14 posts tagged “technology”
I'm starting do to a quick weekly round-up of the Social Media and Mobile news that I find most interesting. Enjoy
AOL:
- AOL Journals and AOL Hometown are shutting down (joining Xdrive and BlueString)
- Apple announces retroactive improvements to “MobileMe”. The following improvements were silently launched in Sept. : http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3182
- iPhone users in the US now get free wi-fi at all AT&T hotspots.
- Ralph Lauren launched an iPhone app. I agree with TechCrunch... They're better off focusing their mobile marketing dollars and efforts elsewhere...Like ShoZu. ;-)
- Rumor has it…According to TechCrunch, MySpace Music's CEO position is going to Courtney Holt, MTV Networks' executive vice president of digital music and media.
- TechCrunch reports that MySpace is getting out of the Netherlands, closing its Amsterdam office and moving Beneluz ops to Berlin. When it’s attempted acquisition of Hyves didn't happen in February, it opened an office in Amsterdam to enter the Dutch market.
- Facebook’s lead over MySpace is reportedly widening. The global gap between the two is now 43.2 million visitors.
- Rumor has it… Facebook may be looking for more investment earlier than anticipated. TechCrunch reports that the bad economy may be slowing Facebook’s revenue growth, causing Facebook to look for investment in Dubai.
- TechCrunch reports that Facebook Connect will officially launch on Nov 30.
- Mobile text messaging apparently coming soon to Gmail.
- Google launched Google Apps Labs, which makes it “easier for business customers and schools using Google Apps to also take advantage of our innovations and ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time. We encourage your organization to experiment with the Google Labs features listed below to improve how you communicate and collaborate.”
- Motorola's earnings call..."$3.1 billion, down 31 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. The segment reported an operating loss of $840 million, compared to an operating loss of $248 million in the year-ago quarter. The loss this quarter includes significant charges, primarily related to decisions and plans to consolidate silicon and software platforms and simplify the product portfolio."
- Reportedly cutting 3000 jobs, 2000 in mobile unit.
- Yahoo! is now open: They are attempting to open their network, unlock social relationshps, and "mesh" Yahoo! expeirneces with other sites. Developers can learn more here.
- Rumor has it…
- Recent Layoffs
- Technology improvements:
- OpenID:
- TechCrunch reports: “If you have a Yahoo account, you have an OpenID. If you have a Windows Live account, you will soon have an OpenID. And today, if you have a Google e-mail account, you can also start using your Gmail address as an OpenID”.
- Windows Live is now supporting OpenID.
- LinkedIn launched it’s new App Platform.
- Netflix is now available on Tivo in the US
- QIK streaming video recording from the mobile is now available for Blackberry:
- SlingMedia’s new portal Sling.com set to launch soon. TechCrunch reports that the launch may be Nov 10.
- Twitter: As of the last few weeks, Britney Spears is now on Twitter.
Watching Bill Gates' keynote from CES 2008 reminded me of how important it is to work with people you not only like but also that bring out the best in you and compliment your skills. Gates is a technology genius, but he didn't put together this 'mocumentary' alone. This is the work of marketing genius:
Speaking of Bill Gate's forthcoming last day in the office, I thought it might be fun to dredge up a little something that I saw on the Late Show a couple of years ago:
If you like my blog, this video will make you laugh, cry, or both!
Today, Reuters published an interesting article "Social Network Sites Tempt Investors" talking about the liklihood of a flury of social networking IPOs. The article is well worth a read for all of you social media fans out there. According to the article, so called "Wall Street observers" believe that United Online Inc.'s recent registration for an IPO of its Classmates Media Corp. arm (i.e. Classmates.com) will "test the IPO waters" for other social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
While I believe that the remainder of 2007 and early 2008 will bring more social networking IPOs than we've seen so far (not many), I don't believe that Classmates.com will be an accurate indicator of the success of future social networking IPOs. Even if Classmates.com's IPO bombs, Facebook, LinkedIn IPO, and Bebo IPO have a strong liklihood of being successful IPOs. To have a solid IPO, a social networking company will have to do more than just link people socially. It will need to be a platform for relevancy, discovery, sharing, and search.
When Google IPOed, it was successful, not just because it enabled search, but it provided a platform that wove together search, information, email, and more with relevant and targeted advertising. Facebook will succeed with an IPO not because it is a social networking site but because it is a social networking platform that allows 3rd party developers to plug-in and users to benefit. In other words, it is, in effect, a social media operating system. LinkedIn and Bebo will have successful IPOs if they continue to grow their user base, expand their platform capabilities, and quickly develop a useful API for 3rd party developers. However, to be clear, it will take a lot of effort, great skills, good timing, (and, perhaps, a miracle) for either Bebo or LinkedIn to have a more successful IPO than Facebook.
