H/T to Mashable for this post!
Here are commercials that some web 2.0 companies (Meebo, Technorati, RockYou, Meez, Multiply, and Plaxo) created in spirit of Superbowl creativity — enjoy!
Entering the internet time period that people will call Web 3.0 is inevitable, but the specifics of what web 3.0 is or will include is up for debate. There have been a number of articles written about Web 3.0 since Tim O’Reilly’s web 2.0 article in 2005- see here, here, and here. BUT instead of hypothesizing about Web 3.0, I thought I’d focus on the next wave of Web 2.0 technology. This has been a work in progress for awhile, but I think I finally finished my thoughts.
Image courtesy of LeJournalduNet
First of all, blogging and social networking seem to be on a direct crash course. I’ve definitely noticed that I don’t surf around myspace or facebook anymore since I’ve started blogging. Todays social networks don’t cater to conversation; they just provide another way to keep track of your connections. Blogs will become a person’s online profile and I’d even go so far as to say I think a blog may become almost as necessary as e-mail is today. A developer, or possibly a company like Mybloglog, will figure out a way to add all the benefits of a social network to blogs. A plug-in to enable people to track all of their RSS feeds from their blog’s control panel would be a great addition to blogging platforms. In essence, building the features of myYahoo! into a blog’s control panel. Another thing I see happening with blogging is even better integration of comments into a blog. Cocomment has done a great job so far, but I would argue there are still serious improvements that can be made – both in terms of customization and integration. In the end, many of these tools will migrate themselves into the admin tool – probably starting with WordPress since it’s open source and WIDELY used.
Second, a web company will be hard pressed to succeed without an API for developers to innovate with. To help you realize the benefit of being “everywhere,” here is a great quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt-
We don’t have the resources to build all these,” says [Google CEO Eric] Schmidt. “We are critically dependent upon the creation of the developer community.” The bigger he can make it, he says, the better off and unassailable he makes Google. It is, he says, “the No. 1 goal … it creates so much good will, so much leverage, so much user traffic, so much benefit.
It seems everyone is racing out with Open API’s, following the trend that Google, Salesforce, and Yahoo have been so successful with. Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Zillow (my employer) are among the young companies to put their initial API’s out there for developers to innovate with. Companies that try to control their content will struggle to grow their market in the emerging web environment that is becoming more and more personalized. Web 2.0 content is meant to be free – meaning wherever consumers want to see it.
Third, the web will see the continual rise of Wiki’s following the amazing things Wikipedia has accomplished. One thing that may cause Wiki usage to take off is the possibility that “Google may be planning to deliver a multi-community version of Wikipedia.” We’ve already seen user-generated content explode onto the scene — just look at myspace, facebook, eBay, and Flickr. Topic specific wikis will spring up on a variety of web sites. However, the thing many don’t realize is the difficulty it is to build a vibrant community to contribute to a wiki. I think many probably think they can just slap together a wiki and people will magically contribute. I bet there are thousands of instances of Media Wiki (one-click open source install on many server accounts) installed on random sites that get almost zero pick up.
Fourth, mobile applications will experience massive growth. When I was in Europe a year and a half ago, I realized how far behind the US is in terms of mobile use. Myspace partnered with Helio. Facebook has Facebook Mobile. Mobile is the future (mobile 2.0).
Fifth, RSS is going to be extended as a search tool. Full disclosure — I originally got this particular idea from a presentation John Battelle gave at the Blog Business Summit. Back to the idea, all the data is available in RSS — developers have just yet to build all the tools on top of that data to make it extremely useful to everyday internet users. Imagine an application that searches through all your RSS feeds in your reader for a particular keyword. Or if you could tag your RSS feeds and search through categories of RSS feeds. Google has already realized the value of narrowed searches with their Google Co-Op product — allowing a user to search a specified list of URL’s. There is lots of room for improvement in utilizing RSS data — probably many I’m not even thinking about.
What do you think is the next wave of technical advances or user adoption??
Part of what inspires me to blog is bringing attention to issues not being given enough attention by the mainstream media or the government. With the rise of social media, everyone has a voice and can impact lives with only a little money or time (or both). I highly encourage you to place a quick post on YOUR blog to the Darfurwall in the hopes of spreading the word for this fantastic cause.
