Monthly Archives: December 2008

Twidiots of the World, Unite!

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Twitter, as the latest social networking fad brilliant microblogging innovation, is attracting a huge following.    The appeal of Twitter is hard to explain until you’ve actively participated for some time, but I’m finding it’s a very enjoyable distraction from more pressing concerns.     Not only can you eavesdrop on usually intelligent tiny written conversations going on all over the world, through the “following” and “followers” features you can filter those conversations and control what you see and send to others.    Arguably the most important feature is that you can link out to blog posts or other URLs of interest, making Twitter a way to filter the increasingly overwhelming stream of data a bit more coherently than otherwise.    Twitter’s most practical application is probably simply “keeping in touch” with others both when they are distant and when you find common ground (e.g. at a  conference).   Tweetups are real life meetings where people who gather online get together for real – usually at a conference or in a city such as the one scheduled for CES 2009 in Las Vegas.

Loic LeMeur, the very popular Seesmic Founder, LeWeb Conference Organizer, and Twitter guy suggested improvements to Twitter search that would rank the material by the *authority* of the person writing, and this sparked a nice debate about how to assign value to the massive and constant stream of human commentary at Twitter.     I didn’t like that idea:

NO.   I’m OK with Scoble’s approach but I think the search by “authority” will deliver the same problems we have now with blogging – the best posts about a topic are not generally surfaced by authority measures. Instead, we get the most algorithmically appealing posts which are usually either a product of old A list bloggers sticking together and linking very opportunistically or overly SEO’d posts that suck but do a great job fooling the algos. Mostly ranking is now a combination of those two factors (old stuff and SEO measures).

One of the *great* things about Twitter is that it limits exposure fairly democratically. Authority search will help the twitter “rich” get richer, but I hardly think that’s a noble objective – it’s the same problem we have now where early adopters with a superficial voice are elevated above quality journalists.

Unless I’m missing something it sounds like you and Mike want to make sure Twitter does not threaten the status quo with more democratic ranking. I think it’s a great idea. In fact I think it would be interesting to *reverse* the algo you suggest – I’d rather hear from some Grandmas in Peoria about their iPhone experiences than from Jason Calacanis about [groan] the wonders of Mahalo.


Mike at TechCrunch had a somewhat opportunistic take on the situation saying this was a fine idea.   I didn’t agree with him either:

Mike my beef with the idea is the notion that popularity or even authority *in any form* is something we should work hard to protect and promote. I’m tiring of a mostly regurgitated news stream and increasingly I want to know what Peoria is thinking as much as what Mountain View thinks.

Even though Peoria is rarely as interesting or well articulated or technologically sophisticated, it’s far more *representative* and if I’m looking for business ideas or social trends…I’d like to hear from Grandma as much as from you and Loic.

The game as it stands mostly retains the status quo and limits the debate. There’s a much better way and, collectively, I think we’ll find it soon.

Scoble was getting closer but still missed the key point here that we need to work *away* from the elitist “my speech is more valuable than your speech” nonsense that somewhat ironically now drives many of the Web 2.0 debates:

Robert I appreciate the fact you are arguing against something that would benefit you far more than others. However my beef with Loic is the idea that popularity or even authority *in any form* is something we should work hard to protect and promote. Call me a digital anarchist, but I’m tired of TechCrunch’s often regurgitated news stream. I find that increasingly I want to know what Peoria is thinking as much as what Mountain View thinks. Even though Peoria is rarely as interesting or well articulated or technologically sophisticated, it’s far more *representative* and if I’m looking for business ideas or social trends…I’d like to know that.

Death of the Media Mogul: Digital Diaspora means …. less for everybody.

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As podcasters and webcasters and such try to turn a buck they come up against fixed ad revenues.

