The basic message of this talk can be summed up as "Don't compete with Google, but do an end run around the search box by pushing relevant content to users as they create or consume information." Dr. Hammond is co-director of the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University. His talk was unusually technical for SIIA, and was greatly enjoyed by some, but not others. (I enjoyed it, of course.)
Frictionless information is defined as "information that proactively serves people based on the context of their activities." The idea is: know the user, be embedded in their workflow, understand their context, and get content to help them. Push from any relevant source and deliver to any format. Two applications were presented which illustrate the concept.
One is a desktop "relevance engine" that suggests content in the research pane of Word, based on what the user is writing. This idea is not totally new (c.f., the Watson search tool), but the magic is all in the execution. How often do you query, what sources, how do you ensure pinpoint relevance and up-to-the-minute freshness? The strategy seemed to be to query a lot initially, e.g., when the user opens or starts a document, and then only present things that are new, e.g., when the focus changes.
The other is called "Beyond Broadcast" - a program that watches TV along with you (presumably embedded in a Tivo box?) that builds a micro-site based on what you're seeing. On the site, there is related Web material, such as news, YouTube videos, blogs, and of course ads. The application apparently takes the kind of show into account, e.g., feature film, comedy show, etc. The client is Titan TV, whose primary business is delivering TV to your PC.
I do like these ideas. At Thomson Reuters, we built a recommendation system based on the relevance engine concept back in 2003, called ResultsPlus. ResultsPlus reads queries being run against case opinions on Westlaw and suggests other sources of information, such as briefs, law reviews etc. Thanks to high relevance driven by personalization, this service has been a huge hit. Annotating video with Web and other data is another active area of research for us, and will appear in a new product launch shortly.
I believe that traditional publishers can indeed preserve their relevance in the face of new media if they leverage their domain expertise, and that of their users, to support customers proactively in the performance of common, but high value, tasks. Basic search is now a commodity, but what I am describing here (which I call "expert search") is not a commodity, since it requires both scarce knowledge and the existence of an online community.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Mark Walsh on "micro-scripts": SIIA Interview
Mark Walsh is a bone fide pundit of politics and media, and also the CEO of GeniusRocket, a crowd-sourcing company for creative content and brand marketing. If you accept the conventional definition of Washington as "Hollywood for Unattractive People", then you have to believe that politicians are typically judged more by what they say than how they look, and that how they say it is increasingly important as 24/7 media coverage intensifies.
Mr. Walsh suggests that politicians have started using "micro-scripts" to penetrate the consciousness of an electorate suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. He cited the use of terms like "maverick", "(bridge to) nowhere", "lipstick" and even "change" (as in "change we can believe in") as evidence that the last election had gone in this direction. Of course, Madison Avenue hit Washington a long time ago, so in some ways there's nothing new here.
I struggled a bit to see how a micro-script is different from a slogan or a sound bite. A micro-script seems to be a sound bite that has become institutionalized, and therefore part of the brand. It also brings with it back story, or a set of assumptions, that is hard to question once it gets established. (Dan Schaible of BurrellesLuce has a good take on this.)
Mr. Walsh also suggested that President Obama's tendency to speak more slowly and deliberately may end up having the effect of "human Ritalin" on the current political debate, making us all more thoughtful. One certainly hopes so. As I said in my last post, and as Henry Blodgett suggested at SIIA, the Internet does have the ability promote truth and reason, so long as the debate is lifted above knee-jerk phrases (like "big government") and disinformation (the Swift boat campaign).
I am reminded of an interview I saw on British television many years ago, where someone asked an aged contemporary of Wyatt Earp whether or not the legendary marshall really was fast with a gun. "No, he was deliberate," the old man said. In other words, he took his time and made his bullets count. I think that his may turn out to describe Barack Obama quite well, and it stands in stark contrast with some recent presidents, who have generally adopted a "shoot from the hip" philosophy.