On the Local News tonight, I saw a short feature on the Darfurwall non-profit project focused on helping aide those affected by the genocide in Darfur and thought I’d try to help the cause. Here’s the opening headline from the article:
Jonah Burke wants you to think about two numbers: 400,000 — That’s how many people have been killed in the fighting in Sudan between Government troops and rebels. And the other number is 1. As in, $1 he’d like you to consider donating to help victims of the genocide.
The project has raised over $32,500 thus far for victims (with a goal of $400,000) in Darfur — one dollar at a time. For more information, you can check the darfur wall blog. It’s easy to donate as little as $1 — which I’m sure everyone reading this blog can afford. Let’s help Jonah reach his goal of $400,000 in donated funds.
Click one of the squares and it takes you to a page with 10,000 numbers — the highlighted numbers are the ones that have already been “lit” up with a $1 donation:
I donated $5 to light up 5 numbers on the site — please consider donating to the cause (every dollar helps).
Thanks for your help in advance — I know those suffering in Darfur will appreciate it (as will Jonah Burke). Please help spread the word.
Update: This event has been moved to Thursday, February 1st
My friend, Tim Reha (now working on a start up in the new media space – New Media Synergy), is putting on a networking event at his Pioneer Square loft tomorrow Wednesday night from 6-9 pm if you’re interested. Cost is $25 that includes refreshments. I’ll be there for the early part of the evening.
If you’re interested, send an e-mail to events (at) ventureallstars (dot) com by tomorrow Wednesday afternoon (sorry for the late notice). Hope to see you there!
This is certainly big news – YouTube is going to start giving contributors a cut of the revenue that YouTube makes off advertisements shown during their videos. The goal is to encourage creativity. Since most people (and companies) simply follow the leader, I’m guessing we’ll see an influx of sites implementing this model in their user-generated web sites. I applaud Chad Hurley for good business strategy — he focused on getting the passionate users who wanted to participate for the right reasons before providing incentives. I think it’s something many sites miss — in my mind, the quality of community content goes down with increased monetary incentives. It really comes down to the fact that passion is crucial to great contributions and money does not correspond with passion. I don’t think sites that start out sharing revenue (such as Revver) will succeed in building thriving communities.
More coverage at NewTeeVee, BuzzMachine, Techmeme, and ZDNet.
Chad Hurley at the Davos Conference in Switzerland.
Hurley briefly talks with Claudia Gonzalez of the World Economic Forum.
No, I’m not going to talk about how to link to others tonight — instead, I’ll just do it:
That’s it for now. I’m sure something interesting will be on my mind this weekend.
There was an absolutely fantastic article in the LA Times that my best friend e-mailed me today, titled “Network Philanthropy: The men behind EBay are leading a high-tech revolution that is turning charitable giving on its head” (registration required). I really encourage you to read it — very good inspiration if you are interested in mixing a heavy dose of business with philanthropy work sometime in your career as I am.
The article talks about how eBay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll have redefined venture philanthropy with their work over the past decade. Pierre pioneered the notion of granting pre-IPO shares to a non-profit foundation by endowing Community Foundation Silicon Valley with $1 million in pre-IPO shares in eBay — 12 months later CFSV sold the shares for $40 million (talk about a great gift). Google later followed this example by granting pre-IPO shares, now worth about $1 billion (wow), to Google.org during their IPO in 2004. In 2005, Omidyar donated “$100 million for a new Tufts University program to generate millions of tiny loans, some as small as $40, to finance entrepreneurs trying to escape poverty in India, Bangladesh and other poor countries” (USA Today). Whereas people in the US think of $40 as pocket change and easily blow through twice that amount of money to attend a sporting event, $40 in developing countries can change lives.
Quite frankly, I don’t have as much time to dive into this topic as I’d like to right now, but I’ll come back to it (I just created a draft with the title “A Deep Dive into Venture Philanthropy”). I will say this: It is absolutely fantastic that entrepreneurship, venture capital, and philanthropy are starting to converge. Hats off to those making it happen — they have my respect.
I’m glad VC Confidentia (blogger is Matt McCall) is planning to increase its coverage of venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship (I just subscribed to the blog’s RSS).
Man, I was shocked to see the CEO Jonathan Schwartz of a Fortune 500 company (Sun) publicly apologize to the blogosphere without being asked. In response to this blog post by Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg that critizes the Sun Startup Essentials program, Jonathan wrote this on his own blog:
…yes, I saw the entry written by Matt Mullenweg – and all I can say is… I’m really sorry, Matt. That’s not the way Startup Essentials is supposed to work. We screwed up, and you’re completely right to suggest if that’s the norm, we should kiss goodbye our aspirations of reestablishing our business in the startup community.