Ad model is a problem

(Note several comments came in based on those two sentences before I finished this post)

The main point I’m trying to make here is that the internet has created a remarkably cheap and effective content distribution mechanism – a global soapbox for anybody who cares to make a point online.    The cost to publish online is now essentially zero for all but very  large scale online publishing efforts.    Although eventually the number of publishers will level off as everybody who wants to be online gets online and the dropping out folks balance the new arrivals, I think we are still early enough in that process that there’s a lot of new website and blogging action ahead of us.

This suggests that it may be increasingly hard to become a  *Media Mogul* even in fairly specific niches.      We’ve seen the rise of mini moguls like Arriana Huffington in the Political space,  Mike Arrington in Technology at TechCrunch, Jason Calacanis , and Nick Denton of the Gawker Yellow Journalism and Celebrity Blog Empire,  but I think the success of early blogs is more a transitional thing than a trend that’s going to stick.     Few blogs make much if any money and that’s not likely to change a lot although I suspect we’ll see lots of hard working good writers find comfortable niches of expertise managing to make a living providing online content – at least until the machines start to slice and dice and repackage online information so effectively nobody can tell if it’s organic or artificially intelligent organization.

Now, contrast this trend towards many publishers with the fact that online advertising total spending may actually decline in 2009, and more importantly can only grow so much.    Now, it’s true that the online spend is currently low enough that we may see online advertising grow enough to support the growth of online content for some time, but my guess is that content is growing many, many times faster than online advertising it needs to be profitably supported.   Luckily for users the content is not going to go away and will keep flowing online, but unluckily for online publishers they are going to have to produce more and more to make the same amount.   We’re already seeing this trend with sites like TechCrunch which often spin out dozens of articles daily.

As an online publisher myself I’m not really sure how to address this challenge.    Certainly I tend to favor keeping expenses under control and not making the mistakes we did earlier in the travel empire by spending too much to improve websites that were always under the gun of Google’s somewhat algorithmically arbitrary content policies.   Better I think to use small amounts of capital to seed a lot of project and then fund the winners and let the losers whither on the vine.     I’ve written a lot about this process which I think is somewhat analogous to biological evolution where smart businesses actually are usually working away from failure more than towards success.    I know a many successful business folks (and perhaps even *more* biz wannabes) would bristle at the notion that serendipity plays as much a role in success as careful, reasoned strategy but the more I see of success and of failure the less convinced I am that formulas play much of a role.    Sure it helps to work hard, have a general idea of what you want to do, etc, but like evolution I don’t think a whole lot of planning is the recipe for most success stories.  On the contrary you find engaging people engaged in things they enjoy and are very good at doing, and you find lucky breaks or circumstances that propelled thos particular people to fame.    Music and sports are a great example of this – for every thousand excellent singers or sportspeople there are only a handful of superstars, and the road to that stardom is often littered with personal tragedy as well as the failures of the other 999 folks who didn’t make it.    I think the reason we tend to think there are success “formulas” is that we examine success too much and failure … too little.

OK, I got too far afield  – must be the turkey talking.   Hmmmm …. where is that leftover stuffing anyway?

DIGG Losing Money Despite Huge Traffic

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I was floored to see that DIGG, a key darling of Silicon Valley and arguably one of the key forces that has shaped online social media, is losing a lot of money on abysmal revenues.

These numbers are from Silicon Alley Insider quoting a BusinessWeek article:

  • Last year the company lost $2.8 million on $4.8 million of revenue
  • In the first three quarters of 2008, Digg lost $4 million on $6.4 million of revenue.
  • Digg wanted to sell for $300 million last year, but took funding this fall to set its valuation at $167 million

All this when DIGG sees about 23 million unique visits per month according to QuantCast and some 30 million according to DIGG.       Silicon Alley reports that DIGG’s expenses are some 14 million annually and wonders where all that goes.    Me too because unlike, say, YouTube I do not think DIGG’s hosting infrastructure would have to be all that massive, and with content from users one has to wonder where the big money goes at DIGG.

