Content Matters

As Google Abandons RSS, Will LinkedIn Fill the Void?

Yesterday was a big day for Twitter. First, it handled the huge traffic burst for the announcement of Pope Francis. But that was only the warmup. The big test came yesterday evening when word came out that Google (GOOG) will shutter Google Reader in July. My Twitter feed quickly lit up with pleadings to Google to keep it alive, and to developers to quickly build a replacement.

Of course, I follow a lot of journalists and bloggers, and RSS feeds have long been their lifeblood. Google Reader for them fills the role that newswires once played. But most people have no idea what RSS is or what it does.

Perhaps MG Siegler of the CrunchFund said it best:

Personally, I rely a lot less on RSS than I did four or five years ago. Then, tools like Google Reader and NetVibes were a critical part of my morning routine, right after checking my email. Today, they’ve largely been replaced in my workflow by Twitter and Flipboard. If there’s something important for me to know, chances are it will show up in my Twitter stream. And Flipboard is perfect for keeping up to date on things I don’t follow as closely, leveraging Twitter lists and a handful of RSS feeds.

For those concerned about replacing Reader, there are a bunch of options. Lifehacker was quick to publish a list of alternative RSS readers.

For non-blogger/journos, you might find Flipboard provides a more compelling interface for keeping up. It’s not a workflow tool in the way that Reader is, but for simply reading, it’s great.

The bigger challenge may come down the road if Google shutters its Feedburner service. Feedburner, founded by current Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and later sold to Google, is the tool most blogs and news services use to push out their RSS feeds for syndication. There have been rumblings for quite a while that Feedburner may soon be shut down. That would set off more of a scramble for a scalable solution to push RSS. But someone will fill the void.

A good candidate to fill both the Reader and syndication gaps could be LinkedIn (LNKD).  The company is rumored to be acquiring mobile news reader Pulse News for between $50 - $100 million. That’s just the latest step in LinkedIn’s move to become more of a content company. The recently launched Influencers Program, added to the LinkedIn Today feed has made its news page much more competitive. And while it could stand improvements, the LinkedIn Endorsements feature helps tag people to skills and interests. Combining the business-focused LinkedIn social graph with a flow of news content could enable a more true interest graph. As GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram notes “this kind of “interest graph” targeting is the holy grail for both content companies and social networks.”.

Beyond the news reader side, LinkedIn could immediately gain traction with publishers by launching a Feedburner alternative. An aqui-hire of Feedblitz, Feedity or even IFTTT could position them to pick up the bulk of the RSS syndication market when Google exits.

Going From Unstructured Text to Structured Data Remains Much Harder Than the Reverse

I was reading an interesting article this morning on a new Washington Post prototype tool to automate fact-checking.

The Truth Teller prototype, described as a "Shazam for Truth" sounds very compelling, though taking it from prototype to a scalable solution will not be a trivial task.

But there was one paragraph in the article which jumped out at me as a deep misunderstanding of how semantic technologies work:

You can see a Truth Teller project working well with hard, numbers-driven realities since we already have companies like Narrative Science using algorithms to write sports, real estate and financial news. More difficult though is to take that algorithm and place it against soft, interpretative data. For example — and keeping things current — how sequestration will affect governmental agency X, Y or Z, if at all.

I agree with the basic premise of the paragraph - that as you move from simple, provable facts to interpretative conjecture, it becomes much harder. But it's the first part of the paragraph that I quibble with here. The ability of products like Narrative Science (or the similar Automated Insights) to convert structured data into text is completely different from the reverse process - using technology to read unstructured text and turn it into structured data.

Converting structured data to text is a fairly straighforward process. That's not to say that doing it well is easy - it's not - and companies like Narrative Science and Automated Insights are doing a very impressive job of authoring realistic text. But it's safe to assume that the error rate for that process is near zero. If I provide you with a baseball box score showing that Mike Trout went 3-for-5 with a home run and two singles, 2 RBI and 2 runs scored, you can use these technologies to state that in many different conversational means. In no cases will the information be incorrect - it's just a question of tone and writing style.

