Tag - marketing

Six words no more he said

January 8, 2007
John Koetsier
news

Robert Hruzek is running a Wired-inspired writing contest that I’ve agreed to help judge.

Alright, readers, let’s see how many budding writers there really are out there. Are you willing to take the challenge? If you had only six words to tell an entire story, what would you say? Take your time, but when finished submit them here via comments and they’ll be posted for all the world to see. (At least, for all who stop by the Zone, anyway. *Sigh* One day, the world.) Please bear in mind, this is a G-rated blog; I’ll delete inappropriate entries. (I have the POWER! Bwa-ha-ha-ha!)

The fun all starts on January 15th, so be sure to tune in to Middle Zone Musings in about a week and enter your hemingway (sorry, shameless neologism).

Oh, and btw, I am eminently bribable. New MacBooks and HK audio equipment are best.

The best one I can think up on the spur of about three moments?

Too fast. Overpass. Not passing over.

[tags] contest, hemingway, middle zone, robert hruzek, john koetsier [/tags]

web2.0 and the cost of production

January 2, 2007
John Koetsier
news

This post is a follow-up to my recent web2.0 monetization post.

In order to make money in the web 2.0 world, you need to reduce the cost of product to almost zero. That’s because the means of web monetization are almost all very marginal.

(See my list in linked post above if you don’t agree. If you don’t – great! Share your secret.)

So how do you reduce your cost of product to almost zero? There are three ways I can think of:

  1. Outsource
    Get your infrastructure built cheaply, at least when starting up. India, China, Eastern Europe, developing Asia, whatever. Get it built cheap.

  2. Crowdsource
    Build something that increases in value as people use it and share it. (And, as should be obvious) build something that has enough value that people will use it even before other people have started using it.) Note that when I use the term crowdsource, I don’t mean use people to build your empire. I mean providing something with enough built-in utility that people will freely decide to use your services because your services meet a need they have.

  3. Automate
    Google has two huge assets: a great search platform and a great advertising platform. Both are almost completely automated … they run by themselves. Build something that runs by itself – the fabled perpetual motion machine – and find a way to make penny every cycle, and you’ve just built yourself a wealth engine. (Of course, it’s the almost completely part that some people forget.)
[tags] web2.0, monetization, startup, production, costs, entrepreneur, john koetsier [/tags]

Whose convenience, precisely?

January 2, 2007
John Koetsier
news

I detest the theatres that want you to order your tickets online … and then charge you a “convenience fee.”

convenience.png

Whose convenience are we talking about? Obviously, not the theatre’s. Whose convenience should matter to the the theatre? Obviously, ours!

If offering online tickets really was convenient for the theater as well as being convenient for us the convenience “fee” would be a convenience “discount.” And yet we stand in long lines at the theater, waiting to pay, waiting to enter. Rather inconvenient, wouldn’t you say?

Tell me again why I shouldn’t wait for the DVD to come out.

. . .
. . .

As an afterthough, let’s not even talk about the miserable usability of a form that, although every price class is the same price class, still has three price classes. Intelligence abounds.

[tags] theater, convenience, fee, john koetsier [/tags]

web2.0 monetization

January 1, 2007
John Koetsier
news

Most web2.0 companies struggle with issues of monetization. As I see it, you’ve got about 5 options:

  1. Sell attention (aka advertising)
  2. Sell relationships (aka partnerships)
  3. Sell content (aka syndication)
  4. Sell services (aka charge for access)
  5. Sell products (aka old-skewl)

Selling attention requires scale – big scale, because attention is so ephemeral these days people don’t pay much for it. Example: MySpace, Digg, Google.

Selling relationships requires relevance – tight connection to the partnering company. It also helps if the relationship with your clients is a deep one – clients are more likely to follow up on establish a relationship with your partner company if they already have a really good relationship with you. Example: Flickr and Moo (yummy awesome business personal cards).

