboard, launched by 140 Ware within the last week,
is a new micro-forum application that allows you to get closer to the digital
universe by bringing the Twitterati to your Website and content. Available for
almost any type of Website (Wordpress, Blogger, Ning, etc), Tweetboard acts as
a pull-out tool for visitors, allowing them to comment on content within the Website with other Twitter users.
Each time someone posts (or replies) via the board on your site, a link back
to the corresponding conversation is appended to their tweet, creating a viral
stream of Twitter traffic to the Website (I've uploaded it to the RaceTalk
blog as a reference).
Of course, destination Twitter sites like ExecTweets
have been along for some time, but this is the first time that Twitter
conversations have been customizable for almost any Website. That, combined
with TechCrunch covering the new app today, made Tweetboard a top trending item
on Twitter for the last several days.
In this age where "every
company is a media company," it should be trending. Ustream's
integration with Facebook and Tweetboard are leading examples of how
marketers and even publishers can try to infiltrate digital communities - especially
these two (As they say: Fish where the fish are).
Moving forward, Tweetboard hopes to create a similar feature to Ustream's on Facebook, which will allow tweetboard commenting on specific posts,
pages and streaming video - rather than being generic across the entire Website. This will create even more viral opportunities and personalized conversations.
The one thing that will be interesting to follow is which companies are able to
implement on their main page / homepages. Sure it's easy to put on a separate
corporate blog (different Website than corporate home page), but will legal
really allow companies to put it on other content-focused pages within their
corporate Website? I would hope so, but in reality I know how sensitive
companies are to giving consumers this type of control. Skittles illustrated far too well,
what could go wrong.
Given that, I think that publishers (newspapers, magazines, etc) will be given more leeway than
marketers with implementing on core pages. Now let's see how long it takes them
to implement.
Yes, Facebook continues to struggle with providing value and ROI with ad
sales on the site; even though they are reaching some
of the right folks with targeted ads.
However, as I've noted in some recent entries within
this blog and the RaceTalk
blog, they are making very steady progress in appealing to marketers on
other fronts. Fan and brand pages, check.
Vanity URL's, check.
Today, Facebook took another huge step in appealing to marketers by bringing
live video and real-time chat features to its 200 million+ users. To do so, it is launching the Facebook
Live Stream Box: a feature that any Website or developer can use to enable
Facebook users to connect, share, and post updates in real-time as they watch
live streaming events and video. For the time being, the most important place
where it can be used? On Facebook.
Ustream
which has teamed up in the past with Facebook to support streaming
presentations, including a series of recent Jonas Brothers Webcasts (example below) on their Facebook Fan Page, is the first developer to offer (the
extension of) their services to artists and brands under this new feature.
They'll likely have people lining-up to take advantage of it,
if the Jonas Brothers trial can be replicated in any way. According to Facebook
the live following of the Jonas brothers Webcasts led to 1.5million
updates - averaging 23,000 posts per minute - and more than 100,000 viewers.
In fact, given the demand they expect and the limited customized players
they can build, Ustream has created an application process for
brands and artists. Those that are chosen will have the options of: 1) A free
ad-supported version - Partners Only 2) A white-label version, not supported by
ads, which will cost $15,000 to develop.
While this may sound like a lot at first (especially for some artists), it's
really a small price for marketers that are used to spending 10's of millions
of dollars on television advertising. Despite some misperceptions, the highly sought after teen to twenty demographic is still watching a lot of TV, and tapping new strategies to reach them within this hybrid of a social network-based, TV experience will continue to grow in importance.
As for Facebook. It has only been able to turn analog dollars into digital dimes to date, but post-analog riches could lie ahead, if this is a sign of things to come.
Nico Pitney, National Editor for the Huffington Post, is “live-blogging” the events from Tehran by pulling together content and information from people on the ground and others aggregating it across the Web.
There is no doubt the Social Web has made it easier for these modern-day “correspondents” and “international editors” as they aggregate the news of the disputed elections with hashtags such as #IranElection on Twitter, and bring video and pictures to the masses through YouTube and Flickr.
“That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.”
To be fair to the mainstream media, we can’t blame their lack of coverage or lack of portraying actual events (as they happen in Tehran) on their closure of foreign bureaus. They’ve made an effort to cover this. While people are criticizing CNN.com, their best international correspondent is directly addressing Ahmadinejad on the status of his rival, Mir Hossein Moussavi.
The New York Times is dedicating their The Lede blog to the discussion and has correspondents and even columnists taking a look at the happenings on the ground in Tehran.
This is really a case of the mainstream media being hampered by authorities that want to vastly limit the information coming out of Tehran, especially from the international free press. But they can’t cut off all communications in this information age.
Citizen journalists aren’t waiting for the mainstream media. They’re taking to every communication technology available and filling in ”pieces of the puzzle,” as Iranian authorities scramble to take down telecommunications, Internet and mobile access. Mir Hossein Moussavi , himself, is taking to Twitter to update “his people” on his location and safety.