Now, take the reverse process - reading a text-based summary of the game and trying to compile a box score. There are many challenges there. Not every at-bat gets mentioned in the summary. The nuances of language means that not every mention will be understood by the tagging engine. A home run might be called a homer, four-bagger, cleared-the-bases, round tripper, goner, went yard, moon shot, dinger or even a tater. Of course, semantic tagging uses many methods to understand text, including the use of vocabularies to capture examples like these. But any semantic text tool will miss or misconstrue some. 

Semantic technologies have come a long way in the past decade. We're able to do things we were only able to dream about a few years ago. But the complexity in scaling any of these prototypes to fully useful applications should never be underestimated.

Why Daily Deals Are So Damn Hard (and what can be done about it)

The Daily Deal market has taken some big blows in the past week.

Last week, PrivCo's scathing report on LivingSocial claimed their financing round was at a $330 million valuation, down nearly 95%.

This week, of course, saw Groupon stock down more than 25% on disappointing earnings and a horrendous Q1 outlook. A day later, Groupon (GRPN) CEO Andrew Mason was forced to resign, or, as he jokingly put it:

“I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why…you haven’t been paying attention.”

So, is that the end of the Daily Deals market? Not really.

The Daily Deals market is really, really hard for several reasons:

• There's no barrier to entry
• There are few, if any, economic benefits to scale 
• Merchants have had, at best, mixed results
• Consumers are trained to ignore emails, particularly if the initial deals are not compelling

So, why is there a future for Daily Deals?

There's still a huge opportunity in the hyperlocal market. Local merchants need ways to drive foot traffic to their restaurants and shops. The old models of yellow pages, newspaper ads and classifieds don't work any more (and in many cases never did). A regular web presence is important when consumers search for you by name, but doesn't help you get their attention with special offers. 

At the same time, consumers want deals. They've been trained to look for discounts, ecoupons and other deals. 

So, what might a successful Daily Deal product look like?

It's probably small (or small-ish). One of Groupon's failings is that it tried to scale quickly to dominate the space. In doing so, it put too many sales rep feet on the street and put too much pressure on merchants to do deals that really didn't make sense. If you had fewer reps focusing on higher quality businesses and trying to understand how to make those deals work for both merchant and customer, you'd have a better product. That product might have lower margins and smaller revenues, but it might be sustainable.

It's probably not just an email blast. I never see Daily Deal messages as Gmail is good at sorting them into my \Promotions folder, which I rarely view. A Daily Deal offer might work better if it were worked into my workflow. For example, when I use Yelp, it might let me know that a restaurant in a cuisine I've looked up previously is now offering a deal.

It's more personalized. Yelp knows a bit about me, as do Foursquare, Netflix, Seamless and Gmail. If you know the sports that I follow, the cuisines I eat, the areas I visit (work and leisure), the music I listen to and more, you can create much more compelling deals for me.

The winner in the Daily Deals game will be the company who can leverage analytics and personalization in the ways that Amazon has done for ecommerce. Understand what I want and you can solve my needs and those of the merchants. And there's still a pretty big pot at the end of the hyperlocal rainbow.

 

Related articles

Groupon Fires Its CEO, Andrew Mason

Breaking: Andrew Mason is out as Groupon's CEO

PrivCo may be wrong, but LivingSocial's CEO is still sugarcoating this round

LivingSocial CEO Fires Back And Calls Damning Report 'Fiction'

Yahoo: Much Ado About Remote Workers

Some companies are just lightning rods for controversy.

In the past week, since the release of an internal email indicating that Yahoo would no longer support remote workers, there have been hundreds of articles and blog posts (I guess this adds one more) and tens of thousands of tweets and comments.

Of course, controversy is nothing new for Yahoo. Once the darling of online media in its infancy, Yahoo (YHOO) has attracted an outsized amount of criticism in recent years. Of course, the company has made some dumb moves, so much of the critique is warranted. But this time, I think it's a bit silly.

Is Marissa Mayer's new policy right for Yahoo? 

As an outsider, it's really hard to tell. Every company has its own unique culture. I've worked for a company which was completely virtual. We had employees in dozens of cities around the globe. And, from the start, we put in place tools and processes to support a global, virtual business. As a result, we had great communications, both internally and with clients, and smooth handoffs on the engineering side.