Selling content requires scale too, but also quality. And, unfortunately, a sales force, which means overhead. Example: BlogBurst.

Selling services requires infrastructure … real value that people can be convinced to pay for, and the demonstrated ability to deliver on them. Example: 37Signals.

Selling products requires meatspace infrastructure. Yuck. Much better to revert to selling relationships and outsourcing the production and transportation of atoms.

[tags] web2.0, monetization, startup, venture, john koetsier [/tags]

What’s the story?

December 19, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I’ve been working through a lot of product identification and differentiation lately, and this Seth Godin post really hit home: the story always matters.

The most important point:

“A commodity is only a commodity if you treat it like one.”

So: are we going to treat our products as commodities, or will they be the pages we write on to deliver interesting, compelling, remarkable messages to the people who buy and use our products?

It’s only a commodity if we are so bored (and boring) to treat it as such.

People want to be excited. People want to be motivated. People want to be captivated. People want to be passionate.

Are we allowing, providing, creating, inventing, hiding, showing, and building those possibilities into the things we create? What’s the story?

Let’s make it a good one.

[tags] stories, marketing, products, seth godin, john koetsier [/tags]

A couple of quickies: biz, marketing, peanut butter

December 18, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Here are a few things that have caught my eye lately. Usually these types of articles hang around in Safari tabs for days until I stick ’em up on del.icio.us. Maybe I’ll start just blogging them, link-blog-style, from now on …

  • How to have an overnight internet success story

    While any compelling Internet service can benefit from word of mouth exposure, not every compelling consumer Internet service possesses the proper characteristics to rely on viral distribution. I’d like to propose a new definition for what qualifies as a viral Internet service. A viral Internet service is one where each new user must involve friends to derive personal value from the service.

  • Your company’s social media score

    Many companies want to get involved in social media. Some see the promise of building closer relationships with stakeholders (customers, employees, partners, etc…). While others are excited about new marketing methods they must try. The novelty of social media is wearing off. That’s a good thing. Now we can get down to what it is really good for …

  • Making sure my peanut butter is thick and crunchy

    I was reading Brad Garlinghouse’s Peanut Butter Manifesto about Yahoo’s strategy having been spread too thin across too many opportunities. Quoting the memo:

    I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.

  • The 20 smartest companies to start right now

    Social-networking sites may be sprouting like weeds, but none yet operates as a bona fide marketplace, with members buying and selling their own creations as much as they blog, link, and post. Breyer, who sits on Wal-Mart’s board, is interested in backing an international network for indie artists, musicians, filmmakers, authors, designers, and other creative types from dozens of countries.

[tags] links, quickies, john koetsier, business, web2.0 [/tags]

OK now how did that make you feel?

December 15, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Well it’s the morning after and I have to decide if I can still live with myself.

Yesterday, of course, I dipped my toes in the (murky?) waters of paid reviews with Review: Search Engine Marketing Glossary. Today I see that my review has been accepted and I’ll be paid $30.

A buck a minute isn’t too bad – it sure beats Google AdWords – but how do I feel about writing a post for money?

Short answer: I’m not sure yet. It definitely feels different … frankly, it feels a little frightening. Am I OK with this? Is it right?

I don’t think paid reviews are unethical when there’s full disclosure. I think the ambivalence that I’m feeling rises from the fact that my blog, my space, my stake in the cyber-sand, which I have only used so far for personal and professional thinking out loud, now has a commercial feel to it – more than what you’d get from AdWords or banner ads.

I’ll have to think this one through a little more …

. . .
. . .

Some other thoughts:

[tags] reviewme, paid content, paid reviews, google, adwords, john koetsier [/tags]

Review: Search Engine Marketing Glossary

December 14, 2006
John Koetsier
news

This is a paid review. More details at the end of the post.

SEO is a bit of a black art to me.

