Category: Media/Tech Business Models

Facebook As Storyteller

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(image) Recently I was in conversation with a senior executive at a major Internet company, discussing the role of the news cycle in our industry. We were both bemoaning the loss of consistent “second day” story telling – where a smart journalist steps back, does some reporting, asks a few intelligent questions of the right sources, and writes a longer form piece about what a particular piece of news really means.

Instead, we have a scrum of sites that seem relentlessly engaged in an instant news cycle, pouncing on every tidbit of news in a race to be first with the story. And sure, each of these sites also publish smart second-day analysis, but it gets lost in the thirty to fifty new stories which are posted each day. I bet if someone created a venn diagram of the major industry news sites by topic, the overlap would far outweigh the unique on any given day (or even hour).

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Just In Case Ya Missed It, Google Is Pushing Google+, Hard

This is what users who are not logged in see on the home page of Google. Clearly, folks at Google would very much like you to sign up for Google+. There's a lot more to say on this subject, but I'm on the road. Just wanted to capture this…

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This is what users who are not logged in see on the home page of Google. Clearly, folks at Google would very much like you to sign up for Google+.

There’s a lot more to say on this subject, but I’m on the road. Just wanted to capture this for posterity. Google+ is a major play by the company to put digital mortar between all of its offerings, and create a new sense of what the brand *means* – far more than search. It’s Google’s clear declaration that it will be a platform player alongside Microsoft and Apple. More on this over the weekend.

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The Future of Twitter Ads

Since Jan 1, 2011, this number has already increased 82% Our active users are now growing faster in 2011 than they did in 2010 US growth is neck and neck with overall global growth And, we are on pace to add as many active users in the next 4 months as we added in all of 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined (26M) … Every team in the NFL is on Twitter and more than 50% of NFL players 75% of NBA players 82% of the US Congress and 85% of US Senators 87% of the Billboard Top 100 Musicians of 2010 93% of Food Network chefs 100% of the top 50 Nielsen-rated TV shows

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(image) As I posted earlier, last week I had a chance to sit down with Twitter CEO Dick Costolo. We had a pretty focused chat on Twitter’s news of the week, but I also got a number of questions in about Twitter’s next generation of ad products.

As usual, Dick was frank where he could be, and demurred when I pushed too hard. (I’ll be talking to him at length at Web 2 Summit next month.) However, a clear-enough picture emerged such that I might do some “thinking out loud” about where Twitter’s ad platform is going. That, combined with some very well-placed sources who are in a position to know about Twitter’s ad plans, gives me a chance to outline what, to the best of my knowledge, will be the next generation of Twitter’s ad offerings.

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On Location, Brand, and Enterprise

From time to time I have the honor of contributing to a content series underwritten by one of FM's marketing partners. It's been a while since I've done it, but I was pleased to be asked by HP to contribute to their Input Output site. I wrote on the impact…

HP IO.pngFrom time to time I have the honor of contributing to a content series underwritten by one of FM’s marketing partners. It’s been a while since I’ve done it, but I was pleased to be asked by HP to contribute to their Input Output site. I wrote on the impact of location – you know I’ve been on about this topic for nearly two years now. Here’s my piece. From it:

Given the public face of location services as seemingly lightweight consumer applications, it’s easy to dismiss their usefulness to business, in particular large enterprises. Don’t make that mistake. …

Location isn’t just about offering a deal when a customer is near a retail outlet. It’s about understanding the tapestry of data that customers create over time, as they move through space, ask questions of their environment, and engage in any number of ways with your stores, your channel, and your competitors. Thanks to those smartphones in their pockets, your customers are telling you what they want – explicitly and implicitly – and what they expect from you as a brand. Fail to listen (and respond) at your own peril.

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Twitter Makes a Statement

I could not make Twitter's press event today, but I did get a chance to sit with CEO Dick Costolo (the Web 2 Summit dinner speaker this year) yesterday afternoon, and got a chance to do a deep dive on today's news. I'll write up more on that as…

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I could not make Twitter’s press event today, but I did get a chance to sit with CEO Dick Costolo (the Web 2 Summit dinner speaker this year) yesterday afternoon, and got a chance to do a deep dive on today’s news. I’ll write up more on that as soon as I can, but the recap:

100 million active users around the globe turn to Twitter to share their thoughts and find out what’s happening in the world right now. More than half of these people log in to Twitter each day to follow their interests. For many, getting the most out of Twitter isn’t only about tweeting: 40 percent of our active users simply sign in to listen to what’s happening in their world.

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Google As Content Company – A Trend Worth Watching

It's been a while since I've said this, but I'll say it again: Google is a media company, and at some point, most media companies get pretty deep into the Making Original Content business. With the acquisition of Zagat* Google has clearly indicated it's going to play in a…

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It’s been a while since I’ve said this, but I’ll say it again: Google is a media company, and at some point, most media companies get pretty deep into the Making Original Content business. With the acquisition of Zagat* Google has clearly indicated it’s going to play in a space it once left to the millions of partners who drove value in its search and advertising business. Google is walking a thin line here – media partners are critical to its success, but if its seen as favoring its “owned and operated” content over those who operate in the open or independent web, well, lines may be redrawn in the media business.

