My friend just read my RSS reader post from the other day and asked me “what is RSS?” I realize there are still a fair number of people that don’t realize the benefits that RSS provides. Quite simply, RSS stands for really simple syndication. It enables you pull data (using an RSS reader) rather than data being pushed to you (the way e-mail works). How do you pull? RSS is an XML file of raw data-basically, a web site. Every time you open your reader, it pulls updated data from that site. For instance, paste this into your address bar to see what my site’s RSS feed looks like–it’s all standardized text: http://www.drewmeyersinsights.com/feed

If you’ve never used RSS–join the revolution! I fully believe e-mail is going to be all but replaced by RSS (RSS is already becoming mainstream). E-mail will probably always exist for one to one communication–but face it, it is a HORRIBLE tool for conversations among multiple people (at least in my opinion). We’ve already started to see a rise in internal blogging, wikis, and online forums for business collaboration. You can subscribe to content you want and cancel when you want. Nothing is stored on your computer with RSS (how often do you get a co-worker IM’ing you saying your mailbox is full??). For those RSS “newbies”, I’ve been told Bloglines is the best reader to use.

Once you have a reader, you can subscribe to content anywhere you see this logo–. Just click and subscribe…it’s that easy.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? Pursuading Customers When they Ignore Marketing. Written by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg.

Full disclosure: I received this book for free at the Blog Business Summit a month ago as part of PR Web’s sponsorship of the event.

My views on this book are mixed–I found the 1st half of the book very insightful while I found my attention wavering during the 2nd half. The title of the book, Waiting for your Cat to Bark?, absolutely describes the issue marketers are now facing. The book contrasts the older generation with the younger generation by using the cat vs dog analogy. Dogs will listen to what someone tells them (usually!), representing the older generation, while cats want to interact. Why does the older generation listen? I think it stems mainly from the fact that they grew up in a time where traditional media and marketing was the only real connection to the outside world–they had little choice BUT to listen. The internet has brought all sorts of information to anyone with an internet connection and enabled people to choose what they listen to. Today’s younger generations (X & Y) have grown up in the information age, where they choose what media to consume and when to consume it. Therefore, they are much less likely to listen to traditional marketing pitches. If you tell a dog to sit..they’ll do it. If you tell a cat to sit…they’ll sit there and stare at you like an idiot (at least my cats would).

Marketers: get creative and engage with your target audience. Cats will NOT bark–PERIOD. Trying to cram traditional marketing messages down the throats of today’s youth won’t work. Further, please don’t make the mistake of trying to hide information from your customers. They WILL find out eventually and it will likely create negative word of mouth for your product. There is some very creative marketing taking place out there…you just have to figure out what works for your specific audience and your company (see Federated Media for someone doing this well).

Here are some interesting quotes that I pulled from the book:

• “Customers need to resolve their own concerns so they can build the confidence to buy from you. Ideally, they’ll build that confidence with information you provide. But if you don’t provide it, they’ll track it down by going to other sources.” This is absolutely critical in today’s information age where almost everything is available online.
• Kevin Robers, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, is quoted as saying, “The future belongs to those who can make emotional connections in the market.”
• “Even negative information gives you a potent opportunity to develop good will and better meet the needs of your customers by having the courage to address it rather than running from it.”

I hope you don’t take this as me thinking all advertising is bad…because it isn’t. Relevant, targeted ads work for many companies–and they aren’t going away (nor should they).

Crazy!! It’s actually snowing in Seattle. And to top it off…the Seahawks beat the Packers in a great monday night game. I’m sure most fans that tuned into the game were stunned the game was in Seattle and not Green Bay (where it ALWAYS snows) when they saw snow flurries. It wasn’t the prettiest game in Hawks history, but we managed to pull it off by a score of 34-24.

is now posted at Startup Review. I should note that the image in the header of this blog was purchased off of iStockphoto. Go check it out!

I found an interesting article this morning titled “Who’s Using What for RSS?” It doesn’t hurt that it contains a cool graphic (below). Personally, I’m in the “Others” category by using myYahoo! I’ve heard bloglines is great and have been contemplating switching readers. What RSS Reader do you use??

Speaking of web 2.0, Techcrunch made me aware of an interview with Digg’s CEO, Jay Adelson. Here it is–happy viewing!

