Corporate blogs: powerful marketing tool

Many corporations are reluctant to enter the world of social media fearing a loss of control over their relationships with customers. Funny thing is the consumer has always been in control.

The key precedent to entering the world of blogging is transparency. Currently, consumer trust is at an all time low and transparency is the antidote. Someone recently posted that a corporation that does not offer a blog from its CEO or executive team is suspect. There is truth in this statement. The web is about interactivity; marketers have always wanted a relationship with their customers and the web is the simplest, most accessible tool.

Remember blogs can and must be moderated. Where my blogs have received thousands of spam messages over the last six months, these spammers are now posting “nice blog” and other short saccharine statements with minimum links to get through our filters. But moderation saves the day. Expletives, hateful comments (under the guise of freedom of expression)–all can be deleted. I compare much of stealth hateful comments to “road rage”. The blogosphere has too many hateful participants and frankly the more we moderate, the more it will be taken over by social decorum. There is no more honesty in freedom to hate than there is in freedom to be kind. Even Tim O’Reilly is trying to start a new higher standard for blogging; I blogged about this earlier. I applaud this worthy cause and his courage.

Blogs put a face, a voice and a heart behind a corporation and its brands. It adds vital meaning to the brand. And builds community around it. And furthermore, it also provides a zero cost, authentic tool to learn how your customers feel. In a panoply of marketing tools, this is probably the most effective.

The truly fearful can turn off comments as a starting point—it’s not interactive but it does provide a sincere voice. I’t s a good start.

Blogging is an indispensible tool for marketers. Some say, “I don’t have time to blog”; truly, they are postponing the inevitable. Blogging should be on every marketer’s daily To Do list.

War of Words Waging in the Valley

Tim O’Reilly launched a call for Bloggers’ Code of Conduct (COC) to end the vitriol that pervades the blogosphere. For those of you who do not know O’Reilly he is rumored to have launched the term Web 2.0; he also manages substantial interests in technology events and publishing in the Valley.

Many take this COC as censorship but Tim is clear to state that it is to offer the Freedom of Civility. The usual suspects are weighing in, including Danny Sullivan (search engine star), Mike Arrington (tech review star), Robert Scoble (blog star) and Doc Searls (of Cluetrain Manifesto fame). The New York Times has also joined the frey.

My take: It’s about time this conversation begins.

The blogosphere does not have the respect of the big business community and many other web users thanks to its limited lexicon, explitives and often baseless posting and commenting. O’Reilly seeks to make blogs more transparent i.e. no stealth journalism. This should keep the web more honest. In a seven step initial proposal, he also exhorts blog owners to be more vigilant with abusers–and to cease their own abuse. O’Reilly’s idea has been mocked by many; this is symptomatic of the fact that these are the voices usually heard. There are many who support him. It will be very interesting to see this play out. Movies always end in good conquers evil.

A Holiday Wish from me

I hope you all enjoy more cowbell on this Easter Monday!

Plexusity makes Top 10 growing WP blogs

Yes! this blog made top 10 twice and made “fastest growing blogs” again, a third time at WP. Thanks readers. I really appreciate your loyalty and your tripping over Plexusity from the bottom of my heart. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy posting. Something to be said for passion!

HOT NEW LAUNCHES April 2007

1. Ballhype.com: It’s a social, collaborative site for sports fans. They can comment on their favorite teams local to national and rate the comments Digg style. This site is totally dedicated to sports fans with no other aim.

 

2. EMI  launches DRM-free music! That means no anti-copying software. Steve Jobs is putting his and Apple’s name and reputation behind the move. The music in question is said to be of higher quality and now available on iTunes.

 

3. YuMe Networks launches first advertising within downloaded videos on BitTorrent entertainment network! On any device! Add to your lexicon,  air-time “pre-roll”, “mid-roll”, “post-roll”, watermark and more on-line.

 

4. DoubleClick announced today that it is launching an ad exchange. It’s like a cross between Sabre (airline booking software) and eBay. Any advertiser will be able to bid for ad space on this interface.

 

5. Google Desktop for Mac. It’s a Universal application which indexes the contents of your hard drive. The image on the right is the new side bar. Reviews are not half bad.

 

6. The Coop: Mozilla adds social networking into Firefox.

 

7. Sansa Connect: A collaboration between Yahoo!, SanDisk and Zing Systems to launch yet another wireless MP3 player this Friday April 13th for $250 US. 

