One of most interesting aspects of search marketing is blog search (engines that specifically focus on searching blogs). This is quite different to the usual Google, Yahoo!, Baidu and MSN search (although blog postings still appear in these search enginess) because there are services that specifically search blogs (and only blogs). The most widely known service is Technorati, but there are a number of excellent services now available. So next time you're looking for that obscure bit of industry knowledge or expert advice, why not jump onto FriendFeed or IceRocket instead of Google?
The State of Blog Search, 2009
Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / January 29, 2009
What blog search engine should you use? That depends on your needs.
In order to join a conversation, you've got to be able to find it first. Three years ago "blog search" was expected to be a booming industry, startups left and right developed different technologies and more than a few raised millions of dollars to help users search the part of the web made up of blogs. These days no one thinks consumer-market blog search is a serious business, but many of us still have a need to limit searches to blogs. What should we do? ReadWriteWeb offers some recommendations and an assessment of the state of the industry below.
Choosing a Blog Search Engine
Different circumstances call for different search engines. We've made a chart below illustrating our different recommendations to fill different needs. When, for example, we're looking to see if anyone else has written about a breaking news story yet - we use Google Blogsearch because it's the fastest. When we're putting a live search feed on a public web page, though, we use Technorati and crank up the spam-control it offers. Many businesses use profesional blog tracking services for some of their search needs, but we're not convinced those services are as useful as grabbing some of these worn old tools and doing it yourself.
Where These Services Stand Today
Technorati is the old stand-by, the blog search engine that the smartest blog lovers used to use. These days it's a sad shadow of what it used to be. The company leadership is focused on building an advertising network and search features have been shed like there's no tomorrow. The company's developers say that features will be returning, just in a more accessible form, but we're not holding our breath.
The service is slow, misses a lot of search results (perhaps in the name of spam prevention) and is so loaded down with cruft and extraneous page loads that it makes us want to scream.
That said, the fundamental value proposition of Technorati remains - it counts inbound links to every blog it has indexed and it will let you sort by that metric of "authority." More advanced RSS-heads will appreciate the fact that Technorati delivers "authority" numbers in its RSS feeds and those numbers can be used to fine tune spam filtering in Yahoo Pipes.
Google Blogsearch is the fastest in the industry but has gone almost untouched since the day it launched, except for a recent dabble with memetracking on the front page. Google Blogsearch spam control is not good and recently the search engine started bringing back search results from places like blog sidebars. It thinks that content is new, too, every time a new blog post (the content we really care about) is published. It's painful to look at Google Blogsearch results pages, but if you've got a need for speed or want to make use of the relative heft of the Google search input box for things like complex queries - then it's a good option.
IceRocket is Mark Cuban's baby and has improved more in recent years than anyone else on this list. It's quite a sophisticated tool for searching blogs. It's got trend analysis, author awareness and a number of other cool features. Unfortunately it only lets you organize search results by data and sometimes other needs arise.
IceRocket also misses some search results that even Technorati catches, though it catches some that Technorati misses as well.
Ask.com Blogsearch has become an unexpected favorite of ours over the years. It's nice. Spam control is pretty good, speed is pretty good, the size of the index is pretty good. It's a pretty good blog search engine. The best thing about it is that it's very easy to sort results by relevance, date or "popularity" of the source, as defined by the number of subscribers the source feed has in Ask's formerly market dominant feed reader Bloglines. Want to find out who the biggest blogs are that have written about Chihuahuas lately? (We'll just tell you, it's Jalopnik, Celebrity Baby Blog and Fark.)
If there's a downside here, it's that Ask does index a fair number of feeds that aren't really blogs. And it doesn't do anything else that's particularly fabulous. None the less, we find ourselves going back to it every day.
FriendFeed is a lot of things, but it's also a blog search engine of sorts. It's a cross-network, real time social site originally built by a team of ex-Google employees. It's pretty awesome and once you've got an account there you can search blog posts, Twitter messages, YouTube videos, SlideShare powerpoint presentations and much more. The down side is of course, it only lets you search the content that other users have synced with their FriendFeed account. That content has a whole lot of conversation going on around it though! Several members of the ReadWriteWeb team use the newly launched FriendDeck to do real-time tracking of FriendFeed. You can meet our whole team on FriendFeed here or join us in the RWW room (open to anyone) here.
That's How We See it - What's Blog Search Like for You These Days?
We'd love to hear about your favorite blog search tools these days. What do you use and in what circumstances do you use it? Is blog search itself old news in a new era of real-time microblogging? We welcome other perspectives on this field that may have lost some of its luster but remains useful and important several years after it was so hyped.
Digital Future explores marketing transformation. Specifically, the move from traditional to digital marketing - covering topics like digital marketing, mobile, social media, search marketing, e-commerce, digital advertising and online strategy.
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Sunday, 22 February 2009
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Twitter Looks at Charging Business
In Asia, Twitter and the whole microblogging concept is just starting to take off. In the US, Europe and other parts of the world Twitter is an already established social media service. Twitter, like it's social media cousins Facebook and MySpace, has a significant audience but hasn't yet established a viable business model. This article from TechCrunch discusses the concept of Twitter starting to charge companies who are starting to realise marketing benefits that Twitter offers businesses - currently at no cost.
Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account?
By Robin Wauters on February 10, 2009. TechCrunch.com
Companies using Twitter for commercial purposes may soon start getting charged for that activity, according to an interview British trade magazine Marketing (part of BrandRepublic) held with co-founder Biz Stone.
This is what Stone reportedly said:
“We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.”
No big surprises there, as this is often cited as one of the most obvious moves Twitter could make to start generating revenue, although many are expecting more from the startup who has become notorious for its lack of an apparent business model even after nearly 3 years of existence. Stone also said they will not start charging individual users, and that the move could “create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.”
Stone did not give any details regarding pricing or the specific way Twitter would go about charging users and for what exactly. As a reminder: the startup has raised $20 million in venture capital to date and recently turned down an acquisition offer from Facebook.