I mean, I know all about the generalities of search engine optimization, and I think you’ll find a few of them reflected here. URLs of all my pages contain keywords; titles of all post pages have the title first, then the bizhack station ID second; and I try to be a good linking citizen – linking to those who are useful and good and interesting, and hoping to be linked to in turn.

But SEO is one of those topics that you can seemingly delve endlessly into. Everyone has different ideas, everyone has different strategies. Just to make it more interesting, SEO is an ongoing arms race between Google et al and the SEO practitioners … who are always looking for a new way to game the system.

When it comes right down to it, the best SEO strategy is probably to:

  1. create great content
  2. that is keyword-rich for subjects you’re focused on
  3. that people will link to
  4. for a decent length of time (at least 6-9 months)
  5. until Google knows you’re one of the good guys

With that as background, I was asked to review the Search Engine Marketing Glossary … a compendium of SEO terms and definitions compiled by Aaron Wall, the author of the SEO book. A little expensive, at $79, but it’s recommended by Seth Godin, which is high praise, and obviously any reasonably proficient SEO optimizer would cost you far more in consulting fees.

In any case, the Glossary is simply that – a list of SEO terms and their definitions. Here’s the funny self-referential point … the glossary of SEO term is actually a major SEO effort to improve the SEO ranking of the SEO book so that more people who search for the term SEO will find it and, perhaps, buy it. Now that’s the essence of SEO!

With that said, I can’t say that I found a huge amount of value in the glossary. Most of the definitions I either know or don’t have a huge interest in. One that was interesting was an actual revealing of the Google PageRank algorithm:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

PR= PageRank
d= dampening factor (~0.85)
c = number of links on the page
PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank)

Of course, that’s the purported PageRank algorithm. The real, current PR process may or may not have a huge impact on Google listings today, and probably bears little relationship to whatever Larry Page and Sergei Brin wrote up in a Stanford paper years ago.

I don’t really understand why PDF is in the glossary, and as far as I know Safari is a Mac web browser, not a “measure of how frequently a keyword appears amongst a collection of documents.” But hey, words have multiple meanings.

Overall, I’m sure there’s plenty of value for newbie SEO optimizers, and even some for those who understand a little more about SEO.

Most of the value, however, is in driving potential clients to the SEO book.


Paid Review
Since I like to keep in touch with all the new forms of blog monetization, I signed up for Review Me‘s paid review service about 2 months ago. I’ve had a few requests to do paid reviews that I’ve turned down; this service seemed to be one that was up my alley of interests enough that I probably would have done it anyways, paid or not.

I haven’t said anything simply because I’m being paid for the review, and frankly, the content of the review is very likely not what a person or organization using paid reviews even cares about. What they’re paying for is the link, primarily. At least, that’s my assumption. (The amount, if you’re interested, is $30.)

In any case, I’ve done this mainly as a test – to see what it feels like, and to see how it works on this blog. If you have any comments, flames, criticisms, or any reaction at all, please let me know!

Products as nouns, products as verbs

December 14, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I don’t really know how to process this yet or what to do with it, so I’m just plunking it on my blog and ruminating about it. From Pulse Laser via Signal vs Noise:

Products are not nouns but verbs. A product designed as a noun will sit passively in a home, an office, or pocket. It will likely have a focus on aesthetics, and a list of functions clearly bulleted in the manual… but that’s it.

Products can be verbs instead, things which are happening, that we live alongside. We cross paths with our products when we first spy them across a crowded shop floor, or unbox them, or show a friend how to do something with them. We inhabit our world of activities and social groups together… a product designed with this in mind can look very different.

Example …

Take Amazon: They don’t just sell products, they sell the whole life-cycle. You discover a book, select it using the reviews, consider it, hang onto it in your basket, finally choose to buy it. Wishlists and permanent book addresses (suitable for emails) understand that, even before you buy it, a book is a social object, present in our social world. Then afterwards you can recommend or review the book, and the site helps (even prompts!) you to sell the book on second-hand.