Face it–putting all your eggs in one basket is a horrible business strategy. The more pieces of the business operations that a company controls, the better off they are. Are bands promoting themselves on myspace making the mistake of putting all their eggs in one basket? Teresa’s “The Death of Myspace” post at Blog Business Summit got me thinking: what happens when myspace loses its appeal and its 100 million users flock to the next “hip” social networking platform? Afterall, there is already a study stating that “myspace is so last year” in the minds of today’s teens. Additionally, over at Puddlegum, there is an interesting article that goes into some of the reasons that myspace is dying.

There are over 3 million bands using myspace to promote their music, many of whom use myspace to connect with ALL their fans. When myspace falls out of favor, many bands will have no way to connect with their fans anymore and, therefore, have to start over with marketing. If a band spends the majority of its time promoting an online presence that they do not fully control (their band’s myspace page), I fully believe that is a bad business strategy in the long term. If you are a band, use myspace for what it is–an supplemental means to market your music; use it to drive visitors to your real web site and engage them.

I believe myspace WILL die–hence, the reason that bands should NOT put all their eggs in one basket by connecting with their fans strictly in myspace. Utilize your own web presence in ADDITION to promoting on myspace.

Want to start a web 2.0 company? If so, the Web 2.0 Checklist over at Ideas for Indeapreneurs is a great resource for you to check out. Not that it matters, but they even mentioned my own employer, Zillow.com, in their “having an unpronounceable name” section.

The most recent Business 2.0 magazine, included a great section detailing “How to Succeed in 2007.” There were certainly some great advice from the likes of Fred Wilson, Richard Branson, Kevin Rose, and Edgar Bronfman Jr. The content isn’t up on the business 2 website yet or I would have linked to the whole articles, but I’m guessing complete text should be up soon. Here are the tips I found most interesting and useful:

• Fred Wilson- “Build a Blog that Builds Your Business.” He mentions that the most important thing he gets from his blog is “getting to know entrepreneurs of all kinds-in India, Australia, England, China, and Silicon Valley.” Being a VC, networking with entrepreneurs is crucial to his business.
• Richard Branson- “Learn How to Say No (Even if You’re Known as ‘Dr. Yes’).” Over the past year, I have really realized that saying no is hard. When working with prospective business partners and customers, providing encouragement while saying no is not always an easy task. However, I think I’m improving.
• Kevin Rose- “Let the Users Run the Show.” Personally, I am fascinated with what sites like Digg, Craigslist, and Facebook have done with user-generated content. While giving users control is scary–I really believe that it is the best way to build a web business in the long run. There is little risk in losing “eyeballs” if users feel they have a say in the direction of the business & are crucial to keeping it running smoothly.
• Edgar Bronfman Jr.- “Turn Gripe Session Into Brainstorms.” The focus here is getting common junior employees to give confidential input to the CEO in the hopes of improving the business for everyone (in what Bronfman calls “town halls”). Workplace politics do exist–and a confidential meeting to provide feedback to the head honcho is a super way for a CEO get the feedback they would not otherwise hear.

So I admit…I may suffer from blog addiction. Since the great turkey dinner I had several hours ago, I’ve been browsing around the web and reading a little bit about various non profit organizations.

World Vision

It’s great to see that Leonardo DeCaprio has re-thought his values while filming Blood Diamond (his new movie).

The joy and the energy and the happiness they exuded to everyone was unbelievable and it made me come back home and not want to listen to anyone’s problems. I don’t want to hear what we, as Americans, have to deal with when you’re immersed in a place like that for six months and you see the extreme levels of what they have to deal with

Here’s the trailer for Blood Diamond (which looks really good):

I found this interesting video on a post on the Nonprofit Blog Exchange. The video is interviews with leaders of the Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference

Hope you had a great thanksgiving–if you’re reading this, feel very thankful for everything you have. When you find yourself THINKING you have reason to complain during the holiday season–please watch the following video and reconsider (sorry for the video overload!!)

I just turned on NBC and came across a reply of Madonna’s Confessions Tour. The “Live to Tell” video was certainly hard to ignore–it’s great when celebrities use their star power to raise awareness of tough issues (Aids in Africa in this case with her Raising Malawi orphan care initiative). We really do have so much to be thankful for.

Shorter Version:

Longer Version:

Disclaimer: While I have exchanged messages on MyBlogLog with CEO Scott Rafer, I have not gotten his thoughts on the future direction of the company. These are just MY OPINIONS as to what direction MBL should go–with no insider information from MBL.

