Category: Joints After Midnight & Rants

A Modest Proposal To YHOO and MSFT: Spin Out A Search Company

One of the longer bomb predictions made by a number of analysts and pundits in the past 12 months has been the following: Microsoft will take its pile of cash and massive market valuation and buy Yahoo. Hell, I even suggested it. The logic goes something like this: Combine…

Msftyahoo

One of the longer bomb predictions made by a number of analysts and pundits in the past 12 months has been the following: Microsoft will take its pile of cash and massive market valuation and buy Yahoo. Hell, I even suggested it. The logic goes something like this: Combine the two companies’ reach and search share, their CPM advertising businesses and various other plays, and you have a behemoth that can take on Google.

Fine, except I don’t buy it anymore, mainly because I think both companies are not well positioned to deal with a successful merger. And, I think there might be a better way. Now, those of you who read regularly may recall my LiveSoft post a year ago, in which I suggested that Microsoft set its Internet businesses free. Well, thanks to many folks who work in the industry (and one in particular who will remain anonymous for now), my thinking has evolved. I no longer think Microsoft should spin out LiveSoft, nor do I think it should buy Yahoo. Instead, it should roll out a new company that focuses on one thing: Search monetization. But it shouldn’t do it alone. Instead, it should be a joint venture with Yahoo.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa?

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Conversational Marketing: PGM v. CM, Part 3

(image) Grab a favorite beverage if you're going to read this one. It's rather long….. OK. If you believe that conversational media (post 1, post 2) represents an important emerging category in the overall media landscape, the question must be begged: how does one pay for it? What is…

Ah Bourbon-1

(image)

Grab a favorite beverage if you’re going to read this one. It’s rather long…..

OK.

If you believe that conversational media (post 1, post 2) represents an important emerging category in the overall media landscape, the question must be begged: how does one pay for it? What is the central economic model for conversational media?

I have a short answer, and a very long one. The short one is this: Conversational marketing. The long one gets into how conversational marketing is simply the tip of a very large iceberg, representative of a sea change in how all businesses converse with their constituents – be they customers, partners, or employees. Yes, I’m going somewhere with all of this – my shorthand for it is “The Conversation Economy” – but for now finding a succinct definition is exceedingly notional – and frustrating. Regardless, the more smart folks I talk to in the media, marketing, and business world, the more I am convinced we are entering the age of the Conversation Economy. But to get there, we need to crack the code of conversational marketing. So that’s what I’ll focus on in this post. The next (and final) one will, I hope, tie it all together.

And because I am writing this all day today, I plan to experiment a bit with how I write for the web (I’ve referred to this as web-enhanced writing). In short, I plan to serialize this post over the day, posting it as I write it. Every hour or two or three, I’ll hit “publish” and you’ll see wherever I am in this process of Thinking Out Loud. Given the way I know I write, I’m sure that each successive post will not only be longer, but an entirely revised version of the stuff I’ve already published. I hope by the end of the day to have a decent draft finished, and perhaps, you’ll visit from time to time and toss your comments into the mix.

So onwards. (Pressing the publish button for the first time now….)

Update – this post is getting so long, I’m going to put it in the “extended entry” format. Continue reading by clicking that link below….

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Subversion Has Its Place: Forget the Deal, Use the Platform

People in big media companies sometimes ask me about YouTube and the content conundrum. In short: Should they post their stuff up there, or not? My answer comes back as sort of a koan – yes, of course, do both. Mark Cuban, who is a consistent and very vocal…

Oscar

People in big media companies sometimes ask me about YouTube and the content conundrum. In short: Should they post their stuff up there, or not? My answer comes back as sort of a koan – yes, of course, do both.

Mark Cuban, who is a consistent and very vocal YouTube critic, points out a few issues as to why. I have to admit, I think he is onto something here. (OK, I don’t always agree with him, but I do always read him…). In short, Cuban says, use YouTube. After all, everyone else is.

There is something almost subversive in using YouTube as a marketing or promotional venue for content that can be found on another site. If you are a big media company, why, don’t just post trailers, post stuff that you create specifically for the YouTube audience. If it gets your knickers in a bunch, don’t post the whole thing (unless of course you have a deal you like). If you don’t (in Cuban’s example – the Oscars- there was no deal), well, use YouTube as the best promotion network ever invented.

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Larry Page on AI

You know I trend toward the mystic when it comes to the emergence of AI, and in the book I explored the idea of Google using brute computation and comprehensiveness to allow AI to emerge in its network. Here (Cnet video) Larry Page discusses this very idea, ending with…

Larry Ai

You know I trend toward the mystic when it comes to the emergence of AI, and in the book I explored the idea of Google using brute computation and comprehensiveness to allow AI to emerge in its network. Here (Cnet video) Larry Page discusses this very idea, ending with “it’s not as far off as many people think.” Thanks KK.

16 Comments on Larry Page on AI

Search Over TV Ads, The Brand Beacon

Lost Remote makes a very important point: Showing up first in search is more powerful than promoting your brand on TV. But how to make this happen? It's not just buying keywords. It's having a conversation up, online, that is honest and has integrity and is about your brand….