Lots to chew on as I develop products every day … how to design the product for its whole lifecycle:

  • Hearing about it
  • Seeing it
  • Wanting it
  • Learning about it
  • Getting it
  • Opening it
  • Examining it
  • Using it
  • Displaying it
  • Talking about it
  • Dare I say loving it?
  • Carrying/transporting it
  • Discarding it

How to make each of those experiences remarkable … even the one at the end, when you’re finished with the product or moving on to another product.

[tags] products, noun, verb, social, john koetsier [/tags]

MediaTemple GridServer: #2

December 12, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Just noticed that I’m hit number two at Google for MediaTemple Gridserver. And the post title is not complimentary. Remind me, if I ever forget, to keep bloggers happy about anything having to do with a product/company of mine.

The funny thing? GridServer is actually performing really well lately!

[tags] mediatemple, gridserver, mt, john koetsier [/tags]

Pre-alpha: fatboynews

December 8, 2006
John Koetsier
news

If brevity is the soul of wit, this post is hilarious:

  1. I’ve been a little busy lately
  2. Making something cool
  3. It’s still in the oven
  4. But it’s starting to smell good
  5. And I wanted to let you know

Pre-announcing fatboynews, and of course, the obligatory fatboy blog.

(For the non-software developer audience that frequents this blog, pre-alpha is freaking bloody early in development. As in not even eat your own dogfood time yet.)

In other words, don’t expect something until perhaps mid-January. Unless I decide to pull a Vista.

Don’t even joke about it.

MediaTemple: starting to rock again

December 7, 2006
John Koetsier
news

MediaTemple (my hosting company) is really starting to do all the right things and is regaining my confidence rapidly.

While having had quite a few problems over the past month, they’ve compensated affected people and are aggresively communicating about system upgrades, enhancements, and status.

The bare facts are that GridServer is starting to deliver on the promise that made me pull up stakes and move my sites. The warm fuzzy emotional appeal is that MT is being completely open and aboveboard during what will probably still be some “interesting” weeks ahead.

Kudos and congrats!

[tags] mediatemple, mt, hosting, communication, crisis, john koetsier [/tags]

Virtual shopping malls: meet Second Life

December 5, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Are virtual shopping malls returning? Maybe yes. Maybe no.

But not unless they’re social.

A truly social virtual shopping mall would be like Second Life. Here’s what I would love to see:

A virtual shopping mall:

… that provided an instant avatar
… … that you could browse and shop
… … … while interacting with other people
… … … … to check out cool stuff and get their opinions

But it can’t take 5 minutes (or even 3) to get signed in and suited up and oriented. It has to be seamless, instant, easy.

Which is, of course, not easy to do.

[tags] shopping, social, mall, virtual, second life, john koetsier [/tags]

MediaTemple does the right thing

November 30, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I’ve posted a few critical stories regarding MediaTemple’s new grid server product lately.

But I’m happy to be able to post good news: now MT is doing the right thing. I just got this email:

Dear John,

Our records indicate that you recently opened up a support request related to an open incident, wide-spread problem, or known issue relating to (mt) Media Temple’s new (gs) Grid-Server system. We want to apologize for the inconveniences this may have caused you.

We are compensating you 3 months of service as a concession for the troubles we may have caused you and your site. No action is required on your part. In the next 24 hours this will appear in your account in the form of a credit.

We will be announcing GRID MASTER RELEASE (v.1.1), and version upgrade which fixed hundreds of bugs and will dramatically improve your overall experience with this system.

(mt) Media Temple wishes to thank you sincerely for your patience during the course of these incidents. We believe the (gs) Grid-Server is an amazing system with new technology that has only begun to reach its real potential. Please look forward to announcements in the next few days relating to our new master release.

Thank you again.

Best Regards,

(mt) Media Temple
Hosting Operations

Good move, Mediatemple. Stuff happens, errors occur: that’s reality. I’m looking forward to good continued service from MT.

