Links for May 30th

• Pew: Nearly 50 MM Americans Create Web Content
  Clickz zero in on some interesting data from the latest PEW report: � Forty-eight million American adults have contributed some form of user-generated content on the Internet . . . That's 35 percent of Internet users.�
  
  
• Social media attract greater attention
  B2B Online chart the emergence of social media as a marketing tool in the B2B space (via Church of the Customer Blog)
  
  
• Free Advertising
  The New York Times on Customer-Made Ads: �The rise of consumer-generated advertising can be viewed as either a boon to brands (outsourcing marketing to loyal customers) or a threat (handing marketing over to a bunch of uncontrollable amateurs)�
  

Digg for marketers

Piers Fawkes and the folks at trendspotting collective PSFK have just launched Marktd, a very Digg-like, community edited site collecting user-submitted marketing news stories, articles and commentary.

Looks very interesting, although for some reason the home page defaults to the latest stories rather than the much more interesting �top� stories (those with the most editorial votes).

Definitely worth watching. It'll be interesting to see what its users collectively decide to do with it.

Tags: marketing, digg

YouTube proves the power of participation

Today�s web is all about participation. It stands to reason, then, that the most successful web businesses will be the ones that do the best job of empowering their users to participate.

This point is beautifully illustrated by new data released yesterday that shows YouTube as the far-and-away winner in the online video search space. The data, collected by Hitwise, tracks visits to video sharing sites over the three months ending May 20th.

Pretty phenomenal, considering most people hadn�t heard of YouTube 6 months ago.

So why the giant lead on the competition? I think it has a lot to do with the way YouTube have embraced and enabled the growing online culture of participation. They�ve given their users more ways to participate, and therefore more reasons to come back. From comments to ratings to tagging to groups, YouTube is fundamentally a social experience.

And of course they were the first to offer a way to easily embed video in a blog post�a great way to extend that umbrella of participation . . . and of course the fact that each embedded video carries the YouTube logo and links back their site doesn�t hurt either.

Compare this to Google Video which, despite some positive improvements since launch (including the ability to easily embed videos a la YouTube) still feels about as fun as a the basement of a library on a sunny day.

Of course, YouTube�s free and easy approach to copyrighted material hasn�t hurt either . . . but that�s a whole other post.

Tags: youtube, participation, web 2.0, google

User-generated stardom: from YouTube to Conan

Thanks to YouTube, an amateur guitarist and (presumably) late night comedy fan has made it to the big time.

Last night on Conan O�Brien, 19 year old Ben Lichtman sat in with Max and the band and recreated his solo guitar arrangement of the Late Night theme song, which the show's producers discovered via this YouTube video:

Links are for clicking

• PSFK talk to Long Tail prophet Chris Anderson. �Many people have noted how ironic it would be if my book on niches becomes a hit. I can live with that.�

• The videogaming industry embraces user-created content (Business Innovation Insider). �Why pay an expensive software development team to do the job, when there are plenty of enthusiastic, talented gamers willing to do it for you?� Good question!

• Everybody�s a network (Buzzmachine). �In the future of media, which is now, everybody is a network. In the past, networks were defined by control of content or distribution. But now, you can�t own all distribution and content is controlled where it�s created.� No one pokes holes in the status quo or heralds the next wave of disruption with as much passion, wit and blunt truth-telling as Jeff Jarvis. We are not worthy!
  

Steve Rubel's magic "T"

Steve Rubel has a nice post explaining and expanding on the "T" visual that I re-created earlier this week in my round up of his talk at Mesh--and he's actually used my (somewhat crude) drawing of it to make his point.

Glad to be of service, Steve!

Of course, the reason I went as far as drawing it in the first place is that I think it's a very useful and beautifully simple visualization of the way that more traditional marketing tactics can co-exist with an approach driven by deep community engagement.

Ideally, though, it would be nice if the two approaches could do more than co-exist, which Steve actually touches on in his post:

Monitor RSS feeds for mentions of your product and reach out to selective evangelists. Here you would invite them in to participate in an online consumer feedback panel. You can share ideas and generate discussions about how to improve the product, the marketing and more

The point Steve touches on here, I think, is that the deep engagement represented by the vertical part of the "T" can and should have an impact on how more traditional tactics are used along the horizontal bar. You could illustrate this by adding some arrows to the "T" . . .



. . . but of course then it wouldn't look like a "T" anymore. And it wouldn't be quite so beautifully simple either.

So forget it.

Leave the "T" alone. It's beautiful.

Tags: steve rubel, marketing, mesh06

Final Mesh round up

This will be the last of my Mesh Conference round up posts. Day 2 was so jam-packed that it could not be summarized in a single, digestible post, so this post begins where the last one ended: lunch.

The first session I attended after lunch was titled Does Web 2.0 Need VCs. The two panelists were Jason Fried of 37Signals--my main reason for attending--and VC and blogger Rick Segal, who henceforth also qualifies as reason enough to attend a panel discussion. These are the highlights I am able to squeeze out of my notes. This time around, I'll break it down by topic and speaker.

On taking VC money:
JF: If you don't need VC money, don't take it.
RS: Agreed up to a point. Institutional money changes things and you need to consider that, but the ability of 37Signals to be self-sufficient on so many levels is a bit of an anomaly.