One of the most recent examples of companies using Twitter for commercial purposes is Dell, who reportedly made $1 million in sales during the holidays via the micro-sharing utility, and recently started giving discounts exclusively to its followers.
We’ll see more of this type of behavior in the future beyond any shred of doubt, but I’m wondering what exactly is considered as ‘commercial usage’ by Twitter management: does it mean any way of promoting a product or service or only when there’s sales activity connected to the corporate accounts? And will companies be prepared to pay up for use of the service at all?
Marketing got in touch with Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations at Dell, with that exact question and got a telling response: “If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.”
Update: as Peter Kafka points out in comments, there was good article two days ago in New York Magazine which reveals a little more of where Twitter is headed.
Update 2: Twitter’s Biz Stone has written a post related to the rumors:
However, it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone—individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services. We are still very early in the idea stage and we don’t have anything to share just yet despite a recent surge in speculation. When we do, we’ll be sure to let you know.
Twitter To Start Charging Companies For Having An Account?
By Robin Wauters on February 10, 2009. TechCrunch.com
Companies using Twitter for commercial purposes may soon start getting charged for that activity, according to an interview British trade magazine Marketing (part of BrandRepublic) held with co-founder Biz Stone.
This is what Stone reportedly said:
“We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.”
No big surprises there, as this is often cited as one of the most obvious moves Twitter could make to start generating revenue, although many are expecting more from the startup who has become notorious for its lack of an apparent business model even after nearly 3 years of existence. Stone also said they will not start charging individual users, and that the move could “create revenue-generating features to tap into the way brands use Twitter as a hybrid marketing and customer-service tool.”
Stone did not give any details regarding pricing or the specific way Twitter would go about charging users and for what exactly. As a reminder: the startup has raised $20 million in venture capital to date and recently turned down an acquisition offer from Facebook.
One of the most recent examples of companies using Twitter for commercial purposes is Dell, who reportedly made $1 million in sales during the holidays via the micro-sharing utility, and recently started giving discounts exclusively to its followers.
We’ll see more of this type of behavior in the future beyond any shred of doubt, but I’m wondering what exactly is considered as ‘commercial usage’ by Twitter management: does it mean any way of promoting a product or service or only when there’s sales activity connected to the corporate accounts? And will companies be prepared to pay up for use of the service at all?
Marketing got in touch with Bob Pearson, VP of communities and conversations at Dell, with that exact question and got a telling response: “If it becomes complicated and costly, our instinct would be to move elsewhere.”
Update: as Peter Kafka points out in comments, there was good article two days ago in New York Magazine which reveals a little more of where Twitter is headed.
Update 2: Twitter’s Biz Stone has written a post related to the rumors:
However, it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone—individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services. We are still very early in the idea stage and we don’t have anything to share just yet despite a recent surge in speculation. When we do, we’ll be sure to let you know.
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
MySpace's Hybrid Advertising Model Making Profits
There's been a lot of speculation about the profitability and business model of social networks since the extraordinary valuation of Facebook, when Microsoft bought a small stake in the company back in 2007. With billions in valuation but the business barely making enough to break-even, many questions have been raised about whether social networks can make real money. But then there's MySpace. MySpace is still holding onto the number 1 spot in the US but it's total global audience is now about half that of rival Facebook. However MySpace is at the $1 Billion revenue mark and growing strong. This article by Matthew Garrahan of the Financial Times looks at the success of MySpace's hybrid advertising model. Perhaps this is the right template for other social networks to follow?
On the money in social networking
By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles, Financial Times/FT.com, January 28 2009
Chris DeWolfe is dashing around his Beverly Hills office. The co-founder of MySpace is preparing to go to Davos, where he will rub shoulders with leaders of the world economy, including his boss, Rupert Murdoch.
Davos this year is packed with gloomy-sounding sessions on the collapse of global capitalism but Mr DeWolfe is in an upbeat mood. MySpace has fine-tuned its advertising model and as it celebrates its fifth birthday he believes the site can prove its critics wrong about the durability and profit-making potential of social networking.
With their millions of users, social media has long been seen as a panacea of online advertising. But sites such as Facebook and MySpace, which is part of News Corp, have been unable to turn those users into significant profits. MySpace narrowly missed a $1bn revenue target last year, while Facebook has preferred to concentrate on building a large base of users.
By Mr DeWolfe says a relentless focus on profits at MySpace is starting to pay off. "From day one we have always been focused on building a really big, scaleable business that is based on advertising," he says. "If you are a big brand and you want to reach any demographic you can get real scale on MySpace."
The group has devised a hybrid business model that combines big branding campaigns on the popular pages with its ability to "hyper-target" millions of users according to their interests.
The big, more general advert campaigns are a recent factor: MySpace has introduced branding on its home page, which is seen by more than 50m users daily. "That's more people than watch American Idol ," says Mr DeWolfe. Such campaigns used to be found only on portal sites, such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN but Mr DeWolfe says MySpace has those companies in its sights.
This is partly because MySpace has built a sufficient user base to compete for what is a much larger pot of money. "In the early days, either the brands or their media buyers would reserve a small part of their buy for social media sites - the rest would go to the portal sites," he explains. "But what has happened is that we are now competing against offline media and the big portals, such as Yahoo and AOL."
Analysts say this move to a hybrid model that combines the penetration of social media with the broad reach of a portal site could be decisive. "MySpace is going to be more attractive to advertisers because they have created these 'safe havens' where advertisers can put their brands," says Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Research.
The home page branding comes a year after the site launched its "hyper targeting model". Mr DeWolfe says the move does not represent a strategic U-turn and instead gives the site the best of both worlds.
He points to the more than 1,000 "enthusiast groups" on MySpace as being appealing for advertisers keen to target their products at niche demographics. "We have also built a product that reaches small and medium-sized businesses that represent billions of dollars in potential ad revenue."
One user - a roofer in Chicago - turned a MySpace advert offer costing a few hundred dollars into a $30,000 roofing deal. "There has been no easy way for people like that to advertise online other than buying big display ads or by buying text ads on Google. But more than 15,000 have used our product to create graphical advertising."
