Feedster is currently beta testing a new offering that allows you to do a job search against RSS feeds of job listings syndicated directly from employers.
Wow!
$500MM deep in CareerBuilder, the newspaper industry now has yet another form of competition for one of its core revenue streams; employment classifieds.
Sure, Feedster's beta implementation is a shell of what you get at the big job sites (due mostly, I suspect, to the unstructured data it's working with), but that's fairly easily corrected... anyone who can generate an RSS feed can either add internal (i.e., text) formatting hints to help Feedster... or better yet, develop a schema/DTD that structures key search parameters (location, salary range, industry, etc).
Robert Scoble writes about his upcoming session at BloggerCon III (BC3) on Information Overload. (I'm deeeep on the wait list for BC3, which is regretable, as it looks excellent.)
At one point, Scoble states:
::Someone asked me the other day "why don't you just build a few search queries and delete the rest of your feeds?" I thought about it, but I enjoy the random weird stuff that people blog about. Search queries will only bring back the equivilent of purified sugar. Sweet, yes, but not that nutritious.
It's why I keep the link blog. It helps me think about everyone of the approximately 3000 items that cross my Tablet PC's screen every evening. "Is this something my readers need to know or would like to know?" I ask myself.::
Much like the clipping services born in the '80s, the current state of services like PubSub (which I use and value) are inherently flawed if what you desire is to "find things you're interested in", vs "find specific things I direct you to notify me about".
That's an important difference, and one that should be solvable. Look at the notion (if not the current implementation) of SonicBreakdown, which I blogged earlier tonight. Basically, it scans your music collection, and compiles related personalized news and information feeds for you from 80 sources.
Now take that up a notch. What if, in addition to telling PubSub his specific keywords, Robert could point it to his Link Blog (which is essentially a collection of his broader interests), and have it return conceptual clusters of posts/feeds, ala Clutsy? Then, turn it up yet another notch by giving Robert an interface to score the results, providing the engine with yet more context on what Robert is really after.
The holy grail sits between fixed result myopia and irrelevant deluge. The tools & tech are out there, someone just needs to string them together.
"All Consuming is a website that visits recently updated weblogs every hour, checking them for links to books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Sense, and other book sites. Every book on this site has a list of all the weblogs that have mentioned it, and every weblog that has mentioned books in the past also has a page here listing which books it has mentioned. If you have a weblog, search for it here to see if we've picked anything up from it yet."
Very cool. Can't imagine why they're not doing the same for Songs/CDs and other uniquely identifiable products.
I've written recently on some of the internal debate going on inside the news(paper) industry around Google and other news aggregators (good for context):
But that's not my argument here. What is? The real secret behind how Google makes money on Google News.
It's called AdSense; I'm sure you've heard of it.
But isn't that completely to the contrary of what Mr. Penenberg wrote? Yes, and that's the point.
Penenberg wrote that Google probably can't run advertising on its site without risking lawsuits from news publishers, and that may or may not be true.
But Google cleverly gets around this by signing up publishers (of all shapes and sizes) to run AdSense.
So guess what? You, the user, go to Google News. You click on a headline and end up at a newspaper, broadcast or blog site that, gasp, runs AdSense. You click an ad: Google gets its piece, and the publisher gets his.
What's more, Google gets branding on the publisher's site (many of whom also feature Google search), which if clicked, generally recycles traffic back to Google.
ClickZ's Kevin Newcomb covers FindWhat's launch of its version of Google's AdSense and Overture's Content Match offerings, pointing out the key difference:
- FindWhat takes a category approach vs. a contextual approach
An interesting approach on FindWhat's part... While this may be great from a publisher's perspective, allowing them to pick categories that yield high CPC's, but are inconsistent with what their web visitors are looking at, is not so great from an advertiser's perspective. The whole point behind contextual advertising, like search advertising, is to closely match the intent/interest of the user with that of the advertiser.
Would a publisher choose a category that doesn't match his content in order to get better CPCs? Sure, provided they were of sufficiently general interest to generate clicks. But more importantly, he doesn't have a choice; while his content is dynamic, the API call he uses to invoke FindWhat's advertising on his page template will most likely be static... not a great receipe for advertisers.
Net-net? FindWhat is filling a gaping product hole with the wrong tool for the job. While contextual offerings are still fairly immature, they represent the right approach for content publishers. I expect FindWhat will reveal its own contextual offering when it builds or acquires the technology it lacks to make a serious run at the first tier players.
Full disclosure: another tip of the hat to a friend chasing his dream.
I caught up with another close friend recently, Ando Sonenblick.
Ando is a 2D animation guru (and stellar Mac engineer in general), best known as one of the key figures behind Apple's QuickTime, After Hours Datebook PIM product (bought by Aldus, Consumer Division), Now Utilities, and Berkeley Systems You Don't Know Jack.
I got to play with his latest creation, Sprite Studio, last night. Sprite Studio is a multimedia authoring tool that allows you to (fairly easily) create extremely complex 2D animations, in the form of (cross platform) applications, QuickTime movies and web graphics.
I say fairly easily because it's an early beta; the things you'd probably want to really understand and maximize your experience (documentation, quick start guide, etc) aren't done yet. But it does indeed look promising.
While playback is cross platform, authoring is currently Mac only. If you're one of the multitude of Mac-developer-thought-leader-types that permeate the blogosphere, I encourage you to give his new toy a try and comment with your replies. Worst case, you'll help a great guy get it right; best case, you'll get a free, early look at a great new tool. Not a bad deal at all!
Shameless plugs are okay if they're billed as such, right? Right.
Well, with that in mind, I'm happy to report that one of my dearest friends (of ~14 yrs) has just launched his first business: selling custom poker tables and accessories.
Does he have a retail store? Of course not. He's gone all web.
The site needs work (just went live yesterday after a few hours work), with some obvious changes needed: all the text is actually graphics, which means it's not search engine friendly; typos abound; the trust factor isn't addressed.
But guess what? He has an effective sales channel with an integrated shopping cart courtesy of Paypal. Total cost so far? Less than $100.00.
Not necessarily news to people reading this... but a nice reminder of the power that online represents, and just how readily available it is to make your dreams come true.
Yesterday, I wrote a quick piece entitled .Mac glitches and futures where I pointed out a few key things about Apple's .Mac service:
1. Very little PR/Marketing
2. Great margins (esp compared to the rest of Apple's business)
3. Far behind competitive offerings in terms of storage
4. Far ahead of competitive offerings in terms of integration with media management and production tools
Today, #3 changed in an important way. Instead of your $99/yr buying you a host of nicely integrated services and 115MB of storage, it now buys you those same great services and 250MB. Still not the 1GB you get for free with Gmail, but a step in the right direction.
But speaking of Gmail... let's not forget that Google recently bought Picassa, giving Google the equivalent of iPhoto. There are plenty of rumors about Google building a browser, but as I pointed out, I believe their ambition lies closer to an information mgmt & communication "works" program... which could be (when fully realized) Apple's iLife suite crossed w/ browser/email/rss reader.
You don't often hear about .Mac (aside from the rare outage or upgrade), Apple's online services offering/division.
And yet, the services offer an interesting value proposition, especially for Mac owners. .Mac is a bundle of online services, nicely (neatly?) integrated with Apple's various iNAME_HERE applications (iCal, iTunes, iMovie, etc), a significant differentiator from similar portal offerings from the usual suspects (Yahoo, MSN et al).
And yet, there are other important differentiators: a) Apple charges (and handsomely at that, with retail at $99/yr generally discounted to $69), and b) the service now trails significantly behind the 1GB+ offerings for Gmail et al.
While a services business like .Mac clearly has potential for Apple (great margins, user locking/turnkey experience), it also requires a commitment to low cost leadership, in order to offer storage and functionality with a "compelling value proposition" for users.
Apple also seems to lack the typical portal anchor of Search. What is Apple doing for web search? Is it an area they should play in, perhaps through partnership (hello A9)?
Susan Mernit points to this press release from Somacon, announcing their new service, which allows Yahoo! Store participants to automatically flow their product feed into Google's Froogle service.
Dan Gillmor sets the stage with the first of three planned Sunday articles on politics and the effects on technology and the tech economy. Dan takes a fairly neutral perspective, thus I'm forwarding it on (this blog isn't intended to be my pulpuit on politics, and I'm sure you all appreciate that).
My (hopefully equally neutral) reply to his article:
Dan, nice article, as usual.