Mr. Walsh suggests that politicians have started using "micro-scripts" to penetrate the consciousness of an electorate suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. He cited the use of terms like "maverick", "(bridge to) nowhere", "lipstick" and even "change" (as in "change we can believe in") as evidence that the last election had gone in this direction. Of course, Madison Avenue hit Washington a long time ago, so in some ways there's nothing new here.
I struggled a bit to see how a micro-script is different from a slogan or a sound bite. A micro-script seems to be a sound bite that has become institutionalized, and therefore part of the brand. It also brings with it back story, or a set of assumptions, that is hard to question once it gets established. (Dan Schaible of BurrellesLuce has a good take on this.)
Mr. Walsh also suggested that President Obama's tendency to speak more slowly and deliberately may end up having the effect of "human Ritalin" on the current political debate, making us all more thoughtful. One certainly hopes so. As I said in my last post, and as Henry Blodgett suggested at SIIA, the Internet does have the ability promote truth and reason, so long as the debate is lifted above knee-jerk phrases (like "big government") and disinformation (the Swift boat campaign).
I am reminded of an interview I saw on British television many years ago, where someone asked an aged contemporary of Wyatt Earp whether or not the legendary marshall really was fast with a gun. "No, he was deliberate," the old man said. In other words, he took his time and made his bullets count. I think that his may turn out to describe Barack Obama quite well, and it stands in stark contrast with some recent presidents, who have generally adopted a "shoot from the hip" philosophy.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
What if we'd had the Internet in the 60s?
The recent rise in the use of the Internet by grassroots political organizations made me wonder what the 60s would have been like if we had all had Internet access. Would political discourse have been more reasoned and textual, rather than slogan-oriented and demonstration-based? Would the counter-culture have been more cerebral, and less laced with sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll? (I always thoughts that drugs and politics were a bad mix, because it gave the establishment the excuse to arrest you.)
These may seem like a frivolous questions, but I don't think they are. People can only express themselves using the media at their disposal, and we see extreme cases of this, where people sometimes resort to guns and bombs because they have no voice. (People resort to guns and bombs for other reasons, of course, e.g., because they can.) Even public demonstrations (I went on a few) are a rather blunt instrument when it comes to getting your point across.
If people feel they can make a difference without burning cars, occupying buildings, or simply shocking the bourgeoisie, then I suspect that many will choose less confrontation instead of more. Obviously, some folks enjoy taking to the streets, witness the WTO meetings of recent years, which have served as a magnet for protest groups of all kinds. But I like the fact that the new administration is leveraging technology to promote a more meaningful dialog than is possible across a police cordon.
These may seem like a frivolous questions, but I don't think they are. People can only express themselves using the media at their disposal, and we see extreme cases of this, where people sometimes resort to guns and bombs because they have no voice. (People resort to guns and bombs for other reasons, of course, e.g., because they can.) Even public demonstrations (I went on a few) are a rather blunt instrument when it comes to getting your point across.
If people feel they can make a difference without burning cars, occupying buildings, or simply shocking the bourgeoisie, then I suspect that many will choose less confrontation instead of more. Obviously, some folks enjoy taking to the streets, witness the WTO meetings of recent years, which have served as a magnet for protest groups of all kinds. But I like the fact that the new administration is leveraging technology to promote a more meaningful dialog than is possible across a police cordon.
Glenn Goldberg of McGraw Hill: SIAA Interview
McGraw Hill has 6 businesses in their Information and Media group: Aviation Week, TV Broadcasting (all ABC affiliates), Business Week, JD Power, Construction, and Platts (energy pricing). Glenn Goldberg is the President of this division. (Their other businesses are in the Education and Financial Services divisions, the latter being basically Standard and Poor's.)
JD Power serves global marketers with surveys (customer satisfaction, etc) and other information in a variety of industries, including: automotive, environmental/energy, and healthcare. Since McGraw acquired them some 4 years ago, they have also moved up the value chain by providing consulting, e.g., how do you launch brands. Surveys are also augmented by sentiment analysis these days, thanks to the recent acquisition of Umbria. This company's computer scientists scrape web sites, such as blogs, to do data mining on relevant postings and aggregate the results demographically.
