Posted by Sebastien on the 2006/11/30 at 10:56
in Google, Local - No Comments »
Read on Peter Krasilovsky’s blog, a summary of Dan Rubinstein’s (Head of Small Business product initiatives at Google) presentation he gave at the Kelsey ILM 2006 conference in Philadelphia.
Highlights:
- “Google is going to meet SMEs halfway to get them to actively market themselves on the Internet.”
- They’re launching microsite solutions to help SMEs that don’t have a website but want to advertise on Google (only available to AdWords advertisers)
- They’re building a Website Optimizer tool that will help SMEs take the guesswork out of landing page testing (also only available to AdWords advertisers)
- They are also focused on real-time local inventory (possibly done through the Intuit/StepUp partnership)
- They would eventually like to offer “deep cross-merchant, cross-product metrics that will help consumers know what to buy, and where to get it right now”
- They also want to “establish standards for aggregating and categorizing and protecting personal information”
Dan Rubinstein also thinks that “for local business ads, mobile is the killer ap, not the desktop”
Additional info on that presentation can be found on the ZDNet blog.
What it means: Google is going to ecommerce-enable SMEs, whether traditional media wants it or not. It’s going to be a slow process but by offering a complete portfolio of products and services around eBusiness (including obviously advertising), they become the de facto center piece of the action. At the same time, they don’t really have a choice given that 99% of their revenues is dependent on linking to Web sites (up until they develop a pay-per-call model). I’m surprised Dan Rubinstein did not mention Google Checkout though.
Harry adds: I’m with Dan, for local, mobile is the killer app… now, how does one get around those walled gardens again?
Michael Geist blogs about the launch of a user-generated news show at BBC News 24
According to this Journalism.co.uk article, “Your News, which began a pilot run on Saturday, will feature stories, features and video proving most popular with viewers on TV and the internet. Presented by Richard Bilton and Laura Jones, the show will contain weekly features that will look at news reports covering issues raised by members of the public (called Your Story) and a section where reporters try to find answers to questions sent in to the BBC by the public (Your Questions).”
It seems like the BBC Web site receives 10,000 suggestion/comment e-mails a day.
What it means: what might seem like “garbage” to one company (what do we do with these 10,000 e-mails we’re getting, they’re a pain!) is gold for the BBC. I’m sure they saw all this submitted content sitting there and figured out a way to leverage it. Very smart! So, are you sitting on “garbage” that could be turned into gold?
Via the Lost Remote blog, Interactive Corp (IAC) announced the launch of AskCity, a new local information service that will mash-up all of IAC’s local content together. It will combine content from Ask.com, CitySearch, Evite and TicketMaster. I suspect this will be a channel of Ask.com (as the AskCity.com URL is owned by this company) and they will use search as the entry door to all that content. The service is scheduled to launch on December 4th, followed quickly by a full redesign of the Ask.com site.
What it means: it’s a good beginning but they might need to aggregate additional external content (newspapers, TV, etc.) to make this even more interesting and relevant from a local perspective. It’s also interesting that they chose to keep all destination sites in addition to this new service (potentially driven by search). This create a massive new entry door into existing content. I might be mistaken but it’s also the first major move at improving Ask.com since the acquisition. I’ll be keeping an eye out for this one.
Posted by Sebastien on the 2006/11/28 at 05:35
in Podcasts, Radio, TV - No Comments »
Business Week is reporting on a Pew Internet & American Life Project podcast downloading survey and gives readers a pretty good summary of the podcast landscape. Highlights from the Business Week article include:
- “Roughly 12% of Internet users have downloaded podcasts in order to listen in at a later time” (up from 7% early this year)
- “Most tuning into podcasts are sampling shows available, rather than subscribing and regularly listening to particular programs”
- “Only 1% of Internet users reported downloading podcasts on a typical day”
- “Estimates of the number of podcasts range from 30,000 to more than 60,000″
- “Researchers at the Diffusion Group forecast that 11.4 million Americans will tune into podcasts by the end of 2006″ (21.7 million in 2007)
- “Analysts point out that it’s still hard for many Internet users to find satisfying podcasts, much less ones that you want to hear on a regular basis”
- 75% of the podcast traffic is driven through Apple iTunes
- “Many of the most popular podcasts are produced by traditional media outlets (about half of iTunes’ top 100 podcasts are from existing media companies)”.
- “A Forrester study found that the content many respondents were most interested in receiving via podcast was produced by traditional media outlets.”
- 23% of respondents were interested in radio news programs
- 20% wanted broadcast radio shows
- 20% wanted to listen to recorded books
- 18% wanted television news programs
- 10% wanted recorded news or magazine articles
- 8% wanted audio content from bloggers.
What it means: even though podcasting (and listening to podcasts) is growing, volume usage is still limited to traditional media consumption. Is podcasting a way for traditional radio broadcasters to offer time displacement like Tivo or PVRs are doing for TV? This clearly seems like a great opportunity from a traditional media point of view, an opportunity to extend the reach and frequency of radio and TV shows (via video
podcasts).
Harry says: Public broadcasters have already embraced podcasts as a way to timeshift; many NPR, CBC and BBC programs are available within hours of their original radio broadcast. As for traditional media outlets having the upper hand, they do have the talent, technology and promotion machines to stake out the top positions. The world’s most popular non-traditional media podcast, This Week in Tech (reportedly with hundreds of thousands of weekly listeners), features media personalities that produce the show on the side, in addition to their ongoing mainstream media jobs. Reminds me of the adage, giving someone a paintbrush doesn’t make them a painter.
After writing my “The Impact of Social Media on Businesses” post on Friday, I kept thinking about the concept of Social Media Optimization (SMO) mentioned by David Berkowitz. I believe there’s something very strong there, almost a new meme. By reading Rohit Bhargava’s post on it, I discovered that there were now 16 rules around Social Media Optimization. Here they are:
- Increase your linkability (usually through fresh content)
- Make tagging and bookmarking easy
- Reward inbound links (permalink, listing recent linking blogs)
- Help your content travel (if your content is portable, submit it to other relevant sites)
- Encourage the mashup (let others use your content)
- Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you (include outbound links to areas that could help your users, even to your competitors)
- Reward helpful and valuable users (promote their work, develop a ranking system)
- Participate (join the conversation)
- Know how to target your audience
- Create content
- Be real
- Don’t forget your roots, be humble
- Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
- Develop a SMO strategy (define your objectives and set goals)
- Choose your SMO tactics wisely
- Make SMO part of your process and best practices
Rohit Bhargava created the first five rules, Jeremiah Owyang added Rules 6 and 7, Cameron Olthuis added Rules 8, 9, 10, and 11, Loren Baker added Rules 12 and 13 and Lee Odden added Rules 14, 15 and 16
What it means: the new social media world has its own code of conduct that marketers need to understand if they want to leverage it. This list is a great introduction and gives you the basic notions needed to be successful. Again, I really think that this notion of SMO will be very important in the future as