 

8. MailChannels launches a new spam filtering program that slows email by an additional 8 seconds rather than the former 2 seconds. This cuts down on impatient spammers. It can retrofits into any email infrastructure saving corporations a great deal.

Keep posted daily for more hot launches to this month’s awesome beginning!

BRAND OF THE WEEK: Kincafe

I just recently posted Geni as the Brand of the Week, a social collaboration platform for the building of a family tree. But Kincafe (a fun relevant name) is Geni on steroids. It is very intuitive as it is very visual, using icons, images, and less text (text is sequential and slow to the brain). But what is great is that it takes collaboration a relevant step further with photo album building, blog, stories, shared between family members and friends.

I began to muse the opportunities that Kincafe could evolve into. The problem with Web 2.0 is that the hosted services are fragmented–and there is only so much time any of us have to spend sitting at a keyboard. And more user IDs and passwords than we can maintain. This is where the battle will be won, aggregated functionality.

So Kincafe could become a substantive “inner circle” network adding features like auto-prompted birthday greetings or birth announcements, videos, audios–as it is Kincafe is a fabulous way to keep in touch and add meaning to “family” or a group of friends.

I’ve heard musings about Kincafe taking longer than Flash based Geni but I think these are small glitches, easy to overcome. The depth of the service is to be noted. My personal preference is the zoom tool at Kincafe rather than the tedious scrolling at Geni–but hey, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.

I expect like Geni you can use Kincafe free up to a point. How to monetize this for the founders is a question I am sure I will get an answer to shortly.

BRAND OF THE WEEK: Geni

This hosted app in beta is something everyone can use. More than a tech innovation, Geni is about every human being’s need for meaning and yearning for immortality. It is a user-generated, hosted genealogy application. It operates somewhat like LinkedIn where you invite family members into the community and in turn they do same. The net result should be a detailed at-a-glance picture of family history.

The application gives you a chance to set-up your immediate genealogy for free. After setting-up my children, sisters and brothers, parents, grandparents and aunts/uncles, I am going to have to pull out the VISA card. After setting-up approx. a dozen members, Geni advised me that I used up 30%. Immediately, Geni sent me an email with my temp password.

The app is intuitive in that girls are pink, boys are blue. And an on-screen scroll tool allows you to move around and add to your family tree visually. And I did not have to go in and set a password!–this in itself is a task no one likes when they are just testing the waters. Again intuitive.

What’s nice about this is that family can participate in adding their information about the tree. What I don’t like is that aging members are not on the web–and much of the knowledge is lost to the dearly departed. But hey, family will have to dig (no pun). Geni is to genealogy what Flickr is to family photo albums-live. Perhaps one day Geni will link to databases to help us add that knowledge. It would also be nice if we could skip generations adding ancestors which we happen to know about while we fill in the gaps with family Members. Perhaps Geni will become so robust that it could fill in the blanks. Why not ask for the moon? But one thing is for sure, I’d like to be able to print the tree on a large poster once we have it as complete as possible. Makes a great Xmas present. Add that to the Flickr photo album.

Geni was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, Yahoo! Groups, Ebay, and Tribe; so, we can expect this application will just get better and endure. Right now its fun, worthwhile and I’m getting drawn in!

HOT NEW LAUNCHES March 2007

A number of developments in web 2.0 and gadgetry keep the market hopping. HOT NEW LAUNCHES will be published each month featuring innovations from start-ups and behemoths. It is a live list that will grow through the month so you can have a quick picture of what’s fresh in the marketplace.

1. Google launching a mobile phone – a Blackberry like device with a C++ core. Google did start a partnership with Samsung in January; so there is collaboration here. Lots of chatter here and chattering teeth from the competition. Idea rating: 3 1/2 stars

2. My.Netscape - the next generation of Netscape’s personalized home page in beta (there’s nothing at this link today-keep checking). The chatter in the market is hopeful on this one. Idea rating: 2 1/2 stars

3. Adobe Creative Suite 3.0 – due out March 27. Idea rating: TBA

 

4. Geni on-line family tree building already into its second round of financing with Charles River Ventures value at $100 mm. I simply love this hosted app. I am in! Idea rating: 3 1/2 stars

 

5- Skype Prime Beta a Skype to Skype 1-900 style i.e. paid by the caller to experts at the posted fee per minute. This is about a brand so visionary that it sees beyond its appliance. Linked in has a similar service but I do not believe for mobile and for larger fees. Idea rating: 4 stars

 

6- Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G1 Sonys’ first wireless digicam which will send images over wi-fi networks. Standard resolution 480 X 640 at 30 frames per sec. Memory card able to hold 8 GB. No touch screen on this one. Idea rating: 3 1/2

Business now “gets” social networks

Reuters CEO, Tom Glocer, announced today it is launching its own version of MySpace for financial markets later this year. Analysts, fund managers and traders will be able to visit this on-line collaborative community (by subscription) and share research.