One sentence really jumped out at me:
"Americans may be in for a generation of lowered expectations, and we need huge investments in education, research and 21st century infrastructure to give ourselves a chance."
Agreed, 100%. The problem, of course, is that politicians are satisfied by only one thing: power (or more power). And so, most of them have a very short-term perspective, doing and saying those things that will get them re-elected or elected into a higher office (Kerry's "say anything" flip flopping is a perfect example of this).
Second-term presidents (from either party) are a different beast. Something clicks; they realize this is the end of their show. They get anxious about their "legacy". They want to "do something" that will actually matter; that history will remember them for.
I don't know what that would be for Bush (and perhaps that's a huge indictment in and of itself). But I'd love for him (heck, for any of these folks) to focus on doing the things that will matter for generations to come. And as you called out, education, R&D and infrastructure, while not sexy, are the very things that will allow this country to continue to lead for generations to come... or not.
Let us hope that whoever wins in November has a "second term mentality" for his entire time in office.
There was a lot of back and forth this week on AOL's new RSA double authentication login announcement. Frankly, I was quite surprised to see some people criticizing AOL for offering this service, and claiming that it was unnecessary.
While I hate to admit it (especially on my blog of all places), I don't use a separate password on every site I'm a member of (and I bet you don't either)... if I did, I'd have to keep a list somewhere, and that would defeat the purpose of a login.
But having an RSA card to use in conjunction with my half dozen or so passwords... now that would be nice; a solid level of security without obnoxious inconvenience.
And while it's great to see AOL offering it, I'd rather see Bank of America, Fidelity and other Financial Services Co's leading this charge.
Susan Mernit has a nice wrap-up (with 14 links) on all of the rumor mongering going on about Google fielding a browser, or as Scoble hints, perhaps something even bigger...
Considering everything Google offers after 6 years (save Search) is still beta, you have to wonder what's going on over at Google. Is allowing their developers to spend 25% of their time on whatever they want producing results... or simply slipping ship dates? Are they in a vicious analysis paralysis cycle, continually redoing their strategy, instead of executing on a vision and refining it based on market and competitive response?
I honestly can't tell. Surely they have the talent. And now they have the money. But beyond that, it's a bit mystifying what exactly those thousands of employees are up to, and if they have the necessary focus to ship software (beyond a toolbar) that could be used on 100MM's of PCs with varying configurations.
Furthermore, while I (and you) understand the value of moving further upstream in the value chain (and claiming precious desktop real estate and user mindshare), is it that significant an advantage that it justifies the costs of developing and supporting software on all of the necessary platforms, OS versions, languages, etc? And if it is, is a browser the best bet? Does it really make sense to enter into a market share war for a free piece of software with commoditized functionality (even on the back of Mozilla)?
I suspect that Scoble has the right perspective here; if in fact Google is going to go the software route, they are going to do it in a way that leapfrogs a "mere" browser... perhaps incorporating blog authoring, rss reading, picture sharing (Picasa), email reading/writing (gmail), and of course web/local/product/hard-drive search... an information/communication "Works" program, if you will. Let's see what happens...
Yahoo Search Blog runs a post titled May The Buzz Be With You, highlighting some interesting trends in movie searches.
Taken at its face, it points to pop culture tendencies in consumers, which is certainly interesting in and of itself.
At a more abstract level, it screams "Look at the great marketing data we have!" What do I mean by that?
Back in 1999 I helped start a web based gift registry company (WishClick.com); we built it using a "network" model, where from a central registry, you could add products from all of your favorite online retailers (or at least the 30 we partnered with).
The connection? In addition to collecting a bounty on every gift purchased for you, we also knew your interests across product categories, and tendencies of people buying on your behalf. For a partner like The Sharper Image, we could tell them (in aggregate), the types of books, clothing, cooking gear, etc that their customers were putting on their gift registries, providing them with a much richer perspective of their customer base.
The same is true for Yahoo... and in some ways, in a more significant way than for Google; Yahoo, after all, knows much more about you (at this point) if you've registered with them...
Battelle notes that a search on a Google SVP's name turns up an Adwords ad for someone selling a private Caribbean island. (The ad has since disappeared, likely after someone's account was depleted or the exec in question caught wind...)
Which begs the questions: If GEICO (and others) can sue Google for trademark infringement, can individuals do the same?
So what exactly is Google's policy on accepting ads against a person's name? Can you imagine your ex-wife running an Adwords ad against your name claiming that you're a lazy, non-alimony paying loser?
Your future employers would be grateful to know after all...
Deeje Cooley points to a press release from 21 Publish announcing that they are releasing an OEM service that allows licensees to create private communities of interconnected blogs.
While the details are a bit sparse (and I've yet had a chance to play with it -- having loads of fun quasi learning CSS and PHP this weekend...), this could be a very powerful concept for businesses, potentially letting companies like Intel, Cisco et al manifest their partner ecosystems in blogs, RSS feeds, etc.
Battelle riffs on an article in the WSJ about Comcast's upcoming VOD offering:
"I've long fantasized about having a web-like search interface to video (who wouldn't want to type "The Office" Season 2 into a Google video search, and get all the episodes listed, ready for download or drizzle?). But a Comcast version sounds, well, like a Comcast version. If they decide that those 7 million plus broadband users must play by Comcast's rules when it comes to video, well, implosion ho!"
My reply for John:
Why do you say "implosion, ho"?
Sure, I'd love to have all the necessary gear to do VOD via the Internet... but all the typical consumer is going to ask for near term is the ability to go to Comcast.com, pick what they want to see, and have it play on their TV within ~5 minutes.
Sure, ideally, they could do that from /anyone's/ video library, be it the big media houses or their cousin in Europe... but it's 2004, and most American consumers are still figuring out that they can get DVDs in the mail next day, and think that's aces compared to running out in the cold to BlockBuster...
Like you, I'm frustrated by not having immediate access to a realistic and easily foreseeable future... but the masses move much more slowly...
Just a quick heads up that posts will be a bit lighter, as I'm focusing most of my efforts on getting a new service up and running... something I hope all of you will value.
I'm hoping to catch up a bit this weekend on all of the happenings from this week... so don't give up the ghost too soon!
Peter Cooper, the developer behind RSS Digest, today's most popular addition to the 'blogosphere', was kind enough to reply to an email I fired off to him (all of an hour ago), and... GREAT NEWS... he's got Atom support working (with the obligatory 'beta' label).
It's people like Peter that make this medium what it is. Thanks Peter, for making the web experience I can offer my visitors that much better.
I just found out that Pamela Parker, one of my favorite ClickZ writers (how does one choose between Pamela and Danny Sullivan?!) has her own blog named The River.
Catching up on her previous posts, it seems that her blog posts are as polished and insightful as the articles she writes for pay at ClickZ, with a bit more personality (a good thing indeed). Subscribed!
Search Engine Watch Blog had a post on RSS Digest, service that allows you to insert nicely formatted headlines from a blog feed into ANY HTML page... without writing a line of code! (SEW Blog mentions that there are actually a handful of these solutions out there.)
Unfortunately, RSS Digest doesn't support Atom yet (but they say it's on the way)... of course, that too is solvable; just pop my atom feed into FeedBurner, pass the FeedBurner RSS 2.0 feed to RSS Digest, and voila, problem solved. (It is a bit pokey, but I'm sure I can fix that with some settings.)
I'm working on the third design of my site & blog and plan to incorporate my blog headlines on my new home page... I'll post when it's all up and running...
Beyond my needs, the broader implications are pretty interesting... with a little effort, I can essentially create the equivalent of the My Yahoo Beta RSS Reader mentioned earlier this week by Hacking Netflix...
CNET's News.com reports that Warner Brothers has been gracious enough to allow Netflix to test VOD with would-be-partner Tivo. I've previously written about the Netflix/Tivo combo (Netflix can do better), including a likely end game scenario (VOD is a commodity, leaving Netflix without a clear competitive advantage).
But hey, at least they're a step ahead of Blockbuster, right?
In possibly related news (let's see if we can't lazyweb a rumor here...), TechDirt writes that Verizon is launching their "3G EV-DO" service (great naming job guys), a broadband wireless service.
"As Manager of Video Content Strategy & Acquisition you will be responsible for the following responsibilities: Assist in the development, execution and implementation of the Video on Demand and pay-per-view content strategy. Identify and evaluate VOD and PPV content opportunities"
Hmm... so can we add Wireless Companies to Netflix's list of competitors (which already includes Cable Cos, Satellite Cos, Software Cos, and video rental industry competitors)? Ugh!
