Tag - social media

Dangerous lawyers: YouTube & TechCrunch

November 15, 2006

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]

Start-up goals: traffic, traffic, and more traffic?

November 13, 2006

Following the leaders is a great way to be a follower. But the fifty-first YouTube is nobody, and the sixty-third MySpace is nothing.

What does that mean in terms of a start-up’s goals?

Question: traffic & monetization
You start a wonderful new web start-up. Is traffic what it’s all about? Will everything magically work if you get traffic? And if you get traffic, will it automatically be monetizable?

Question: usefulness & critical mass
You start a wonderful new web start-up. But is it wonderful when you’re the only one there, or is it only wonderful if thousands of people are using it? Of course, you eventually want millions. And you know it’ll be great if only you can get over that hump – the first few thousand users. But what about at the beginning?

Thinking out loud: a start-up cheat sheet
What are you going to focus on when building the start-up so that you solve the traffic issue, the monetization issue, and the critical mass of users issue?

This is a personal question for me as I’m doing my own start-up right now, and here are some of my personal thoughts. I’m almost certainly missing some, and would appreciate any tips/hints/additions/suggestions that any readers might have.

Remarkable
Start with a remarkable idea. If it’s not whoa-that’s-cool (to at least someone, or some group of someones) forget it. Find another idea. Why? Your success depends on attracting attention (a necessary but insufficient condition). If it won’t, you’re sunk.
Simple
Start with an explainable-in-15-seconds idea. You need to grab attention, as just mentioned, but if you can’t maintain attention, you’re also sunk. Complexity is the enemy of attention.
Real, tangible value
Promise and deliver real value right away for user #1. User #1 is not going to join your social-network-web-2.0-music-sharing-video-trading-revolutionary-unique blahblahblah if it’s only cool when millions of people are doing it. Some people/stars/companies can start something like that and because of their cachet/history/brilliance make it an instant success. You’re not like that.
Network effects
Build in network effects so that your site/tool/service delivers more and more value as more and more people use it. Social bookmarking sites are a prime example … anything where you can aggregate, analyze, and report on user behavior that is interesting and significant to each individual user.
Viral
The word “viral” is over-used and under-delivered on, but the key point is: make your product easy to spread. More importantly, make people want to spread it. This is related to but not the same as Network effects.
Focus on the user
Assuming all the stars aligned and the angels sang and you did the right thing … don’t stop doing the right things when you do start to grow or get big.

I think the biggest problem with web start-ups is wanting the fruit without understanding how to plant, water, and weed.

In other words, people build things that would be great if a million others were using them, but forget that before a million comes a thousand. If it doesn’t work for the first thousand, you’re either never going to grow to a million, or you’re going to have to spend money like water to incentivize people to do what they naturally would not.

In the first case you’ll die, and in the second you’ll burn through much more money than you want to, probably still die, and only possibly, potentially, hopefully make it to the promised land of critical mass and catalyzed reactions and … success.

Endgame
My best guesstimation right now is that by following these cheat sheet guidelines I’ll maximize my chance for success … and so will you!

[tags] start-up, entrepreneur, web, business, goals, traffic, monetization, john koetsier [/tags]

Citizen Agency’s new digs

November 7, 2006

Citizen Agency has finally moved in … and it looks great.

Fun, creative, beautiful, energizing: wow. And that’s just the aesthetics. Here’s what they’re planning on using the space for:

So, here is what we are going to do: have as many amazing gatherings in it as possible…AND open it up to the suggestion that anyone out there who is doing something that is worth a damn in this world can have amazing gatherings in our space. Really. It’s yours. Let’s make some beautiful energy.

Reminds me of when I redid my office space a couple of years ago. (That was when I was managing my company’s tech solutions department – I’ve moved on since then.)

[tags] office, reno, citizen agency, tara hunt, john koetsier [/tags]

It’s hard to be a social media marketing zealot

November 3, 2006

It’s hard to be a zealot. Have you ever thought that?

A zealot is passionate. A zealot is a true believer. A zealot is intolerant of unbelievers. A zealot breaks china. A zealot shouldn’t be allowed in the gift shop.

A zealot lacks patience. A zealot doesn’t understand when people don’t instantly grok what they’re talking about. A zealot doesn’t have a reverse gear. A zealot wants to be in fifth gear motoring at a hundred down the autobahn all day long.

A couple of days ago I updated my blog look and added a pic of myself, with a bit of an WTF section for new visitors: “Biz, tech, social media, PR, and marketing musings from a social media marketing zealot.” I wrote that because I’m passionate about what social media can do to change how people and companies talk. After all, we’re all people, aren’t we.

As a zealot, I sometimes remind myself that I’m limiting myself. I think of the Chinese proverb: “To a hammer, all problems look like a nail.” A zealot thinks his or her chosen tool is the only tool.

The problems seem so obvious:

I mean, the 30-second spot is so dead.

Adblindness is so prevalent.

Old-skool corp-speak is so corpse-speak.

Suits who think they can manage the message are so clueless.

Marketers who think they control what a brand means are so 1950s sitcom.

PR that’s operating just like 1985 is so echo-chamber delusional.

But sometimes it seems like 95% of the business world didn’t get the memo. And they don’t speak the same language. And they want instant solutions to complex problems. And I’m from Mars, and they’re from Venus. Or something like that.

Arrgghhh. It’s hard to be a zealot.

Patience is a virtue. Sometimes I just need a little bit more of it.

[tags] social media, marketing, pr, web2.0, zealot, business, john koetsier [/tags]

Yet more TV 2.0 news

October 30, 2006

TV is racing to become … whatever it will become.

I happened to actually be watching some last night – a relatively rare occurence these days – and noticed ads for this service: GlobalTV online.

Beats my expectations
I checked it out today and it’s fairly cool. Cool in that I’m “watching” TV while I’m posting this. (Survivor, actually.)

Fairly cool in that they’re using a Flash-based player, so you don’t have to download some proprietary – or worse, Windows-only – video player.

And fairly cool in that while advertising is present, it is not ubiquitous.

But it’s not perfect
While the quality is probably a bit better than your average YouTube show, it’s small. The screenpic at the top of this post is full-size. I expected a little bigger.

And a couple of times when I paused the show, I had to actually refresh the page to get the show playing again, since it refused to restart when I pressed play.

And missing a couple of opportunities
But the TV station is really missing out on a couple of opportunities.

First of: why not put a sharing mechanism in place like YouTube or Revver? Let bloggers put TV shows on their sites with some cut&paste code. This would certainly increase viewership and ad revenue from pre-show, interstitial, and post-show advertising.

Secondly, if I was putting TV show up, I’d forget the pre and post ads, and just run occasional ads underneath the show – not obscuring it, but just taking up a bit of extra space below it.

That way you can not waste people’s time, ensure that if the show is seen, your ads are seen, and (potentially) show more ads in more innovative ways than the traditional 30-second spot. Plus, you don’t have to worry about giving fast-forward and rewind control

Not a TV “station” anymore
A little more social media marketing awareness would really help this take off, but one TV station on its own will not be compelling as one place that offers all or virtually all available shows.

After all, it’s not like they can only broadcast one show at a time anymore.

[tags] tv, global, survivor, social media, john koetsier [/tags]