[tags] MT, mediatemple, customer, service, john koetsier [/tags]

I want people this passionate about the tools I’m building

November 30, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Thomas Hawk just bought a Mac after 18 years of wandering about in the valley of the shadow of Windows.

Here’s what he has to say:

I never in a million years would have thought that the design of a laptop would ever matter to me at all. It’s not about the aesthetics of a machine. It’s what it does for you right? Well, maybe. But this machine is damn sexy. I love the way that the keyboard is lit at night so that I can work in the dark. I love that glassy screen. There is something about the feel of the polished aluminum as I hold, no caress, the thing in my hands. It types perfectly. I love how I can use two fingers on the touch pad to move my screen down. I love how it has a hidden built in microphone and a small little video camera in the screen so that I can do video phone stuff through Skype super easily. I love how the little power supply has a magnet built into it and just kind of plugs itself in. And yes, I even love that glowing little Apple logo on the back of the case that I’ve scoffed at in the past at the various conferences and tech meetups that I’ve gone to.

(Every time I see some crappy Dell laptop or an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad I look at all the sharp angles, notches, odd bulges, and unsimple lids and just shake my head.)

That aside, however, here’s the point: how extravagantly wonderful is it when people rave like this about a product, service, or tool that you’ve create? I passionately want people who use the stuff I build or contribute to to passionately love them.

(And yes, I am building something. Still pre-alpha, though.)

As I saw recently on a design site: design like you give a damn.

[tags] design, mac, thomas hawk, john koetsier [/tags]

More incredible citizen-generated social media marketing: Nintendo Wii

November 24, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Take a peek at this 45-second movie of parents surprising their kids with a Wii console:

Wouldn’t you want that kind of reaction for your product? I know I do. Kids screaming your name? Wow.

(On a personal note: as a parent, this is the one console I might buy … because Wii gameplay is social and physical, not just individual and virtual.)

[tags] social media, marketing, john koetsier, wii, console, games [/tags]

Small biz blogging: why, how, when, where

November 23, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Yesterday I met Joe Laudenbach, a Bellingham, WA realtor who is wondering how blogging might be something he could use in his business. As I prepped for the meeting, I jotted down some thoughts on how blogging will fit into his business.

Note: my goal was not to get him blogging, but to give him information that will help him make an informed decision whether or not he wants to start.

Why to blog

  1. Better SEO
    Because blogs are more frequently updated, they’re a major benefit to your site’s search engine optimization … the factors that help you rank higher in search engine results pages. 
  2. More interesting site
    A blog is usually much more interesting than a website … it’s not corporate, it delivers content in quick hits, it’s more accessible … 
  3. More human face to potential clients
    Building on the “not corporate” theme, a blog is where your personality comes through – which is attractive (unless you’re Attila the Hun) 
  4. Learn and develop more as a person and as a realtor
    I learn more from blogging than just about anything else. Simply the process of thinking and writing and writing and listening and linking makes me much more consciously aware of trends and opportunities. The same is true for realtors or virtually any occupation, I believe. 
  5. Creative outlet
    People who blog regularly come to love blogging as a creative outlet. And I don’t believe there’s a single person alive who isn’t creative to some degree, in some way. Feeding this impulse has personal and professional benefits. 
  6. Contacts, conversations, communication
    Through blogging I’ve had email contact with Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and many other major, well-known technology, business, and marketing leaders. They’ve made me smarter. Plus, I’ve had many more contacts with many more people who aren’t so well known … and that’s had even greater benefits. The same can be true for real estate agents or any professional/business people. Jobs, work contacts, and just plain interesting people: blogging can bring all that. It has for me.