Social communities are a huge opportunity for publishers and broadcasters or for that matter, producers of intelligent content. This does not preclude any industry or theme. Who will own these communities (the media call them “channels”)  five years from now?

Yahoo! is moving quickly in this direction with its 100 media brands using mashup platforms.

Communities are truly real estate on the web. The location is in the mind of the user though. Location! Location! Location! The curb appeal must be good i.e. the content. “Fixer-uppers” and “charming” communities just won’t do. They must be robust, rich and provide a real value.

It’s not about corporate web sites so much as it is about communities anymore. Through them businesses will prosper. A true sign the web is out of bubbledom.

Palm Desert Demo Dozen favorites

I have reviewed all the new apps, most from start-ups, many from big players like Adobe and Seagate, and all were impressive. Kudos to all the inventors–they are defining our future. The Web 2.0 meme is alive indeed! Here is a list of what I see as the top dozen favorites in the buzz network (not prioritized):

1. Zink (inkless printer that fits in your pocket!)
2. Eyejot (the best of email video)
3. eJamming (voip for musicians)
4. Apollo (Adobe) (web apps to the desktop-not hosted!)
5. Mobio Networks (mobile 2.0 mashups paltform)
6. Jamman (high-def feature films from all over the world)
7. Scram (Ceelox) (embeds info behind images for security)
8. Sentinel (blogwerx) (tracking blog plagiarisers, sploggers)
9. Zoho’s Notebook (multiple sources of content into one)
10. D’Fusion (Total Immersion) ”augmented reality”
11. Shipwire (affordable browser based warehousing & shipping-could launch a new legion of home-preneurs!)
12. Me.dium  (follows people’s web surfing)

Frankly, it’s unfair to leave any out; but, we all suffer from a collective attention-deficiency. Merit should be given to Teleflip, Vringo, DesignIn, Seagate’s Crickett, Boorah, Blinkx, Aggregate Knowledge, SplashCast and Boston-Power’s Sonata. Everyone has favorites. I tried to blend those of the pundits.

An interesting point is that few are monetized via advertising-it’s all pay-as-you-go or straight-forward buys.

Apparently, the Demo 2007 was crawling with VCs. Plexus 2007: The Web Marketing Conference & Demo will be populated with real buyers from the marketing and ad world. VCs are welcome.

The very successful “demo” event model applies to every innovation even if from Yahoo, IBM or Adobe. It moves quickly. It’s dynamic, invigorating. And you get the big picture, the value, quickly. Reportedly, attendees just love it! Chris Shipley, head of Demo 2007, has been inundated with praise for her excellent execution of this demo-styled event.

LinkedIn has LuckedIn!

I gave LinkedIn a tough post many moons ago but now…I am starting to see value. I came to LinkedIn in 2006 as a result of an invitation from a brainiac colleague in Massachussetts who specializes in FMRI (equipment that reads blood flow to the brain in response to stimuli). I never knew about LinkedIn ’til then. I accepted the invitation; the proviso was that LinkedIn HookedMeIn. I never liked lock-ins (not a good cue). I could not partake in his network at the time. It was all not clear to me what they were all about and I had zero time to check it out. However, last month I went and enhanced my profile vowing to leverage its value at a later date. Perhaps now I should move forward!

Just yesterday (these people work on Sundays) LinkedIn announced it raised another round of funding i.e. $12.8 million US (nice to see the investments are beginning to creep above the 2006 rounds of $3-$10 million). 

Linked In declares it has 9 million users and is gaining 100,000 new members per week. Ouch! My skepticism seems to be challenged. I am still a Member but now I am paying attention.

What’s the money for? Well I suspect LinkedIn Answers was a driver to this investment. This service allows you to ask your personal network professional questions and get answers now. LinkedIn Experts launched on January 4 ’07 takes Answers a step further. A question will render the top five experts to answer a question–the answer comes from the selected expert at $500 per hour. LinkedIn keeps $250. If this model takes off, it could become the norm for  the procurement of “soft” goods; however, it is not threat to enduring consulting relationships. It is rather an entry point. A chance to hasten “the pitch” process. Or at its core, get a quick answer without the consulting fees customary of think-tanks in the five figure range.