With the economy crashing and advertisers reining in their spending, maintaining momentum is going to be difficult, although he says first-half sales rose 16 per cent on last year. "Where the next six months are going is hard to say because the economy is changing so quickly. But I think we are in a much better position than most of the other [online] companies formed in the past five years."
On the money in social networking
By Matthew Garrahan in Los Angeles, Financial Times/FT.com, January 28 2009
Chris DeWolfe is dashing around his Beverly Hills office. The co-founder of MySpace is preparing to go to Davos, where he will rub shoulders with leaders of the world economy, including his boss, Rupert Murdoch.
Davos this year is packed with gloomy-sounding sessions on the collapse of global capitalism but Mr DeWolfe is in an upbeat mood. MySpace has fine-tuned its advertising model and as it celebrates its fifth birthday he believes the site can prove its critics wrong about the durability and profit-making potential of social networking.
With their millions of users, social media has long been seen as a panacea of online advertising. But sites such as Facebook and MySpace, which is part of News Corp, have been unable to turn those users into significant profits. MySpace narrowly missed a $1bn revenue target last year, while Facebook has preferred to concentrate on building a large base of users.
By Mr DeWolfe says a relentless focus on profits at MySpace is starting to pay off. "From day one we have always been focused on building a really big, scaleable business that is based on advertising," he says. "If you are a big brand and you want to reach any demographic you can get real scale on MySpace."
The group has devised a hybrid business model that combines big branding campaigns on the popular pages with its ability to "hyper-target" millions of users according to their interests.
The big, more general advert campaigns are a recent factor: MySpace has introduced branding on its home page, which is seen by more than 50m users daily. "That's more people than watch American Idol ," says Mr DeWolfe. Such campaigns used to be found only on portal sites, such as Yahoo, AOL and MSN but Mr DeWolfe says MySpace has those companies in its sights.
This is partly because MySpace has built a sufficient user base to compete for what is a much larger pot of money. "In the early days, either the brands or their media buyers would reserve a small part of their buy for social media sites - the rest would go to the portal sites," he explains. "But what has happened is that we are now competing against offline media and the big portals, such as Yahoo and AOL."
Analysts say this move to a hybrid model that combines the penetration of social media with the broad reach of a portal site could be decisive. "MySpace is going to be more attractive to advertisers because they have created these 'safe havens' where advertisers can put their brands," says Richard Greenfield, an analyst with Pali Research.
The home page branding comes a year after the site launched its "hyper targeting model". Mr DeWolfe says the move does not represent a strategic U-turn and instead gives the site the best of both worlds.
He points to the more than 1,000 "enthusiast groups" on MySpace as being appealing for advertisers keen to target their products at niche demographics. "We have also built a product that reaches small and medium-sized businesses that represent billions of dollars in potential ad revenue."
One user - a roofer in Chicago - turned a MySpace advert offer costing a few hundred dollars into a $30,000 roofing deal. "There has been no easy way for people like that to advertise online other than buying big display ads or by buying text ads on Google. But more than 15,000 have used our product to create graphical advertising."
With the economy crashing and advertisers reining in their spending, maintaining momentum is going to be difficult, although he says first-half sales rose 16 per cent on last year. "Where the next six months are going is hard to say because the economy is changing so quickly. But I think we are in a much better position than most of the other [online] companies formed in the past five years."
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Social Networks - The New Portals?
This article by Jeffrey F. Rayport in BusinessWeek presents an interesting point-of-view - are social networkings becoming the new web Portals?
Social Networks Are the New Web Portals
Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are becoming the new gateways to the Web, threatening the dominance of Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL
By Jeffrey F. Rayport
Not long ago, it seemed that four companies would forever dominate the Web in traffic and ad dollars. Each of the Big Four—Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN, and Time Warner's (TWX) AOL—attracts more than 100 million unique visitors a month. Collectively the group accounts for roughly 90% of gross ad dollars online. So far, so good.
But now those companies are facing a threat to their dominance. I'm not talking about the recessionary headwinds that have slowed growth even for mighty Google. Nor is this about the self-inflicted wounds that have weakened the positions of the other three players. Yahoo spent the last year in turmoil following Microsoft's takeover offer, inducing Carl Icahn to elbow his way onto the board and then force out CEO Jerry Yang as business conditions grew increasingly dire. AOL is hardly better off. Its former CEO, Jonathan Miller, freely admits that AOL essentially missed the boat on social media and the decline of AOL's legacy connectivity business. Microsoft failed to acquire Yahoo and continues in vain to seek a credible competitive response to Google's search advertising juggernaut.
These travails aside, there are bigger threats on the landscape. Today's massive social networking systems are rapidly becoming Webs within the Web—one-stop shops for a wide range of services (from content to communications to commerce) that were once the unique province of the Big Four.
One-Stop Shopping at Facebook
For example, through a combination of its own creation and that of third-party developers, Facebook has become a world unto itself. Now the Web's largest social network as measured by active users (140 million at yearend 2008), Facebook offers bread-and-butter portal services like e-mail and instant messaging as well as photo posting and video sharing. But Facebook's reality extends much further. A partnership with Amazon.com (AMZN) has produced a shopping application that lets users buy items at Amazon without leaving Facebook's site, while tapping opt-in "news feeds" that broadcast activities on Amazon, such as product reviews and wish list updates, to Facebook friends. At the same time, a chat feature introduced last spring, which automatically populates itself with a user's Facebook "friends," may render older services like AOL's AIM (where new users must build their own "buddy lists") socially impoverished.
Facebook's mobile alerts, long familiar to the site's users, are just the tip of the iceberg in wireless apps, as the company delivers mobile services for plain-vanilla cell phones and more sophisticated smartphones. Applications for popular devices, such as Apple's (AAPL) iPhone or Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, deliver even richer social experiences. Video has taken off, too, with 45 million clips uploaded on Facebook to date; last month, the site also introduced higher-resolution video formats. Facebook users can send video messages from the site and from mobiles.