My comments: These may sound like moderately robust businesses to be in, and revenues in I&M grew about 4% YOY 2007-2008, but increases in profitability seem to have come from restructuring, involving layoffs and reductions in incentive compensation. Meanwhile, Business Week joins the rest of the magazine industry in suffering somewhat from falling ad revenues, as well as the normal recessionary effects. BW is online, of course, but online ads don't compensate for the decline in print ads, since the margins are much lower.
Mr. Goldberg gave good advice when he exhorted information companies to create communities as well as content, curating other people's content for their customers to consume. He also advised aligning technology and business and generally holding people accountable, easy to say but surprisingly hard to do in many companies.
Interesting developments at McGraw Hill in recent years include the use of the AutoDesk web service to connect Construction customers with AutoCAD software, the growth of the Dodge network for aggregating and distributing information about building products, and Platts' continued expansion beyond its roots in petroleum markets to encompass other energy sources.
JD Power serves global marketers with surveys (customer satisfaction, etc) and other information in a variety of industries, including: automotive, environmental/energy, and healthcare. Since McGraw acquired them some 4 years ago, they have also moved up the value chain by providing consulting, e.g., how do you launch brands. Surveys are also augmented by sentiment analysis these days, thanks to the recent acquisition of Umbria. This company's computer scientists scrape web sites, such as blogs, to do data mining on relevant postings and aggregate the results demographically.
My comments: These may sound like moderately robust businesses to be in, and revenues in I&M grew about 4% YOY 2007-2008, but increases in profitability seem to have come from restructuring, involving layoffs and reductions in incentive compensation. Meanwhile, Business Week joins the rest of the magazine industry in suffering somewhat from falling ad revenues, as well as the normal recessionary effects. BW is online, of course, but online ads don't compensate for the decline in print ads, since the margins are much lower.
Mr. Goldberg gave good advice when he exhorted information companies to create communities as well as content, curating other people's content for their customers to consume. He also advised aligning technology and business and generally holding people accountable, easy to say but surprisingly hard to do in many companies.
Interesting developments at McGraw Hill in recent years include the use of the AutoDesk web service to connect Construction customers with AutoCAD software, the growth of the Dodge network for aggregating and distributing information about building products, and Platts' continued expansion beyond its roots in petroleum markets to encompass other energy sources.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
How to Monetize Social Media: SIIA Panel
Given these troubled times, it's not surprising that people are worrying about how to make money from nifty and cool things like social media platforms and video (see previous post). This panel featured John Blossom (Shore Communications), Joe Robinson (A Small World), Rob Barber (Environmental Data Resources), Chuck Shilling (Neilsen) and Shawn Gold (SocialApproach) as moderator.
The short story is that in order to make money you have to layer stuff like ads, surveys, virtual goods and services, games, etc. on top of social media platforms. We have all seen such things on Facebook, where groups, fan bases, and other coalitions drive 'word of mouth' marketing through memberships, testimonials, and iconography including badges and widgets. We are also seeing more e-commerce on sites like mySpace, where people sell CDs, T-shirts and jewelry.
Neilsen has a well-known 'listening platform' called BuzzMetrics that monitors mentions of brands, sentiment around them, and even proximity of competitor names to the brand names in text. EDR aggregates public environmental data from government sites such as EPA for people doing property due diligence and the like, allowing them to update the information. A Small World is a subscription portal for globe-trotters to share information and meet like-minded people, e.g., going to the same conference.
My own comments: Facebook is rumored to have 2008 revenues of around $250M, which sounds OK until you realize that they have significant expansion costs, and that adding customers probably isn't making them much money. They got about this amount from the Microsoft deal in 2007, but they're still smaller than mySpace and they're not cash positive yet, so they must be wondering where this year's growth is coming from.
The short story is that in order to make money you have to layer stuff like ads, surveys, virtual goods and services, games, etc. on top of social media platforms. We have all seen such things on Facebook, where groups, fan bases, and other coalitions drive 'word of mouth' marketing through memberships, testimonials, and iconography including badges and widgets. We are also seeing more e-commerce on sites like mySpace, where people sell CDs, T-shirts and jewelry.
