Content Matters

Bad Idea of the Day: LinkedUp

From the Guardian comes word of a new app - the cleverly named LinkedUp, which they describe as "Tinder for your professional network".

The app uses the LinkedIn API to access a user's professional contacts, and has a Tinder-like interface to quickly browse pics and profiles.

Let's think for a minute about how bad an idea this truly is. 

For most of us, our professional network consists of current and former coworkers, clients, your next potential boss and more. What could possibly go wrong?

I can only imagine the alerts from LinkedIn: you've just been endorsed for the following skills...

According to founder Max Fischer, "I think it helps people feel a little more comfortable about people. I was looking through some profiles earlier today and the tag line says "You must love sports and dogs" or "I really love this hockey team." 

Wait - I thought that's what Facebook already does. It captures your social graph, your interests, your experiences and more. But it does that in your social circle, not your professional circle. In other words, people who are less likely to adversely impact your career if things don't go quite right.

There could be worse ideas for dating. Perhaps a "classmates.com" for prison parolees, or an app that sits on top of the national sex-offender registry. And, I'm sure there will be those who find LinkedUp to be a useful app. But, there's a reason we don't have a single social graph, covering our business and personal lives. And most of us prefer that those world's do not collide.

 

 

 

LinkedOut? LinkedIn Shuts Out CRM Partners

Based on this post from Zoho CRM, it appears that LinkedIn has cut its CRM partners to just two - Salesforce and Microsoft. And, if you visit the LinkedIn Developer page, it becomes clear that they have chosen to work with just those two partners. 

In an environment where APIs and web services are at the core of innovative web applications, LinkedIn is taking a step backwards towards a walled garden. From a financial standpoint, I understand it. LinkedIn has an incredibly unique and valuable database. And SalesForce and Microsoft not only have the huge installed base, but also the deep pockets to make this a hugely profitable partnership. 

The exclusivity may make sense from a short-term revenue standpoint, but it's certainly not providing value to many of its users. I don't know the terms of LinkedIn partnership deals, but hopefully they can come up with an access plan that could make sense for some of the smaller, upstart providers like Zoho, Nutshell and others. 

 

Twitter Buys Gnip; What Are the Repercussions?

Twitter is buying social media firehose Gnip, it's largest distributor and among the largest social data aggregators.

On the surface, this could make sense. Twitter has been looking to monetize its data, and simply being a wholesaler doesn't let that business scale. As Rob Passarella notes, the deal is a clear sign that Twitter is focused on its data business.

But the acquisition raises a few interesting questions.

Data aggregation platforms are typically most successful when they are independent. Aggregators thrive because they can be "Switzerland", neutral and unaffiliated with any providers. It's what makes acquisition of aggregators difficult. Once they are acquired, they lose that independence. I've seen this happen many times in the financial data business.

So, the two questions this deal raises in my mind are:

1. What will the other Gnip data partners do, now that Twitter has acquired them? Beyond Twitter, Gnip partners include Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Instagram, Disqus, StockTwits, Estimize and more.

While many of these partners may be content to allow their data to flow through Twitter-owned Gnip, I can see some (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) looking to exit the service.

2. What will this mean for DataSift? Gnip competitor DataSift is the other leading provider of the Twitter firehose, along with Facebook, Tumblr, G+ and many others. Will Twitter still sell its firehose via DataSift? Will Gnip gain strategic advantages due to its new parent? And, will Google or Facebook to jump in with an offer to buy DataSift in response to Twitter's acquisition of Gnip?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Verge Offers a Compelling Vision for Online News

To much anticipation, consumer tech blog The Verge launched yesteday. The Verge is the newest site in the newly named Vox Media stable, joining SB Nation, and is led by Joshua Topolsky and much of his editorial team from Engadget along with publisher Marty Moe.

Engadget, of course, was the leading gadget blog on the web (and, at one time was the top overall blog in terms of traffic). Josh and much of the Engadget team left as AOL closely integrated the blog into the Huffington Post organization.

SB Nation had already made a name for itself through its dual focus on great editorial content and a heavy emphasis on its technology platform. In fact, their mantra, under CEO Jim Bankoff, was Always Be Coding, not the typical fare you’d expect at a media company. And they are bringing that technology focus, along with an emphasis on local, social, real-time news to the new site as well.