I also want to note the reasons for writing this–
1) I view MyBlogLog as a very promising web 2.0 company poised to benefit from blogs exploding into mainstream media
2) Business strategy & direction is the fun part of business
3) I want to see MBL be even more valuable as a tool than it already is

MyBlogLog’s goal should be becoming every blogger’s default home page. I truly believe they are well on their way to doing so by adding social networking on top of blogging. Blogging is inherently a form of social networking, but MBL is adding structure and organization to enable bloggers to network more effectively with other like-minded bloggers. Let me also point out that I don’t think selling to Yahoo! is necessary at this point–I agree MBL could make much more money by remaining solo for another year or so. With the rise of blogging, MBL is in a great position. In my opinion, part of blogging success is building a community around a blog, which is exactly where MyBlogLog aims to provide the most value. IMO, MBL is taking the right approach- listening to their existing users, building great features, putting privacy controls in the hands of their users, and providing excellent customer service.

I understand MBL is still a fairly new company, but these are the product features I would focus on in order to create the most valuable blogging tool available:

1. Strike a Deal with CoComment (or build equal technology themselves)- I’m someone that uses cocomment to track the comments I leave on other blogs. MBL would become much more valuable to me if comment tracking functionality was incorporated into their service offering, perhaps as another tab (everyone wants everything in one place).
2. Add RSS reader functionality to their offering- Revamp “My Home” to enable it to act as an RSS reader. Essentially, it seems they already have this functionality built (most recent posts shown on the Lifehacker MBL community page). The feature just needs to be expanded (convince people to enter their Feed URL into their profile as a 1st step) to every blog community page and users need to be allowed to place community feeds on their main page. A little user interface work will be required to implement effectively, but nothing too difficult.
3. Segment blog communities into categories- I would love to browse MBL communities relating to web 2.0, real estate, professional sports, and entrepreneurship without having to sort through the cooking, fishing, and European communities on the site. Provide a way for blog authors to “tag” their blog community with an industry. Each industry should have the Top 50 (or 25) functionality that can be seen on this page.
4. Enable bloggers to group communities- As a blogger that uses MBL to track which blogs I read, it would be useful if MBL had the functionality to group the communities into user-defined groups.
5. Advertising Network for Bloggers (longer term)- I’ve already discussed this a little bit in another post. The short version is that many bloggers want to make money from blogging, which has led to a number of companies trying to help them do so. MyBlogLog will be reaching thousands of blogs with widgets, why not bring on advertisers and create an advertising widget that bloggers could utilize to make money (and let the advertisers target as they wish)? I was thinking along the lines of what Federated Media is doing.
6. Blog stat aggregation (longer term)- MBL is in a killer position to find the most relevant posts from around the internet due to their click tracking functionality. In addition to link tracking, they track page views. The potential to become a portal to discover new and interesting blogs is certainly there, but I imagine it will take awhile to do this on a large scale. Something similar to Digg, but based on actual clicks or links to certain posts rather than what the Digg community deems most popular. Fortune’s “Hunting the Next Google” article this month says, “The web is leaving the days of search and entering an era of discovery. Search is what you do when you’re looking for something. Discovery is when something wonderful that you didn’t know existed finds you.” I think this quote applies more in blogging (which is all about discovery!!) than elsewhere, which means MBL can really take advantage if they play their cards right.

Marketing:
• Luckily, web 2.0 is a place where a great product doesn’t need to be marketed. It would not be wise to spend marketing dollars to extend brand awareness for MBL other than senior management attending conferences and networking themselves deeply into the tech industry (I’m sure management is already doing this). Since blogs such as TechCrunch, LifeHacker, and Boing Boing have jumped onboard, I think MBL will spread virally throughout the blogosphere relatively quickly. To maximize expansion, an considerable effort should be made to get influential blogs in other, non tech-savy, industries to implement the MBL “Recent Readers” widget.

Revenue:

• I think an advertising network is the way to go in the long run, as I stated above. Federated Media is making a killing by taking 40% of the ad revenue. If bloggers were made to classify their blog by industry, advertisers would have a great way to target smaller blogs if the ad serving engine was built correctly. I must admit, I think their premium statistics subscriptions are worth the $25 per year, especially for corporate blogs or bloggers who blog for a living. I have access to MBL “pro” for the Zillow Blog and it’s very useful (the free version does not give you real time link tracking & is limited only to the top 10 inbound and outbound links). I think subscription revenues will continue to rise as more and more corporate & professional bloggers join the blogosphere.

Let me end by saying I’m sure MBL CEO Scott Rafer and co-founder Eric Marcoullier will make the right decisions to grow their company. I already know they listen and respond to their users–which is the key to success. There is little business risk in any company if all the features built are the ones that existing users are asking for. Hopefully all of my product enhancement suggestions are already in the pipeline based on other feedback they have received…

Sorry Cougar fans, but I just have to mention what a great game yesterday’s 2006 Apple Cup was–the Dawgs won 35-32!