More interesting however is that modest revenue number.   $4.8 million in revenue on some 250-360 million visits.   If we assume only 2.0 page views per visit  and 250 million visits over the year DIGG is making about 5 million total on 500 million page views, or just about a penny per page view or $10 CPM.

This is probably overly generous (DIGG says they have 30 million uniques and they probably have more than 2 pageviews per unique).   However if true that’s actually a fantastic CPM given that the DIGG audience trends very young and presumably is not the key demographic for most advertisers.   Although many prestigious and highly targeted websites tend to charge $30 CPM and up I’m confident that number will decline as advertisers realize how unlikely they are to have positive ROI at that CPM.     DIGG appears to be doing better than other youth focused gaming sites where advertising can often run below $1 CPM, in some cases even challenging sites to even break even on server and bandwidth costs.

Related:  November 2006  – Owen Byrne of DIGG

PepCom “Digital Experience” won’t allow many bloggers – this is Pepcom’s idea of promoting technology?

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<begin whining rant>

Along with CNET’s David Berlind, I am not impressed at all with PepCom and felt compelled to write a bit about why I don’t think they are doing a good job promoting technology at their events which work by capturing attending press folks from  CES  Las Vegas and other technology events.

First, this is not a criticism of CES.  On the contrary if you a technology enthusiast heading to Las Vegas for CES 2009 I can say from my  experiences last year that you are going to have a wonderful time, especially if you are a tech blogger and thus qualify for the many fun parties and events where bloggers and other press folks are generally welcome.

Last year at CES 2008 the Consumer Electronics Association and sponsors did a wonderful job hosting blogger lounges, lunches, parties, and full access to conference sessions. Despite some prankish BS by the folks at Gizmodo I think most bloggers were happy with the arrangements.

PepCom’s Digital Experience on the other hand is not so blogger friendly, effectively refusing admission to all but full time press and reporters. Sure, they have a right to run their own show. However I have a right to call them for poor strategy and annoying rules. Why keep *any* technology bloggers out of a “Digital Experience” which is designed to generate positive buzz and reporting about their technology sponsors, who pay something like $8,000 and up for a table and a few hours of exposure to press folks?

Adding injury from last year to this year’s insult, I’d actually been invited last year by one of PepCom’s sponsors to the party but was turned away at the door along with many others who I think were in the same boat of having an invitation that was not approved by PepCom.    Aside from feeling insulted not to “qualify” for the event, it’s no small thing  in Las Vegas where you walk very long distances to get to places.   Given the confusion they’d helped cause with the problematic invitations they should have fixed this simply and quickly by offering admission.   But no.    I should have realized then that the PepCom Digital Experience was going to be a bad experience, but I decided to jump through their silly hoops this year and fax in my business card and blog information, especially because this year we’re really planning some extensive coverage at Technology-Report.com with two reporters, a lot of pictures, and even some video.    But no.   We did not meet some of PepCom’s stringent press standards of full time reporters and/or mainstream press.

Again, that’s OK – it’s their party and they can run it how they see fit, but ….

Who ARE these PepCommers anyway?   Certainly they are not folks who understand how technology gets reported and promoted.

<end whining rant>

Twitter? Priceless. Dell makes a million on Twitter? Meaningless.

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As usual there is an *extraordinary* failure in the blogosphere to apply even the simplest reasonable business metrics to a minor event, in this case Dell’s million dollar Twitter “success”.

I’m a big fan of Twitter and think it’s great, but can’t abide the absurd valuation metric du jour which is hyping Twitter’s value based on Dell reporting that they had a million in revenue from activity via their Twitter presence.     Excuse me, but this is *trivial* news, suggesting if anything that Twitter is probably *not* a good base for  transactional economies.

Why the contrarian conclusion here?

People too often view revenue numbers as if they were profit.   Revenue is easy.  Profit is hard.   A million in revenues for a company that does many billions in revenue each quarter is not very significant – that million probably represents something like $50,000 in profit even if we assume the cost of the social media campaign was *zero*, when in fact it was likely … more than the profit from it.   Even if the ROI was positive companies like Dell can’t mess around with many new technologies if they only make Dell a few thousand extra in profit.