Though Facebook now offers 52,000 applications created by 660,000 developers (this has done much to enrich the site's features), other social networking giants have entered the fray, too. News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace, for example, claims 120 million active users; it recently introduced a service called MySpace Music that lets user create and host playlists on their pages.
Lots of Users Spending Lots of Time
Social networking sites are also growing at exponential rates and attracting users of all ages. Facebook's fastest-growing segment is users over 25 years of age. LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site, claims more than 30 million active members with an average age of 41.
Of course, scale is only one metric of success. Another is what tech types call "engagement," or "time spent." Researcher ComScore (SCOR) ranked Yahoo the No. 1 site for engagement, with users worldwide collectively spending some 120 billion minutes on the site in October. For the same period, Google users logged 42 billion minutes. Yet, Facebook and MySpace were not far behind, with 34 billion and 18 billion minutes, respectively.
The traditional portals still win on unique visitors per month, but from the standpoint of where Web users "live" their lives online, social networking sites are gaining share.
Building Constellations, Not Destinations
What all this augurs is a new stage in an ongoing battle for influence, even dominance, of the Web. Back in the "old days" of the late 1980s and early '90s, online service providers such as AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServ generated revenue through monthly subscriptions for bundled services, which combined connectivity, communications, and content. With the advent of the Web's friendly user interface combined with the rise of Internet service providers, which offered dial-up and then always-on connectivity, the old guard gave way to a new host of dominant online players—the Big Four portals. While Google focused largely on search, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN provided a rich array of content as well as services and relied on advertising rather than subscriptions to pay the bills.
Now, as usage shifts to social networks, there's a catch. This is no longer a race to build destinations, but constellations.
To be sure, the social networking sites, like the portals before them, aggregate services to provide one-stop shops for Internet users. But they're competing, too, in a race to provide a social context for Web usage generally. Facebook Connect and MySpaceID are new tools that offer users a way to make their social networks—previously wedded to a single platform—portable across other social networking sites and, in fact, Web sites of all kinds. Google's Friend Connect, based on that company's OpenSocial standard, represents similar functionality. Though late to the game, Yahoo is planning a pan-Web social offering, and Microsoft has built one into its new Windows Live. In practice, these services mean users can visit a site for the first time, register with a standard username and password, and find their experiences instantly enriched by friends' lists, profiles, reviews, ratings, and feeds. In essence, it's a way to bring social context to sites that have no social media components of their own.
It's all about defining a new World Wide Web—a meta-Web that has the functionality of a social Web.
While the portals are doing their best to catch up, challenges abound. Google's oft-stated mission is "to organize the world's information." Organizing information is how earlier generations of Web companies have traditionally created value for users, with or without search. But the new game is radically different. Facebook, in particular, has set out to organize not the world's content, but the world's people. As this social meta-Web emerges, the players that own and harness social applications will radically reorganize and reshape the Web in ways we can only imagine today, and that will profoundly alter our experience of the online world.
Social Networks Are the New Web Portals
Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are becoming the new gateways to the Web, threatening the dominance of Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL
By Jeffrey F. Rayport
Not long ago, it seemed that four companies would forever dominate the Web in traffic and ad dollars. Each of the Big Four—Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN, and Time Warner's (TWX) AOL—attracts more than 100 million unique visitors a month. Collectively the group accounts for roughly 90% of gross ad dollars online. So far, so good.
But now those companies are facing a threat to their dominance. I'm not talking about the recessionary headwinds that have slowed growth even for mighty Google. Nor is this about the self-inflicted wounds that have weakened the positions of the other three players. Yahoo spent the last year in turmoil following Microsoft's takeover offer, inducing Carl Icahn to elbow his way onto the board and then force out CEO Jerry Yang as business conditions grew increasingly dire. AOL is hardly better off. Its former CEO, Jonathan Miller, freely admits that AOL essentially missed the boat on social media and the decline of AOL's legacy connectivity business. Microsoft failed to acquire Yahoo and continues in vain to seek a credible competitive response to Google's search advertising juggernaut.
These travails aside, there are bigger threats on the landscape. Today's massive social networking systems are rapidly becoming Webs within the Web—one-stop shops for a wide range of services (from content to communications to commerce) that were once the unique province of the Big Four.
One-Stop Shopping at Facebook
For example, through a combination of its own creation and that of third-party developers, Facebook has become a world unto itself. Now the Web's largest social network as measured by active users (140 million at yearend 2008), Facebook offers bread-and-butter portal services like e-mail and instant messaging as well as photo posting and video sharing. But Facebook's reality extends much further. A partnership with Amazon.com (AMZN) has produced a shopping application that lets users buy items at Amazon without leaving Facebook's site, while tapping opt-in "news feeds" that broadcast activities on Amazon, such as product reviews and wish list updates, to Facebook friends. At the same time, a chat feature introduced last spring, which automatically populates itself with a user's Facebook "friends," may render older services like AOL's AIM (where new users must build their own "buddy lists") socially impoverished.
Facebook's mobile alerts, long familiar to the site's users, are just the tip of the iceberg in wireless apps, as the company delivers mobile services for plain-vanilla cell phones and more sophisticated smartphones. Applications for popular devices, such as Apple's (AAPL) iPhone or Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry, deliver even richer social experiences. Video has taken off, too, with 45 million clips uploaded on Facebook to date; last month, the site also introduced higher-resolution video formats. Facebook users can send video messages from the site and from mobiles.
Though Facebook now offers 52,000 applications created by 660,000 developers (this has done much to enrich the site's features), other social networking giants have entered the fray, too. News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace, for example, claims 120 million active users; it recently introduced a service called MySpace Music that lets user create and host playlists on their pages.
Lots of Users Spending Lots of Time
Social networking sites are also growing at exponential rates and attracting users of all ages. Facebook's fastest-growing segment is users over 25 years of age. LinkedIn, the business-oriented social networking site, claims more than 30 million active members with an average age of 41.
Of course, scale is only one metric of success. Another is what tech types call "engagement," or "time spent." Researcher ComScore (SCOR) ranked Yahoo the No. 1 site for engagement, with users worldwide collectively spending some 120 billion minutes on the site in October. For the same period, Google users logged 42 billion minutes. Yet, Facebook and MySpace were not far behind, with 34 billion and 18 billion minutes, respectively.