TechDirt reports on a piece by John C. Dvorak claiming that the reason why newspapers force registration is so that they can spam you...
I can only speak from my experience at Knight Ridder Digital, so perhaps the practices are different at the other big two chains (Gannett and Tribune) or at 2nd and 3rd tier publishers... but John's clearly off a bit.
Yes, certainly, the online divisions of the major newspaper chains have been charged with becoming profitable businesses. And yes, many of them require registration so that, like everyone else who requires registration, they can profile you (for better ad targeting) and email marketing. The latter generates significantly better CPMs (vs. what they can charge for IAB placed ads), but, at least at KRD, is only done:
- In compliance with CAN-SPAM
- Purely opt-in, and only to categories you specify
- With the email coming from KRD; your address is never given to the actual advertiser
Folks, the alternatives (for now) are online newspaper subscriptions, micropayments, or your willingness to pay them rediculous prices for classified ads (vs. free services like Craigslist).
Personally, I'd rather delete the ads (or create an Outlook rule to do it for me) than pay for the content.
A few weeks ago, Susan Mernit, a fellow entreprenuer and consultant whom I hold in high regard (and for full disclosure, who I'm building a personal friendship with), was named a Sr. Fellow at The Media Center, a non-profit "think tank".
According to their PR boiler, The Media Center is...
"The Media Center is a nonprofit think tank committed to building a better-informed society in a connected world. The Media Center helps individuals and organizations worldwide acquire intelligence and apply insight into the future role and use of media and enabling technology..."
Given Susan's involvement (along with JD Lasica's, who my friend Deeje Cooley says good things about) and their stated mission, it seems like an organization worth supporting.
Search Engine Lowdown reports that Ask Jeeves is now delivering Local News thanks to a relationship with Topix.net.
Two thoughts here:
1. Topix has a substantially larger relationship to announce, most likely on the scale of MSN's relationship with Moreover to power MSNBot (which, while public, apparently isn't widely known).
2. At this point, pretty much anyone who's anyone has a destination news aggregation site... except for the newspapers themselves! Most of them are still trying to figure out what if anything they should do with RSS. Of course, with aggregated news surpassing big brand destination sites, one would expect that to change soon... syndicates, like Knight Ridder run RealCities already have the relationships; why not expose the content in a way that consumers clearly want?
Deeje Cooley and I had dinner tonight to catch up on life, shared interests, and of course all things technology.
Amongst a variety of trends spotted, product futures foreseen and ideas generated, one question in particular stands out in my mind...
In an election where funds have been raised via blogs (Dean), messages have been shared via blogs (Kerry, Bush and their daughters), and false allegations crushed due to blogs (CBSGate)... why isn't the President's Weekly Radio Address available via RSS and who will be the first President to change that?
Perhaps more broadly, who will be the first President to use blogs to communicate views, visions and plans (vs. campaign rhetoric) with U.S. citizens?
Pamela Parker gets the scoop the other big outlets missed in announcing AOL's new Shopping Search offering. In addition to providing the online comparison shopping services that everyone has already reported, AOL will also return local offline "steals and deals" from local businesses (and local points of presence for regional and national chains) in its shopping search results. The offline deals come from digitized and parsed zoned editions of the circulars that appear in the newspaper
I hinted at this before, but thought it wiser to let someone else break it given my involvement in the deal and relationships with both players.
This is a significant development; it is the first comparison shopping engine that marries both online and offline channels, satisfying consumer needs for the great prices and instant gratification, and driving traffic for physical stores.
Further, as I wrote when we did the CrossMedia (CMS) deal, while this isn't "the next Google", it is a major move for the papers... First, that they are involved in search at all (remember, we're talking about companies with a very different mindset), and second that they are licensing local shopping content to major players like AOL (and billing on a performance basis).
Hats off to the teams at AOL, CMS, Knight Ridder, Gannett and Tribune for a smart deal. Now comes the real challenge; can you (the papers) drive traffic to your own ShopLocal.com site, and can you build off this strategy with other smart offerings and acquisitions? Time will tell...
We're back up and running after power was restored to our ISP following the conclusion of the fires that effected downtown Baltimore this morning. Email was cached, so no need to resend. Thanks!
Tony, I agree, but what happens if you swtich search provider, how long till the intelligence is acquired again? or what if your online apps are provided by numerous providers. who is going to collate the inteligence? I could not envisage using the same company for the next 3yrs let alone 30.
The key question however is are you comfortable with a organisation knowing that much information about you. I'll leave the definition of "organisation" to your own imagination.
And here's my reply:
ID:entity - As is typical of your comments here on John's blog, your reply is especially insightful, as it points out a couple of the bigger problems we're seeing in several aspects of "digital life".
Let me use "social networking" as an example. I co-founded a company named WishClick "back in the day" and built a social networking component into it, based on sixdegrees.com; WishClick was a networked gift registry (acting as both a destination site and ASP for online retailers), and as a registry is viral and personal by nature, it seemed like a great fit.
Well, things didn't exactly go our way, but as you well know, the last few years have seen all sorts of social apps (Friendster, LinkedIn, et al). One of the popular memes (and I think John's commented on this) is: Is this a feature or a company? Why? Well, at least in part, because IMHO, social networking should be a platform, with a variety of applications (dating, business networking, etc) built on top of it.
So issue one: should the knowledge that allows for search refinement be siloed (which providers would love from a "stickiness" perspective), or should it be platform that disparate apps feed and pull from? (My vote is for the latter.)
Issue two? You nailed that too. Privacy. Exactly how much should any one organization know about me, or, to the other side of issue one, how can I control which organizations have access to my central profile/repository?
What I do know is that consumers are still too uncomfortable (and rightly so) to buy into this in mass; MSFT Passport/Hailstorm's utter failure is a great example of the disaster that can occur when you fail consumers on both issues 1 & 2 (and fail to secure the trust of partners for your platform play).
Conceptually though... I do think that search algos must be fed with more context on the searcher if they are to approach John's "perfect search" world; more processing on the data (concept clustering, etc) is valuable, but ultimately insufficient.
I've got a 'slew' of what I consider to be timely, accurate and insightful blogs and traditional media outlets for Search, RSS, consumer electronics and general technology blogs, but am still searching for e-commerce and social software/media sources.
I came across Roland Tanglao's Payment Views this morning, which looks like a keeper. But without offending Roland, I'd love to have more than one source (isn't that what good journalism is all about)?
So, if you're an ecommerce blogger or author, I invite you to please post a comment (and feel free to link/deep link to your blog and any posts/articles in the last 30 days that you think are particularly noteworthy). Thanks!
Jeremy's thoughts on search as a "skill" are interesting. His conclusion, based on his considerable knowledge, is that search shouldn't have to be a 'skill'; it should just work.
This is an interesting observation, especially in light of a recent post on Yahoo!'s Search blog regarding the daughter of a Yahoo employee using search to find her first car. I commented on that here, essentially saying that search is a skill that all youngsters (heck, everyone) will need to have in the future.
So where does that leave things? Without undo harshness to Jeremy, I think there are many skills which needn't be: typing should be replaced by voice entry (or a neural link); auto mechanics should be unnecessary (cars shouldn't need maintenance, save for catastrophic accidents, etc)... almost anything that we have to do today due to a lack of the 'ideal' or 'perfect' solution should be unnecessary.
But I think Jeremy's meta point is more interesting; search should use the "active listening" skills that one is taught in an Org Behavior class... my search engine should be in tune with me, continually helping me get closer to my "intent" by looking at my search stream both in real time and historically, leveraging any other knowledge (my blog topics, email, et al) that I care to feed it with, and most importantly, asking me clarifying questions (just like "active listening").
That day is coming, with the following already live:
- A9 is leveraging search history in a significant way
- Teoma (Ask Jeeves) & AllTheWeb (Yahoo) present alternatives
- Eurekster is using social networking filtering
- Switchboard is making heavy use of synonym clarification (e.g., searching for "leaky faucet" gets you a list of plumbers)
Having spent some time with Gary Flake & Daniel Fain (Yahoo/Overture R&D labs), I'm confident that Yahoo, Google and MSFT are thinking in this general direction. Most of this just seems inevitable as the next phase of search, moving us one step closer to Battelle's perfect search.
Scoble has an excellent write-up on how to get your blog "discovered" by potential readers, fellow bloggers, et al.