I think the Verge is well-positioned for success in this market. Others have commented on their fresh-looking UI. I agree, but design can be copied by others (and other sites, like Newser, have created similarly compelling visual designs). I see two critical factors that position The Verge for success:

Posts built on top of Structured data. Blogs are just blogs – a bunch of articles you can browse or search for. But The Verge starts out with a structured database of products and layers its articles on top of that. This provides a number of benefits:

• Great product pages. Take a look at the page for the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch. It’s got specs, reviews, photos, a video and an easy comparison engine.
• Better navigation – The Verge offers faceted filtering, so you can find stories on digital camers from Canon, Nikon and Panasonic, costing under $200 and with a review score of 6 or higher. The filtering is a bit quirky right now, but I expect they’ll resolve those bugs quickly.
• Easy new product development. It would be incredibly easy for The Verge to launch spin-off products - like sponsored mobile apps ranking the best products by category, or to offer up APIs to shopping sites. For every top 10 list you can imagine, they could easily pop out an app or microsite.
• Better SEO for the publisher – blog posts have a short shelf life, but detailed product pages can live for a long time.

The other key feature that The Verge has incorporated from SB Nation is the concept of Story Streams. Similar to the experimental Google Living Stories, Story Streams are designed to allow the reader to follow a story over time. A new reader can read the full story, while someone who’s been following the story can dip in for a quick update. Writers can update posts anywhere within a story, and those updates can be pushed out to readers. Unlike most editorial articles where additional data shows up at the end of the story, with Story Streams, you’ll typically see the newest information at the top, with links to prior updates.

Looking at the Story Stream for the Amazon Kindle Fire, there are 12 updates, beginning with rumors of the new Kindle in late September, and ending with a gallery of images from last week.

The consumer technology space is a crowded one, and The Verge will not have an easy time leapfrogging the existing players. But they've got all the ingredients to make it happen.

And for online media companies looking for ways to drive revenues and create new products, they could do a lot worse than looking at The Verge's use of editorial on top of structured data as a model.

 

Looking back at my 2010 Predictions

This is the time of year for predictions. Before I take a look at 2011, I have to first look back at my digital media predictions for 2010.

I offered 11 predictions for 2010. Let's take a look at them.

1. Apple (NASD: AAPL) will break its exclusivity with AT&T (NYSE: T), making the iPhone available on other networks (T-Mobile and Verizon). AT&T will get to test the loyalty of its new subscribers (and find many of them leaving their dropped calls for Verizon).

Result: Not yet. Looks like it will happen in Q1, 2011, but did not happen in 2010

2. Android (NASD: GOOG) shows itself to be a serious player in smartphones. This one will take some time, but I think that going into the 4th quarter of 2010, the Android platform will have established itself as a legitimate competitor to the iPhone. Android will also make a run at the enterprise market, providing a viable alternative to the Blackberry.

Result: in spades. Happened more rapidly than I’d expected.

3. Spotify will line up its partners and launch by mid-year and will mount a realistic challenge to the iTunes model of buying music. Apple will respond with a service-based offering, based on the LaLa platform it acquired.

Result: still waiting and looks like only limited inroads to the US in 2011

4. Online advertising spend will exceed analyst forecasts. As the market begins to recover, advertisers will first expand their budgets online where they can measure results. Pepsi’s decision to skip the Super Bowl and focus online could be the tipping point and we’ll see lots more growth to come.

Result: Mixed. Online advertising did surpass newspaper ads in 2010 and was up about 10% over 2009, but did not spike quite as I’d expected due to continued weakness in the overall economy.

5. The real-time web will continue to grow in importance, and will be more fully integrated with the existing web (especially on mobile devices). Hence...

Result: Absolutely

6. Real-time search results presentation will be overhauled. Google and Microsoft Bing (NASD: MSFT) rushed solutions out the door after inking deals with Twitter, but the results are mediocre, with a “last-in, first displayed” approach like web results circa 1998. Given time to do it right, I expect that Google will display results using measures of influence (based upon a mix of followers and engagement) to rank results, similar to their core page rank system.

Result: this is still a work in progress. Google has more closely integrated real-time results but have not developed a robust page rank system. Perhaps a 2011 acquisition of Klout.com will address this.

7. Consumers embrace web video as an alternative to cable: Roku’s partnerships with Netflix (NASD: NFLX) and Amazon (NASD: AMZN); and various devices launched on the Boxee platform will begin to drive mainstream acceptance of video downloading. This integration of television and the Internet will lead to new and innovative offerings.  Meanwhile, Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) finally declares bankruptcy, shuttering most of its stores.