The traditional portals still win on unique visitors per month, but from the standpoint of where Web users "live" their lives online, social networking sites are gaining share.
Building Constellations, Not Destinations
What all this augurs is a new stage in an ongoing battle for influence, even dominance, of the Web. Back in the "old days" of the late 1980s and early '90s, online service providers such as AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServ generated revenue through monthly subscriptions for bundled services, which combined connectivity, communications, and content. With the advent of the Web's friendly user interface combined with the rise of Internet service providers, which offered dial-up and then always-on connectivity, the old guard gave way to a new host of dominant online players—the Big Four portals. While Google focused largely on search, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN provided a rich array of content as well as services and relied on advertising rather than subscriptions to pay the bills.
Now, as usage shifts to social networks, there's a catch. This is no longer a race to build destinations, but constellations.
To be sure, the social networking sites, like the portals before them, aggregate services to provide one-stop shops for Internet users. But they're competing, too, in a race to provide a social context for Web usage generally. Facebook Connect and MySpaceID are new tools that offer users a way to make their social networks—previously wedded to a single platform—portable across other social networking sites and, in fact, Web sites of all kinds. Google's Friend Connect, based on that company's OpenSocial standard, represents similar functionality. Though late to the game, Yahoo is planning a pan-Web social offering, and Microsoft has built one into its new Windows Live. In practice, these services mean users can visit a site for the first time, register with a standard username and password, and find their experiences instantly enriched by friends' lists, profiles, reviews, ratings, and feeds. In essence, it's a way to bring social context to sites that have no social media components of their own.
It's all about defining a new World Wide Web—a meta-Web that has the functionality of a social Web.
While the portals are doing their best to catch up, challenges abound. Google's oft-stated mission is "to organize the world's information." Organizing information is how earlier generations of Web companies have traditionally created value for users, with or without search. But the new game is radically different. Facebook, in particular, has set out to organize not the world's content, but the world's people. As this social meta-Web emerges, the players that own and harness social applications will radically reorganize and reshape the Web in ways we can only imagine today, and that will profoundly alter our experience of the online world.
Monday, 5 January 2009
Evolving Digital Display in 2009
Here's a great article on something I'm particularly interested in - digital predications for the future. It'll be very interesting to look back at 2009 and see whether the tough economic environment really does evolve online display (banner ads) or not.
Not-So-Banner Year for Digital
As budgets tighten, media such as display ads will come under scrutiny
Jan 5, 2009. By Brian Morrissey
There are two schools of thought when it comes to how digital advertising will fare in the grip of a recession. On the one hand, optimists see tight budgets accelerating the shift from less measurable traditional media into more targeted digital channels. The pessimists, however, point out that stagnant budgets affect all marketing, even if digital outlets fare better.
Against this backdrop, experts expect marketers will continue to push for new ways to reach audiences through digital channels. Tried-and-true methods like search marketing look to remain stable, while advertisers pay more attention to getting more solid metrics on how consumers were influenced before they type a query into a search box.
That means old school methods like display ads and microsites will come under pressure. Social media looks set to remain on the top of advertisers' agendas, as they look to apply the lessons of their early missteps in the area while adding real measurement to what have been experimental forays to date. As the Internet becomes more social, there will likewise be an acceleration of a move from purely technical implementations to using the Web's emerging social infrastructure to connect on a more human level.
According to researcher eMarketer, online ad spending will climb 8.9 percent next year, from $23.6 billion to $25.7 billion. Back in August, just prior to Wall Street's meltdown, eMarketer predicted that spending would surge 14 percent in 2009. But the economy is now taking its toll on all segments of media. Here is a roundup of how that spending may pan out:
Display ad blues
The Web has moved well beyond its former role as a place where banner ads and microsites are used to support the real meat of the offline marketing. Nowadays, the most high-profile campaigns are centered on the Web. Take "Whopper Virgins," the latest Burger King push from Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The centerpiece is a Web film, which is then spliced into components for traditional media. What's more, the push has relied on the viral buzz of blogs and other digital outlets as much as big-money media buys.
Those type of efforts will put pressure on "traditional" digital efforts like run of the mill banner ads pumped out through ad networks and Flash microsites without any compelling reason for anyone to visit.
Forrester Research expects display ads to come under the scrutiny of tight-fisted marketers uncertain of their effectiveness.
Pricing is expected to rise just 8 percent after several years of uninterrupted, solid expansion. "The financial pressure will be severe," said Dave Morgan, a former AOL executive. "When you take out big chunks of money, it's not just the spend that disappears but also the competition."
Social measures up
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's prediction that media would forever change with the advent of the popular social network's ad platform is rightly ridiculed. Yet while advertisers have few success stories on sites like Facebook, the growth of the social Web is impossible to ignore. Facebook now adds a new user every seven seconds.
For all its growth and hype, social media has been unforgiving terrain for marketers. Their efforts to date have been decidedly experimental, consisting of sponsorships, ad placements or brand applications that have proven ineffective. "Whenever you try to apply a standard ad model to a social dynamic, it's like oil and water," said Sean Finnegan, chief digital officer at Starcom MediaVest Group.
Instead, look for marketers to weave social programs throughout their marketing, using free tools to monitor their brand health and respond to customer needs. Comcast, a brand with no shortage of detractors, has scored a rare win with customers by dedicating an employee to handle customer problems on micro-blogging network Twitter. Expect more brands to follow suit, not just on Twitter but throughout the social Web of blogs and other two-way media.
"The best way is to dig in and monitor what people are saying," said Noah Brier, head of strategy at digital marketing firm Barbarian Group. "It can only help you."
Bring in the humans
To this point, the Web has been, by its nature, technology driven. Google is the most successful company of the Internet era thanks to its algorithm, a piece of technology adept at sorting the wheat from the chaff. Most of the leaps and bounds online have been in the realm of technology, whether it's ad networks deciding marketing message placement by sniffing out users' prior behavior or finely tuned measurement. Expect more advancement on those fronts, yet a greater emphasis on giving digital marketing a human face.
