The Praized Blog

According to this eMarketer article, “Nearly two-thirds of small businesses surveyed by Western Wats in an AT&T-commissioned study said they advertised in a printed yellow pages directory.“

I might be wrong as I’m not as familiar with the US market, but that number seems high based on my Canadian directory business experience. Up here, Yellow Pages Group has 395,000 customers (2006 annual report) which gives them, depending on who you talk to, between 20% and 40% penetration of the Canadian SME market. The US market is much more competitive though (some cities have 5+ competitive printed directories) and that might be why more SMEs are claiming they advertise in printed business directories.

Happy Holidays to all the Praized blog readers! The next two weeks will see a lighter blog post schedule. Back to the regular daily schedule on Monday January 7th.

Flickr picture by krisdecurtis.

Pew Internet just released a fascinating study called “Teens and Social Media”. Teens are clearly embracing the conversational aspect of the web and are precursors to the way we will use the Internet in the future.

Highlights & data points:

• 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet.
• 39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories, or videos.
• 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments.
• 28% have created their own online journal or blog.
• 27% maintain their own personal webpage.
• 26% remix content they find online into their own creations.
• 55% of online teens ages 12-17 have created a profile on a social networking site.
• 47% of online teens have uploaded photos where others can see them.
• 14% of online teens have posted videos online.

Additional insights:

• In the midst of the digital media mix, the landline is still a lifeline for teen social life. Multi-channel teens layer each new communications opportunity on top of pre-existing channels.
• Email continues to lose its luster among teens as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites facilitate more frequent contact with friends.
• Posting images and video often starts a virtual conversation. Most teens receive some feedback on the content they post online.

For more information, here’s the full report (.pdf).

What it means: more crystal-ball gazing. This net-native generation will completely change the web. Embrace these trends to be ahead of the curve.

Famous entrepreneur Mark Cuban (Broadcast.com, HDnet, Dallas Mavericks) totally embraced Facebook when it caught fire this year. Other Facebook users sent him request to become “friends” and he quickly reached the 5000 friends limit. What happened afterwards is very telling.

He tells his experience on his blog:

Facebook went from being a way to broadcast information to 5k people, probably 4k of which I didn’t know or even have a business link to, to a platform I either had to take seriously or walk away from. (…)

What I had not accounted for was that there were a lot of people who I had never met or had any connection to, who took the concept of FB “friending” literally. They wanted to interact as if we were long time friends. I was getting FB emails asking me how i was doing. What I was up to tonight. What did i think of X, Y, Z. Stuff that I was not going to tell a total stranger, even if they were my FB “friend”

He then started removing “friends” and decided to rethink his “friending” strategy. He explains:

My new FB strategy is not exclusively about “friends” in the truest sense of the word. Its about three layers of “friends”

The first layer has my real friends. Those people who who I have actually met in real life and who I enjoy keeping in touch with. FB provides a great way to keep up with things with them via pictures, notifications, etc.

The 2nd layer is people who I have tangential connections to. They may just live in Dallas Fort Worth. They may be self proclaimed Mavs or MMA or movie fans, or in groups I’m in. For whatever reason there is something about them that I could connect to.

The 3rd layer is emerging as a very unique and interesting network in FB. Its what I will call “The Power Layer.” These are people who in whatever industry they are in , retain some level of power. Having them as FB friends, although very simple and non committal, gives me some level of access to them, and them to me. These are people that if they sent me a FB mail, i would certainly read and respond to , and I think they would do the same.

What it means: Cuban’s strategy is one of many we’ve seen in regards to personal and professional Facebook use. Again, we’re still trying and struggling to define what is a “friend” in the context of these new social tools. Donna Bogatin criticizes the post and calls it a “self-serving self-promo”. (Donna just wrote to let me know she actually agrees with Mark Cuban. The line I quote was her reaction to a post from Jeremiah Owyang). I call it “exploration and experimentation”. We’re learning as we go.

I’m alway reminded of this graph (above) from René Barsalo showing how many generations it took to go from the beginnings of the modern man to writing (1700 generations), from writing to printing (300 generations) and so forth with each new communication technology. Where our ancestors had the benefit of one (or more) generation to learn how to use emerging communication tools, we now only have a few years. Expect a lot of trial and error in a very short period of time.

Yesterday, I wrote about what I thought were the most important news in 2007 in the local and social media space. Today, I’d like to propose my 2008 predictions, an always interesting exercise.

1. The year of Identity. One of the big challenges of social media is having to sign-up and add your friends in a multitude of web sites. Expect 2008 to be the year where this problem becomes a major issue and gets potentially solved through identity interoperability initiatives like OpenID.
2. Social is now everywhere and open. The last few months of 2007 have set the stage for a very social 2008. Any new major initiatives will include social elements by default and will use existing standards like OpenSocial, DiSo or Facebook.
3. Fragmentation & personalization of media. Given the lower barrier to entry for new local/social projects, user and advertiser fragmentation will continue to accelerate in 2008. From a user point of view, this will lead to new personalization tools allowing consumers to create their own unique media view.
4. The year of ad networks. As a corollary of point #3 above, given that user fragmentation will accelerate, an increasingly large number of ad networks will pop-up to aggregate consumers into a critical advertising mass. It’s all about advertiser defragmentation. Directory publishers will want to become ad networks themselves to push their ads o