Lost Remote makes a very important point: Showing up first in search is more powerful than promoting your brand on TV. But how to make this happen? It’s not just buying keywords. It’s having a conversation up, online, that is honest and has integrity and is about your brand. That conversation becomes a brand beacon, and you can’t just buy that, you have to make it, engage in it, build it, cultivate it. How to do that? Ah, there’s the rub. I’ll be talking more about this in part three of my Conversational Media series, which is way overdue. From the LR post:

Last week, as most of you know, Steve Safran broke a national story here on Lost Remote. He appeared on ABC and MSNBC, as well as Boston TV and radio, with plenty of Lost Remote mentions. While our traffic nearly doubled for the day, it more than tripled the next day. Why, according to our logs? Search engines pointed thousands of users to Lost Remote for both the Aqua Teen Hunger Force story and the bad hair bride video. Which is a powerful lesson for TV folks: showing up near the top in Google for popular search terms trumps nationwide promotion on TV (well, unless you have a spot in the Super Bowl). So how’s your search engine optimization going?

2 Comments on Search Over TV Ads, The Brand Beacon

Thank God For 20% Time

Man, I wish I smoked weed like I used to in graduate school. I'd have a 24-hour party to watch the sunset across the globe on Google Earth. No, really. I mean….wow, man….

Sunriseearth017+High-Res

Man, I wish I smoked weed like I used to in graduate school. I’d have a 24-hour party to watch the sunset across the globe on Google Earth. No, really. I mean….wow, man.

6 Comments on Thank God For 206 Time

The Bummer Of Davos…

Is that nearly every session I attended where I got that unmistakable "Shit I have to post on this" feeling was, unfortunately, off the record. Last night Larry and Sergey sat down with Charlie Rose for an intimate chat at a private event. Off the record. Before that I…

Tnbt Logo White-Tm

Is that nearly every session I attended where I got that unmistakable “Shit I have to post on this” feeling was, unfortunately, off the record. Last night Larry and Sergey sat down with Charlie Rose for an intimate chat at a private event. Off the record. Before that I spoke to a room full of Media Governors – the folks who run just about every major media company in the world. Off the record. Before that, a gathering of influential editors and journalists from all over the globe. Again, off the record.

You’ll have to trust me that the insights, conversations, and information I gathered will certainly inform the musings I post here. I just can’t be specific to the who, what, and where. Stay tuned…

UPDATE: Lots of comments take me and the WEF to task, and I need to clarify. Most of Davos was in fact on the record, I was noting that the stuff where I found the most insights tended to be off the record. And I am investigating whether some of what I heard was in fact subject to looser “Chatham House” rules where just the speaker cannot be identified. Overall, I do defend the practice of getting leaders together from time to time in an off the record environment, it allows them to share experiences openly and learn from them. I will be posting more thoughts on all of this over the coming week.

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NYT: No, No, NO!!!

The approach the NYT takes, editorially, to describing "user generated content" (what I prefer to call Conversational Media) is so dismissive, so backhanded, it makes me want to scream. Here's how Richard Siklos defines it in today's paper (the piece is entitled "Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking"). User-generated…

The approach the NYT takes, editorially, to describing “user generated content” (what I prefer to call Conversational Media) is so dismissive, so backhanded, it makes me want to scream. Here’s how Richard Siklos defines it in today’s paper (the piece is entitled “Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking”).

User-generated content is basically anything someone puts on the Web that is not created for overtly commercial purposes; it is often in response to something professionally created, or is derivative of it. So, it could be a blog, a message board, a homemade video on YouTube, or a customer’s book review on Amazon.com.

Richard and his editors so deeply want to believe that conversational media is dependent on “professionally created” media. But it’s not, any more than it’s “not created for overtly commercial purposes.”

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The Blog Merchandising Problem, or, Blogs, V 2.0 (2.1? 3.0?)

Late last year, in my predictions post for 2007, I mentioned something I called, quite uninventively, "Blog 2.0." More specifically I wrote: "10. "Blog 2.0" will become a reality. By this I mean that Version 1.0 blogsites, of which I think Searchblog is a good example, will begin to…

Merchamazon

Late last year, in my predictions post for 2007, I mentioned something I called, quite uninventively, “Blog 2.0.” More specifically I wrote:

“10. “Blog 2.0″ will become a reality. By this I mean that Version 1.0 blogsites, of which I think Searchblog is a good example, will begin to look dated and fade in comparison to sites that employ better approaches to content management, navigation, intelligent widgets and web services, etc.”

Well, that entry caught they eye of Martin Nisenholtz, head of NYT Digital. I was in NYC this past couple of days visiting colleagues and attending the wonderful “Evening of Wonders,” run by FM partner author Josh Foer. Upon hearing I was coming to town, Martin asked me to stop by. He wanted me to unpack what I meant by that brief reference. Turns out, we had a fascinating conversation, and it led me to want to think out loud with all of you about a problem I think most folks who either write or read blogs have.

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