I've also worked for a company that was centered around an in-office experience. Communications there were often informal. Some of the most important decisions were made in hallway discussions between the cofounders and members of their management team. If you were out of the office that week, you might have little chance to weigh in on that discussion. Is that good? Well, it worked well for them.

The key is that every company's culture is unique. There's a reason why many successful startups use a single, shared space. It encourages collaboration and information sharing in ways that don't always happen with digital communication.

One important thing to note from the Yahoo discussions is that it seems that only a small percentage of their 11,000 person workforce works remotely. The policy has been described as affecting "hundreds" of employees. If 95% of your employees work in the office, it's likely that the bulk of your processes and systems are aimed at supporting that environment. Those who work from home may miss critical information or be unable to contribute in the same ways that they might if they were in the office.  If it were 25%, not 5%, it might actually be easier to support. The communications processes and tools would have to be in place to make it work.

And let's keep in mind that many tech companies discourage remote working. According to Google CFO Patrick Pichette, as noted in All Things D:

‘How many people telecommute at Google?’ And our answer is: ‘As few as possible’ … There is something magical about sharing meals. There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer ‘What do you think of this?’ 

From some of the fallout, it's clear that the impetus for this decision was, in part, due to frustrations with the overall culture at Yahoo. Kara Swisher notes that "Mayer has been particularly irked about Yahoo parking lots that are slow to fill in the morning and quick to empty by 5 pm". 

I hope that's not the primary driver of the new policy. I don't believe you'll create a more productive workforce by simply forcing people to spend more time in the office. Yahoo needs to attract the types of employees who will be passionate about what they do, and not those focused on doing as little as possible.

If I were launching a new company today, I would learn towards the virtual model or a hybrid virtual/office mix. The advantages are great and the disadvantages are modest, provided you design for it. But let's cut Mayer some slack here. She's still in the early days of trying to change a culture in efforts to turnaround a company facing deep challenges. She needs to make the decisions on how to revamp their culture and their business. The scorecard for her effectiveness should be looked at over several years and not quarter-to-quarter or based on specific policies.

 

 

image of Marissa Mayer courtesy World Economic Forum.

image of Patrick Pichette courtesy C2-MTL

Three Things LinkedIn Should Change Today

LinkedIn (LNKD) continues to strengthen its position as the de facto source for business networking. The company continues to beat Wall Street expectations and the stock has performed exceptionally well.

At the same time, the company continues to innovate, adding new features and improving the core platform. LinkedIn's latest mobile and tablet offerings are showcase examples of how to reinvent your products for the needs of the mobile user.

But there are a few potential clouds on the horizon. And there are three things that LinkedIn should change immediately in order to maintain its credibility.

And credibility is everything for LinkedIn. Unlike other social media platforms which are purely social, LinkedIn is about business. And for business users, the value of LinkedIn comes from knowing that its social graph is reflective of the real world social graph of its users. LinkedIn is all about separating the signal from the noise.

Here are three things that LinkedIn should change immediately, to maintain its value proposition:

Make it slightly harder to connect: I know. This goes against all logic, especially for mobile users. But LinkedIn has lowered the bar to connecting. It used to be that almost every LinkedIn connection request came with a note. Something like "Hi, Barry. I enjoyed speaking at the abc conference and look forward to following up with you about our tablet initiative". Great. Even if it's not someone I've worked with, I can immediately remember the context and decide if it's someone whom I should allow into my professional network.

But today, many of the paths that LinkedIn provides to connect with contacts don't even provide that option. Upload your address book or click on this group of people and a generic request automatically goes out. So, if I can't remember the context of how we met (or if we even met), I'm refusing your request. 

This is the same problem that services like Monster.com (MWW) created with "1-click" to apply for a job. Prior to that, job applicants typically had to write a custom cover letter to apply. So, they wouldn't bother applying for jobs where they did not meet the required skills. But with 1-click to apply, there's no penalty to applying for jobs they won't get. So, hiring managers were flooded with job spam - unqualified applicants and Monster has become largely useless. 

LinkedIn runs the risk of becoming useless noise if it makes it too easy for people to try to connect to everyone.