By engaging 3rd party developers so early, Facebook gained a clear lead over the competition, which will be hard for competitors to surpass. By creating a social networking operating system, which allows entreprenurial developers to plug in, contribute to, and profit from a wider economy, Facebook has peaked the interests of investors - not only as a company in which to invest but as an economy in which to invest. As I mentioned in my last post, VCs are expressing a strong interest in the players within the facebook 3rd party developer economy, and is easy to see why. Facebook is creating a social media operating system that has the potential to revolutionize the web by changing the way people find and interact with content and applications.
Yesterday, Robert Scoble posted an interesting video trilogy on his blog in which he predicts that if they work together, Facebook, Mahalo, and Techmeme will trounce Google in 4 years by providing superior SEO-free, reduced-noise, social search that does more than Google. While I'd be seriously surprised if Google didn't have something up its sleeve to compete with the vision Scoble outlines and I don't think we'll see the end of SEO, I do think Scoble makes some good points in his vlogs. His musings on the topic of social networking, social media, and search highlight a growing interest in social networking as a space and its potential to change the way we surf the net.
There is nothing more attractive to investors than strong possibilities and good ideas, and it's clear in the quickly growing and evolving space of social networking, there is a high concentration of both. Which social networking companies will choose to ride the wave with an IPO remains to be seen, but I'm betting with Reuters in thinking the numbers will increase very soon.
Note: I'm not an investment advisor, and my blog posts do not constitute financial advice.
Tonight is the first chance I've had to write about the Facebook Developer/ Influencer conference that I went to last week. The event was an invite-only afternoon of panel discussions hosted by Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia. Attendees included about 50 developers, entrepreneurs, investors, and a couple of bloggers, and the discussions ranged from "When, if ever, will Facebook start 'taking back' core chunks of its platform?" to "What metrics really matter for gauging success on the Facebook platform?"
The conference began at Noon with lunch and networking followed by the first panel discussion at 12:30: "What is Engagement and why is it so important?" In the first session, Dave McClure from 500 Hats and Seth Goldstein set the stage for the rest of the event. Dave emphasized the importance of establishing more meaningful metrics for measuring the success of Facebook apps - beyond counting user installs. His point was well taken... Clearly we need a way of measuring user engagement in apps, especially given that people are often compelled to download apps that their friends send to them and never use them again. Just because an app has great word of mouth success initially, doesn't mean that it will latch on for the long haul. Similarly, time spent on the app isn't the right measure for success either. As Seth asked (and I'm paraphrasing), 'What's a more important to Facebook's success- a graffiti app that allows Facebook users to draw for 3 hours, or an application that encourages shorter but more frequent interactions?'
Rumor has it that Facebook will be unearthing at least a few 3rd party app success metrics internally in the next couple of month, but it remains to be seen whether they'll share this information with the world. So far, Facebook hasn't released any helpful metrics for measuring user engagement on apps. Perhaps this is because they don't have them, or perhaps they're holding their cards close to the vest in the hopes of determining the best way to move forward (i.e. by taking back parts of the API they already opened and/or extending new Facebook features that leverage lessons learned by observing user engagement stats on leading apps). Either way, in order for the 3rd party developer community to flourish on Facebook, developers will need a better understanding of what makes a winning app and which apps are the most successful based on those metrics.
The next session of the day was about "Creating, Spreading and Scaling Multi Million User Facebook Apps." The all-developer panel included:
- R. Tyler Ballance from Slide,
- Blake Commagere of Vampires / Zombies / Causes,
- Dave Genztel from SocialMedia,
- Jia Shen from RockYou,
- Joe Winterhalter and his colleague, Eric (didn't catch his last name), of Quizzes and
- James Hong from Hot or Not.
Tyler also brought up the issue of Facebook's need to communicate more proactively and effectively with Developers. He and others expressed concerns that Facebook had made some code changes without talking to developers in recent weeks, which resulted in killing thousands of profiles within Slide's database alone. Generally, the developer panelists felt that Facebook's attempts to help a large number of small developers may unintentionally hurt larger developers. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I'm a huge proponent of investing in developer relations. When you allow ISVs/ developers (at least large ones) to plug into your API, you should be treat them as strategic alliance partners and give them insight into what you're planning in exchange for quality assurances. If you don't, you run the risk of alienating thousands of your users if/when something goes wrong with the apps that plug into your platform.