Now, it’s easy to argue that this was a small, strategic buy to support Google’s local offering. Then again…Blogger, YouTube, and GoogleTV are not small efforts at Google. And if I were an independent publisher who focused on the travel and entertainment category, I’d be more than a bit concerned about how my content might rank in Google compared to Zagat. Just ask Yelp.

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We Need An Identity Re-Aggregator (That We Control)

The subject of "owning your own domain" has been covered to death in our industry, with excellent posts from Anil Dash and others (Fred) explaining the importance of having your own place on the web. I've also weighed in on the importance of "The Independent Web," where creators have…

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The subject of “owning your own domain” has been covered to death in our industry, with excellent posts from Anil Dash and others (Fred) explaining the importance of having your own place on the web. I’ve also weighed in on the importance of “The Independent Web,” where creators have control, as opposed to the Dependent Web, where platforms ultimately control how your words, data, and expression are leveraged.

But not everyone gravitates toward having their own, independent site – at least not initially. Even those who do have sites don’t necessarily see those sites as the best place to express themselves. I was reminded of this reading a Quora thread over the weekend entitled “What’s it like to have your film flop at the box office?” (The subtitle of the thread is hilarious: “Don’t they know how bad it is before it comes out?”)

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More on Twitter’s Great Opportunity/Problem

In the comments on this previous post, I promised I'd respond with another post, as my commenting system is archaic (something I'm fixing soon). The comments were varied and interesting, and fell into a few buckets. I also have a few more of my own thoughts to toss out there,…

Itwitter-bird.pngn the comments on this previous post, I promised I’d respond with another post, as my commenting system is archaic (something I’m fixing soon). The comments were varied and interesting, and fell into a few buckets. I also have a few more of my own thoughts to toss out there, given what I’ve heard from you all, as well as some thinking I’ve done in the past day or so.

First, a few of my own thoughts. I wrote the post quickly, but have been thinking about the signal to noise problem, and how solving it addresses Twitter’s advertising scale issues, for a long, long time. More than a year, in fact. I’m not sure why I finally got around to writing that piece on Friday, but I’m glad I did.

What I didn’t get into is some details about how massive the solving of this problem really is. Twitter is more than the sum of its 200 million tweets, it’s also a massive consumer of the web itself. Many of those tweets have within them URLs pointing to the “rest of the web” (an old figure put the percent at 25, I’d wager it’s higher now). Even if it were just 25%, that’s 50 million URLs a day to process, and growing. It’s a very important signal, but it means that Twitter is, in essence, also a web search engine, a directory, and a massive discovery engine. It’s not trivial to unpack, dedupe, analyze, contextualize, crawl, and digest 50 million URLs a day. But if Twitter is going to really exploit its potential, that’s exactly what it has to do.

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The Future of The Internet (And How to Stop It) – A Dialog with Jonathan Zittrain Updating His 2008 Book

(image charlie rose) As I prepare for writing my next book (#WWHW), I've been reading a lot. You've seen my review of The Information, and In the Plex, and The Next 100 Years. I've been reading more than that, but those made it to a post so far. I'm…

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(image charlie rose) As I prepare for writing my next book (#WWHW), I’ve been reading a lot. You’ve seen my review of The Information, and In the Plex, and The Next 100 Years. I’ve been reading more than that, but those made it to a post so far.

I’m almost done with Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together, with which I have an itch to quibble, not to mention some fiction that I think is informing to the work I’m doing. I expect the pace of my reading to pick up considerably through the Fall, so expect more posts like this one.

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Twitter and the Ultimate Algorithm: Signal Over Noise (With Major Business Model Implications)

Note: I wrote this post without contacting anyone at Twitter. I do know a lot of folks there, and as regular readers know, have a lot of respect for them and the company. But I wanted to write this as a "Thinking Out Loud" post, rather than a reported article….

Note: I wrote this post without contacting anyone at Twitter. I do know a lot of folks there, and as regular readers know, have a lot of respect for them and the company. But I wanted to write this as a “Thinking Out Loud” post, rather than a reported article. There’s a big difference – in this piece, I am positing an idea. It’s entirely possible my lack of reporting will make me look like an uninformed boob. In the reported piece I’d posit the idea privately, get a response, and then report what I was told. Given I’m supposedly on a break this week, and I’ve wanted to get this idea out there for some time, I figured I’d just do so. I honestly have no idea if Twitter is actually working on the ideas I posit below. If you have more knowledge than me, please post in the comments, or ping me privately. Thanks! twitter issue.png

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I find Twitter to be one of the most interesting companies in our industry, and not simply because of its meteoric growth, celebrity usage, founder drama, or mind-blowing financings. To me what makes Twitter fascinating is the data the company sits atop, and the dramatic tension of whether the company can figure out how to leverage that data in a way that will insure it a place in the pantheon of long-term winners – companies like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. I don’t have enough knowledge to make that call, but I can say this: Twitter certainly has a good shot at it.

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