Iran, although closed off from the world in some respects by its regime, has embraced the Internet-age. Even with talk of the death penalty for those that oppose the regime through blogs on the Web, Iran is home to the 3rd largest group of bloggers in the world. They are driving this crowd-sourced news story through small tweets of information.
So while we should still fear the death of publications like the New York Times, this event offers hope in citizen journalism and processing through some type of objective, free press outlet. The Times, itself, has been outspoken against the act of “process journalism,” but this type of process journalism is crucial to the future of democracy.
As I mentioned recently on RaceTalk, a large drop in ad sales at MySpace means that social network ad sales will fall 3% this year. However, according to Blake Boznanski, an Ad Sales Executive at LinkedIn (who visited Racepoint’s San Francisco office yesterday), the “business relationship” social network is still very bullish about ad growth - less than a year after launching its own ad network for the site.
I covered the takeaways from our conversation with Blake in full detail here, but thought I'd narrow into 5 LinkedIn marketing tips and tools for the Fast Company community. I'm sure you know how to update your company's corporate page on LinkedIn and perhaps you even update your personal status on LinkedIn from time-to-time. But are you taking advantage of other marketing avenues to reach LinkedIn's desirable user base of senior executives and decision makers with your products and services? Here are a few of them:
LinkedIn's New apps and App Sponsorships: LinkedIn currently hosts apps from companies such as SlideShare, Google and Tripit and is open to collaborating on additional customized applications with additional advertisers / brands. In addition, there is an opportunity for marketers to sponsor third party apps and event apps. For instance, the application from Tripit, which lets you see where and when your LinkedIn network is traveling, has created sponsorship opportunities on the site for hotels and airlines. The same sponsorship opportunity exists for the 10,000 plus events that are now listed on LinkedIn.
Paid Poll Partnerships: Poll partnerships have also become a new way for brands to connect with LinkedIn’s demographic. The most widely known partnership being LinkedIn’s deal with CNBC, which has drawn huge engagement from the LinkedIn community. Under the agreement, CNBC has also become LinkedIn’s preferred business media provider and offers CNBC articles, blogs, financial data, and video content to LinkedIn’s user base - in exchange for the community-generated content (LinkedIn / CNBC polls) exclusively provided for CNBC.
Group Page Creation and Sponsorships: Group pages are growing in popularity (nearly 300,000 of them) on LinkedIn and have added recent features that allow group managers to send an announcement via email to their group members. This, combined with applications and RSS feeds pushing content into these group / fan pages has created a rich / vibrant community to advertise within. Brands can sponsor a federation of user created groups or target users of specific groups throughout LinkedIn.
Featured Questions: Another feature that is growing in popularity is featured question functionality that can be promoted throughout the LinkedIn community. Featured questions from executive leaders or “brand celebrities” allow brands to engage with the community, create dialogue and gain further insight. For instance, Garry Kelly, Southwest Airline’s CEO, recently used the question feature to ask how an airline can make people more productive and was greeted with numerous responses that he and the community could view.
Display, Text and Video Ads: As for its “basic” display and text ads, Boznanski noted that LinkedIn still handles all of its ad placements, unlike other social networks that have outsourced to other ad networks. This, he says, “allows LinkedIn to target better.” LinkedIn supports text-based ads and display ads (300×250, 150×600, 728×90 and video). It also only allows a limited amount of ads per page, giving advertisers a bigger “share of page.” All of this has led to speculation that LinkedIn has a CPM in the range of $75 for targeted / customized advertising. Comparatively, Facebook CPM rates for display ads on the destination site are rumored to be in the $0.50 - $1 range and advertising within social apps on Facebook are going for CPM’s as low as $0.12.
Any other tips or feedback to share on marketing within LinkedIn? Look forward to hearing from you through comments here or on Twitter: @kyledaustin
Facebook’s recent move to make Facebook pages similar to user profiles
(in-terms of interactivity) is drawing attention from mainstream
publishers and marketers at top brands. New publishing features on
Facebook are being used by brands like Coca-Cola, and publishers such
as Fortune Magazine and TheNew York Times, in an effort to become part of the new Facebook stream. The pages will also serve as landing pages for brands on Facebook, which they can promote and measure traffic to using Facebook Advertising.
Here's 5 Tips for marketers utilizing these new pages.
#1 Post updates frequently: Twitter rules now apply, and frequency of status updates must be high in order to stand out with your fans in the Facebook stream. In fact, given the scale of Facebook, it’s likely that we will see the best Twitter brands: Jet Blue, Ford, Comcast, Home Depot, Zappos and their handlers making a strong play for Facebook mind-share. In order to compete, posts must be frequent and interesting.