I've already been doing most everything that he recommends, save actually clicking through on my links to other people's blogs (to trigger their referrer log). Here I thought I was the only one curious enough to read through my referrer log to see where my traffic was coming from.
The other clear takeaway is originality. Link blogs (where people simply post links to things they found interesting without adding significant commentary of their own) are valuable... but they're less likely to get you discovered.
This is one to ponder; weighing the value of originality (and perhaps, being intentionally provocative vs. "purely objective").
Every time I've tried to use California's state government site to find information on registering to vote (primaries, nationals, etc), I've ended up frustrated. Missing files, broken links, you name it.
And so, it falls to Rock the Vote to provide a simple way to fill out a voter registration form -- which it then sends you as a PDF -- that you can then drop in the mail.
There are 45 days to election day, and at least in California, you need to register 15 days in advance... leaving you with a paltry 30 days to get it done. So get to it!
Can your blog platform do this (w/o custom code)? Mine can't...
I recently sent the following note to Blogger support:
I have a blog that I currently publish to my domain (www.buzzhit.com) via Blogger. The main page is pushed as a child page of my domain (i.e., www.buzzhit.com/buzzblog.html).
What I'd like to do is have a short list of "recent posts" show up on my **home page** (www.buzzhit.com/index.html), so that new visitors to my site can see my most recent posts as they learn about me and my company, before clicking through to my blog.
Obviously, I'd like to do this in some automated fashion, vs. manually
updating my site home page (../index.html).
If this can be done (even if only via the Atom API), I'd appreciate any direction on making it happen. If not, please consider this a Wish/Suggestion.
Contrary to the helpful reply I received yesterday, I got the following reply today:
Thanks for writing in. Currently, Blogger Support does not support questions regarding customized template code or CSS/HTML in general. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Huh?! Perhaps I got lucky and got an unusally helpful rep yesterday. Or perhaps I got unlucky and got a rep that was ready to head home after a long week today (this rep didn't insert his/her name).
Either way, being able to show my recent blog posts without having to write server side code on my end seems like a reasonable customer request/use case. Perhaps I need to reconsider my reply to Roland Tanglao and crew on current industry product management practices...
If you've got ideas on how to make this happen on Blogger; I'm all ears. Open to other platforms/tools as well. Thanks!
I attended The Kelsey Group's DD:ILM (Drilling Down: Interactive Local Media) conference in Santa Clara, CA during my time with KRD, and was impressed with the caliber of the discussions (and therefore, the attendees). The show was sold out (and then some), and the buzz meter was high.
Regardless of the buzz, there was substance to be had. I walked away with a couple of key insights into the minds of SME's with regards to local search (some confirmation of my own thinking and more importantly, some new learning). In particular:
1) PPC should stand for Pay Per Call, not Pay Per Click for the next few years in Local. For many local advertisers, web transactions aren't applicable (ask your tailor) and web leads aren't believable; they want the phone to ring. No surprise then, to see a company like FindWhat launching a Pay-Per-Call offering. (The real surprise, in my book, is that none of the majors have acquired Ingenio.)
Pay Per Call will grow in 2005. Period.
2) Just like Pay Per Call provider Ingenio, online coupon companies, such as technology provider Coupons, Inc. and newspaper sweetheart CustomCoupon, stand to benefit by providing a bridge between online and offline, and driving people into local businesses. Evidence? Check out my blurb on IAC finding the religion, marrying CitySearch and Entertainment Publications.
If online coupons are ever going to happen, it'll be in large thanks to Local Search / Directory.
3) What local businesses who are using SEM local about the medium is its ability to allow them to fully express their businesses, at a price that provides substantially more value than Yellow Pages. An example: a local photographer put up his portfolio, references, schedule, etc. Even if the Yellow Pages could accomodate that much information (they can't), he'd be looking at $10s to $100s of thousands of dollars! Online, he pays a few bucks a month to host.
The needs of local businesses have changed, and the online medium (especially coupled with Pay Per Call, Online [Secure] Coupons and plentiful real estate) will, in time, serve them as aptly as it serves Amazon today.
And so, I was thrilled (and honored) to get an email from The Kelsey Group, inviting me to attend this year's conference in Jersey City on a press pass. As with the last event, the speakers look great, and the agenda looks solid.
This year, I'm hoping to meet a bunch of new folks, including:
Marc Barach, CMO, Ingenio Inc.
Dave Hamel, CMO, CrossMedia Services/ShopLocal.com
Jas Dhillon, President & CEO, ZeroDegrees Inc.
Taek Kwon, EVP, Product & Technology, Citysearch
Andrew Shotland, VP, Business Development, InsiderPages
And, I'm looking to catch up with a slew of friends, including:
Bill Bradford, Executive Director, E-Commerce Product Marketing, AOL
Mark Canon, VP, Business Development, Switchboard division of InfoSpace
Phil Dubois, President & CEO,CityXpress
Paul Levine, General Manager, Yahoo! Local
Kirsten Mangers, Chief Strategic Officer, SME Global Solutions
Terry Millard, President, Planet Discover
Dariusz Paczuski, VP, Local Products, America Online
Sukhinder Singh, General Manager, Local, Google
Geoff Stevens, GM, Local, Overture Services
Rick Szatkowski, SVP & General Manager, FindWhat.com Network/Private Label
Drop me a note if you're attending, and would like to connect! tony _[at]_ buzzhit.com.
Google gets tough on credit card advertisers, holders
Hot on the heels of announcing that it was going to enforce tough new rules on credit card advertisers, a new report shows just how easy it is to use Google to find live credit card numbers.
Surely I'm not the only one to see the irony in that?
I recently wrote about my TypePad envy, relaying my latest Blogger tech challenge and TypePad feature envy. I'd simultaneously written to Blogger for a bit of assistance, and they delivered in spades today:
"Looks like you're using relative links to your style sheet. We recommend
changing the style sheet links in your template to absolute. This should
resolve the display problems you're seeing on your post pages."
In order to reply with this answer, someone had to spend the time to go to my blog, review my HTML, find my mistake and compose a personal reply. Not bad, especially for a free service.
A year after receiving Turbo C 1.0 for my 16th birthday, I launched my first product as Shareware (IAMS - Instant Access Menu System, heh), and named my company Prodigy Technologies, as a tongue-in-check tip of the hat to Woz's book title.
My first formal industry job was as the first employee of WestCode Software, founded by BeagleBrothers (of ClarisWorks/AppleWorks) alums Alan Bird, Rob Renstrom and John Obberick.
Woz, whatever imagined failures you have, you inspired a generation (or two, or three) of us. Don't ever change.
Gizmodo reviews the new T-Mobile SDA Music Smartphone, praising its SD card slot and built-in music control buttons, and commenting:
"Phones aren't going to kill the iPod quite yet, but with a couple gig SD card and a decent interface, there's no reason they shouldn't kill flash players. "
I bought an iPod Mini a couple of weeks back (and intend to block on it this weekend), and have previously written about the death of the iPod (and frankly, all single function devices) at the hands of cell phones...
I'll leave it there for tonight; I want Mini in my life a few more days before I cast my verdict...
I'm thrilled to announce that I've taken a new consulting client; Gap.com (aka, Gap Direct, the online arm of the retailing giant). My focus will be on product strategy and product management.
The project they've got underway is... rather substantial... and I'm excited about the possibilities that it represents for them. From first day impressions, they've got a smart, passionate and really friendly group of people working on the effort, and are building in a sensible and extensible way.
Details will be scarce of course (at least until post launch); their privacy is of paramount importance to me. But, I'm sure it will serve to further broaden my perspective on retail and e-commerce, and hopefully buzzblog readers and future buzzhit clients will benefit because of it.
TechDirt starts a discussion on business models for IP (specifically, music), based on an NPR story.
Part of TechDirt's perspective is on micropayments:
"The second idea is bringing back the always popular, but often discredited, idea of micropayments. Without rehashing all the old arguments, micropayments only work in some very specific circumstances, and do more to shrink a musicians potential market than to grow it."
It may just be me, but if iTunes isn't "micropayments" ($0.99, $0.49 via Buy.com), I'm not sure what is. Perhaps we need to coin a new term, "nanopayments", for sub $0.10 content buys?
Buzzmachine's Jeff Jarvis reacts to Ad Age's advice w.r.t. to bloggers:
"DON'T throw money at bloggers. These influencers will not respond to outright, traditional ad placements."