The algorithm is already getting a human touch with sites like Buzzfeed and Mahalo. Even Google is coming around to this notion by letting users tell it which sites are more relevant to them, a seemingly small step but one unthinkable for the engineer-driven Google just a couple years ago. New tools like Twitter will only increase the drive for people to connect with people, not just faceless entities. This will challenge marketing organizations and agencies, since humans don't scale as easily as computers. The launch-and-forget mentality will need to give way to a 24 x 7 approach.
"There's going to a big wake-up call for brands that the real work begins after the launch," said David Armano, vp of experience design at digital agency Critical Mass. He sees cause marketing via social networks as a useful bridge to brands looking to infuse their mass reach ad tactics with a human touch.
Not-So-Banner Year for Digital
As budgets tighten, media such as display ads will come under scrutiny
Jan 5, 2009. By Brian Morrissey
There are two schools of thought when it comes to how digital advertising will fare in the grip of a recession. On the one hand, optimists see tight budgets accelerating the shift from less measurable traditional media into more targeted digital channels. The pessimists, however, point out that stagnant budgets affect all marketing, even if digital outlets fare better.
Against this backdrop, experts expect marketers will continue to push for new ways to reach audiences through digital channels. Tried-and-true methods like search marketing look to remain stable, while advertisers pay more attention to getting more solid metrics on how consumers were influenced before they type a query into a search box.
That means old school methods like display ads and microsites will come under pressure. Social media looks set to remain on the top of advertisers' agendas, as they look to apply the lessons of their early missteps in the area while adding real measurement to what have been experimental forays to date. As the Internet becomes more social, there will likewise be an acceleration of a move from purely technical implementations to using the Web's emerging social infrastructure to connect on a more human level.
According to researcher eMarketer, online ad spending will climb 8.9 percent next year, from $23.6 billion to $25.7 billion. Back in August, just prior to Wall Street's meltdown, eMarketer predicted that spending would surge 14 percent in 2009. But the economy is now taking its toll on all segments of media. Here is a roundup of how that spending may pan out:
Display ad blues
The Web has moved well beyond its former role as a place where banner ads and microsites are used to support the real meat of the offline marketing. Nowadays, the most high-profile campaigns are centered on the Web. Take "Whopper Virgins," the latest Burger King push from Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The centerpiece is a Web film, which is then spliced into components for traditional media. What's more, the push has relied on the viral buzz of blogs and other digital outlets as much as big-money media buys.
Those type of efforts will put pressure on "traditional" digital efforts like run of the mill banner ads pumped out through ad networks and Flash microsites without any compelling reason for anyone to visit.
Forrester Research expects display ads to come under the scrutiny of tight-fisted marketers uncertain of their effectiveness.
Pricing is expected to rise just 8 percent after several years of uninterrupted, solid expansion. "The financial pressure will be severe," said Dave Morgan, a former AOL executive. "When you take out big chunks of money, it's not just the spend that disappears but also the competition."
Social measures up
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's prediction that media would forever change with the advent of the popular social network's ad platform is rightly ridiculed. Yet while advertisers have few success stories on sites like Facebook, the growth of the social Web is impossible to ignore. Facebook now adds a new user every seven seconds.
For all its growth and hype, social media has been unforgiving terrain for marketers. Their efforts to date have been decidedly experimental, consisting of sponsorships, ad placements or brand applications that have proven ineffective. "Whenever you try to apply a standard ad model to a social dynamic, it's like oil and water," said Sean Finnegan, chief digital officer at Starcom MediaVest Group.
Instead, look for marketers to weave social programs throughout their marketing, using free tools to monitor their brand health and respond to customer needs. Comcast, a brand with no shortage of detractors, has scored a rare win with customers by dedicating an employee to handle customer problems on micro-blogging network Twitter. Expect more brands to follow suit, not just on Twitter but throughout the social Web of blogs and other two-way media.
"The best way is to dig in and monitor what people are saying," said Noah Brier, head of strategy at digital marketing firm Barbarian Group. "It can only help you."
Bring in the humans
To this point, the Web has been, by its nature, technology driven. Google is the most successful company of the Internet era thanks to its algorithm, a piece of technology adept at sorting the wheat from the chaff. Most of the leaps and bounds online have been in the realm of technology, whether it's ad networks deciding marketing message placement by sniffing out users' prior behavior or finely tuned measurement. Expect more advancement on those fronts, yet a greater emphasis on giving digital marketing a human face.
The algorithm is already getting a human touch with sites like Buzzfeed and Mahalo. Even Google is coming around to this notion by letting users tell it which sites are more relevant to them, a seemingly small step but one unthinkable for the engineer-driven Google just a couple years ago. New tools like Twitter will only increase the drive for people to connect with people, not just faceless entities. This will challenge marketing organizations and agencies, since humans don't scale as easily as computers. The launch-and-forget mentality will need to give way to a 24 x 7 approach.
"There's going to a big wake-up call for brands that the real work begins after the launch," said David Armano, vp of experience design at digital agency Critical Mass. He sees cause marketing via social networks as a useful bridge to brands looking to infuse their mass reach ad tactics with a human touch.
Friday, 2 January 2009
Online News Now Preferred Over Newspapers
Welcome to 2009!
In the spirit of new beginnings, it's a year that's started off with a "out with the old, in the with new". This article by Erika Sass at MediaPost News discusses the rise of online news - new media replacing the old and becoming the mainstream norm. Recent research indicates that people now prefer to get their news online, overtaking Newspapers as the preferred news media. These findings are US-based but its easy to see this in other parts of the world.
Internet Tops Newspapers As News Source
by Erik Sass, Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 7:00 AM
laptop with The New York Times online The Internet is now the most popular source of news after TV, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which released its year-end roundup of news media consumption last week. While TV is still king of the hill, its steady decline in the face of Internet competition bodes ill in the long term.