Why not to blog

  1. If you can’t write
    Don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to be Hemmingway. But if you absolutely cannot string 2 words together intelligibly, forget it. Find some other way to engage your clients. 
  2. If you won’t keep it up
    Don’t start if you won’t keep it up. Few things are more pathetic than an orphaned blog. However, don’t get too worried, either. One post a week is not ideal, but it’s perfectly fine for many, many professionals. 
  3. If you’re just marketing yourself
    If your blog is only going to be about how your company and you are incredibly, stunningly great (not to mention handsome and wealthy) forget it. No-one’s going to read it – one Paris Hilton is enough, thank you very much. 
  4. If you’re looking for a quick fix marketing hit
    Blogging isn’t a quick fix solution. It’s about telling stories and developing relationships, and those don’t form overnight. Even the blogosphere success stories such as Thomas Mahon blogged for months and months without seeing major results. The good news: all your work is always paying dividends. Old blog posts never die, they just keep attracting hits. 
  5. If you’re not comfortable being authentic, real, and non-corporate
    Don’t be a stuffed shirt – let your hair down and be real. If you can’t tolerate the slightest mistake, if you can’t speak with anything other than the traditional marcom voice: forget it. It’s boring. It’s just advertising … and people are more adblind now than they’ve ever been.

What to blog about
Note: these are tailored for Joe, who’s a real estate agent. But they’re adaptable to different situations.

  1. Why people move to Bellingham/Whatcom county
    There’s probably 10 or 15 blog posts right here … as many as there are reasons. 
  2. What areas are great for kids|seniors|adults
    Another 5-7 posts … 
  3. Things to do in Bellingham
  4. Seasonal events
    If you do to a harvest festival, blog it. Christmas candlelight parade? Blog it. 
  5. House-hunting tips
    Keep it to one tip per blog posts … there’s probably an indefinite number of tips here. Organize them in a category so that visitors can see them all. 
  6. Top ten house-hunting gotchas
    I know I’d love to know what to watch out for when moving … and I’m probably searching for this type of information when I’m about to move, too. 
  7. Things you realize AFTER you move in
    Wouldn’t we all like to have known this – about a month before moving in. 
  8. Stressless moving

How to blog

  1. Intentional keywords
    Be intentional about the keywords you use. Know what people will be searching for when they’re looking to find a home in Whatcom County, WA. Niche it out to the max if you want to rank in search engines, and make sure you use those keywords in titles and posts. 
  2. Regularly (at least once a week)
    As mentioned above, don’t make an orphan out of your blog. 
  3. Naturally
    When you’re blogging, you’re a person. Not a company. Talk to people who are also persons as you would talk to someone on the street. Anything else is disrespectful, stuffy, and annoying. 
  4. Interview people
    Interview key people in your community. This is a great way to expand your circle of contacts, blog about interesting valuable topics, and grow your readership. 
  5. Talk to clients
    Clients will give you all the blog fodder you need, if you just ask.

Other things to consider

  1. Other social media
    Over time, as you become established in your blog and comfortable with the technology, why not explore other forms of social media? Upload a house video or a neighborhood drive-through to YouTube. Then post it to your blog. Or … 
  2. Podcasts
    Create a couple of podcasts so that people can hear your voice. This can really give people a sense of who you are and that they know you.

These are a few of the suggestions I had for Joe. I hope that they’re applicable to whatever situations you’re in, whether you’re a small business blogger, a corporate blogger, or a social media consultant. I’d love any feedback you might have, positive or negative.

Questions/opportunties? Looking for help in your social media adventure? Let me know.

Stop spamming me, PhotoStamps

November 22, 2006
John Koetsier
news

PhotoStamps is a cool company that makes wonderful custom stamps with pix of your kid, your dog, or your college on them, but if they keep spamming me I am tempted to go postal on them:

photostamps.jpg

They’ve now sent me 7 identical emails today. Not extremely clueful.

[tags] spam, photostamps, john koetsier, bizhack [/tags]

Now with less advertising!

November 21, 2006
John Koetsier
news

It’s that time of the month again, so I dropped Google AdSense.