I understand Jeff's points... but there have been plenty of big old media stories about the "grass roots" and "community" nature of blogs, and the resistance of bloggers to spread the word for "old media" businesses (music/MP3 distribution comes to mind immediately).
Old media is trying to find its way with blogs and bloggers; it's not unexpected that there will be mistakes along the way. It could be worse; Ad Age could be recommending tips on how to decieve and exploit bloggers for your or your company's personal gain. ;)
Yahoo! Search Blogger and employee Jerry Welch recounts a story of his 16 year old daughter's quest for her first car, and how broadband and Internet Search played a role.
While it may sound silly, teaching your child (or at least opening the door for them) to search the Internet will one day (very soon) be as invaluable as teaching them how to handle money, relationships, etc...
Don't think so? Remember, there was a time not so long ago when parents were proud to be able to afford to have a $400 set of encyclopedias at home. The Internet provides value several orders of magnitude behind static, dead trees.
Hmm, something very interesting could be happening here... so why not some wild speculation. Let's assume the following quote is true:
:
"Word among the legal community is that an out of court settlement could be imminent and that it will massively dwarf the $26.5 million paid to the Fab Four's company in 1991 in a row over trademark use.
One lawyer told Daily Variety, "People are expecting this to be the biggest settlement anywhere in legal history, outside of a class action suit. The numbers could be mind boggling."
:
If that is in fact the case, I'm betting that Apple is buying Apple Corps, including exclusive world-wide ownership of the Beatle's library. This would a) settle, once and for all, the bickering between the two companies, and b) give iTunes coveted content that could differentiate iPod/iTunes, and conceivably give Apple some leverage in future content licensing agreements with other music IP holders...
Can you Imagine (sorry, couldn't resist): "The Beatles. Only on iPod and only at iTunes."
Roland Tanglao lends his support to a post on Telepocalypse calling for more accessibility/interaction between customers (likely both direct and end users) and corporate product managers.
No offense intended (honestly), but is this a new idea? Sure, most companies due a poor job of exposing their internal staff to the "harsh" outside world directly, but quality product managers (and marketers) are trained (or eventually learn in some awkward and painful way) to listen to their customers; heck, at most companies, the PM is described as the "customer champion".
Why? Because product managers, corporate cultures notwithstanding, are really mini-GMs. They worry about everything involving the business and its manifestation via product, from the business plan/model (P&L), to product functionality/design, to technical implementation, to positioning & messaging... and certainly all the way through to the voice and feedback of the customer.
Quality PMs know that they must gather customer feedback (from Customer Support, Sales, and any other customer facing organization) in order to (minimally):
1. Gather bugs
2. Gather feature requests
3. Gather competitive perspectives
4. And perhaps most importantly, understanding the changing and unmet needs of customers
Aside: High quality PMs do this not only by pawing through CS logs, etc, but by actually TALKING (not just emailing) to potential, current and churned customers, ideally in person (and not just during focus group, beta test, etc project phases).
Why bother? Because PMs have limited resources to work with, and they must weigh all of the above against competitive threats, general environment (economic, social, political, etc) changes, and so on, in order to refine a business and product strategy that allows them to win the market, satisfy customers and generate earnings.
So I guess I agree... in the sense that you're just asking people to do a better (and more transparent) job... but you shouldn't need to. I suspect that's your point! ;)
Side note: Roland, that may be the longest blog URL I've ever seen! :)
A little outside of the scope of things I generally blog about (though computer security is fair game I suppose)... but as a public service, I'm passing this along.
Fire up those browsers and get your Windows security patch du jour.
ClickZ, covering the launch of ThomasB2B.com (a search/directory service focused on the B2B vertical) has an interesting quote from Dan Savage, the president of ThomasB2B.com:
"I think if Google or Overture were to start over again to build the ad model that they have, they would model it around categories rather than keywords. They used keywords because they were there -- people went to search sites and entered query strings. As bidding categories, bidding strings are quite clumsy," he said.
Taking the opposite perspective, Google said the following in their release announcing an update to their Local Search offering today:
"This innovative approach does not rely on pre-determined categories and enables Google Local to provide local information that exactly matches a user's search. For example, a woman in Palo Alto, Calif. could be looking for a restaurant but is on a budget. She would have trouble finding listings that provide this information in the yellow pages or on other local information sites. However, by simply searching for [cheap restaurants] in [Palo Alto] on Google Local, she would find a number of nearby restaurants to fit the bill. Google Local achieves this level of relevance by searching restaurant reviews and other related web pages, in addition to business listings, to return results described as [cheap] on the web." (Ed: Emphasis mine.)
Mr. Savage is thinking like the President of a print company, not a search company. In print, you have to define a fixed category for businesses; if you listed every business under every permutation that a user might conceive of, your print offering would balloon to huge proportions. Instead, print products, like the Yellow Pages, solve this by heavy use of internal indexing and referral -- e.g., "See Also" -- for terms that user's frequently use instead of the category that the YP company has seen fit to categorize the business under. For example, try looking up "pizza"; you'll be referred to "restaurants->pizza", even though 95% of people hitting their YP are looking for pizza the food, vs. pizza industrial equipment, etc.
Yes, keywords are a bit clumsy from an advertiser perspective. (And in fact, that represents an opportunity for your friendly neighborhood SEM, who would be happy to bundle up a set of recommended keywords for your business...) But unlike print, in web search, the advertiser must bear that clumsiness to make search quick and easy for end users. This will evolve eventually, as concept clustering, personalization, parsing of intent, etc. improve result sets, decreasing the effort for all involved parties.
socalTech.com reports that Yahoo! has acquired Musicmatch for $160MM. Coupled with its Launch service, and recent renewed rebranding of consumer devices (broken by Engadget), it seems quite possible that Yahoo! is preparing to directly challenge Apple in the digital music arena.
Jeremy Zawodny backs up Danny Sullivan (of Search Watch fame) when Steve Rubel asks (i.e., doesn't accuse) whether Danny's integrity can remain intact after Danny guest blogs on the Yahoo! Search Blog.
My $0.02:
Yahoo could, and should -- and I apologize in advance if they already have and I missed it -- clearly state its policy on renumeration, etc for its blog authors and guest authors.
While bias is a separate issue (and I too believe Danny is enough of a pro not to be questioned), knowing that guest bloggers like Danny are not compensated in any way, shape or form (and that a Yahoo! employee would be terminated for doing so) would go a long way to quiet the critics.
Well, I feigned surprise earlier today in my post about the NYTimes coverage about AOL's upcoming Shopping Search launch, and the fact that the NYTimes didn't ask about their plans for offline shopping... but ClickZ's gone and spilled the beans in their coverage, stating:
"AOL's service will also link users to local offline merchants, said a person familiar with the new offering. "
The deal's been done for a while now, and the news it out... but the partnership isn't announced, so I'm not going to spoil it for them and leak it. But if you've read my blog for a while, you probably already know.
Alright, a hint: They're black and white and read all over... ;)
Congrats to all parties, can't wait to see the final execution!
This has been a long time coming; during my time consulting as a core member of Overture's launch last summer, everything from naming, to bidding, to listing management was in question around in the inclusion of multiple matching types. Sounds like Overture is now rationalizing their offering based on what they've learned over the last year, and that's good for all of us.
Now, assuming that you've read the article, and understand terms like "head", "tail", and "negative keywords", you might be wondering... "How do I make the most of this (for me, and potentially for my clients)?"
Fortunately, Overture implemented several of the features that I designed for last year's release, including Overture Tracking URLs (aka, OTU). (You can read more about OTU from Overture.)
Warning: This isn't for neophytes... though it ain't that hard. I promise! :)
Okay, you've decided to broad match on "shoes" (from the Clickz example), and now you're faced with a couple of new questions, including a) Which terms should I exclude and b) Which terms would be better left as Exact match (because it'd be cheaper, or I need to bid higher to be ranked 1-3, etc)?
OTU solves all of this for you, provided you're willing to do some analysis.
In short, OTU automatically appends a number of parameters to the URL you provided to Overture (don't worry, they won't appear on SERP pages, you'll still have your pristine marketing URLs) after a lead has clicked your ad. What's added? Get ready for analysis love!
OTU appends three "name value pairs", which are hardcoded:
OVKEY: the keyword you specified to broadmatch, e.g., "shoes"
OVMTC: the match type used to match for a SPECIFIC CLICK, e.g., "broad" (or "standard")
OVRAW: *** the actual term the searcher entered ***
So, now, if you are willing to mine your log, you could find out that in addition to typing in "shoes", users are also getting to you via "red running shoes", "strappy shoes", and "shoes for horses", by comparing the OVKEY vs. OVRAW values in your web log for every click you receive. (SEMs, there's a golden opportunity here to step up and automate this for your customers... wish I would have had time to do it myself...)
