The Praized Blog

Following Harry’s last post, I happened to find the following very actionable mini-manifesto (registration required) from Dave Morgan in MediaPost. Dave Morgan is Tacoda’s CEO (Tacoda is a behavioral targeting advertising network) and their biggest customers are major newspapers. He feels that newspapers can’t wait any longer before they embrace the Web and if they don’t, they will lose to GYM (Google, Yahoo, MSN). According to Mr. Morgan, newspapers have the following biggest competitive weakness vs. GYM: lack of scale and lack of vision.

He offers the following strategic advice for them if they want to be successful:

1. Set their digital divisions free. “Newspapers need to stop the forced integration of online and print teams. These two groups are like oil and water, and the print people bring the online folks down. Newspaper should “rightsize” their print business according to future print revenues and invest in their online business according to future online revenues. Forced integration online causes great customers and great talent to flee.”
2. Think beyond the page. “Local newspapers cannot simply repurpose themselves online.”
3. Embrace user-generated media. “Newspaper Web sites need massive audience and ad impression scale. They will need to be twenty times bigger in three years than they are today. They cannot get this growth through newsroom content alone; not by far. As Fast Company noted, newspapers need to be the place where everything local is posted, shared, discussed, criticized, or mashed up. That means lots and lots of user content and very little “publisher control.”
4. Create local ad networks. “Someone needs to aggregate every site and every page and every blog with any local connection onto local ad networks to create the kind of massive scale that advertisers want. This is already done on the national level; it should be done at the local level.”
   

What it means: this is a brilliant wake-up call to the newspaper industry but I think every offline media should read this mini-manifesto and filter it through their own business rules and environment.

Newspaper journalist and blogger Mark Evans has some interesting insights for the newspaper publishers and the media conglomerates that own them; lower ROI’s are now the norm, get used to it, “reposition your newsrooms to cover less news” and “focus on providing analysis, perspective, context”. In other words, newspapers are now a niche business, no longer the mass media they once were – or least that’s what they’re rapidly becoming. Which begs the next question, what about convergence? Wasn’t the concentration of all that billion dollar traditional media (cable/broadcast/newspapers/radio) supposed to stave off the global media onslaught? Paradoxically, the focus of that battle was other media-laden 800-pound gorillas (Newscorp, anyone?) when in reality the true menacing hordes are the thousands of citizen journalists that report, however erroneously, what’s happening in their small part of the world. In fact, right now, the real scoop is that Mark Evans himself is the “next generation newspaper”, as evidenced when Om Malik pulled a Business 3.0 on Business 2.0, and that media behemoths are ill-equipped to battle anything less than other media behemoths.

What it means: Media fragmentation will continue and those that can harness the of power citizen journos may win, but they’re a wily bunch as are their readers. A new local media paradigm will eventually emerge.

Read in November 2006’s Wired Magazine: Daniel Rosen is a candidate for U.S. Representative in Nevada’s Second Congressional District. “Rosen’s pitch to the people of Nevada’s Second Congressional District is that if they send him to Washington in November, he’ll vote exactly the way his constituents tell him to. Really. Each of the district’s 358,000 registered voters would be able to log in to a secure Web site and record their preference for every piece of legislation that comes before Congress.”

What it means: although I’m a strong believer in using the Web to democratize the political process (the real “power to the people”), this might be pushing the envelope too much. I like the general idea but, at the same time, an elected official is put in office to represent people, need to be able to take decisions based on complex dossiers and can’t really manage by polls (in this case votes, but you know what I mean).  In any case, this might stimulate more people to vote and that’s good!   Expect the next 10 years to be really interesting though in terms of social applications applied to politics.

Many people ask us: “for all the posts you write on Praized.com, you must have read 10 other articles that did not make the cut”. The answer is obviously, yes! But starting today, and once a week afterwards, we’ll write a Meta-Praized post that covers the top articles that did not make the cut. Remember, you can always get a taste of what we’re following by looking at the various articles we’ve “dugg” on Digg.com. Feel free to add us as a friend: PraizedDotCom

• “In Teens’ Web World, MySpace Is So Last Year“, Washington Post
• “Wikipedia Leaves $100M on the Table“, Calacanis.com
• “Is Google Evil?“, Mother Jones
• “Is Microsoft Office Doomed?“, PC World
• “Facebook Officially Launches “My Shares” / Social Bookmarking“, Facebook’s blog
• “Skype founders plan to launch Web TV service“, Reuters via Yahoo News

According to TechCrunch, Digg.com is in acquisition talks with News Corp. It seems like they’re asking $150M for the company but sources say they won’t be able to get it. Rumour has it that they will go to a second round of financing with GreyLock Partners (who have also investments in Farecast, Oodle, LinkedIn and Facebook among other things).

By the way, I am also completely addicted to Digg.com. It’s a great way to track new trends. If you want to see what the Praized team think is cool on the Web, we’re using the PraizedDotCom alias in Digg. Please feel free to add us to your friends’ list.

Update: “Digg’s Adelson Brushes Off Acquisition Rumors“.  Erick Schonfeld from Business 2.0 magazine asked him:  “…under what circumstances would he sell Digg to a larger entity. He said he would only consider it if he believed that a larger company could do more to democratize media than Digg could on its own.”

United Talent Agency in the New York Times: “One of Hollywood’s top five talent agencies has created an online unit devoted to scouting out up-and-coming creators of Internet content — particularly video — and finding work for them in Web-based advertising and entertainment, as well as in the older media.”