Make Skill Endorsements Meaningful: Endorsements can be very powerful. But as presently implemented, they're fairly meaningless. LinkedIn is pushing endorsements pretty aggressively. As a result, users are often encouraged to do a 1-click endorsement of multiple contacts for "default" skills that others have chosen for them. It's also become a courtesy issue. If you endorse me, I feel obligated to endorse you.

There are a few ways in which LinkedIn could quickly improve Endorsements.

First, flag or identify endorsements from people who worked with you (relationship as Colleague or We've Done Business Together). I trust those more than the random guy you met once. Amazon marks reviews by whether the reviewer purchased the product through Amazon. This could work in a similar manner.

Second, require endorsers to add a sentence or two to the endorsement. If I need to think for a second, I probably will only invest the time for people I would honestly endorse. Third, only allow users to endorse one contact at a time. The whole idea of presenting a slate of four contacts with predefined skills to endorse just makes this a joke. Make users work a little harder to endorse someone and the endorsements will have significantly greater value.

Clean up the stream: The LinkedIn news stream has gotten a lot more cluttered lately. Some parts of the stream are great. The Twitter-like shared links and posts work well. The "new connections" are fine. The endorsements are weak for the reasons described above. But probably the weakest thing is the "say happy work anniversary to Katrina" posts. First of all, they're often incorrect. In fact, I'd say that more than 50% of the ones I've seen have been inaccurate, likely due to the way that someone entered their resume or bio into the system. But seeing a "congratulate Bob on his first anniversary" message for someone whom I know has been in the same job for five years just makes the platform look dumb. Even if it's accurate, it's just noise.

LinkedIn is a great service for business development and recruitment. Their massive database has become a barrier to entry for potential competitors. The company has clearly figured out ways to monetize the platform. Going forward, they need to be careful not to turn their valued network into just another stream of noise. And they can start with the three changes outlined above.

 

 

 

5 Companies Who Might Buy Time, Inc.

Today comes word that a potential buyer is exploring the purchase of Time, Inc. from Time Warner (TWX). The Company has three main groups: News and Sports (Time Magazine, CNN Money and Sports Illustrated ), Style & Entertainment (People, InStyle and Entertainment Weekly) and Lifestyle (RealSimple, Southern Living, MyRecipes.com and others). According to reports, the sale could exclude three flagship brands:  Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune, which would remain with Time Warner.

Who might the suitor be?

Obviously, there could be a private equity firm lining up to bid, but that’s not too interesting, so I thought I’d suggest some potential strategic acquirers.

UPDATE: The NY Times notes that analysts are speculating the bidder could be Meredith Corp.

That would make sense from the content/titles, and could see Jack Griffin doing it from an ego standpoint, but would be a challenge for them to absorb IMO. Assuming a price tag of $2-3 billion, it could cost nearly double Meredith's current market cap.

Disney (DIS) would make a lot of sense. They have the news (ABC) and sports (ESPN) coverage in place and could certainly capitalize on media and web opportunities around the style and entertainment business.

Hearst would find the titles would be hugely attractive, but absorbing an acquisition this large would be a challenge.  

Conde Nast/Advance Publications, publisher of Bon Appetit, Glamour and Vogue, would be a great home for the lifestyle and style brands, but may find a deal too large to absorb.

News Corp (NWS) is in the midst of splitting itself in two. An acquisition here could diversify that publishing group, reducing its reliance on newspapers and opening up more avenues for digital publishing.

Viacom (VIA) could see this as interesting way to build new video and digital content around the style, entertainment and lifestyle markets in the way that Time Warner's TMZ has found success.

Who am I missing? Who do you think might bid on Time? Add your ideas in the comments.

What Are Your Favorite Content Apps?

I'm writing an ebook aimed at helping publishers develop and implement their mobile strategy.

One section of that book will spotlight apps from publishers that get it right. I've got a bunch in mind, but would love to get your suggestions on content apps that are deserving of recognition.

First, to define what I'm looking for, I'm focused on apps from publishers, not on generic readers. So, the NY Times app would be a fit, but Flipboard or Pulse would not.