In 2008, 40% of the respondents said they got most of their national and international news from the Internet, versus 35% for newspapers in 2008. The Internet's share is up from 24% in 2007, while newspapers also increased slightly, from 34%. The long-term trend is even clearer: the Internet's share has more than tripled from 13% in 2001, while newspapers fell by almost a quarter--from 45% in those six years.
(The figures add up to more than 100% because Pew accepted multiple responses to account for ambiguity in its survey of 1,489 adults from Dec. 3-7. Although Pew did not explain this ambiguity, it might include respondents citing online newspapers or TV news Web sites alongside the traditional medium itself).
Although print newspapers--especially big metro dailies--appear to be locked in an irreversible long-term decline, newspaper Web sites have had big increases in audiences. In October 2008, the last month for which data is available, newspaper Web sites attracted a total of 68.97 million unique visitors--up 64% from 41.96 million in October 2004. The October 2008 figure represents 42% of the American adult Internet-using population--up from 28% in October 2004.
TV still takes first place as a news source, claiming a 70% share in 2008--but that's down from 74% in 2007, and a peak of 82% in 2002. Significantly, the percentage is lower among adults under the age of 30, who have taken to Internet news enthusiastically. Fifty-nine percent of respondents in this age bracket said TV news was their primary source, while an identical percentage tapped the Internet. That's a big change from 2007, when 68% of people under the age of 30 chose TV, versus just 34% for the Internet.
In the spirit of new beginnings, it's a year that's started off with a "out with the old, in the with new". This article by Erika Sass at MediaPost News discusses the rise of online news - new media replacing the old and becoming the mainstream norm. Recent research indicates that people now prefer to get their news online, overtaking Newspapers as the preferred news media. These findings are US-based but its easy to see this in other parts of the world.
Internet Tops Newspapers As News Source
by Erik Sass, Wednesday, December 31, 2008, 7:00 AM
laptop with The New York Times online The Internet is now the most popular source of news after TV, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which released its year-end roundup of news media consumption last week. While TV is still king of the hill, its steady decline in the face of Internet competition bodes ill in the long term.
In 2008, 40% of the respondents said they got most of their national and international news from the Internet, versus 35% for newspapers in 2008. The Internet's share is up from 24% in 2007, while newspapers also increased slightly, from 34%. The long-term trend is even clearer: the Internet's share has more than tripled from 13% in 2001, while newspapers fell by almost a quarter--from 45% in those six years.
(The figures add up to more than 100% because Pew accepted multiple responses to account for ambiguity in its survey of 1,489 adults from Dec. 3-7. Although Pew did not explain this ambiguity, it might include respondents citing online newspapers or TV news Web sites alongside the traditional medium itself).
Although print newspapers--especially big metro dailies--appear to be locked in an irreversible long-term decline, newspaper Web sites have had big increases in audiences. In October 2008, the last month for which data is available, newspaper Web sites attracted a total of 68.97 million unique visitors--up 64% from 41.96 million in October 2004. The October 2008 figure represents 42% of the American adult Internet-using population--up from 28% in October 2004.
TV still takes first place as a news source, claiming a 70% share in 2008--but that's down from 74% in 2007, and a peak of 82% in 2002. Significantly, the percentage is lower among adults under the age of 30, who have taken to Internet news enthusiastically. Fifty-nine percent of respondents in this age bracket said TV news was their primary source, while an identical percentage tapped the Internet. That's a big change from 2007, when 68% of people under the age of 30 chose TV, versus just 34% for the Internet.
Monday, 22 December 2008
The Digital Year in Review – and 2009 Trends
2008 was a great year if you worked in the digital industry. So many advances in technology, huge leaps forward in the numbers of people connected to the Internet and using high speed broadband to access content and a rock solid acceptance of digital (mobile, Internet, email, search, social media) by the general public – in fact, if you’re Generation Y, you’ve never known anything else. Below are some of important things we learned throughout 2008 and a few of the trends we should see in 2009.
The maturity of search marketing
There’s a lot of talk about moving marketing dollars away from traditional media into search marketing during times of economic uncertainty. This has been validated by two things – Google’s revenue figures and the persistence of Microsoft in trying to buy Yahoo!’s search business. Google’s numbers speak for themselves. As for Yahoo!’s search business – while Microsoft might have gotten some strategic things wrong in the past, I wouldn’t want to put my money at risk by betting against Microsoft this time around.
The move to search marketing is very simple. If you think about search marketing as a direct response channel and not for its branding potential, the reason is clear – search marketing is about sales. Search marketing for a lot of companies is the most effective way of growing sales. This isn’t true for all industries (particularly FMCG, where search is the most effective drive-to-web strategy but not direct sales) but it’s where companies in the IT, professional services, travel and automotive industries are putting their marketing budgets. This was the trend in 2008 and this will only increase in 2009 as budgets need to be harder working and more effective.
The rise of social networks.
2008 saw the rise of social media – Facebook becoming the dominant player, MySpace narrowing it’s focusing onto music and movies, Friendster leading South East Asia and Bebo being bought by AOL.
Facebook has long been the darling of media and the public, despite skirting dangerously around privacy issues a number of times this year. If you look at a lot of the social networks, they are now becoming surprisingly similar – a person’s profile, user generated content, third-party applications and often a wayward business model. This can be directly attributed to Facebook’s success and popularity with its audience.
Social media is very popular. OgilvyOne Singapore released a report titled “Can Brands Have a Social Life?” that focuses on social media in Asia. It identifies a staggering 456 million people in Asia (of a total Internet audience of around 571 million people) who are engaged in social media activity. Admittedly, this is more than social networks, including blogging and other social interaction, but the numbers are extraordinary.
