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Apr 14, 2008

Who says you can’t monetize social networks

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You kinda wonder why social networks came to exist in the first place. These were havens/escapes for users who were tired of being bombarded by advertisers who held them handcuffed to the content in exchange for viewing their beacons of intrusive ads and even occasionally clicking on them (please oh please!) to get them to come to their site. Does anybody remember when the internet first emerged and advertising was a no-no. Eventually as with everything else, advertisers went where the masses were congregating and advertising became a necessary evil in order for users to access to the much-needed content.

Now social networks is the new norm, yet another opportunity for marketers –> but somehow the rules have changed. In this space, it’s about influence. it’s not about banner clicks. Playing in this space as an advertiser means you have to tread cautiously. I’ve talked about the “establishment” in previous posts and it’s clearly about learning to adjust in an arena that is dictated by its inhabitants. Big brands can damage their reputations if they fail to be authentic or try to sell themselves in a space where selling is not allowed. It’s also about attempting to and genuinely wanting to create relationships with the users in this space and willing to be open to discussion and criticism in order to grow the brand.

It’ll be interesting to see how the MySpace Plus 3 Major Music lables deal pans out. It almost defeats the purpose for the existence of social networks. And yet it is providing an avenue for labels to make money at a time where CD sales are declining , illegal downloading and file sharing is rampant and the music business is desparately finding ways to stay afloat. On the flip side, the advantage for many of the independent artists who currently have MySpace pages is enormous if they could benefit as well.

But again, will the million of users on MySpace perceive this as yet another imposition by big brands trying to infringe on their time? These users need to be the forefront of this. Strength in numbers dictate that users can change the way they are being marketed to ie creating demand for products they care about as opposed to having that demand pushed on them by advertisers.

Filed Under: advertising, Social Networking · Tagged: , , ,
Apr 11, 2008

The Power of Community

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Social Networking is a phenonmenon that has gained incredible strength and continues to flourish. It has baffled advertisers and businesses as the next generation of marketing is trying to learn how to tap into users in this space.  A significant shift has resulted where marketers realize that traditional advertising on the web is slowly becoming obsolete and appealing to target groups as an advertiser in this space seems to be less effective than attempting to influence the influencers. We’ve always seemingly put trust in the establishment to give us information on certain historical facts, best products, top destinations, hottest jobs and optimal solutions to problems. But the emergence of Web 2.0 has elevated the power of community and hundreds of social networking sites have erupted to validate its authority. The establishment is slowly feeling the impact of this move.

I never really bought into community until a few years back. Ironically, I managed the launch of Yahoo! Answers in Canada, one of the few social search products in this market.  Its premise was to leverage community to provide valuable information based on experience –> something algorithmic search could not provide. Unlike other social search products, Answers does not rely on expert advice from pundits in their fields but the common person, whose life experiences provides the source of answers to many questions.

The turning point for me came when I was attending a Search Summit in the UK, working with other international product and marketing people who were also launching Answers in their respective regions. I received an email from a friend who informed me that my former VP’s daughter had passed away from Leukemia, something she’d been battling for 6 years. She was only 10 years old.  I wanted to immediately reach out to her and give her some comfort for her loss and was reminded of a poem that my Mom had shown me sometime back. I emailed my Mom and asked her about it but, while she remembered the poem, she didn’t know where to find it. I asked the rest of my family if they knew about it. But the response was same. So, I searched for the poem online not really knowing the author or any of the lines — just the context. I did this for some time with no luck. So I gave Yahoo! Answers a go and I sent my question into the unknown abyss of the Answers Community, skeptical of what I would receive.  It took awhile, as I expected it should since I was looking for a needle in a haystack. The response came 9 days later.  And it made me cry.  I didn’t realize that someone out there had the answer. When I looked to established tools and systems for answers to my questions, they didn’t have any. I’m telling you that social networking is here to stay.  The tools out there are making it easier for users to create their own content, build and engage in community.  Businesses have to figure out how to maneuver themselves in this tightly-knit environment if they are to succeed. 

 

Filed Under: advertising, online, Social Networking · Tagged: ,
Apr 10, 2008

The Last Lecture

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I’ve viewed this video a number of times in the past few months but recently a friend sent it to me again and this time I had a chance to really watch and listen to it — this time without rose-coloured glasses. It’s amazing to me how many of us live life knowing that things could be better if…. or that tomorrow is another day… We continuously push off tomorrow what we could have been done today. We say we live life with integrity but we knowingly prioritize the lesser important things and justify that these are merely a means to an end — and end that involves the only thing that really matters: family. Life is passing us by so quickly, and as I have come to experience, those around me continue to be confronted by the reality of their own mortality. My kids continue to grow and I realize that I have been absent through the little milestones they have achieved. When did Nate become so articulate in his explanation of a cool hockey play? When did my little girl become such a philosopher? Why wasn’t I there when they had problems with the class bully? In the past while I’ve been reminded over and over ever so subtley about my priorities. I used to work late into the night when the kids were asleep and from time to time I would hear, Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle”. Sometimes I would stop to listen, feeling the guilt rush through me. Other times I would say to myself, “Thank God that isn’t me”. But it was..and still is. And it’s time to confront that inner beast and change before it’s too late.

Filed Under: Human Interest · Tagged: ,
Apr 9, 2008

The emergence of this new medium….

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I’ve responded to a number of blog posts “Overlay.tv Adds Links and Easter Eggs to Music Videos” and “Hypervideo: Hyperlinking video content” and there is a lot of positive stuff being written about companies such as ours. Interactive video is here but it’s taking some time to sink into mainstream.  It’s ironic:  iTV has been talked about for years –> it was supposed to have emerged by now….yet online video is still a medium we haven’t figured out.  We’re still too far off that iTV phenomenon given that the online video market is still in a state of fragmentation and testing. Everyone’s still trying to figure out the monetization angle. There are still no standard CPMs for video advertising. Formats are continuously morphing in response to the user and advertising views on mitigating annoyance and increasing performance.  The video player is non-standard and the recent partnerships like FOX networks and utarget; Brightcove and Bebo; and AOL and ESPN  are results of attempts to spread the net as wide as possible to maximize audience reach. Performance is also another topic that needs addressing. TV has always been a branding medium –>product placement has been the only in-content-type-advertising that is both costly and doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue or traffic. Video has the ability to solve for this given its emergence from the online world, which records tonnes of data on user behaviour and determines likely user propensities. Google has already started this process and is moving quickly to figure this out when the digital home environment comes to fruition.

Most importantly, before all this settles the public has to become comfortable with the notion of video interactivity and the plethora of possibilities from exploring new ways of publishing to new models of revenue generation. The music industry can definitely benefit by creating new engagement possibilities for their artists. It’s a matter of time…hopefully just around the corner…

Filed Under: advertising · Tagged: , , , ,
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