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TechMeme, paid blogging, and Zunes
Lots of interesting tech news today from TechMeme which is starting to distinguish itself as “the place” for tech insiders as Digg and Technorati increasingly seek to cater to a huge audience and Slashdot remains problematic because it’s not as robust with community input.
The New York Times reports that Huffington is adding “original” reporting to her extremely popular political blog. I wonder if this is as much for advertising credibility than quality, which clear thinking people know is not a function of whether you get paid to blog or not. Hey, wait a minute. A lot of bloggers (including me) are skeptical that paying people for blog posts, reviews and other online content serves the best interests of the blog community.
Yet nobody seems to frown on a journalist when they get paid to blog. Or, for that matter, run copious amounts of expensive advertising beside quality content as Mike does over at TechCrunch. For the time being I’m refiling my pay per post concerns under the folder “maybe right, but maybe just hypocritical pseudo-elitist nonsense”.
Also at NYT is this piece on the Third World Laptop project bringing cheap computing to the poor all over the world. It’s a very exciting concept that will certainly bring about big changes and also many unintended, unpredictable consequences. I remain confused as to why Bill Gates has opposed the laptop project because even though clean water and health and food are more immediate needs, the Laptops will connect the first and third worlds in ways that will *demand* more proactive participation in third world development by us rich folks. Also this project brings some of the best thinkers – people who often dwell in abstract and expensive first world problem solving realms – into the of “global poverty and development” department of innovation. Gates’ outstanding contributions in this realm are of global and historical significance so I hope he will eventually see how the laptop project is part of this excellent trend that is connecting the rich and the poor.
Aleks Krotoski has a great piece about digital violence over at Second Life where that blossoming virtual community is now under attack by opportunistic and malicious … programs. It’s not only art that imitates life, it’s virtually impossible to escape our human inadequacies even when humans are not physically present in the environment.
And those nifty Zunes can’t seem to crack the IPOD dominance in digital MP3 players. I often wonder how much of the tech trends are habit and how much innovation. Zunes seemed to offer better features yet they appear to be losing the battle. Ironically the neat song sharing feature using DRM restrictions seems to be backfiring on the Zune.
Yahoo beats Google at something other than … sports.
Google is closing down it’s answers feature which has been very inferior in performance compared to Yahoo’s and was missing the point in Web 2-point-0.
Hey, I pointed this difference out about one year ago. This is actually a very interesting example of how Yahoo is more 2.0 friendly and better at bringing people into the computer equation, and helps disprove Matt Cutts’ recent, mildly back-handed compliment suggesting that Yahoo is only better in sports.
More important is that it’s a small indicator of how the battle lines are getting drawn in what may be the most significant, fun, and interesting corporate battle in the history of commerce. Who you gonna call . com? Yahoo as community builder, Google as search behemoth, Microsoft as “where o where did our monopoly go?!” Who will rule the net? There’s room for many players so it could even be a combination or companies yet to be invented.
So, how about a price spike in Yahoo stock, which seems to happen with GOOG every time that Google farts.
Hey Wall Street! Yahoo!!! Look! Hey!
Disclaimer: I own some Yahoo Stock and have some old Google puts that will expire soon, worthless.
Serves me right for betting against brilliance, though I still think Google is priced using an irrational exhuberance stock picking algorithm and Yahoo is … undervalued.
Blogs – why listen to the man when you can listen to the guy sticking it to the man?
Jeremy, over at one of the very best non-official blogs, is noting the challenges of corporate blogging which has been exploding thanks in no small part to the blog evangelizing efforts of another great non-official blogger Robert Scoble.
This reminded me of a nice talk I had with Google’s Adam at Pubcon where I was telling him that I’d rather read his own personal blog where he often has very thoughtful posts, or read Matt Cutts, than read the Google company line at the corporate blog.
Ideally I’d like to see Adam talk about Google stuff from his own perspective, as Jeremy has done so effectively over the years at Yahoo and Matt sometimes does at his blog. Corporate suits should take note of the amazing reservoir of credibility Jeremy, and a handful of other unofficial folks, have created with their frank, honest and introspective styles.