Social Networking going mobile
The Japanese had a whole new perspective on social media. Mixi and Mobagetown, two of the leading social sites in Japan, are attracting tens of millions of people who are accessing their services through mobile devices. While other countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong have over 100% mobile penetration (i.e. there are more mobile devices than the country’s population), use of data services and applications is still in its early stages. Japan leads the world with its sophisticated mobile market and it will be really interesting to see how Mixi, Mobagetown and other mobile-focused social media help shape the social media landscape. It feels like only a matter of time before one of these players’ moves onto other mobile-savvy markets in Asia and across the world…
Blogs as buying guides
Asia is really driving the proliferation of blogs and blogger activity. This is particularly seen in Korea and China but is becoming more common across the world. This of itself is not the big issue because people have always wanted to express themselves. The major trend that is starting to affect marketers is how blogs have been inadvertently commercialized and used by consumers as buying guides. Consumers trust other consumers much more than they trust brands, so it’s no surprise that blogs are now being seen as buying guides for new products and services. The automotive industry is a great example of this – once you’ve done your online research from the brand’s website, compared prices on a few different websites, many people are now going to blogs to see “real world” experience. Does the car drive well? Does it breakdown often? How does the automotive company deal with complaints? These questions are no longer being answered by call centre staff or showroom personnel but by real people and their blogs.
The year of the job seeker.
With the doom and gloom of the current economic downturn one of the unfortunate trends is that more and more people are now facing unemployment. With so many people facing an uncertain future and a lot of people losing their jobs, 2009 will be a great year for the job classifieds sites (think Monster.com, JobsDB, ClassifiedPost, SEEK, etc.). Job classifieds sites make the majority of their revenue through job ads, which will decline, so these sites will have to evolve or die out. The savvy job boards are already working on talent management tools, interactive CVs, career content and other tools that will help candidates better promote themselves. These sites will have a huge increase in site traffic and if they are clever in working out ways to commercialize this increased audience or monetize their job seeker toolkits.
For the same reasons, there should be a significant increase in the use of business social networking. Recently LinkedIn.com release a new batch of tools – introducing networking groups, applications (similar to Facebook) and other features that allow business professionals to connect and network with each other. LinkedIn.com is now posing a legitimate threat to online job sites and print classifieds simply because it allows people to connect and network in a much more interactive way. 2009 should be the year LinkedIn.com and other business-focused social networks come into prominence.
The maturity of search marketing
There’s a lot of talk about moving marketing dollars away from traditional media into search marketing during times of economic uncertainty. This has been validated by two things – Google’s revenue figures and the persistence of Microsoft in trying to buy Yahoo!’s search business. Google’s numbers speak for themselves. As for Yahoo!’s search business – while Microsoft might have gotten some strategic things wrong in the past, I wouldn’t want to put my money at risk by betting against Microsoft this time around.
The move to search marketing is very simple. If you think about search marketing as a direct response channel and not for its branding potential, the reason is clear – search marketing is about sales. Search marketing for a lot of companies is the most effective way of growing sales. This isn’t true for all industries (particularly FMCG, where search is the most effective drive-to-web strategy but not direct sales) but it’s where companies in the IT, professional services, travel and automotive industries are putting their marketing budgets. This was the trend in 2008 and this will only increase in 2009 as budgets need to be harder working and more effective.
The rise of social networks.
2008 saw the rise of social media – Facebook becoming the dominant player, MySpace narrowing it’s focusing onto music and movies, Friendster leading South East Asia and Bebo being bought by AOL.
Facebook has long been the darling of media and the public, despite skirting dangerously around privacy issues a number of times this year. If you look at a lot of the social networks, they are now becoming surprisingly similar – a person’s profile, user generated content, third-party applications and often a wayward business model. This can be directly attributed to Facebook’s success and popularity with its audience.
Social media is very popular. OgilvyOne Singapore released a report titled “Can Brands Have a Social Life?” that focuses on social media in Asia. It identifies a staggering 456 million people in Asia (of a total Internet audience of around 571 million people) who are engaged in social media activity. Admittedly, this is more than social networks, including blogging and other social interaction, but the numbers are extraordinary.
Social Networking going mobile
The Japanese had a whole new perspective on social media. Mixi and Mobagetown, two of the leading social sites in Japan, are attracting tens of millions of people who are accessing their services through mobile devices. While other countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong have over 100% mobile penetration (i.e. there are more mobile devices than the country’s population), use of data services and applications is still in its early stages. Japan leads the world with its sophisticated mobile market and it will be really interesting to see how Mixi, Mobagetown and other mobile-focused social media help shape the social media landscape. It feels like only a matter of time before one of these players’ moves onto other mobile-savvy markets in Asia and across the world…
Blogs as buying guides
Asia is really driving the proliferation of blogs and blogger activity. This is particularly seen in Korea and China but is becoming more common across the world. This of itself is not the big issue because people have always wanted to express themselves. The major trend that is starting to affect marketers is how blogs have been inadvertently commercialized and used by consumers as buying guides. Consumers trust other consumers much more than they trust brands, so it’s no surprise that blogs are now being seen as buying guides for new products and services. The automotive industry is a great example of this – once you’ve done your online research from the brand’s website, compared prices on a few different websites, many people are now going to blogs to see “real world” experience. Does the car drive well? Does it breakdown often? How does the automotive company deal with complaints? These questions are no longer being answered by call centre staff or showroom personnel but by real people and their blogs.
The year of the job seeker.
With the doom and gloom of the current economic downturn one of the unfortunate trends is that more and more people are now facing unemployment. With so many people facing an uncertain future and a lot of people losing their jobs, 2009 will be a great year for the job classifieds sites (think Monster.com, JobsDB, ClassifiedPost, SEEK, etc.). Job classifieds sites make the majority of their revenue through job ads, which will decline, so these sites will have to evolve or die out. The savvy job boards are already working on talent management tools, interactive CVs, career content and other tools that will help candidates better promote themselves. These sites will have a huge increase in site traffic and if they are clever in working out ways to commercialize this increased audience or monetize their job seeker toolkits.
For the same reasons, there should be a significant increase in the use of business social networking. Recently LinkedIn.com release a new batch of tools – introducing networking groups, applications (similar to Facebook) and other features that allow business professionals to connect and network with each other. LinkedIn.com is now posing a legitimate threat to online job sites and print classifieds simply because it allows people to connect and network in a much more interactive way. 2009 should be the year LinkedIn.com and other business-focused social networks come into prominence.
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