Neilsen has a well-known 'listening platform' called BuzzMetrics that monitors mentions of brands, sentiment around them, and even proximity of competitor names to the brand names in text. EDR aggregates public environmental data from government sites such as EPA for people doing property due diligence and the like, allowing them to update the information. A Small World is a subscription portal for globe-trotters to share information and meet like-minded people, e.g., going to the same conference.
My own comments: Facebook is rumored to have 2008 revenues of around $250M, which sounds OK until you realize that they have significant expansion costs, and that adding customers probably isn't making them much money. They got about this amount from the Microsoft deal in 2007, but they're still smaller than mySpace and they're not cash positive yet, so they must be wondering where this year's growth is coming from.
Profiting from Video: SIIA Panel
This panel featured Sandy Malcom (CNN.com), Andy Plesser (Beet.TV), Kathy Yates (AllBusiness.com) and Nicholas Ascheim (NYT) as moderator. I really enjoyed listening to this conversation, and took copious notes. The following summary captures the gist (I hope), but doesn't always attribute who said what, or who agreed with whom, and occasionally mixes in my own observations.
The Web is becoming more like TV, but estimates of the video ad market have always been overblown. In the summer of 2007, it was a little over $500M, about half of what had been predicted. Meanwhile, CNN is churning out 100 news clips a day, and niche players like Beet.TV and AllBusiness are building lower cost libraries of less perishable goods for much narrower audiences.
The CNN story is pretty instructive, I think. They started with online video in 2002, in partnership with Real Networks, and kept their product behind a pay wall. Then they made it free, except for live video, employing ads and cross-platform selling (presumably of their other service offerings). Now it's all free, including the live stuff, and bloggers, etc, are allowed to link in.
Beet.TV, meanwhile, makes 10 videos a week, mostly of tech gurus and academics who want to get on the small screen. Some, like Akamai and Adobe, want to reach out to customers. (Thomson Reuters has used Beet.TV to highlight its Open Calais service.) Others are probably building their personal brands and promoting their careers. This can be done at relatively low cost with webcams and Skype. AllBusiness spends about $250-$300 per 3-5 minute video, which includes the cost of a videographer and a production assistant.
Video search is still a wide open field, guided mostly by metadata tags, blog context and other cues. Ads can travel with a video, embedded in a branded player. YouTube (like Google) has adwords available to be associated with video content. And Google is making video more discoverable through its ordinary, universal search engine.
Bottom line is that YouTube is monetizing less than 5% of its clips, while even CNN must only be making a few thousand per clip in revenues, with production costs 10 times that of Beet.TV et al. Increased use of syndication may be part of the answer, in which ad revenues derived from product are split. (Thomson Reuters already does this in both directions.) In any event, the convergence of Web and TV is proceeding apace.
The Web is becoming more like TV, but estimates of the video ad market have always been overblown. In the summer of 2007, it was a little over $500M, about half of what had been predicted. Meanwhile, CNN is churning out 100 news clips a day, and niche players like Beet.TV and AllBusiness are building lower cost libraries of less perishable goods for much narrower audiences.
The CNN story is pretty instructive, I think. They started with online video in 2002, in partnership with Real Networks, and kept their product behind a pay wall. Then they made it free, except for live video, employing ads and cross-platform selling (presumably of their other service offerings). Now it's all free, including the live stuff, and bloggers, etc, are allowed to link in.
Beet.TV, meanwhile, makes 10 videos a week, mostly of tech gurus and academics who want to get on the small screen. Some, like Akamai and Adobe, want to reach out to customers. (Thomson Reuters has used Beet.TV to highlight its Open Calais service.) Others are probably building their personal brands and promoting their careers. This can be done at relatively low cost with webcams and Skype. AllBusiness spends about $250-$300 per 3-5 minute video, which includes the cost of a videographer and a production assistant.