If there’s anything I can do to win a second chance, I’d like to know. I appreciate your first sentence.
Robert Scoble mentioned that “Now we know that this blog isn’t written by a PR team. I’ve never seen a PR team recommend apologizing in public for messing up a customer.” Traditionally, it’s certainly not been normal to bring attention to a mistake. This makes me wonder: Is the PR landscape changing? Well, I know blogs have had an effect on Public Relations by giving a voice to the little guy (all it takes for something to explode in the blogosphere is one person writing about it & one A-lister who finds it) – but I don’t think the change is really revolutionary yet.
What is revolutionary is a CEO who takes the initiative to respond very publicly to a user without being required. Many organizations would have responded in the comments of Matt’s blog if it came under criticism like this, but Jonathan took it one step further by including the apology in his own blog post. I think people (and PR professionals) are going to start realizing how much customer good will is brought by responding publicly and pro-actively admitting mistakes. So what if it brings more attention to the issue? Maybe the goal SHOULD be to bring more attention to customer complaints so as to improve the way a company operates. In my opinion, more and more companies are going to start taking this approach of building trust with their customers. And more and more CEO’s will be the ones doing it.
By the way, there was a great comment left on Jonathan’s post — A CEO who blogs is rare. A CEO who publicly admits a mistake is priceless.
I can almost guarantee that the Sun Startup Essentials program is going to see huge changes in the way potential customers are handled as a result of this, which will improve Sun’s bottom line. Isn’t that a good thing?
I started this post last night, so I guess it’s not “new” anymore — ShyCast was featured on TechCrunch yesterday (man, I’m resorting TechCrunch news), but I thought this was an interesting company with some potential. ShyCast is another social networking site that helps marketers to reach new audiences (hopefully). It aims to generate revenue via company sponsored contests where the community decides the winners in a transparent fashion. For instance, maybe a Coca-Cola contest for most creative way to drink a can of Coke where users can vote on the top videos. Perhaps some web 2.0 companies will sponsor a “best widget” contest for developers who are looking to build something cool & make a buck in the process (if they win). There are lots of possibilities as the site tries to capitize on the explosion of social networking, video, and user-generated content.
There are still some VERY large obstacles to success — the most notable being attracting an audience large enough to make the social network useful. Before ShyCast is really successful with reaching critical mass, I’m betting Myspace or Facebook (who already have massive audiences) will build a simple add-on to their site to tap this revenue stream. One of the commenters on the TC post, Kelli Mack, mentioned that there is probably money to be made in helping local business promote (raise awareness for) their product to individuals who live in the area. I certainly agree. It sounds like ShyCast have several nationwide companies onboard, such as Ikea — but I think the real opportunity lies in the local markets. Target cities 1 by 1 until the site is fairly well-known and successful in 10, then grow the product virally from there. Focusing on national advertisers and spending huge amounts of advertising dollars to draw a national audience is NOT the right way to go about spreading awareness (in my opinion). Another obstacle is whether this will even be useful to a large number of users? How many people will really create videos and participate in these contests? I don’t know if I’m convinced unless ShyCast creates an application that adds value to someone’s everyday life — not just people who want to spend their free time participating in contests sponsored by large brands (we’ll see how much the winners make – people will do anything if the potential payout is high enough).
I’m not saying they can’t make it happen, but it’s going to be a difficult road to the top…
Choosing relevant and beneficial blog entry titles should be a high priority for any blogger who hopes to entice both their RSS subscribers and blog search users to click through to their blog. Afterall, readers only have so much time to read blog entries in a given day. What is going to differentiate your post over the rest? The TITLE!! Dave Taylor writes an excellent post over at Intuitive Life Business Blog titled “The Importance of Good Blog Entry Titles.”
The following is question number 11 of Guy Kawasaki’s “The Stickiness Aptitude Test (SAT) and Ten Questions with Chip and Dan Heath” post that I was just reading. I thought I’d highlight it because it totally mirrors a lesson I learned this past week.
Question: What’s your advice to a product champion stuck in a large company who gets matrixed to death trying to implement your ideas?
Make people play on your turf by keeping things concrete. It is so much easier to bullshit with abstraction than with concrete examples. Don’t say, “I think we should devote more resources to evangelism among mid-market IT decision-makers.” Say, “Here’s a list of 500 IT decision-makers in the area around Salt Lake City. I want to invite them to a one-day conference on Sept 29. It will cost $60,000 to pull off. Who’s in?” Even if they disagree, it will be productive disagreement, anchored in reality.