The focus can be b2b or b2c; I'll include native apps, mobile web apps and hybrid apps in the discussion. Content can be text, images or video. And I'm looking across a wide range of business models - free apps for brand awareness, paid subscriptions, content-enabled mobile commerce, digital-print bundles, sponsored apps and more.

Please respond using this short, one question survey.

If you'd like, you may add comments below. Or, if you prefer, you can email your suggestions to me at barry-at-contentmattersllc-dot-com.

Thanks for your help!

Journalism and Personal Brands

Less than 24 hours after announcing his intent to part ways with the Daily Beast and launch his own paid blog, Andrew Sullivan announced that he'd already received more than $300,000 in paid subscriptions from nearly 12,000 subscribers:

I wish Andrew Sullivan and the Dish team well in their efforts. As publishers find it more and more difficult to generate strong ad revenues from niche sites, we'll need for models like this one to succeed. And Sullivan has been an early adopter of new models since the early days of blogs.

At the same time, this effort is, no doubt, causing stress for many publishers when they look at the strong brands that their writers are creating. 

From all that I've read, The Dish's separation from the Daily Beast is a friendly one. And, let's face it, Andrew Sullivan had built the Dish brand at the New Republic, Time, the Atlantic, and as an independent blogger, long before he was hired by the Daily Beast. So, there's no debate about who owns the brand. 

But many journalists will build a strong brand, leveraging the traffic and position that a major publisher can provide, and publishers will fear them taking that brand elsewhere.

Well, what else is new? Broadcasters have poached their competitors' top talent for years. The same happens in print. The only difference here is that a twitter account or Facebook followers may seem a more tangible asset than the vague concept of viewers and readers.

Publishers will be tempted to turn to their legal department in an effort to retain ownership of those social media accounts. I'd recommend they don't. The best way to keep your audience will be to continually hire great talent and keep them challenged. The audience doesn't want to follow a publisher. They will choose to follow voices they find compelling.

The challenge for Sullivan and the Dish will be to ensure they remain part of the social conversation around topics, even with the metered ('not a paywall") approach. The real value Andrew has always provided is in creating an environment for intelligent debate. Now he must make sure that debate doesn't only happen behind closed doors.

 

 

Related articles

Andrew Sullivan Declares Independence, Leaves The Beast

Andrew Sullivan raises over $100,000 for ad-free blog in first six hours

Andrew Sullivan Leaving Daily Beast to Start Subscription Web Site

NOOK Sharpens Focus on Education Market with Pearson Stake

Pearson (NYSE:PSO) has taken a 5% stake in the recently spunoff NOOK Media LLC division of Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) with an $89.5 million investment.

The investment values NOOK Media at $1.789 billion, unchanged from its recent spinoff. After the Pearson investment, the Barnes & Noble stake will be reduced to 78.2% of the company, with Microsoft (MSFT) owning the remaining 16.8%.

The investment was clearly strategic for Pearson, as a means of providing more seamless technology solutions for the education market. According to Pearson North America CEO Will Etheridge:

"With this investment we have entered into a commercial agreement with NOOK Media that will allow our two companies to work closely together in order to create a more seamless and effective experience for students. It is another example of our strategy of making our content and services broadly available to students and faculty through a wide range of distribution partners."

At the same time, Barnes & Noble filed an 8K indicating that "the Nook business will not meet the company’s prior projection for fiscal year 2013″.

The NOOK is a product in a tough position. While the NOOK HD has aimed to expand its capabilities beyond that of a single-function e-reader, it faces a highly competitive market. Traffic generated by Nooks are a fraction of that from the Kindle and are a rounding error when compared to the iPad. As single-function gadgets are subsumed by smartphones and tablets (see iPod for example), the life expectancy of the standalone e-reader market will be short. 

As I've previously written, I don't see a promising future for the NOOK as a general purpose e-reader or tablet. Instead, they should narrow their focus to the educational  and early reader markets, where they are better positioned for success. As I wrote last fall:

Barnes & Noble needs to root itself deeply into the textbook market. That market is up for grabs and it seems that Apple or Barnes & Noble will become the likely winner. Barnes & Noble should move quickly to secure the needed partnerships and focus its efforts on winning there.