Even more importantly this silly “Twitter Revenue” metric is almost completely bogus.    This appears to be a count of sales that came in via Twitter rather than sales that were the result of some extra advertising activity at Twitter.   By this type of metric we’d value email infrastructures like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail in the hundreds of billions or even trillions since so many economic decisions and transactions happen via email.  When GW Bush emails Henry Paulson to say “Hank,  throw 15 billion at the Auto Makers” do we chalk 15 billion up to the “email economy”.  Of course not.

Communication paradigms are very important but their economic implications are not to be exaggerated or conflated with real monetization programs – few of which have proven even modestly successul in the social media world.

Partly it’s simply because I’m being honest and not trying to hype the value of microblogging to advertisers.   I’m just calling this analytically which leads us to wonder how they could have done so poorly when Dell’s demographic matches Twitter’s suberbly. Dell’s volume is huge.  Dell’s got  a huge number of  Twitter Followers.  They are preaching and selling to a choir filled with existing and potential customers.

It appears the usually-insightful-but-in-this-case-opportunistic Fred Wilson has been trying to bump this “Twitters Millions” article around, perhaps because … he owns part of Twitter.    But I think Fred knows better  – if anything this is such a trivial sum it implies that Twitter – like most social media operations – is probably already overvalued by the Silicon Valley hype machine that you might remember suggested huge valuations for hundreds of companies that are now … gone and worthless.

Twitter’s here to stay and certainly has great value, but I’m skeptical they’ll find a great monetization model for the same reason Facebook is failing to find one – social media is almost exclusively about socializing where search media has a very large component that is very advertising friendly.    If you are shopping for cameras you are likely to go to Google to find out more information and you *want* to find camera ads in your search event.     This fact cannot be underestimated and forms the basis for most successful forms of internet monetization.   Perhaps a holy advertising grail will be found that’ll work for social media and/or video media but I continue to be as skeptical as I have been for years.

Disclaimer:  I sometimes write for Dell at the TechDirt Insight Community.

Luke … I’m your Facebook Father

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Parents are starting to flow online and although I’m still searching for some data on this topic I think the main reason is not at all to follow their own college-aged children, almost all of whom have been socially interacting online for many years.    Rather it is to connect with their own friends and relatives as the online social universe expands to include …. virtually … everybody.

Facebook’s dignified style probably has helped with this trend as Myspace  is is less appealing to the professional and parental style world view.    However I think mostly we’re just seeing something of a Gladwellian  “tipping point” where enough friends and relatives of online friends and relatives  have come online to reach a critical mass.

Obviously we still have many years to go before “everybody” who wants to be connected online is connected, but I think we are  crossing some thresholds that will be sociologically significant.      One of these thresholds is the parent / child continuum, where parents like me with college age kids like Ben become “friends” on Facebook and wind up sharing types of information that are generally *not shared* between parents and their kids or the friends of their kids.

On balance I’m very optimistic about this development.  I think it’s a way to *add transparency* to the system, especially for kids who are facing personal challenges and sharing information online that their parents should know and act on.     More common however will be an *enhancement* of functional relationships between parents and kids.     In fact what inspired this post was noting a very thoughtful and loving “wall” note at Facebook had come from the *mom* of a friend of my son’s.    My first reaction (my “legacy media” reaction) was that it seemed like too public a place to rave about your kid, but I quickly realized that the mom was just adopting the very nice new tendency of the bright and shiny kids in the new generation to give glowing praise to each other very publicly.    Note to Loic Le Meur and Mike Arrington – you guys could learn from those young whippernappers!

A threshold I find even more interesting is something I have yet to experience but I’m sure better connected folks like Robert Scoble have by now, which is where social networking finds new and significant, but previously unknown connections between friends and relatives.     e.g.  you find out you are your close friend’s second cousin once removed.    Or, I suppose in some of those “fun but alarming”  stories, people will  find that they really were adopted and their biological parents are actually their … current in-laws.        Hello, this is Jerry Springer calling.