What it means: traditional media still makes or breaks creative careers

MySpace and TBS in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily: “ In the Stand-Up or Sit Down Comedy Challenge, aspiring comics will compete for a $50,000 prize by submitting performance videos for MySpace users to rate. The top five finalists will then be invited to appear in a one-hour special hosted by comedian George Lopez and filmed at The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas. The show will be broadcast on TBS on Nov. 17.”

What it means: great use of a “multi-media” strategy (and also see above)

Social network fatigue in the Wall Street Journal: “Ms. Thompson belongs to a fringe of Internet users now renouncing MySpace and other social-networking sites — not in spite of their popularity, but because of it. That highlights a dilemma facing NewsCorp’s MySpace and Facebook Inc.: While it takes a critical mass of users to make these sites work, having too many users alienates some, especially when they attract an ever-growing cacophony of advertising and in some cases, spam.”

What it means: beware of rising privacy issues in social networks.

Nielsen//NetRatings via Marketwire: “over a three-year period, the top sites among teens 12-17 have shifted from those offering a selection of instant messaging buddy icons to those providing assistance with social networking profiles and page layouts.”

Los Angeles Times on YouTube: “What’s so unique about YouTube is that most of the content on the site is this conversation between people,” said Fred Stutzman, a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill who has studied social networks. “The interesting thing is that the conversations are happening in videos.”

I want to add my two cents on the launch of LinkedIn Services, a services business directory based exclusively on members’ recommendations. Full disclosure: I am a total LinkedIn addict. I currently have 492 direct contacts in LinkedIn allowing to connect with close to 2 million members. I use it extensively in my business development role to contact companies where I don’t have direct contacts. It works for me and I love it.

Now, in this Reuters release (via the Washington Post), Konstantin Guericke, Vice-President of Marketing, says: “No one should be picking a lawyer from the yellow pages. Recommendations based on personal connections are important.”

Yes, word-of-mouth via your trusted sources has always been a key lead generator for local businesses but I’m not sure LinkedIn is for everyone. I get a sense that B2B referrals will play a bigger role than B2C in this new directory. For example, I’m a business and I’m looking for a legal firm for my business. I might use my LinkedIn network. But if I’m getting divorced or I want to challenge a speeding ticket, not sure I’ll rely on my LinkedIn network. I think they might successful in attracting some of the SOHO workers that usually do not advertise their services via traditional business directories though.

What it means: capturing word-of-mouth referrals via networking software is something that will become standard in any local search sites in the future. I also think it can help traditional local media companies make some headway in the SOHO market. Finally, I believe that capturing word-of-mouth referrals will actually increase the local search reference pie and not necessarily cannibalize current usage.

Thanks to the folks at Revolver3, I was able to attend day 3 of the Digimart conference, whose objective it is to “foster discussion and debate as innovative distribution strategies and new devices radically transform the business of film”.Peter Buckingham, Head of Distribution & Exhibition at the UK Film Council had what I think is a brilliant idea to re-energize the movie theater industry under assault by illegal (and legal) movie downloading, poor consumer experience (sticky floors, intrusive ads, people talking and ringing cell phones) and its “Hollywoodization”: Consumer-programmed movie theatres.It involves the creation of a virtual local “cineclub”, a Web site where people would come and vote for which movies they want to see next month at the local theatre. Obviously, it requires movies to become digital instead of film and it requires theaters to have the equipment needed to show digital movies, but it’s just a question of time before that happens.

What it means: local and social Web applications do not mean the end of the real world. In this scenario, those applications would actually help theatre operators fill more seats and make more money while building a loyal consumer base that would go back to the movies more often that today.

Efforts by major brands to leverage social networking sites are ramping up. As the social networking sites try to monetize the humongous traffic they’re generating, this New York Times article talks about a few big brand integration success:

1) Axe deodorant (Unilever) & MySpace: “This spring it created a promotion around a group it called Gamekillers — people who get in the way of a seduction. The pitch is that Axe helps men stay cool in the face of the Gamekillers. The campaign included an hourlong program on MTV and a page on MySpace devoted to the topic, with message boards where people could trade complaints and tips about Gamekillers. Its online host was Christine Dolce, a busty model who was already a celebrity thanks to MySpace, where she has accumulated more than a million friends.”

2) Chase credit card and Facebook: “Chase has a promotion on Facebook that implicitly uses a person’s friends to endorse its credit cards. When people join the Chase “+1” group on Facebook, they see a list of their other friends who have joined the group. The program gives members points when they do things like apply for a card and get others to sign up. Those points can be redeemed for prizes, donated to charity or given to other friends on Facebook.”

3) Aerie underwears & Facebook: “On Facebook, American Eagle created a group for its Aerie line of underwear with photos, discussion boards, a contest and clips of the television shows it sponsors.”
The sites are trying to move beyond banner ads and develop ways to integrate marketers into the fabric of their online communities.

4) The X-Men Movie & MySpace: “MySpace is even willing to change some of its standard features to help advertisers. For example, it normally lets members display photos of their top eight friends on their main profile pages. But people who added the movie “X-Men: The Last Stand” to their friends list were given the right to show 16 top friends. ”

5) Crest Whitestrips (Procter & Gamble) & Facebook: “It is running a contest for Crest Whitestrips that involves 20 different colleges and universities. The four schools that have the most students join the “Smile State” group will earn a free on-campus concert by an up-and-coming artist (only for members of the group, of course)”
“Teens have grown up with being barraged with advertising,” Ms. Boyd said. “They just want it to be relevant, but they expect it.”

What it means: we’re clearly far away from the traditional banner ad space or the sponsored text links that we tend to see in most of the online sites. Those are more creative ways to leverage the networks by being part of the fabric of the site, akin to product placement in movies. Most of these also leverage the network effects created by large user groups.