The lesson is to take the initiative to develop a concrete example before trying to “sell” something — don’t argue in theory. Have you had one of those incredibly long work e-mail strings that didn’t accomplish anything? Well, I was a part of one recently and was given some fantastic advice (thanks David) as a result. Rather than argue about something that you THINK would work without developing a concrete example, do the work ahead of time to show an example of what you mean. It can save a lot of time and headache and lead to a productive conversation rather than a never-ending argument (or e-mail string).
Guy Kawasaki is Jennifer Jones’ latest interviewee for Podtech’s Marketing Voices. Guy dives into social media and talks a bit about the book he is presently writing, tentatively titled “How to Change the World” (how many of you noticed that he changed the name of his blog to reflect this title?). I guess it’s no longer a secret that Guy is one of my favorite bloggers.
It’s disappointing that the Seahawks season ended in overtime on a 50 yd field goal. We didn’t take advantage of some of the opportunities that we given to us — and it cost us. Our decimated secondary definitely hurt us a little bit, though Pete Hunter did grab an interception. Rex Grossman made fantastic throws when he had to in order to keep the Bears in the game and to give them an opportunity to win. It’s frustrating to see the Bears move on when I feel the Seahawks are the better team, but there’s no sense complaining. It’s all about winning — nothing else matters.
Regarding Shaun Alexander (who didn’t have a great season) — at halftime after a lack-luster 1st half, I seriously considered writing about how overpaid Shaun is, but he did have an excellent 2nd half. I still believe the Seahawks would have been better off spending the money spent on Alexander to keep Steve Hutchinson on our offensive line. Sure, an o-lineman is not as sexy as a 1,000 yard back, but backs are dependent on the offensive line to open holes. Maurice Morris showed he can hang with the big boys in Shaun’s absence this year. What happened to Priest Holmes after being a dominating back 3 years ago? 3 years from now — I’m betting Alexander will be washed up and we’ll be stuck with his contract.
I do want to say congratulations to the Seahawks for a great season. I certainly can’t bash the team for effort. I’ll be looking forward to a great season next year if we can keep our nucleus together and don’t experience the numerous injuries that plagued us this year. Perhaps (hopefully) we’ll add an offensive lineman?
Fred Wilson has done it again — another fantastic article. This one titled “Founders and Management” (fairly long) and posted on the Union Square Ventures blog — it details what Union Square Ventures looks for in management teams that they invest in. I would summarize further, but I don’t want to give you a reason to not go read it. Definitely a fantastic read for all you entrepreneurs out there.
I won’t dive in too deep to this issue tonight — but getting yet another direct mailing from a magazine wanting me to subscribe is driving me nuts. Today the direct mailing was from Conde Nast Portfolio (a new magazine). Yesterday it was Smart Money. Ever since I signed up for Fortune, Business 2.0, and Entrepreneur, I’ve gotten at least 3 direct mailings from magazines or newspapers every week. I don’t know which one sells their mailing lists, but I’d guess all three. That’s beside the point.
What I really want to get at is that these companies need some serious marketing lessons for reaching young consumers such as myself. Do marketing execs honestly think I will subscribe to a magazine that sends me a direct mail? What happens when I receive a direct mailing, about anything, not just magazines? Three things:
Don’t marketers realize this is a complete waste of money on their part? Spend your time creating great content and generating word of mouth — not on direct mail campaigns. If a marketer is really hell-bent on reaching me through traditional means and they know I subscribe to Fortune (my favorite magazine) — ADVERTISE there. I consume the majority of my media ONLINE — if your aim is to reach me, get a clue and go where I spend my time. Advertise on the Fortune web site. Advertise on TechCrunch, Yahoo!, or ESPN. PUSH marketing is over. If I want your magazine or service, I’ll find your product! Just make yourself findable.
And does anyone know where I can get off of all these damn mailing lists from one place?
Well, it’s official. Both TechCrunch & Mashable reported the news today — MyBlogLog has sold to Yahoo! (this time for real) and will be part of the Developers Network. You may remember that the deal was rumored back in November, but never got finalized. I was just chatting with Eric, one of the co-founders, on IM and he’s excited about the deal (I guess it’s hard not to be when you just make that kind of money – $10-12 million is being reported).