It adds a bit of load time, visual clutter, and general tackiness … and makes me a pittance. A couple of bucks a day just isn’t worth it.

Maybe I’ll try again in a couple of weeks with a single ad in the body of each post, if I can figure out a way to make it as unobtrusive as possible.

[tags] google, adsense, adwords, advertising, john koetsier, bizhack [/tags]

Dollar signs in the greedy gleam of your eye

November 21, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Whether blogging or writing content for a standard old website, never, never, never, never, never make the mistake of providing every single link except the one your readers want …

nolinks.jpg

Such as this interview at FiringSquad that provides every possible money-making link you could image … except the link to the website of the company founders they’re interviewing. That’s, of course, what Kontera and Vibrant Media are good at helping you accomplish.

There’s no better way to tell your visitors that they are nothing but potential dollar signs in the greedy gleam of your eye.

[tags] ads, links, link love, firing squad, john koetsier [/tags]

Yes, it blends!

November 20, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Scoble has already linked to this so the whole world probably knows, but I just can’t resist. This is absolutely perfect 100% genuine beautiful shiny social media marketing in all its amateurish grainy goodness:

What’s so perfect about it?

It’s short, remarkable in a they-did-that!?! type of way, is relevant to the company’s products, builds/reinforces the brand, isn’t too contrived, is well-executed but clearly unprofessional (which is good), and doesn’t try to do too much.

[tags] blender, social, media, marketing, john koetsier [/tags]

Holy freaking mother: stop the blog widget insanity

November 16, 2006
John Koetsier
news

How much blog bling is too much?

Context: I was just at A VC – a blog by Fred Wilson, a New York venture capitalist that I follow from time to time.

He has about 5 million widgets and doodads hanging off his blog. He’s even worse, if possible, than Matthew Ingram.

Let me count. In the left sidebar Fred’s got:

  1. A picture
  2. Feedblitz RSS subscription form
  3. Yahoo! search widget
  4. Assorted other Fred Wilson RSS feeds
  5. My Blog Community photo widget
  6. Gotham Gal’s Stuff
  7. Podcasts he listens to
  8. Amazon music widget with about 15 albums in it
  9. tourb.us concert widget
  10. Streampad My Music widget
  11. Last.fm music widget
  12. iTunes music widget
  13. Shopcasting widget from ThisNext with about 6 products and full descriptions
  14. Alacra store search widget
  15. Blog categories
  16. Blog archives
  17. Blog about
  18. Blog stats
  19. Various links: axis of evil
  20. Fred’s social networks
  21. Facebook widget
  22. LinkedIn widget
  23. Some other links

In the right sidebar, not to be outdone, he’s got:

  1. Sitepal voice message widget
  2. Personality profile link (what a shock, he’s not high on aesthetics)
  3. Federated Media (FM) publishing banner ad (skyscraper format)
  4. Flickr widget
  5. Wallstrip video widget
  6. Shakeshack widget
  7. More FM ads
  8. VC Feedburner network widget
  9. WordofBlog widget
  10. Ad for another of his blogs
  11. Del.icio.us linkroll widget with about 20 recent links, including brief descriptions
  12. Indeed.com job posting “jobroll” widget
  13. Another Indeed.com widget, this one focusing on salaries in NY
  14. Blogroll with about a hundred blogs in it
  15. Another shopcasting widget from ThisNext with about 10 products, pictures, and descriptions in it
  16. Recent searches widget
  17. Contextual text link ads from Yahoo!
  18. Contextual text link ads from Google (could be against AdSense terms & conditions if Yahoo! is also being used – I think it is, actually)
  19. Recent posts

As I said earlier: holy freaking mother. Stop the insanity!

RSS via IM: feed crier

November 16, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Just found Feed Crier – a very cool app to get new RSS feed items automatically sent to your favorite IM application. What a great idea.

If you use IM and this sounds interesting to you, you might want to check it out soon. “Pro” accounts, which let you add more than 3 feeds and normally cost $4/month, are now free.