In 2006, LinkedIn generated revenues just over $10 million US; yet, it is valuated at $250 million. For bubble-mongers this does sound familiar; but it is widely accepted by pundits that business networks such at this one are faring well. Xing, its Europeean competitor, is reporting similar revenues. This is a space to watch. Business web apps were slow to get going; but now I delight in the flurry of web offerings to businesses. Just last week Big Blue (IBM) launched it own awesome web app (see post below). The growth on the web is now turning to biz.

Global Blogging System is beautiful

I was touched by how many reknown bloggers including the team at Cnet and Robert Scoble among many, posted and commented throughout the blogosphere in an effort to find James Kim and his family lost in Oregon. This happened long before the networks gotta hold of the story. It is terribly sad that James is deceased but indeed remarkable how many friends he had made in the tech community. As was exclaimed at the conculsion of  ”It’s a wonderful life”, “[James was] the richest man in town”. As grief sets in in this community, the natural process, “shoulda coulda”, will also rear its head. We should use this sad event to improve technology so that someone in Grant’s Pass or in Borneo can use technology effectively for rescue.  With our prowess in technology this is surely preventable. There should be no dead zones. But one thing is clear, the blogosphere’s heart can be beautiful.

My posts take a back seat to my loss

I have not been posting much for the last while. My mother was diagnosed with the most horrible invasive cancer six weeks ago. She passed away two days ago. She was my hero. My best friend. A great scholarly intellect.  A prolific artist. Despite losing her husband suddenly (my father whom I also adored) in late August she planned to “spread her wings”,  painting more beautiful landscapes. Yet her wings were clipped. It may seem odd to post this on a professionally geared blog. But blogging is about honesty–we all long for the genuine. After all it is my blog and my whole countenance is offered here. I am reminded that while many post and comment with vitriol to each other (fortunately I have been spared) about their different iniatives or characters that it all does not amount to a hill of beans. The Web 2.0 community much collaborate and support each other. Negativity is tabloid fodder. Constructive criticism or recognition is virtuous. Life is too short.

I will keep posting soon because work heals (this post is healing too).  I will re-apply myself with a vengeance to this task and building up the most extraordinary Web 2.0 event yet very soon.

Web behemoths on feeding frenzy

Google is rumored to be courting YouTube (not yet profitable but it does broadcast a reported 100 million videos each day) for $1.6 billion as we speak. No doubt this will be its biggest acquisition yet. But don’t reach for the Rolaids yet because Rupert Murdoch, Yahoo, Viacom and Microsoft, also have their eyes on YouTube. By all accounts, Google seems ahead of the race. Until 2006 Google was on a steady diet of smaller start-ups that provide turn-key features to Google’s various tools. But the YouTube ten-course meal is a good one. For Google who has had some difficulty with building communities via video sharing, YouTube will prove useful. And for YouTube, tormented by claims of intellectual property, Google could be its salvation. It will be interesting to see how Google integrates this complex platform and content into its own, never mind the difficulties of merging itself. Google’s steady diet could slow its innovation especially when we hear Sergey Brin repeatedly admonishing his organization to not develop any new products but rather, improve on the products they have. This in the same year staff functioned within a culture of innovation, where 20% of their salaried time was freed to start something new. Slowing innovation… True to the nature of a corporate behemoth.

Yahoo’s appetite is no less sizeable as it negotiates to buy Facebook, a social networking site, for over $1 billion. The feasting has undoubtedly been fueled by Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of MySpace (a rivalling social network of sorts to Facebook) for $580 million. It is now valued at $2 billion.The conglomerates want to buy before this type of valuation escalation uhh… escalates! Gosh this sounds more and more like the bubble of the recent past: sky-high valuations on unmonetized properties. For social networks only advertising will provide revenue and unlike the bubble there is now a keen and mature interest by advertisers since audiences (especially youngs ones) have grown up on new media and are virtually absent in traditional media ratings. I just can’t understand why traditional media are never at the bargaining table. It will be their undoing. Is Rupert Murdoch the only player with neurons firing?