A memo from Brad Garlinghouse, a senior VP at Yahoo!, was published in the Wall Street Journal. The subject? Yahoo! spreading their resources too thin & other organizational issues. He states that they recognize the existing problems:

• We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company
• We lack clarity of ownership and accountability
• We lack decisiveness

I certainly recommend you read it for yourself to find out Brad’s suggestions as to how Yahoo! deal with the problems that face the organization.

Credit for pointing me to the article once again goes to A VC, but Techcrunch also covered the story.

I’m at work at the moment- but this was such cool news I had to at least mention it (I’ll write more later tonight or this weekend). TechCrunch and Mashable are both reporting that MyBlogLog has been bought by Yahoo! for around $10 million. MyBlogLog is one of the most promising Web 2.0 companies out there–great acquisition for Yahoo! in my opinion.

Update: TechCrunch reports that this story broke too soon. MyBlogLog & Yahoo! are in early talks, but there is nothing official to report.

Robert Scoble visited the Zillow offices several weeks ago, right before the Blog Business Summit. He posted two videos filmed during his visit on the Scoble Show today–one with our CFO & VP of Marketing, Spencer Rascoff, and another with 4 of our talented developers.

Sorry for another short post with little insight, but Fred Wilson keeps cranking out great posts–the latest is titled “Connectors.” Fred  mentions that connections are key to the VC industry (weird). However, the interesting part of the post is the effect blogging has had on his ability to network and connect people–he says blogging “has surpassed my expectations by an order of magnitude.” To me–it’s a no-brainer. E-mail & phone calls are used to communicate to one person. Blogging is something that can reach a massive audience while still enabling conversation.
It seems to me that connectors without blogs would likely see similar results (increase in beneficial connections) if they started blogging. Afterall, they already have a decent sized group of interested readers.

I’ve covered this subject a little bit before, but this is seriously VERY cool! A collage of great reasons to blog (you can download the PDF here). Go show this to the execs in your company–help all of us bloggers evangelize blogging!

I must admit, I found it here–but I’ve now added CK’s Blog to my RSS reader.

There is a great conversation going on over on Dave Taylor’s blog regarding WordPress acting as a blog police by not allowing wordpress users to post sponsored or paid blog entries. I think I agree with Jason Preston’s comment:

I think WordPress.com’s actions, especially after the clarification, are completely reasonable.

They set up a service based on certain terms, and if you’re going to host a blog with them for free, you should be prepared to live with the fact that ultimately what happens to your blog is in their hands and at their discretion.

The same is true of all hosted services. If you want to spam and cheat and fill the internet with filth, don’t expect to get away with doing it on someone else’s dime.

In my opinion, the bottom line is wordpress can do whatever the hell they want. If you are trying to make money from blogging, it seems to me that you should at least be willing to pay $9.95 for a domain name and about $12 per month for web hosting. So don’t be mad at wordpress for not letting you make money using their free hosted platform.

WOW. This post, titled “Customer Service is the New Marketing” by Brad at Union Square Ventures (and inspired by coffee with Craig Newmark of Craigslist), really hits home with me. In the web 2.0 environment, where companies are focusing on site users to spread word of mouth, I think customer service is critically important. Strong customer service leads to increased word of mouth- the chances are high that site users dedicated enough to seek customer support are those considered ”mavens,” which are very valuable from a WOM perspective due to being deemed trusted experts in their field.

Here are the quotes that I really resonated with:

• “A web service needs to be pulled into a market and promoted by its users – its co-creators”
• “If you need to convince your contributors of the value of your service you have probably already lost”
• “…if you put a simple rudimentary service out there, not only would your users – your co-creators – tell you what you needed to improve the service; if you let them, they would do the work themselves”
• “First, it means that you need to get the service out there quickly. Designing a comprehensive feature set and spinning it a couple of times in a small closed beta is not going to work. If the service provides value in its initial rudimentary form, your users will take it and run with it. If you launch it fully formed , at best, you have robbed them of the pleasure of co-creating the service, at worst you have created something that nobody wants”

So- if you want to improve word of mouth for your web site (also known as FREE marketing), start building your customer support team, but keep it very small. Finding a passionate blogger or two that enjoy engaging on blogs with others should be a high priority. When you find one that “gets” how blogs can be used as a customer service tool (and how powerful the relationships with other bloggers are), they will be a great hire for your organization. You’d be amazed what one or two employees engaged in the blogosphere can do for your company.