Blake Commagere, who helped develop popular facebook apps like Causes went on to talk more about developing Facebook apps. It took 4 engineers to develop the Causes app (which was written in Ruby on Rails). Blake pointed out that to develop a successful Facebook app, you don't need 100 app servers, you just need to make sure the app and database are solid. By way of example, Causes runs using 11 app servers, which serve 2.5 million users, and it is working well. Joe and Eric who developed Quizzes, only use 4 servers for their app. They emphasize the importance of focusing on app quality and investing time in apps that will grow spread quickly virally.
All of the developers mentioned that that Facebook platform is a little sluggish at times. James Hong from Hot or Not said that to combat delays, his team opted for using Ajax. The challenge here is that most ad networks don't currently consider user action as the way by which advertisers pay for ads. Instead, it's still page changes. In principle, the ad networks James knows say they're happy to move towards a user action model, but in the meantime, there are monetary disadvantages to using Ajax on Facebook. But, most of the panelists seemed okay with the tradeoffs in the short-term because they increase user engagement long-term. At the time, Hot or Not is apparently making $1000/day off of AdSense, and rumor has it (according to a member of the audience) that Graffiti is making $100,000 month!
Ads were a hot topic on all panels - including the developer panel - with the need for relevant content delivery emerging as a key theme. Most of the developers on the panel said they'd been approached to do demographic based behavioral targeting of users. What I found interesting is that the only data anyone would cop to hearing advertisers request is: sex and geography. If this panel was any indication, for all of those personalization fans out there (of which I'm one), it looks like we're a ways off from seeing any meaningful movement in this space.
The 2pm panel was on "Facebook Advertising Models." Panelists were:
- Aryeh Goldsmith (Acebucks)
- Sourabh Niyogi (Appsaholic)
- Scott Rafer (Lookery)
- Narendra Rocherolle (fbExchange)
- Matt Sanchez (VideoEgg)
- Sundeep Ahuja (Appfuel)
How useful are Facebook users to developers and advertisers? The final session addressed "How to Value Facebook Apps." The panelists were:
- Eve Phillips, (Greylock)
- Keith Rabois, (Slide)
- Naval Ravikant, (Hitforge)
- Angela Strange, (Bay Partners' AppFactory)
- Susan Wu, (Charles River Ventures)
For those of you interested in future developments in the Facebook space, Dave McClure mentioned that he's planning a Facebook conference of his own on October 7-9. Stay tuned to his blog for details.
Today, TechCrunch revealed big news in social networking investing: Hi-5 got $20 Million in Financing from Mohr Davidow Ventures and Tagged apparently raised $15 Million from an unknown investors on a $102 Million pre-money evaluation.
Hi-5 I understand, but Tagged?! Whoa. That's a whole lot of mula -- especially for a social networking site that no one I know uses (especially given that I blog about Social Networking). A few friends I know that tried Tagged a while back disparaged it calling it an "agent de spam." So, I couldn't help but laugh when I read some of the comments on TechCrunch with similar observations:
Having not tried Tagged myself, I figured it wasn't fair to question the valuation until I learned more and maybe tried it myself. I started off trying to learn more about Tagged by visiting the website. However, I couldn't find a decent explanation of what Tagged is (beyond a social network) on the consumer site. It took jumping to the "corporate site" to find out anything about it. Even there, the explanation was basic, if not ambiguous:
Tagged.com is a premier social networking destination and an ideal place for advertisers to reach their target audience.
Tagged provides a fun, safe, and exciting environment for people to showcase their personalities and talents, and to connect with friends and meet new ones.
Tagged is experiencing dramatic growth Advertisers love Tagged because they get clear, uncomplicated access to our audience. Our team is dedicated to making every advertiser successful and can develop and support any type of ad campaign.
I couldn't get excited about the prospect of joining a social network that none of my friends/ aquaintences participate in, that I've heard spam nightmares about, that doesn't tell me exactly what "features" I'm signing up for, and which, apparently, "Advertisers love." Joining a site that admits to giving advertisers "clear, uncomplicated access" to me and my "friends". (Yeah, I know Google does it, but I also know exactly what I'm getting in return.) I was floored by the self-reported stats on Tagged, which illustrate that clearly my reservations aren't shared by everyone:
With numbers like that I can see why someone was willing to roll the dice with such a big investment. But, I was still unsure about why anyone would sign up. Unsatisfied with the explanation on Tagged's corporate site and unable to find an explanation of features anywhere else, I bit the bullet and started to sign up, hoping that the registration process would tell me more. It didn't.
- 30MM registered members
- 10MM unique visitors every month
- 1B page views per month
- 10MM hours spent/month
After providing my name, birthday, and email address, Tagged asked me to provide my password for my Gmail account - presumably so that it could suck potential network invitees from my address list. It wouldn't let me bypass that step. Afraid of spamming my entire address book, I terminated the registration process.