The educational technology market remains somewhat fragmented. Apple has clearly set its sights on the classroom. I think it's time for Barnes & Noble to focus all of its efforts on this market. If the Nook cannot gain significant market share in the education space, it will have no viable future as a platform.

 

Lessons Unlearned: Why The Daily Shouldn't Derail Your Tablet Strategy

During the past week, my Twitter stream has been filled with various thoughts on the demise of News Corp’s (NWS) tablet-centric news app, The Daily (including my own). Some, perhaps in an effort to be provocative, have suggested that the end of The Daily signals the idea that tablet-based publishing itself has proven a failed model. Here are a few of those stories:

Felix Salmon on The impossibility of tablet-native journalism.

Mathew Ingram: Why Rupert Murdoch's bold bet on The Daily was doomed from the start.

The failure of The Daily says little about the future of tablet publishing, and mostly tells the tale of a failed publishing initiative. Let’s take a look at what The Daily was:

A tablet-only (to start), paid subscription, consumer app, providing general news content, with a very high budget. 

Now, let's break that down into its parts:

Tablet-only: By the end, The Daily had moved beyond tablets to include smartphone, and also had integrated the ability to share content via the web. But to start, it was a single-platform (iPad) product. And the fact that it was optimized for the iPad was both a strength and a weakness. 

Paid subscription consumer news app: the good news is that we are seeing paid content take hold in various markets. But consumers are only willing to pay for content not perceived to be readily available for free elsewhere.

High budget: one of the challenges large companies have when trying to launch something new is that they bring with them high cost structures. Startups don’t dangle 7-figure salaries to attract talent, but large companies fall into an expense base that’s not sustainable. Oh, and The Daily was the only app to run a Super Bowl commercial.  

Yet, despite that high cost structure, The Daily really only faced a challenge once News Corp split into two companies. As part of a single, diversified entertainment business, a $30m annual budget for the Daily was almost a rounding error, easily covered by box office proceeds for the movie Avatar in Poland. Not much to pay for a real-time R&D lab, whose learnings can be applied throughout the multi-billion dollar company. Yet, split off into a business already wracked by difficulties, it became an expensive luxury.

So, what lessons can we learn from The Dailly

Mobile First vs Tablet-Only: There’s a real difference between being Mobile First and being Tablet Only. The Daily became a walled garden, making it difficult to share content or to shift your reading from one platform to another.

In building digital products, it’s critical to understand user behavior. Will users skim your content on their mobile device during the morning commute, marking content to read on the desktop when they get to the office? Or, are they marking content during the day to read later on their tablet on the ride home? Do users need to share your content with peers? Particularly for b2b content, the need to shift from one platform to another is critical.

User Experience Matters: While The Daily ultimately failed in reaching their goal of a half-million paying subscribers to a consumer news product, they did exceed 100,000 paid subs. That’s pretty impressive considering the ubiquity of free news sources on tablets and the web. User engagement was high and they created many real fans. Rather than a boring “replica” app, the Daily created a compelling user experience, leveraging the iPad in ways few others have done.

Specialized, hard-to-find information beats generic news: This one almost goes unsaid, but while many companies are finding that users will continue to pay for information they can’t find elsewhere (particularly in b2b),there’s no appetite to pay for content where there is a viable free substitute. Editorial quality and a big marketing budget can’t overcome “good enough” free alternatives.

I’ll be exploring these and related issues this Thursday at the Specialized Information Publishers Association (“SIPA”) Digital Publishing and Marketing Institute conference in Miami.

SIPA members, by definition, should not face the problem of selling generic information to consumers. These companies offer niche products aimed at b2b markets. During this session, we’ll be exploring trends in mobile and tablet use, particularly among business users and explore how to develop an appropriate mobile and tablet strategy. We'll take a hands-on look at publishers who are doing it right (and a few who appear to be on a misguided path). I hope to see you there.

Related articles

In Defense of the Daily (RIP)

Why Magazine Apps Suck

News Corp.'s The Daily: Successful Experiment, Failed Publication

The Daily closes shop: why the news app was doomed from the start | Jeff Jarvis