Result: Bingo! Roku reaches 1m customers; Apple TV and Google TV launch, while Blockbuster goes Chapter 11

8. Apple will release its long-rumored Tablet. While it will not instantly cure cancer or bring world peace, it will provide functionality that the naysayers had not considered, much in the way that the iPhone was more than simply an iPod with a phone built-in. The Tablet will not be the savior for the print industry, but will accelerate consumption of television content and may also provide a boost to glossy magazines and other visual content.

Result: Did Apple release some sort of tablet this year? I can’t quite remember (and, yes, seems to have provided at least a short-term boost for magazine publishers).

9. Mobile gaming will continue to explode; the iPhone and Android will be considered viable alternatives to Nintendo DS and Sony PSP as handheld gaming devices.

Result: Two Words: Angry Birds

10. Internet Explorer market share drops below 50%. While Apple and Google fight over control of the rapidly growing mobile screen, Microsoft’s long domination of the desktop will be diminished as Firefox, Chrome and Safari eat into Internet Explorer’s share.

Result: October, 2010 Engadget headline: Internet Explorer falls below 50 percent global marketshare, Chrome usage triples

11.  The M&A market will be strong in 2010 as entrenched companies pick off weaker competitors at what they perceive to be bargain prices. Here are a few deals that I think we could see:

 * MSFT should buy RIM and give up on Windows Mobile; otherwise, they will cede the mobile space to Apple and Google. Can Steve Ballmer make a large deal happen without his ego screwing it up?
 * LiveNation should merge with MySpace. The recording industry is dead; live performances are the way that the big acts make their money. Meanwhile, MySpace is a great platform for awareness, but doesn’t fit with News Corp’s long-term strategy and is dying as a social media platform. News Corp should spin out MySpace and merge it with LiveNation as the dominant music platform.
 * Twitter will not be acquired; instead it will have an IPO. Ditto for Facebook.
 * Numerous content company CEOs will overpay for underperforming old media assets, convinced they can turn around these “gems”. They will fail.

Result: 2010 was a fairly strong M&A market, especially in the tech sector.  Microsoft did not buy RIM (much to the chagrin of many); MySpace remains a part of News Corp though management now seems open to a sale. Twitter and Facebook have remained independent.

Overall, I score these 7 correct, 2 incorrect and 2 partially correct. That's way above my typical batting average for these types of things. Will post my 2011 predictions soon.

 

Four Ways Twitter Can Improve "Who to Follow"

Last week, Twitter launched its new “who to follow” feature, a valuable tool in identifying those with similar interests to you. Who to follow works on the basis that if multiple people whom you already follow are following someone, they might be of interest to you as well.

Besides its grammatically incorrect form (I guess “whom to follow” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily), “who to follow” could use some basic improvements.

Here are some suggestions on how to improve Who to Follow:

• Exclude the” Twitterati”; if my profile suggests an interest in social media I probably already know @scobleizer @guykawasaki and @pierre. If I’m not following them at this point, it’s because I’ve chosen not to do so. I would suggest excluding any user that has more than 20k followers. At minimum, give me a way to filter them out of the list.

• Don’t ask me to follow a user who has never tweeted. Earlier this week, I saw a tweet from @bandhphoto that Twitter had suggested he follow @canon. Makes sense, as B&H is among the largest sellers of Canon photographic equipment. But then he noted that @canon, while having 3,278 followers, currently follows no one and has zero tweets.

            

• You have tons of data, Twitter (though I'm not sure what you’re archiving). Please mine it more effectively. A few ideas:

• If I've previously unfollowed someone, there's no need to show them to me.
• If someone's on a list I've created, I must know of their existence, so there's no need to suggest I follow them (that's what I currently do with the Twitterati mentioned above)

• Please display the basic metrics for each person - # followers, #following, # of tweets (or better yet, # of tweets per day)

There are also some more advanced features that would be very useful. For example, applying Who to Follow to a list would be a very useful way for me to add more people to each of my lists. Or, let me identify a group of my users and have it calculate new “Who to Follow” suggestions based on those users. There are some third party apps that do similar things – Twiangulate, for example; Twitter could add these types of features or more tightly integrate with Twiangulate and others to handle them.

Of course, Twitter needs to balance its efforts between the early adopter power users and those just coming to the app today. While Geoffrey Moore might argue it's time to ignore the power users and focus on the mainstream, the early adopters are still driving much of Twitter's adoption and these added features should keep those users in mind.

 

What Sidney Harman should do with Newsweek

It’s possible that 91-year old Sidney Harman acquired Newsweek simply as a means of minimizing estate taxes for his family. But assuming he truly wants to turn Newsweek into a viable product in the coming years, what might he do?