I’m still pretty much a corporate blog bigot, feeling that a large company blogs generally suffer from the items Jeremy notes PLUS the fact that usually it is very low level folks in charge of the blog and they simply can’t afford to rock the boat.
A notable exception is Bob Parsons over at Godaddy. I suppose his blog might be considered personal more than corporate, but this is my point. He’s wonderfully honest and insightful discussing Godaddy because nobody can kick his ass. He can write about the man without fear because he IS the man. His series about strategizing and running 2005 Superbowl TV ads was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever read about big ticket advertising.
So I’ll take Jeremy and Adam’s advice and check out the corporate blogs again, but I’m guessing I won’t be reading the man when I can read the guy who is at least willing to stick it to the man.
Google’s Grim
Following up on the Lancet Study I found more examples of how Google’s Adwords mistakes / regular listings can be somewhat odd and grim. The search was “Iraq Deaths”
[Google] Sponsored Links |
| Iraq Deaths Looking for Iraq Deaths? Find exactly what you want today. http://www.eBay.com Internet for US Soldiers Satellite Internet access available in US bases Iraq and Afghanistan http://www.satellite-provider.pl/ |
HBO Comedy Festival and Comic Relief in Las Vegas
In Las Vegas you always have to re-orient yourself to being in a major center of the entertainment world. This week Caesar’s Palace is hosting the HBO Comedy Festival with a lot of household name comics, though major headliner Dave Chappelle has dropped out. After the HBO Comedy Festival event is “Comic Relief”, with proceeds going to Katrina victims. That’s at Caesar’s Palace on Saturday with Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Billy Crystal.
I wandered into the promotional tent/event tonight where they are in the process of giving away cash, cars, T-shirts and cigars. AOL had a bunch of PCs with *superbly* fast internet and an espresso cart serving up whatever you liked. There were a couple of venues with “open mikes” for anybody who wanted to be a comic, but that was not going over very well. In fact I was really struck (as usual) by how events here tend to be so awash with cash that does not create a direct return on the investment. The sponsors would say these “branding” events have large indirect value but I think when we can better measure such things we’ll see how much is wasted by these approaches, especially when compared to online advertising methods.
One thing that really strikes me about Las Vegas, especially at the fanciest places, is the very high quality of customer service. Even if you are underdressed and obviously just looking around, the shopkeepers, security guards, and staff of places like Caesar’s Palace or the Bellagio are attentive and polite and even appear to be sincere. This is obviously the right way to turn a profit but ironically you’ll find inferior customer service at many mom and pop tourism joints around the USA even though they’d likely reap rewards for this as well.
Pubcon – ad optimizing session
Jenstar is giving a great talk about the importance of testing, saying it can impact the publishing bottom line by as much as 10x current earnings. YPN vs Adsense –
Most of her testing uses the custom channels at Adsense.
Sometimes borders work better than borderless. Hyperlink blue” is generally the best link color. Second is the same color as other links on page. Try image ads enabled as test. Mix ads up to avoid “banner blindness”. AVOID right upper corner = low conversion.
I missed lots of good info here her blog is great for this stuff.
Cody Sims from Yahoo – What motivates publishers to publish? 4 things:
Lifestyle, Community Aspect, Technology enthusiastics, The “game” of publishing.
Measure of success = maximizing revenue and increasing traffic = same as Yahoo’s own goals.
Article text on the page is the most important in terms of contextual matching. Robots choke on i frames, flash, etc.
About.com as one of the best optimized environments on the web = high signal to noise ratio.
Do’s: Write the way a user thinks. Creates relevant content and ad matching.
Optimize key areas. Keep tags relevant to content.
LIMIT low content pages.
Don’t use unnecessary code.
Limit page to one or two topics.
Walk in the advertiser’s shoes – “would I want my ad here?”