With that knowledge, you can build up your Excluded Keyword list for things you don't sell (or clicks that don't convert), and decide to Exact match for a greater or lower price (depending on the keyword) for specific child terms.
Be sure to review the Overture FAQ on OTU (say that 10 times fast) that I linked to above to understand its limitations, ways that it may break if you use a non-standard URL structure, etc.
If you like OTU, drop by my blog (http://www.buzzhit.com/buzzblog.html) and leave me your thoughts!
Tony Gentile
Internet Strategy Consultant
www.buzzhit.com
Intentionally or not, a mock-up of a potential redesign of AOL's home page became public today.
And, while the mock-up is somewhat sparse and certainly incomplete, it hints at a customizable, personalized experience that better surfaces many of AOL's properties, including IM, Shopping, Local... and of course, search.
Can't wait to see the real deal; while I don't expect it to make the grade, it'd be nice to have a viable alternative home page to Yahoo (which works great for me, coupled w/ the Google search toolbar...).
The Daily Rundown does an Interview with James Pitkow, CEO of Moreover Technologies. (I recently mentioned Moreover in reference to a posting on John Battelle's blog on RSS Blender.)
Of particular interest is one comment from James:
"The future for real-time news only gets brighter and brighter each year, especially for aggregated news. 2004 marks the first year that an aggregated news source, Yahoo News in this case, has repeatedly been the top online news source, beating out the super strong CNN brand."
Of course, as a consumer, I know that aggregation gives me convenience. But do you think the head of CNN is happy about this? Probably not. As I wrote in reply to a TechDirt article on Japanese newspapers blogging Google aggregation, the big media Co's haven't quite figured out how to handle a world where they're brand is subsumed by an aggregator's brand... and certainly haven't designed their online sites (i.e., usage flows) to optimize search and aggregator traffic.
Quick summary:
- AOL is reinvigorated
- They are relaunching their online shopping effort
- It will include comparison shopping functionality
- It will be priced via CPC vs CPM
- It will be open to the web vs. behind the AOL Client "iron curtain"
As I mentioned previously, I went out and met several of the senior execs on AOL's search team in August, and was highly impressed with the caliber of talent they represented. There was a clear and palpable buzz in the air; to say that they were reinvigorated might be an understatement. To all those folks, I offer my congrats on this launch!
And while all this online shopping stuff is great, I'm surprised that the NYTimes didn't question AOL about their plans for "online to offline" or "local search shopping" services. It seems like an obvious next step for a company like TimeWarner, who has so many print advertising clients... especially in light of today's IAC news on their local search shopping moves.
The lack of integration between IACI (InterActive Corp) properties has been a mystery to me for quite some time. Sure, there's some cross-linking, but nothing that really provides end users with a significantly better experience than they would have using best-of-class local city guide, mapping, or travel sites vs. an IAC "local suite".
And, that doesn't change with this news.
However, as SocalTech.com reports this morning, the company finally appears to be leveraging its local print product division, Entertainment Publications (best known for its Entertainment Coupon books) with its CitySearch online local guide. More specifically, it will now cross-sell CitySearch advertising to its large base of EP print advertising customers, giving them significantly more reach.In the race to gather as many local advertisers as possible, this is a significant step forward (at least in leverage) for CitySearch, who invested significantly in hiring and training an internal telesales team.
I haven't played with the offering to see how they are handling online coupon security, etc, but would be interested in hearing from anyone who has. I suspect they're a direct or downstream licensee of Coupons.com (Coupons, Inc), who I spent quite a bit of them analyzing while at Knight Ridder Digital.
The next step in IACs local search puzzle will likely be integration of Service Magic (whom they recently acquired) with CitySearch. The "final" near-term piece would be linking in ZeroDegrees social networking functionality with both CitySearch and Evite.
I've been spending a bunch more time with my blog and RSS Reader the last few days (finally), and am developing a deep sense of TypePad envy.
It started simply enough; just a casual glance and a little smile at the category functionality on TypePad sites. My infatuation grew as I eyed all those sexy, well conceived templates... "No no, you specifically designed your blog template to integrate with your site", I told myself. True enough, but not satisfying, especially when I realized that my template was breaking on each of my individual 'Post Pages' (aka permalinks), even though they use the exact same template as my main blog page (ticketless, untrackable support request sent to Blogger... waiting...)!
It finally reached a crescendo however, when I realized that despite being held by a company worth $30B dollars, my blog doesn't even support Trackback functionality. How could that be? (Oh I'm sure there's some excuse around scalability, supportability, or some other 'ility' word.)
Don't get me started on mobloging, integrated reporting, and other cool TypePad "extras".
The truth is, despite what appears to be a great group of people (Pyra), innovation is happening elsewhere... and in a category where innovation helps one get their message out in a timely and efficient manner, that's worth a lot.
I'm not quite ready to go through the pains of converting over to TypePad (or other alternative service), but temptation has a grasp on me, and I may just let it have its way...
Susan Mernit notes a MediaPost Daily article indicating that online employment classified revenue is now greater than offline classified revenue.
While this may be a defining moment for the newspaper industry, it's hardly surprising, as newspaper classifieds have seemingly become more sparsely populated on a daily basis over the past several years... one only needs to look at employment classifieds in the formerly glorious SJ Merc to understand. (In fact, the SJ Merc, formerly KRD's biggest money maker, is now a loser, thanks to the death of classifieds.)
And why not? The prices that newspapers charge for print classifieds are outrageous, especially for the limited real estate said prices buy you. Online, where cost structures are low, employers get a much better deal: significantly richer job descriptions, the ability to pre-screen candidates with questionnaires, auto-integration of submissions into employer resume databases, and so much more.
Sound like any other industry? That's right, yellow pages/directory. Not surprising they are the battleground du jour.
Great, let's break that aggregated MSDN feed (and other aggregated feeds) into 1000 individual feeds... then all we need to do is teach end users how to comprehend, download and import OPML files, 'cause they sure as heck aren't going to manually subscribe to get the same content they can conveniently get from one URL right now...
Old rumors and speculation around media industry consolidation are swirling again. And why not? Since leaving KRI at the end of June, I've watched my stock slide a good 15% from its May peak. TimeWarner is bidding $4.6B to buy MGM. Sure, Tribune appears to have had a setback on cross-media ownership (in the same city)... but as with many other things, the future may well depend on the outcome of the upcoming presidential elections.
Blockbuster launched their online service during my troubles with Blogger, so I didn’t get a chance to pitch my $0.02 into the din of analysis. With the Blogger issues fixed, it’s on with the show…
Aside from Netflix’s new RSS Feeds, the only critical difference I see between Netflix’s service and Blockbuster’s is Blockbuster’s ability to use their physical points-of-presence to solve one critical hole in NFLX’s business from a customer perspective: instant gratification. (Anyone who uses an online DVD rental service has probably experienced this pain… all your CDs are either watched or in route to or fro, and you’re “jonesing” for a movie right now.) Blockbuster solves this elegantly (enough) by giving its online subscribers two free in-store rentals a month (hoping that they’ll make it up when you by a couple of used DVDs, popcorn, or an extra flick.)
Netflix could counter by building out its own stores or placing kiosks in retail locations of a partner (hey, your local grocery store already has a bank, Starbucks and Krispy Kreme outlet)… but that seems highly unlikely.
Rather, NFLX has been telling analysts that it will stay quasi-virtual (ignore those small non-retail distribution centers), and pursue the emerging VOD (video on demand) opportunity, with an initial offering planned for sometime in 2005.
VOD, with sufficient bandwidth, solves the instant gratification need nicely… even more so than Blockbuster’s in-store rentals. Not only do you not have to worry about your favorite title being out of stock, you also don’t need to schlep out in traffic, rain, snow or dead of night oh so prevalent in life these days. Sounds great!
Only one problem, of course… the last mile between the computer and your TV set, the latter of the two likely not having IP connectivity, and equally likely a sufficient distance away from a PC (or Mac) that consumers will be disinclined to run RCA wires to & fro.