Tagworld is MySpace on steroids

Tagworld, the creation of serial entrepreneurs Fred Krueger and Evan Rifkin, is yet another social network launched in 2005 which boasts app. two million users, a paltry sum compared to the 72 million+ users of MySpace. But Tagworld’s functionality is beyond compare as of this date and 100 million users is within radar range. It is said to be the “MySpace killer” (the “killer” term bugs me because no one has to die to make another successful – the incumbents only have to evolve). Let’s see a gigabyte of storage, a music player that plays your tunes, photo, video and bookmark sharing (that’s flickr,YouTube and del.icio.us all in one!), classifieds (Craigslist was bound to get more competitors)–all tagged with your own semantic descriptives and generated in real time. User generated content is far from reaching maturity on the web. You have not seen anything yet and Tagworld is the latest model. And for advertisers the pay-per-click model that monetizes most of the web is alive and well in Tagworld. But what’s even more outstanding about Tagworld is the information back to content providers as to who is using, viewing their content–that kind of feedback to all users is social networking to the power of ten. Everyone is talking more because everyone is saying “I’m listening”. That feels good. Blogs don’t quite do that.

Blogging demand stressing servers

The number of blogs added to the web monthly is startling. Some servers are showing signs of slowing — nothing adding capacity to meet the demand can’t solve. The charm of blogging is that it removes the middle man, the programmer who’s domain is hypertext language, and enables the common man to combust spontaneously. There is delight in the writing and in the reading of such authenticity. This is what “the long tail” is all about, power spread to the many rather that the powerful few. Anyone can set up a blog thanks to the phenomenal hosted web apps available. Many are free and monetize themselves by offering upgrades; yet the standard services they offer are exceptional. Among the most known are WordPress and Blogger. WordPress does not allow ads on their users’ blogs–they are truly the dot org of the business (after all they an open source platform). But bloggers are publishing and creating readership–the model for advertising! What’s strange is that WordPress prevents you from monetizing your blog in any form. When I was helping someone set-up a new blog they asked me if I was charging them for the help!

Other blog sites such as Vox (a private service), one of many offered by  Six Apart  and Logahead (touted as simple drap and drop style) are said to be the next generation for their simplicity. Live Journal, a strong brand, is a community-styled blog also operated by Six Apart. WordPress is stable but I had difficulty with images (not always easy) and the limited number of templates available are known to all as “WordPress”. It is restrictive against a sea of possibilities but all agree very good. We await WordPress 3.0. And surely a bevy of new offerings.

Beware the vulgarity of match engines

Match engines were just as hot as word search engines almost a decade ago. You know the ones where VC funding was mismatched with the sweat equity guys for example. The boolean script results were so lacklustre that these web apps soon faded. But they are back with a vengeance especially in the dating game. But when it comes to the complexity of human values, match engines are good at matching Hillary Duff with Homer Simpson. Take Match.com. Signed up for a free “winking” (a vulgar concept in itself – no more than an unattainable carrot to the viewer made to extract a credit card number from the carrot). Then I watched how they marketed to me daily to win my heart as a customer. I received constant emails (I mean 3 a day) about how exceedingly popular I was, the hundreds of views I received (when they are forced on the viewer and not generated by a request). What’s more vulgar about these emails are the images and text, “a heart is a terrible thing to break.” Frankly, you can’t get more plebian or patronizing. Several images were of bare-chested 20 somethings wantonly present. If I had been serious about this and signed on, I would I have denied being a member of a community that reduced my social and emotional needs to carnal ones. Notwithstanding, the persistent match of my Christian filter with agnostics was simply ludicrous. My point is, it’s not about the technology – it’s about the user experience. These match apps will implode unless they smarten up and consider every emotional value delivered to the user in the match and the marketing. It’s about the user not the app! However, Match.com can subsist serving a Jerry Springer audience. Dr. Phil will need to rethink his audience match! There is room for a socially clued-in match app. I have not reviewed them all (I don’t think my ego could bare it) but Robert Scoble says Plenty of Fish, a free service supported by ads, is pretty impressive. Perhaps when there is no money involved, you stop trading people like cattle.

Community app’s tacky pyramidal tactics

A brainy colleague from Mass. emailed me inviting me in his personal network using the web app LinkedIn. Cool. I thought I would share in his community once signed in and after divulging my preferences to him. But instead an HTML response congratulated me for having one member in my new community. Uncool. This is a quintessential pyramidal grab for email marketing–not a community of like minded colleagues. A one way conversation. Lock-ins are very uncool.