Still, the implications of a massively interconnected social sphere are to my way of thinking very positive.      We’re not there yet but we’ll be there soon, and at the very least it’s going to get even more … interesting.

Nanumea via Nanumea.net

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My pals Keith and Anne are anthropologists who have spent considerable time in the country called Tuvalu on the island of Nanumea.     Keith’s done a great  job with a website called “Nanumea.net” that offers Nanumeans as well as the rest of the world a lot of insight into their history, geneaology, cuture and language.   Unfortunately Nanumea is third at Google when you search for “Nanumea” when clearly this is *by far* the best resource for the island with extensive history and photos.     Part of the reason for this post here is to see how quickly Google correctly ranks Nanumea.net and also how this blog post ranks for the term “Nanumea”.

Unlike islands that are far more familiar to most of us like Fiji or Hawaii, the Tuvalu group of islands which includes Nanumea is fairly isolated and Tuvalu has never become much of a tourism destination.    For example to get to Nanumea you need to first fly to Tuvalu (usually from Australia I think), and then ride a boat over to this island, home to about 600 people.

Yet thanks to Keith and Anne those of us who may never travel there can get a great sense of the people and culture, and language.  They are only a mouse click away at Nanumea.net

Nanumea.net is an ambitious attempt to document the life and times of the Polynesians residents of the island, include the following:

  • Photographs (1973 to the present)
    • Nanumean families (1973-4, 1984)
    • Daily life in Nanumea
    • Ceremonies and Celebrations
    • Fishing, Gardening, Cooking
    • Making Canoes, building houses
      weaving mats, titi, fau, etc.
    • Individual people, including many
      elders who have now passed away
  • Genealogies (family lines: gafa, telega)
  • Tape recorded interviews and stories (if possible – we are looking at the technical requirements)
  • Publications about Nanumea
  • Miscellaneous other information

Human Rights Day

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There is a UN Inspired Human Rights project trying to get folks to blog, discuss, and reflect on Human Rights today so I thought I should reprint the excellent declaration of human rights document (below).    Here is the Human Rights Day Websiterights

Some sixty years ago, on December 10, 1948, the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.    It’s an excellent document and should continue to guide our thinking about human rights around the world.     I’m sorry that so many critics of US policy miss the forest for the trees with respect to the US role in the human rights equation.    Despite some glaring abuses in our country the USA remains a bastion of free speech, liberty, judicial stability, and personal freedom.      Sure we can improve, but it is critical to recognize that the major abuses of our time are overwhelmingly a product of circumstances in the developing world, combined with our tendency to leave those parts of the world out of our sphere of economic and social influences.    Zimbabwe comes to mind as one of many current examples of the deadly challenges of a nation with too little respect for human rights and too little attention from the rest of the world.

We tend to focus so much on things we disagree about rather than the majority of things where we almost universally agree.    I can’t help but think it would be a lot more productive if we devoted as much attention to solving the problems we all agree about rather than  arguing over those we don’t.

For me “life and liberty” is the key part, though even here you see how we need some clarification, e.g. in the case of criminals we can’t allow them their liberty:

Article 1.

    All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2.

    Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3.

    Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4.

    No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5.

    No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6.

    Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7.

    All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8.

    Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9.

    No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10.

    Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11.

    (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

    (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12.

    No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13.

    (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

    (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14.

    (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

    (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15.

    (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.

    (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16.

    (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

    (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

    (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17.

    (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

    (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18.

    Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19.

    Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20.

    (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

    (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21.

    (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

    (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

    (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22.

    Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23.

    (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

    (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

    (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

    (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24.

    Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25.

    (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

    (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26.

    (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

    (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

    (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27.

    (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

    (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28.

    Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29.

    (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

    (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

    (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30.

    Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.