Video search is still a wide open field, guided mostly by metadata tags, blog context and other cues. Ads can travel with a video, embedded in a branded player. YouTube (like Google) has adwords available to be associated with video content. And Google is making video more discoverable through its ordinary, universal search engine.
Bottom line is that YouTube is monetizing less than 5% of its clips, while even CNN must only be making a few thousand per clip in revenues, with production costs 10 times that of Beet.TV et al. Increased use of syndication may be part of the answer, in which ad revenues derived from product are split. (Thomson Reuters already does this in both directions.) In any event, the convergence of Web and TV is proceeding apace.
Henry Blodgett at SIIA: Online Journalism
Henry Blodgett is CEO of Silicon Valley Insider Inc., has a substantial background in financial services, and his book, The Wall Street Defense Manual, came out in 2007. His talk was on "The Rise of Online Journalism", and concentrated on how sites like Gawker Media and Huffington Post are competing with "old media", i.e., print newspapers who have gone online, with varying degrees of success. It was an entertaining and informative talk, which I attempt to summarize here.
New media isn't just old media put online - it's conversational (informal), interactive (you can talk back), 'snackable' (delivered in bite size chunks), real-time (as the story unfolds), and involves both serious aggregation of multiple sources and the kind of high-velocity production you associate with broadcasting rather than text. You float stories, get reactions, refine, correct, elaborate, and hopefully converge on the truth. It mixes video, images, text, audio, etc (a.k.a. omnimedia).
Some interesting facts. Gawker has multiple Tivos running at any given time, watching TV to find interesting clips. HuffPo aggregates stories from all over, and puts its own spin on them (usually political). Gawker now has 2 times the online traffic of the LA Times, while HuffPo has overtaken the Boston Globe in online page views. This despite Gawker haviung 80 editors to LA Times's 200; HuffPo has about 20 editors apparently.
What does it all mean? Mr. Blodgett claims that we are seeing "creative destruction" of old media leading to a better future. It's hard to be cheerful about destruction at the present time, but it's also hard to disagree that B2C information sources like traditional newspapers are in a difficult bind. If they embrace the Web, it's hard to build margin with online ads, but if they stay offline, or just give it away, they're in trouble anyway.
Wall Street Journal's hybrid model is held up as a good compromise. Unlike New York Times, they do charge a subscription for their online property (I have one), but they are also crawled by search engines like Google, and monetized by ads. Consumers still get quality journalism, but now their are multiple routes to consuming it. It remains to be seen how sustainable this is, or whether it works for everyone, but in the meantime newspapers (like our own Minneapolis Star Tribune) are struggling.
New media isn't just old media put online - it's conversational (informal), interactive (you can talk back), 'snackable' (delivered in bite size chunks), real-time (as the story unfolds), and involves both serious aggregation of multiple sources and the kind of high-velocity production you associate with broadcasting rather than text. You float stories, get reactions, refine, correct, elaborate, and hopefully converge on the truth. It mixes video, images, text, audio, etc (a.k.a. omnimedia).
Some interesting facts. Gawker has multiple Tivos running at any given time, watching TV to find interesting clips. HuffPo aggregates stories from all over, and puts its own spin on them (usually political). Gawker now has 2 times the online traffic of the LA Times, while HuffPo has overtaken the Boston Globe in online page views. This despite Gawker haviung 80 editors to LA Times's 200; HuffPo has about 20 editors apparently.
What does it all mean? Mr. Blodgett claims that we are seeing "creative destruction" of old media leading to a better future. It's hard to be cheerful about destruction at the present time, but it's also hard to disagree that B2C information sources like traditional newspapers are in a difficult bind. If they embrace the Web, it's hard to build margin with online ads, but if they stay offline, or just give it away, they're in trouble anyway.
Wall Street Journal's hybrid model is held up as a good compromise. Unlike New York Times, they do charge a subscription for their online property (I have one), but they are also crawled by search engines like Google, and monetized by ads. Consumers still get quality journalism, but now their are multiple routes to consuming it. It remains to be seen how sustainable this is, or whether it works for everyone, but in the meantime newspapers (like our own Minneapolis Star Tribune) are struggling.
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