Integrate keywords into URL structure. Permalinks>using IDs in links.
Strong keywords in anchor text.
www.ypnblog.com
Tom from Google: Shift in Media Consumption= opportunity. Approaching 40% of time online which will shift more ad money online soon.
Adsense: 76% reach via adsense publishers. 110 monthly page views per user
—Missed some of this —
Jay from ContextWeb, now 25th largest ad supported property online. Venture backed by same firm that brought Overture to market. Like Federated, looking to better match ads and publishers than can be done by the big players. Decision making engine works on the fly. Keyword sensing plus category taxonomy disambiguates the search. (got that?).
Google is NOT real time, but Context Web is. Dynamic content is therefore better targeted by Context Web. (the Samsonite Suitcase ad at Suitcase murderer story problem)
Quigo‘s introduced by Yaron Galai as another “cream vs milk” advertising optimizer. I missed his very interesting slide suggesting how crappy publishers are effectively subsidized by current pricing models – hope to ask about that later. I met Yaron in Boston I think and was really impressed by Quigo, but soured on it after talking with somebody else at SES San Jose who had a negative sort of pitch. Probably a case where the founder’s a better salesman than the salesman.
John Battelle at Pubcon
John Battelle, author of “The Search” is talking about “The New Age of Advertising” and making the case that search is the new computer navigation tool.
Search: Allows adverts to focus on “intent over content”. Shifting from pre-search to post-search world is frustrating, but essential, for advertisers. Google is that nexus.
Marketing as dialog. Attention is increasingly controlled by users, not distributors. Content is once again king and landing page is the queen. John says marketing is now an opportunity to engage the customer in a dialog.
Case studies: Microsoft dinosaur heads vs Wifi awareness. Changing the pitch to acknowledge the reader’s interest (wifi aware vs dinos) increased response 60%.
Cisco – Wikipedia happiness from respect by not posting company propaganda, rather waiting for a natural listing to appear.
Dice: Invited surly IT peeps=most IT peeps, to rant. Tech news “hummingbirds” became sticky stickarounds.
Demo of Federated media campaign manager. Hmmmm- keynote as a pitch?
I guess this is OK because John …. has a PhD.
Federated = bundling of quality sites with advertisers who want targeting.
750 million ad impressions from 100 sites booking a million per month in ads, 60% of which goes to publishers [ummm – why is this lower than adsense rev share of about 70%?].
Here’s the answer – they devote lots of staff time to take care of authors needs?
Questions:
How to separate editorial from advertising?: Blogging allows transparency and trust in a way print does not. Disclose and don’t sell words, but OK to blog about things you like/know/use etc. Ultimate test is whether audience stays with you.
Google radio vs Federated CPM advertising. Quotes Beth Comstock from Web 2.0 about needed humans in the equation. FM is in the “cream” biz where Google’s in the milk biz.
Federated will work to make sure every impression on the site is monetized in the best way.
What’s most unique thing you’ve seen a blogger do to increase traffic?
Lists are good. Blogoscoped asked for posts with most comments. But need the core essense of passion. High integrity voices always win.
Jason Calcanis suggests you should do in-house ad sales after 1 million page views (per month?). John says he does not agree and thinks the Federated model is very viable as an intermediary.
Pubcon – Mega site optimization session
Andrew from Automotive.com / Primedia. Motor Trend magazine. He’s got some case study info about their optimization efforts in the Auto space.
Website Evaluation.
CMS challenges. No”policing” to make sure writers were optimizing content. Structure problems. (missed some here). “Site was not SEO friendly at all”. As an authority in the space, changes in structure helped a lot. Could use the brand and could monetize immediately …
sorry…too much info to capture here..
Pubcon blog roundup
Here’s a list of sources of Pubcon information (aka the WebmasterWorld Conference) going on *right now* in Las Vegas. If you know of one not here please post it in the comments or email jhunkins@gmail.com
SEO Roundtable Excellent coverage – how can you type so FAST Barry??
Joe Duck 