It amazes me that a company that doesn't overtly explain what it does or what features you'll get by signing up has been able to secure so many users. It also amazes me that so many people would actually give a company their email address and password and allow them to infiltrate their private address book without knowing what that company is going to do with the information. I guess this all proves that:
- On-line consumers aren't as demanding of on-line privacy as I expected, and
- The bubble and big risk investment are back to stay... at least for now.
I've just launched a new VOX group called Social Media. If you're interested in joining, click here! I've linked all my blogs to this group, and I hope that others who are interested in Social Media, Social Networking, Marketing, Web 2.0, Mobile 2.0 and other colliding topics will add their relevant blogs too!
Today, the self-proclaimed “tech gossip rag,” Valleywag, published the following graph, suggesting that Social Networking is past its peak from a media coverage perspective:
Valleywag writes:
The social network -- the umbrella term for features of a website which allow users to track their friends -- is past its peak.
Mentions in the press of "social network" or another even uglier phrase, "social networking", reached 1,158 in September, but have declined since. That could mean a decline in media interest in sites like Myspace and Facebook or, more likely, an acceptance that all media will be social, all successful sites will allow users to "friend" eachother, and that it's no longer interesting to spotlight a feature so ubiquitous.
It is true that when a trend reaches critical mass, news media loses interest… “News” is only considered “News” if it is, in fact, “new”. Case in point- the growth of corporate websites in the early 1990s… The first corporations to build websites made international news. Today, I can’t think of any large, successful company that doesn’t have a website. Websites are now a prerequisite for big business. One day, the same will be true of “Social Networking” and “Social Media”…. I’m not convinced that that time is now, or that the recent downturn indicated by Valleywag’s graph is indicative of a “trend”. Instead, I think it is indicative of stabilization in the market following several months of very big news. (And, while I have no empirical evidence to support this, it may also be indicative of a shift away discussing “social networking” alone towards discussing “social media” as a whole. If any of you have seen evidence one way or another on this, please post a comment.)
I’ve numbered several points on the graph to illustrate my point about stabilization. Looking at the popularity of the word “social networking” in relation to some of the big events on-line over the course of the last year is interesting:
- July 18, 2005: News Corporation acquires Intermix Media, Inc and MySpace
- March 2006: MySpace was the second most trafficked site on the Internet (next to Google) with Facebook at number 7. At times, MySpace had more traffic than Google (Duffy, 2006)... And - Hitwise "US Consumer Generated Media Report," reports that visits to MySpace increased 51 percent March-September 2006, outpacing the 34 percent overall growth for the social-net category during the same period.
- May, 2006: comScore Network reports that Myspace surpassed 50 Million U.S. visitors in May. The Top 50 Web Rankings and Analysis report released by comScore Media Metrix in may suggests that online interest in the World Cup and NBA Championships and the Spring television season drove traffic to popular social networking sites (see graph) http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=906
- October 6, 2006: Rumors about Google acquiring YouTube started on TechCrunch. October 9, 2006: Google acquires YouTube
The “major” events in “social networking” over the last year or so have definitely been considered big news. The general public, companies, and media outlets seem eager to watch how social media is changing the on-line and business landscapes. Sure, the apparent “lag” in the term “social networking” since October may be the start of a downward trend. In my opinion, it is more likely a brief correction in the market following the major news around Google’s acquisition of YouTube in September and rumors about Yahoo’s social media strategy. After all, the graph indicates that the term “social networking” is still as popular now as it was back in August, which was the highest it had ever been before.
As the number of mainstream companies announce the integration of s-commerce/ social media into their overall marketing strategies, I suspect that the term “social networking” will be surpassed by more broad categorizations like “s-commmerce” or “social media” of which, “social networking” is a component.
For any non-VOXers who want to post comments, feel free to email me, and I’ll manually post your comments: socialmediablog@gmail.com.
Note: As I was doing research for this blog, I discovered that Google News doesn’t allow historical searches of news articles between specific dates. If anyone has a site that they can recommend that allows for a historical news search between specific dates, I’d love to hear from you.
Sources:
Michael Duffy, 2006. “A dad’s encounter with the vortex of Facebook,” Time (19 March).
When I'm curious about what particular companies are up to/ the strategic direction they're heading, I often look on their careers web pages and scroll through the open vacancies. It is hard for companies (especially those in high-tech) to find what they're looking for in candidates without getting specific about the specific skills they're after.