(The marketing angle on that promo is that eventually the price will go back to $4, and at that point you’ll still get all your feeds for free, but won’t be able to add more. Which, of course, if you like the service, you eventually will. Ingenious.)

Shameless plug: you can try it right on bizhack … scroll down the sidebar, find the feeds section, enter your IM address, and hit Subscribe. Or just go to the feeds tab and do the same thing.

I’ll try this for a while and see if I like it in practice as much as I do in theory.

[tags] rss, feeds, im, feed crier, bizhack, john koetsier [/tags]

Web advertising growing 10-30% annually

November 15, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Good news for all web content providers … web advertising is growing, fast. Very fast:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached an estimated new record of $4.2 billion for the third quarter of 2006. The 2006 third quarter revenues represent a 33 percent increase over $3.1 billion in Q3 2005 and a 2 percent increase over the Q2 2006 total of nearly $4.1 billion.

Here’s the pretty graph, with the black hole of the web 1.0 bubble bursting in the middle:

So the demand-side is growing. It’s still small in comparison to all ad spending, which is good: lots of room to grow. One unanswered question: how fast is the supply side growing? Answer that, and you’ll have an answer to where online ad pricing is moving.

(Hint: the blogosphere is doubling every 236 days.)

[tags] online, advertising, ads, revenue, john koetsier [/tags]

Dangerous lawyers: YouTube & TechCrunch

November 15, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Lawyers working for web companies are like Dick Cheney out hunting: liable to shoot their best friends in the face.

For a perfect example, see this TechCrunch cease & desist, sent by that paragon of intellectual property rights protection, YouTube:

Buried in my email this evening I found a cease and desist letter from an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, representing their client YouTube. We’ve been accused of a number of things: violating YouTube’s Terms of Use, of “tortious interference of a business relationship, and in fact, many business relationships,” of committing an “unfair business practice,” and “false advertising.” The attorney goes on to demand that we cease and desist in from engaging in these various actions or face legal remedies.

The offense we committed was creating a small tool that lets people download YouTube videos to their hard drives. We referenced the tool in a recent post that walked people through the process of moving YouTube Videos to their iPod.

The dangerous part is not in sending the cease & desist notice per se. It’s not even in sending it wrongfully, as Micheal Arrington goes on to point out in the rest of the post.

The idiocy of almost Biblical proportions is sending out a C&D to TechCrunch as if it’s just some blog written by just some guy. The idiocy is not knowing that TechCrunch is one of the biggest and most influential blogs on the planet – particularly in terms of web start-ups and technology.

And the danger is in not putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with the knowledge that your ridiculous C&D, and your name, and your firm’s name … are all going to be splashed across the computers of the most knowedgeable and influential people in the industry.

At the very least you need to have a smarter, more subtle, and more targeted approach. Leave the bullhorn at home. Then, you ensure that you don’t target people who are among your biggest fans. If you’re absolutely forced to, you do it in as nice a way as possible.

And, finally, being sure that what you’re issuing the C&D for is actually a violation of the terms and conditions of your site would be a very good idea.

[tags] techcrunch, youtube, C&D, lawyer, law, legal, web, john koetsier [/tags]

Do start-ups require ruthlessness?

November 14, 2006
John Koetsier
news

What would you do to improve the chances of your business succeeding? Greg Linden explores that thought and wonders if he’s cut out for the start-up life.

Does doing a start-up require spamming, porn, or pirated material … things that Greg points out were critical in the growth of Facebook, MySpace, BitTorrent, HotOrNot, YouTube, and Kazaa/Skype? Obviously, it’s something that can result in increased use and viral growth.

One thing I can say, looking at all those start-up company names, it IS clear that InTerCapS have an huge positive correlation with cool, hip, and profitable new start-ups.

[tags] start-up, entrepreneur, web2.0, john koetsier [/tags]

Subscribe to my Substack