#2 Take advantage of Facebook Advertising: Now that you can interact with current and prospective customers on Facebook, bring people to your page. Team your page effort on Facebook with a small Facebook advertising campaign. While the Twitter community shuns ads, Facebook users are used to them. If they can add value and interest them in comming over to the new Facebook page - you win.
#3 Watch Coca-Cola: While brands like Jet Blue and Ford have mastered Twitter, Coca-Cola has mastered Facebook. Watch how they improve their brand page with the new features. They'll give you a good idea where you should take your page and what you should be doing to grow its following.
#4 Use video: You can't use video with Twitter (Outside of posting a link to it). Use Facebook as a new portal for videos. Nielsen’s recent report on social networks noted that Facebook users spend an average of 3 hours and 10 minutes on the site
per-month; the highest average time per-person amongst the 75 most
popular brands online. Utilize the time they are engaging with the site to get branded content in front of them.
#5 Get your employees involved in word-of-mouth marketing of the page: Before you start promoting the page, make sure you have your employees as fans. Encourage them to dive into the conversations to jump-start a thriving community.
As media companies like the New York Times Co. continue to post dreary results and circulation numbers continue to decline rapidly across the industry – It got me thinking of some questions that these companies (and other media companies) need have an answers for -a few years ago already. I tend to think like Dan Scheinman (VP at Cisco), in that “Every company is a media company,” so the answers to these questions aren’t only for moguls like Rupert Murdoch to consider.
#10) Should we blog?
Yes. According to the latest Technorati "State of the Blogosphere" report, 95 of the top 100 newspapers now have reporter blogs. In the month of August alone, 77 million unique visitors from the US visited a blog. If your media company isn't blogging yet, the train is about to leave the station (for good). Blogging not only provides media companies with the opportunity to take part in the 1,440-minute news cycle; it also provides a real-time feedback channel for readers/listeners/viewers. Journalists can now increase engagement with their readers after a story has already been printed or it has run online.
#9) Should we consider ending print publication?
Yes, every media company should consider it, although it doesn't make sense for every publication to make the complete shift - just yet. Yes, the Christian Science Monitor did it last week, which is an acknowledgment of how costly daily print production has become. Publications must weigh the impact the red numbers from print are having on their overall operation before making the full shift. That said, those like Scoble are declaring that they will never buy a physical newspaper again. But in his piece, he also notes that media companies have other opportunities outside of print & online (i.e. mobile feeds and applications). While they try to save their print business, media companies should be trying all alternatives in mobile, online and video - to see if they are viable enough to ditch print all-together.
#8) Should we break our big story online or in print?
Yes, unless you are the Philadelphia Inquirer, this shouldn't even be a conversation. In fairness, I should note that the New York Times debated breaking the Spitzer scandal in print or online before finally breaking the story online. This shouldn't be a debate anymore. Breaking news stories must be broken in real-time online.
#7) Should we be on Twitter?
Yes. This is easy as well. While Twitter may not have the big numbers yet, it has the engagement. It also provides return on limited investment. One person can manage a Twitter account for a media company and create engagement with existing content while also pointing followers to new content.
#6) Should we focus more on video?
Yup. We live in a viral video world. Generation Y is visual and they have entrenched the video with mainstream audiences. This report, which was issued by Cisco and Compete last week, illustrates how users have tuned into online video during the 08 campaign season. Video is the key to re-engaging the audience and increasing engagement.
#5) Should we create an online social community?
Embrace the idea, but think before you implement a new social community. Consumers are inundated by the number of social networks. We're utilizing one for our conversation here and the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek all implemented new social networks within the last couple months. Make sure your social community features bring something new to the table. If it doesn't, stick with creating a community / group on Facebook.
#4) Should we partner with other news gathering services?
Newspapers in Florida, Ohio and Maine have combined news gathering services with staff constraints, amid the economic downturn. TIME Inc. is utilizing talent to write across its portfolio of magazines. With staff constraints industry-wide, is there any other answer than "yes"?
#3) Should we use bookmarking features?
Yes! A one-time limited investment with fairly unlimited return. Bookmarking is editorial marketing at its finest. Features like Digg, StumbleUpon and Buzz allow media companies to engage prospective readers who don't usually frequent their publication with stories that may be of interest to them.
#2) Should ad sales focus move further online?
The Financial Times recently reported that online ad sales will surpass print ad sales by 2011. In order to compete with online competition like MySpace, Facebook, etc, media corporations and newspapers must turn their attention (nearly full time) to online ad sales. Yes it's not growing as fast, but the competition is growing and is aggressive as ever.
#1) Should we cut editorial staff?
A question that can only be answered by looking at the green and (more likely) red in the books. However, the affect of the editorial cuts must be weighed with the affect the cuts have on editorial integrity. Trustworthiness and editorial integrity are some of the few things major media companies have going for them. Cuts, could limit their one core advantage.