And so, NFLX needs a hardware solution to bridge the gap. Old rumors about a hook-up between Netflix and Tivo have recently surfaced again. Tivo is in fairly dire straights (I did a case analysis on them a few months back as part of my MBA work, which I’ll spare you) and clearly needs any help it can get, but that hardly makes them the right partner for Netflix. Sure, they have a couple million units in the field, used by a complimentary audience that already values time shifting, instant gratification and convenience… but they’re a small fish in a big ocean with little marketing muscle and no competitive advantage (verses the cable and satellite companies build DVR into their boxes, let alone Microsoft et al building software solutions for PCs).
A different (and perhaps better) approach would be a more aggressive model, emulating the cell phone and DSL worlds. That is, Netflix could provide a hardware bridge, something akin to Apple’s Airport Express (but focusing on RCA video & sound jacks vs. printer ports) that could relay content from the PC to the TV, subsidizing the cost by requiring a subscription commitment (6, 12 months, again, ala cell phones and broadband). Higher end consumers could pay a minimal incremental upfront fee for a device that also had S-video, component video, etc. This would seemingly have a nice secondary effect of helping to address NFLX’s growth limiting churn rates (last I heard, they were north of 80%, reminding me oh so painfully of our challenges at PointCast).
But this points out another problem. Netflix currently generates its earnings (limited though they are) based on buffet economics. That is, the model works because of delays created by mailing (day 1 receive/consume, day 2 return, day 3 receive/process/ship, day 4 receive/consume, repeat) even in “1 day turn-around” zones, resulting the average Netflix subscriber consuming approximately 6 DVDs a month. Customers like myself, who at times consume as many as 9 to 12 DVDs a month, put the same fear into Netflix as a 400 pound NFL lineman rolling into an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.
And so, Netflix instead might have to offer that free hardware bridge in conjunction with a commitment from user’s to download a certain number of movies over a certain period of time, mixing the cell phone model with that of Columbia House/BMG.
And that brings us to the near term end game issue (disregarding the recent speculation as to whether or not Netflix even has the rights to distribute movies online – I’d hardly be surprised after watching the movie co’s form Movielink and destroy early co’s like Intertainer)… suddenly, if Netflix is just a video version of iTunes, we know that the economic value is not in the distribution (unless of course, you’re the content/IP holder), but rather elsewhere in the value chain, and will likely be “won”, at least initially by whomever creates the best turnkey solution (iPod/iTunes, AOL mid ‘90s, etc) and by whomever can extract value from the customers in other ways.
So where does that leave Netflix? Certainly not in a seemingly happy place; and like its alleged partner-to-be, Tivo, without a clear competitive advantage.
So where is the opportunity? I’ll definitely have to give it more thought, but my gut says partner or acquisition. Who would be suitable?
TimeWarner seems like a possibility. Marketing Netflix to AOL’s 25MM+ users (without the affiliate fees) would add a lot of marketing muscle. TimeWarner is a big content owner, with deep enough libraries that other content owners would be better advised to cooperate with vs. fragmenting the rental market. And of course, their cable operations drop Tivo-like boxes and cable modems into millions of households. Only problem… they already have several VOD initiatives.
Apple itself, or any manufacturer of “home entertainment PCs” (HP, Sony, Dell, etc) is also a possibility. They’re already fighting the last mile battle, and all are working to earn share of wallet amongst personal and pro-am content publishers (Apple’s core), who a) could get extra value from a solution that allowed them to stream content from their PC to entertainment devices, and b) buy higher margin hardware, software and peripherals.
One thing’s for sure… Netflix’s success is hardly guaranteed as it battles on multiple fronts (i.e., its current and future business models). And yet, having met many of their folks, and knowing them to be smart and scrappy, my fingers are crossed that they’ll find the answer and win the day.
Much has been going on with Netflix (one of my favorite companies) as of late, and my Blogger problems have kept me from commenting. With those problems resolved, and new news from Netflix today, it's time to remedy that...
Netflix released RSS feeds today (link up top), and did so with an interesting twist: while I may simply be unaware, this is the first instance of RSS feeds that I'm aware of for which you can receive personalized feeds; that is, one set of feeds is available to all Netflix members, but the content of a subset of those feeds is unique to a given individual.
Obviously this is necessary, as the contents of my rental queue et al are different than yours... but it's nice to see it implemented in a clean manner.
Unfortunately, the usefulness of the feeds, at least for a frequent and long time customer such as myself, are dubious at best. Some examples might help illustrate some of the weaknesses:
1. Rental Queue feed: Excellent, I can now get a rank ordered list of the content of my rental queue via RSS. Unfortunately however, clicking a 'post' gives me the movie review page. I cannot, from the feed:
a) See when the movie is going to be released (just beacuse it's item #1 on my list doesn't mean it's shipping next)
b) Manipulate the movie, e.g., links to remove from queue, move within queue, or even link to the full HTML view of my queue
Event a static post at the top of this feed that direct linked to my full HTML queue would be helpful (and easy to do).
Without this information, the feed has substantially less value to me.
2. Recent Rental Activity: Unlike the Queue feed, NFLX got the Returned section of this right; a link is embedded to allow me to click to rate the movie. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a link anywhere on the click-through page to Review the movie (let alone have a link directly in the feed). I must first click the Member Review link in the upper right corner, causing a page load, and revealing a 'write a review button'.
NETFLIX... I've mentioned this before, and now that you've found RSS religion, I'll say it again. My movie ratings and reviews should be able to be published to my blog, even if it's simply a short synopsis linking to a page you host. The viral multiplier of 2MM members linking to their reviews could a) dramatically improve your page rankings in the search engines for people searching on movie titles, and b) expose each review (and thus NFLX) to each of my friends and family members, potentially lowering your customer acquisition costs. Heck, you could even incent me to do this for you by spiffing me (affiliate marketing) by crediting me for members that sign-up as a result of reading one of my reviews on your hosted pages.
3. Public feeds (Top movies, etc): All nice, but made significantly less useful by not indicating a) my rating of the movie (if any) and b) my last rented date. I've rented and ranked 650+ movies on NFLX; I don't want to have to remember or click through every single feed post to decide if I want to rent it/again. Yes, I know, you don't want to have to personalize these feeds too... but I'm betting the effect would be worth the cost.
All and all, a decent first effort... which could be dramatically improved with some minor enhancements. Keep it up guys!
I worked very closely with Dan during my consulting gig at Overture (Dan was the business owner of my second project, DTC-XML aka AWS, a programmatic interface to Overture's offerings).
While I do agree that adding Dan to SEMPO might appear to be a conflict of interest in some people's eyes, my time with Dan showed him to be a capable and ethical leader. (No don't go and screw up and make me look bad, Dan. )
Well, I'm sure I'm waaaaay behind the curve on this one, but I just found TechBargains and their RSS feed. If you're also running behind, TechBargains basically aggregates all the "steals and deals" offered online (and off), such as 2GB CF cards for $199, discount codes at Dell, Ofoto, etc.
While that's enough to put a smile on my face every time I open my RSS reader, I, of course, want more. What I'd love is a way of marrying Gizmodo and TechBargains; tagging new Gizmodo discoveries in my reader and having them emphasized (bold, goofy icon, what have you) when they eventually appear in TechBargains.
And of course, this could be done "reasonably" easy, as long as the two shared a common GUID (UPC code et al) in their XML schemas/DTDs, and my reader was smart enough to persist and scan for my request/intent.
Now *that* would finally be going above and beyond what we were doing at PointCast way back when.
I was out at AOL a couple weeks back, talking to some of their Search folks about their business and product strategy -- a truly WONDERFUL set of people, BTW -- when the story about Philly possibly providing free city-wide WiFi access was circulating.
Sitting in AOL's HQ lobby, looking at the huge flat-screen showing usage stats and pictures of their international data centers, it occurred to me that an ISP like AOL (and heck, many cable, phone and as recently announced, electric companies) must be dreading this news.
Sure, there's still business in providing bandwidth to the city; and most businesses would want to have some type of backup plan vs. 100% reliance on the city for their connectivity... but clearly, the days of 30MM $19.95 subscribers are numbered.
Of course, being a bit of a sceptic, I expected that these behemoths would simply crush the movement by lobbying ($$$) in D.C. for "protection", "consideration", or some other such euphemism for gov't subsidies...
But, reading Korby's post... and seeing that at least in the case of Redmond, the initiative was coming from a savvy tech employee focused on actually trying to provide value to everyday citizens... well, that just warms my heart a bit and gives me hope that the common good just might outweigh the machinations of biggie corporations.