Here are three steps he might take to make Newsweek viable.

Leverage the brand

This won’t be easy. Newsweek has very strong brand recognition, but that brand name is an anachronism in the age of real-time news.Perhaps the best thing he can do here is come up with a clever tagline. Maybe something like:

There are 604,800 seconds in every week. Newsweek covers each and every one of them.

Kill the print edition

This one is the most obvious, but will also be very difficult for many inside Newsweek to embrace.
But there is no better way to change the mindset of a newsweekly than to eliminate the weekly editorial and print schedule.

It may seem harsh to kill the print version and the many jobs that will go with it, but if he wants to save the brand, he will need to move swiftly in that direction.

Reconstitute themselves as the curator of choice for politics & policy

Rather than trying to author content on a vast number of topics, what if they instead set out to become the curator of choice for political and policy content? Don't try to comment on the news - instead, provide insights on key policy issues, both domestic and international.

Retain a few key editors, each of whom will be expected to write 1-2 blog posts each day. Then, using a combination of technology and lower-cost curators, sift through content from other media and blog sites, identifying relevant content and classifying it by topic. The end result will be a series of high quality pages on compelling topics, led by a modest amount of proprietary blog content surrounded by carefully curated web content. Some topics may be evergreen, while others may be cyclical (elections) or event-driven (e.g. WikiLeaks). The content should be multimedia in nature and should aim to provoke and promote discussion.

I would trash the existing Newsweek.com site and come up with a dual strategy for website and mobile.  They should take a look at what Flipboard and Pulse have done on the iPad for inspiration. Everything should be based on easily browsing and sharing content.

That’s what I would do with Newsweek. What would you do?

 

What a Long, Strange Marketing Trip It’s Been

It’s no surprise that a key to innovation is rejecting conventional wisdom. And innovation thrives in many businesses, particularly those in the technology space. But whether in silicon valley or silicon alley, marketing is still largely done in the same way it has for decades. Companies hire PR firms who push out press releases, while marketers post product info to web sites and create factsheets for their sales staff.

Marketers may dabble with new approaches, sticking a toe into the social media space by creating a Facebook fan page or setting up an official Twitter account, but even then most apply old approaches to new platforms. Knowledge is shared through boring white papers which sit behind a registration wall while Twitter accounts push out links to bland press releases or staid marketing messages.

 When it comes to breaking the rules of marketing and rejecting conventional wisdom, David Meerman Scott (literally) has written the book. And now, he’s joined together with HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan to author a new book, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead.

It’s not the first time that David has written about the Grateful Dead. Readers of his book World Wide Rave may recall a discussion framed by asking whether you wanted to be like Led Zeppelin, whose historic reunion show at the O2 arena was not made available in video format (and where YouTube was forced to remove clips posted by fans), or like the Grateful Dead who, long before the days of Facebook and social media, encouraged concert attendees to record their shows, even setting up special sections where they could plug in to the soundboard to get better quality recordings.

As the book pointed out:

If you want to remain relevant in an always-on, fan-centric, YouTube world, you need to embrace—not restrict—your most important supporters. You need to believe in the power of a World Wide Rave to sell your products and services.

In this new book, David and Brian take a look back at how the Dead worked to develop and nurture an active community of fans, then show how to apply many of those same techniques to today’s marketing platforms. For example:

Rethink traditional industry assumptions – Rather than focus on record albums as a primary revenue source (with touring to support album sales), the Dead created a business model focused on touring.

 (blogger note: if you’ve read what Fred Wilson and others have written suggesting media companies look to monetize the audience, not the content, this is a great example)

Bypass accepted channels and go direct – The Grateful Dead created a mailing list in the early 1970s where they announced tours to fans first. Later,they established their own ticketing office, providing the most loyal fans with the best seats in the house.

The foreword to the book is written by one of the biggest (literally and figuratively) Deadheads, former UCLA and NBA great Bill Walton. As he so eloquently describes it:

Their passion, creative spirit, imaginative soul, and industrious commitment to promote truth, fairness, justice, and the Grateful Dead way led them through the evolutionary transition where they went from playing for silver to playing for life. This book tells you how to make that transition for your own career.

David Scott’s books are always practical, insightful and a fun read. Fans of his prior books won’t be disappointed here. Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead may be his finest book to-date.

 

To go mainstream, Foursquare needs to become more like Groupon

Foursquare has done a good job of attracting the early adopters – hypersocial mobile data users. If you’re young, single and living in an urban area (or a college town), the value proposition is huge.