Regarding my actual opinion on the deal? I think it’s fantastic for the Eric, Todd, Scott, and the rest of the MyBlogLog crew. Though I firmly believe they could have succeeded with this on their own in time — and probably made more money in the process, I understand that the security that a deal like this brings is hard to pass up. It seems like Yahoo! has done a great job with their acquisitions in the web 2.0 space such as Flickr and del.icio.us — so hopefully MyBlogLog doesn’t turn out any different. I can certainly see MBL driving yahoo!’s social networking strategy (& being in the center of the strategy) — there is no question the team knows how to build a community and I can’t wait to see what they can do with the added resources available by being a part of Yahoo. I absolutely love the company (in depth coverage here) and wish them the best! Congrats!
Update: I just found this fantastic analysis of the strategic implications for Yahoo! over at Search Engine Journal.
I don’t know how many of you read TechCrunch regularly, but TC added forums to their site on Thursday. It’s a cool addition to their growing network and I think they are well on thier way to creating a nice little web 2.0 community — interesting to developers, marketing gurus, CEO’s, and program managers alike. Right now, they have forums to discuss business development, give forum feedback, give/get company reviews, technical discussions, and of course, a general TechCrunch lounge to discuss everything else. It will be interesting to see how large the forum gets and what direction TC expands it to. Having an active community focused on web 2.0 to connect with others who share similar interests will be very useful for those working in the web 2.0 industry (or looking for a job).
I’m not sure how Arrington sells his ads, but I’d guess either on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) basis or just a preset fee per month (sponsorship). If he’s selling his ads via sponsorship placements at a set fee, I bet he’s planning to add some CPM advertising fairly soon or revamp his pricing structure — I can only imagine that the forums and their MyBlogLog community are dramatically increasing the page views to sell ads against. The potential revenue available as a result will probably be too hard to leave on the table.
With a high profile site like this adding forums, it’s almost a given that numerous blogs will be adding their own forums in the next 3 months. As a side note, congrats to Jive Software (more info about them on their blog) for landing TC as a client to use their forum software – great press for Jive. The Zillow API forum runs on Jive and I have to say, I love the platform.
Wow…what an incredible game. The Seahawks squeeked by with a 21-20 win over the Cowboys. Just when I thought the Seahawks were screwed, with 1:19 to go, the Cowboys botched the snap of a field goal that would have given them the lead. Romo didn’t quite make it to the 1st down marker with his scamble attempt after the snap and the Hawks were left to run out the remaining minute of the game with a couple runs by Shaun.
Photo courtesy of King 5
Go Hawks!! I’ve decided to take it easy tonight while many residents of Seattle (& probably the whole state of Washington) celebrate at local pubs.
I believe social media will hit politics head on for the 2008 election. Given this, what John Edwards is doing is INCREDIBLY smart — he’s a 1st mover for social media in politics by allowing the public (through Robert Scoble) to get to know him as a person. This is unheard of in politics. Take a few minutes and watch this interview with Scoble. Edwards is right — consumers don’t trust what they see on prime time television because the suspicion that everything is heavily screened for PR reasons. With the rise of social media, more and more voters are going to demand to get to know a candidate — through blogs, forums, podcasts, or videocasts — before voting for them. Whether candidates choose to embrace that fact is up to them. I admire Edwards for being this transparent and challenge every 2008 candidate to provide the same level of access. It will be truly AMAZING advance in social media if Edwards turns out to be our next President and maintains a personal blog while in office.
Not really related to social media, I fully agree with Presidential candidate John Edwards when he said, “We will never change the country unless the people of America decide internally that they want to change.” He mentioned that the United States needs to start functioning as a bottom-up democracy rather than a top-down — the people need to desire change, it can’t be forced on them.
I watched two interesting videos on the WebProNews Video Blog today dealing with social media:
One main take away is nothing too revolutionary (but many still don’t get it): be transparent about EVERYTHING when participating in the blogosphere.
Update: I’m now listening to Podtech’s Marketing Voices’ latest podcast with Regis McKenna on the Power of Social Media.
If you have questions or suggestions, please e-mail me at meyers (dot) drew (at) gmail (dot) com.
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I'm going to need good contacts in all these areas at some point in the future, but nothing is immediate. When I get to the point where I need these services, I'd rather use someone I've known and trusted for awhile rather than having to go seek someone out. But if you want my business and to be recommended by me, don't pitch me; build a real relationship and the biz will come later. You can start that process in the comments here (or on any of the blogs I write), via a personalized email, or on Twitter