Battelle's friend Toni Schneider points him to RSS Blender, a service that inserts new posts linking to Amazon books into your blog feed, based on contextual "analysis" of your other blog posts.
When I first read Battelle's description, I assumed that it worked like VibrantMedia, i.e., it would insert links into the body of my posts, thereby compromising my editorial integrity (laugh).
But the Blender approach is fantastic! Ads in my feed were generally relevant (and reasonably plentiful, about one adv for every four posts), and most importantly, were clearly marked as Blender posts.
Obviously the prototype only runs against Amazon's book database, but could be applied to any database of products/services/ads, etc.
Companies such as Moreover might do well by themselves to consider integrating such a solution into their free aggregated feed offerings.
Surprise! Well no, not really. It's already well understood in most media circles that people buy newspapers, magazines, etc not only for the editorial, but also for the advertising (people buying the SJ Merc to get the Fry's ads, or Sunday coupons are great examples).
Why? Because the advertising satsifies a need... i.e., it's relevant.
Advertising is only (relatively speaking) if it:
1) Is overwhelming (in size, in speed, etc); and/or
2) Comprises editorial integrity (i.e., it appears that you're on the take)
Some of the Tribe.net focus groups on Craigslist bore this out. Craigslist users LOVED that there were no ads on Craigslist. Why? Because the site was fast and uncluttered. When prompted with the fact that the MAJORITY of the content on Craigslist was in fact advertising (cars, apartments, etc for sale), people said it was fine, because it was what they were looking for (i.e., relevant)!
Well, whatever wayward process (be it Google's or SuccessfulHosting's) that allowed Google to write files to my domain as the 'root' user has been corrected, thanks to some timely support by the folks at SH.
Unfortunately, since Blogger doesn't have a ticket tracking system exposed, I have no way of letting them know (other than this post, I suppose) that I've resolved the problem and they can disregard my requests for help... further worsening their already dubious support levels...
Techdirt's got a post, "from the short-term-stupidity dept.", about a Japanese newspaper publishing co blocking Google from displaying their content in Google News (i.e., not allowing deep linking). Mike goes on to say:
:The newspaper is upset that people might go directly to the news they want, as opposed to visiting the front page first. This is short-term thinking. There are a lot of news sites out there, and the ones that make it more difficult to get to what people want will lose out. Instead of driving more people to a front page, it will drive fewer people to their overall website. It's a little worrisome that a modern news agency would actually turn away one of biggest channels that could drive them traffic.:
And, Mike might be right. He might also, however, not see the implications from a newspaper perspective.
Imagine that you'd built and run a company for 50, 100 or even 150 years. You've worked hard to become a trusted source of local news and information. You've sustained operations (and even earned a profit) by selling advertising. Life is good.
'Suddenly' (from the perspective of a 150 yr old company), your customer's needs start changing. They want to read your content online; they want your content on-demand, rather than at the start of every morning. You spend the time and money to build an online service to satisfy these customers, in an attempt to maintain and enhance the brand you've built. You also optimize your site, based on a usage flow that pre-dates search, to try to extract revenue; barely enough to run the online operation, and certainly not enough to pay the cost of acquiring and developing your content.
Then, someone decides to aggregate your content, and that of thousands of your competitors, without your permission. Worse yet, this aggregator has a global brand, and is used by several orders of magnitude more users than use your online site or read your daily print.
GREAT you think! "I'll get access to SO MANY MORE USERS." But then you realize... most of these users aren't local; they don't care about me or my brand, they just want to consume my expensive-to-produce content. And, even worse, they don't have the decency to surf through your home page (and click on your advertising) or investigate your nav to look at all of the other services (affiliate links, links to your online classified ordering system, etc) you use to "monetize" traffic; again, they just want free access to your content.
So how valuable are these users to your business? And, do you really want to shoulder the expense of serving them?
Media Co's, in particular newspapers, must change their business model (and certainly their site design) if they are to extract value from users who see them as commodity providers, vs. a trusted & valued source of local news and information. But how to accomplish that... is not entirely obvious. Whatever the answer, it had definitely start soon and work in the long term, or many of today's media co's will wither to a shell of their former glory; some might say the early signs are already there.
Ah, it's nice (in a "it's not really nice" kinda way) to see that scale has finally brought many of the challenges we faced at PointCast back in '96-'97 to the RSS aggregator world. For a while there, it seemed that everyone was thinking that RSS (remember, it stands for Really Simple Syndication, right?), Atom, etc were truly viable solutions as currently envisioned and implemented (and as desired by users, i.e., full text feeds).
Unfortunately, life isn't that simple; if it was, PointCast might still be around and thriving today (well, that's a bit of a stretch)...
RSS has several benefits for users and publishers. Personally, I see these as:
1. Timely, structured, aggregated updates of content that interest me (user)
2. Anonymous content pulls, in a relationship structure that I can terminate at will (user)
3. Distributed, standardized content structure and serving (publisher/aggregator client author)
Unfortunately, it is these very things that impact scalability. To wit:
w.r.t. #1
Until the perceived user difference between displaying a full text feed post/article in my aggregator client and loading the post/article real time is non-existent; and broadband access is so ubiquitous that "whacking" (remember that web term?) pages before jumping on the train, plane, etc holds no value... users will desire full-text, fetched pages vs. headline-only, substantially increasing bandwidth requirements.
w.r.t. #2
If the server doesn't know the client, it must trust the client to "do the right thing", e.g., respect a feed specific polling limitation. This inherently creates vulnerability for abuse, be it intentional (e.g., denial of service) or simple user over zealousness.
w.r.t. #3
PointCast had a central NOC; we pulled content from all of our providers and centrally served it up only the new/updated articles to known clients who could tell us their current client-side state. The content we pulled was "generally" in a standardized format, but of course it was easier for the folks working with giant media companies to request custom feed work than it was for them to force said media co's to comply with our standard way back when. And it was certainly easier (business wise), though substantially more expensive and more technically challenging, for us to serve content vs. the media co's.
Of course, things changed over time. Central servers and known clients fetching from a known state at first... then came "point servers" (local caching servers that all clients behind a given firewall would point to)... then CDF (the precursor to RSS, IMHO) when we wanted to distribute serving load for smaller publishers... to experiments with multi-casting (we actually implemented rudimentary multicast for very limited data feeds [e.g., weather temps] in either the 2.6 or 2.7 client, I forget)... to contemplation of P2P... to a new (3.0 architecture) focused on headlines-only! Full circle!
Unfortunately, users want what they want. And as I mentioned above, that's full text, available instantaneously, whether they're connected or not. Compression, P2P, multi-cast, known state, and similar concepts will all be needed, if the goal is truly to provide what user's want and minimize resource utilization. RSS? No. RCS - Really Complex Syndication... but it'll be worth it!
Well folks, I apologize for my appearant blogging lethargy... but all is not always as it appears. I've unfortunately been battling with Blogger for the last couple of weeks.
After successfully moving my blog from the BlogSpot domain to my buzzhit domain, and posting a couple of messages, Blogger started generating a 550 (FTP relay error, permission denied for intended action) message for an existing Blogger index file. (For whatever reason, Blogger writes its files as 'root' vs the FTP user name I gave it, leaving me unable to modify its files.)
Blogger customer support has been unresponsive; I'm sure they're simply saturated. As a workaround, I'm posting this as possibly my one and only "September" post.
And here I thought blogging was supposed to make web publishing easier...
Battelle (and his commentors) discuss how "...all the majors punted on the presentweb - the fresh stuff that's being discussed *right now* via blogs, feeds, and pings..."
Let's be honest here... if you were the EVP of Search at AOL, responsible for a LOB that generated north of $300MM of revenue FY2003, and had finite resources to pursue a seemingly unlimited number of resources, where would feed search sit on your list of priorities. The reality is, probably pretty low at present.
Why? Because, while you do want to innovate (and differentiate your offering), the reality is that feed search is firmly in the "entreprenuerial" stage of its market lifecycle. By definition, competition will increase once the concept is proven and the value apparent, which happens in the growth and maturity stages. Now, of course, different technologies, products, solutions (what have you) progress through the market lifecycle at different paces; it's entirely possible that the lifecycle of feed search will develop substantially more quickly due to the state of web search, local search et al.
But for now, it is rightfully the domain of the entreprenuer, where it will remain until investment from the "majors" is warranted.
Analysis of online business and technology trends, including: Search and Directory, Digital Media, Social Networking, RSS, and E-commerce. Written by buzzhit!'sTony Gentile.