The next stage of adoption (and monetization) is likely to be a tougher hurdle. There are two obvious directions for Foursquare expansion:  digital-savvy business users and shoppers.

While shoppers are the larger (and more attractive) demographic, let’s start with the digital-savvy business users. By this, I’m referring to those who are probably active on Twitter, but are beyond their bar-hopping days. These users (and I fall into this category), get the value of social media, yet struggle to find real value in Foursquare.  I know that I use Foursquare much more heavily when I travel than when I am in the office. Check-ins at clients are typically not appropriate and a daily check-in at Starbucks and the office just isn’t that exciting.

The more attractive market is the local shopping market; I’m using shopping in the broad sense – in addition to goods, it could be food, drink and other services. This is also the place where Foursquare expects to generate its revenues – through promotional marketing offers. Yet, so far, the promotional offers have been somewhat lame.

The dominant offer, at least for those in major cities, comes from Starbucks.  I’ve got five Starbucks within a stone’s throw of my office, so any check-ins in this area will likely yield the yellow “special nearby” sign with an offer from Starbucks. Yet that offer is sort of pathetic: Become Mayor of Starbucks and get $1 off on a drink. But that’s a pretty limited deal.  It took @michaelwolf 76 visits to become Mayor of his local Starbucks.  

Last week, when I was in London, it only took me about a half-dozen check-ins at the Starbucks on Old Broad to become Mayor, but that wouldn’t happen in New York or San Francisco. And what you often find is that the Mayor of a given Starbucks happens to be one of the baristas.

Checking in over and over in hopes that you, like Michael Wolf, may get $1 off on a frappucino, after dropping $200 just isn’t likely to get the mainstream user to adopt Foursquare.

 

Compare those offers to what you see on Groupon. The typical Groupon offer is 50% off or more. Recent deals I’ve received were for 67% off from Wine Insiders, 50% off skating at Chelsea Piers and 53% off at the NY Hall of Science. Those offers are why Groupon is experiencing huge growth. A chance to be the one person that day who qualifies for a buck off a frappucino just won’t motivate users.

Perhaps enabling rewards for multiple check-ins (e.g. everyone who checks in 5 times this week gets a half-priced coffee) would probably get many more people interested. There are complications, of course (you don’t have to actually buy anything or even step foot inside a Starbucks to check-in), but those are things that Foursquare and its marketing partners will have to figure out.

There are many potential innovative offers that can leverage location-based services. Content providers could provide access to premium content to users checking in at a conference; wine brands could offer special deals on wine pairings at a restaurant. I can think of dozens of compelling offers that would make users  more likely to check-in.

 

I think it’s inevitable that checking-in with location-based services will become mainstream in a few years. But if Foursquare wants to be the leader in this space, it needs to provide greater value to mainstream users.

Three Obvious Features That Twitter Should Add NOW

It’s good to see that Twitter is has introduced the new “You Both Follow” feature, which lets you look at a Twitter user and see whom you follow in common. My first reaction was “what took so long?” After all, one of the key inputs to any social system (online or off) is identifying who you have in common with other participants.  Similar features have been available in other social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn for quite a while.

Since You Both Follow has only been rolled out to 10% of the user base, here's a screen shot of it (courtesy Mashable):

While they’re at it, here are a few similarly obvious features that Twitter should add right away:

You’re Both Followed By: this is the flipside of You Both Follow. Who are the people who follow both you and the Twitter user you’re viewing. This is probably just as important as You Both Follow; when assessing the credibility of another user, seeing that they are followed by people you respect makes you more likely to follow them as well.

Are they following me? Today, when I look at a user on Twitter, I can easily see whether I am already following the user. But, there’s no indication of whether they are following me. How many times have you tried to DM someone, only to see that they are not following you? A simple indicator “@graubart is following you” would make life a lot easier.

The ability to mine the social graph is a huge opportunity and there's no reason Twitter shouldn't expose these simple queries.  Yes, there are ways to get at this info through third party sites, but it should be bundled right into the product.

And, while they're at it, the third feature Twitter should add is the temporary mute feature. When users are at a conference and are hyper-tweeting, or even getting a bit overenthusiastic during a sporting event (sorry to those not interested in the #StanleyCup), there should be a way to mute them. There are a few 3rd party tools that do this such as TweepSnooze or my favorite, Muuter (which supports user and/or keyword muting), but this should be part of the basic Twitter toolkit.

In addition to making these enhancements through the Twitter UI, these features should also be accessible through their API so that third party clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic can implement them as well.