I recently found another great resource for getting a wider sense of where the market is going - Indeed.com's job trends tool. Indeed crawls the web looking for millions of jobs and provides a one-stop-shop for job searchers. In 2005, the site posted over 35 million jobs culled from thousands of websites. They've recently opened up their archive of jobs allowing people to search this archive and plot job trends over time.
Today, I did a search for the most popular social media keywords. The results (below) are really interesting. They indicate that companies everywhere are beginning to realize the value of social media and the importance of hiring staff with social media skills:
Post Script Jan 2, 2007: Vox doesn't yet allow for trackbacks on comments. It also doesn't allow non Vox users to comment on posts. This morning, I heard from via email from non-Voxer, Sophie, a Marketing Manager at Indeed, who kindly clarified a few of the questions that were raised in the comments for this post. She confirmed that no job remains in the Indeed index for more than 30 days and they do their best to filter all duplicate and spam/scam job listings. So, the information in their trends section should be pretty accurate.
For any of you out there, who are unable to post comments, please feel free to email me at: socialmediablog@gmail.com, and I will manually post your comments. It's good to know that non-Voxers are reading! To any of you Voxers out there that feel frustrated by the inability of non-Voxers to post, please write a blog about it titled: "Six Apart: Why Can't Non-Voxers Post Comments? (and other feature ideas)" and give your thoughts. Please use the tags: blog, Vox, comments, trackbacks, Six Apart, and whatever else you feel is appropriate.
The World is abuzz today with all sorts of interesting news relevant to social media/ social networking. Here are some teasers with links to keep you occupied with plenty of great reading:
MySpace is apparently the biggest site on the internet in terms of the number of page views. Fox Interactive (largely MySpace) surpassed Yahoo, which saw a 9% reduction in overall traffic in November. This is not all doom and gloom for Yahoo. Yahoo still has more than double the number of unique visitors to its site than MySpace - clocking in nearly 130 million unique visitors in November. If you ask me, unique users is a better judge of website size, but I suppose traffic is also important. Read More.
Speaking of Yahoo. Today, Yahoo and comScore Networks released a research report entitled, "Engaging Advocates through Search and Social Media." This is a topic that I brought up in my recent blog "Social Networking and The Birth of S-Commerce: A Marketer's Dream Come True", in which I compared the power of social networkers to that of the folks that Malcolm Gladwell calls "Mavens" in his book The Tipping Point. It's great to see research emerging on the subject.
Skype is planning to start charging for "Skype Out" calls to mobile or landlines effective January in the US and Canada. If you sign up before January 31, 2007, you'll get the yearly cost for these calls at half price - a cheap $14.95/year for an unlimited plan (regular price is $29.95). If you'd rather get a bill after every call, it's still super cheap - $.021/min! Read More.
A new social media website called DareJunkies launched it's beta, which encourages people to submit videos of themselves executing on dares, which appear on the website. Call me juvenile, but it has the potential to be hilarious. More importantly, it has the potential to be sticky. I'm not sure what their revenue model is, but I can see huge opportunity for ads, product placement in dares, etc. TechCrunch calls it "A social networking site for jackasses". I won't disagree, though looking at some of the challenges, a lot of it seems a bit more benign than the stunts of Jackass... more like videoing the dare component of a high school truth or dare game. Take, the following example, which appears in the dating section:
And, lastly, MobileCrunch is reporting that SharpCast has been added to US carrier Altell's deck. I've been excited to hear SharpCast's announcement for a while now. While I've not seen the service working, I first heard about it last year when it was very much under wraps, as the company has quite a few folks that came from Palm, Inc./ PalmOne. The service allows you to sync photos across all of your devices (phone, PC, etc.) seamlessly. While this is not a social media site or technology, per say, I think it has long term potential to revolutionize the way that users of social media sync information with their computers to their phones and ultimately share. Read More.See how many ridiculous pick lines you can try at the drive though window. Try your best, your most suave moves, until they get increasingly more frustrated with you. Finally get upset yourself claiming that “this is the Pick-Up window, if they weren’t interested they shouldn’t be working there. If they can’t take a joke then order the Big Mac Combo…only if you’re not at Dirty Ron’s. Read More.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:45 am
Tagged’s system of invitation resembles that of a virus to me. It automatically checks all your e-mail contacts and sends invitations to a lot of people. But do you really want to tag them all? That is the question.
July 23rd, 2007 at 2:43 am
How did the spam site get a valuation of $117M? I have gotten more apologies from red-faced friends for inadvertent-spamming from using Tagged service then any other web service.
Also, can somebody explain to me why, if I click on the “browse” in Tagged, 80%+ of the pictures are of scantily dressed women? And many of them have joined on June 7, 2007; how convenient! When did the demographic of web surfer change? Why didn’t I get a memo?