One making money
JF: Everything they do is profitable now, not tomorrow.
JF: Their approach to pricing and sales emulates drug dealers: give users a taste of the good stuff and then make them pay once they're hooked.
RS: How do you monetize something? Simple: charge for it.

On the (un)importance of geography
RS: You don't need to go to the valley to start a company. In fact, it's harder in the valley. It's more expensive. And there's fierce competition for talent.
JF: Agreed. Chicago worked for them for this reason. And remote employees can work well too..

On hiring:
JF: If you're hiring a programmer, troll the open source world for someone who is doing good work that's motivated by passion instead of gain. The actual code, comments and enthusiasm are more important than any resume. Forget resumes. Forget formal qualifications. Some of their best employees dropped out of college.
RS: Get 'em young and hungry. Tap smart junior people and give them a chance to prove themselves. It's the "put me in the game, coach" factor.

On Canadian VCs:
RS: They don't risk enough or fail enough. They're "puck shy".

On growth:
JF: Rapid growth can be as risky as not growing or growing very slowly. If you bring in VCs to help you grow fast, you could end up being forced out and losing control of something you love. Realize that sometimes enough is enough.
RS: Venture capital always changes the dynamic.

On defensibility:
RS: Do you have customers ready to buy? It all boils down to that.

Closing thought:
JF: It's all about your passionate customers. Keep them happy and forget about everybody else. Read Kathy Sierra to find out how.

The final session I'll summarize was about corporate blogs. The panel included Tara Hunt, author Debbie Weil and Jeremy Wright of b5media. The highlights:

• Tara thinks corporate blogs basically suck. It's the difference between pure passion and corporate messaging. For her, blogs are all about real people and "since when do corporations have opposable thumbs?".
• Debbie wrote a book on how to run a corporate blog, so she disagrees. She thinks organizations can do a good job and have an impact as long as they are smart about it. For instance, they should give the blog a focus by picking a single corporate goal and blogging in support of it. Possible goals include getting you message out, empowering your users or just keeping customers informed.
• Jeremy thinks starting with internal blogs is a better idea and more exciting. One cool use of internal blogs is to create a forum for anonymous venting that would be responded to by the exec. team.
• The big point everyone agreed on: before you start a blog, read lots of them and make sure you understand the difference between transmitting and conversing.

So that's it. I'll end my Mesh coverage by offering the organizers my heartfelt thanks for a job well done.

Sign me up for Mesh 07.

Tags: mesh06,web 2.0

Mesh videos

Sprinkled throughout the Mesh conference were a series of clever little videos created by a company called Storystream, who are now kindly making them available online. Just click the "work" button on the little remote control to view or download.

Tags: mesh06,web 2.0

Mesh day 2 round up

So if Day 1 was very good, Day 2 was flat-out great. A day later and my brain is still expanding and contracting. The themes today were Marketing and Business. The day started with a conversation between Steve Rubel--an extremely widely read blogger who's also helping Edelman re-invent PR--and conference co-founder Stuart Macdonald. Here are a few highlights from my notes:

• Public relations has to be what it is called. Which means interacting with the public directly rather than via an intermediary (the media). Today's PR function includes "interacting with people as people".
• So how do you engage these real people, specifically the ones with blogs? Steve says you need to understand their motivation for blogging and help them succeed at it. In other words, the goal is to "work with the community to accomplish their goals and your goals together". It's all about the win-win.
• Having discussed bloggers for a few minutes, Steve hastened to point out that the changes that he believes need to happen in PR and marketing have to do with more than just bloggers and the blogosphere. It's about the fact that consumers are now talking to each other more. And placing more trust in their peers than in marketers.
  
• The formula is simple: an erosion of trust + new tools to connect with peers = a major shift that can't be ignored.
• Having said all that, Steve wanted to make it clear that traditional marketing and PR tactics still work quite well in many cases. Ditto for advertising. These things are not dying, necessarily. There is just a new dimension that is being added.
• There was some discussion that echoed some debate on Day 1 about the credibility of bloggers vs. journalists. Steve's answer: the community is the barometer of credibility. This point was made repeatedly. Readers can smell bullshit and they also know what is valuable and relevant to them. Ultimatly, they will vote with their clicks.
• Steve shared a visual he likes to use to explain his approach. Here is my re-creation:

• Connecting with your core community--the depth axis on his graph--is hard work. And it's very new and therefore hard to measure. This is not easy. These are early days. So don't expect it to be a simple series of steps followed by some easily measurable ROI.
• A key point: marketers must engage the community on its own terms. You can learn what these terms are be observing the community before you engage. Get this right and you will be accepted. Get it wrong and you're a laughing stock.
• And even if you're accepted by the community, you need to be ready to "take your lumps". They will call on you anything and everything and you must respond quickly and be ready to acknowledge mistakes.
• Someone suggested that bloggers need to learn the skills to engage with PR (like journalists do). Steve disagreed. This won't work. It has to be on their terms.
• Bad idea #1: Pay for play. Not a great idea in traditional media. Even worse with bloggers.
• Bad idea #2: Character blogs. Steve put it this way: "If Mickey Mouse really blogged, he'd talk about how sweaty he was in the suit and how long it's been since he's gone to the bathroom".
• So what about metrics? Steve suggests "most incoming links" and "most successful conversations initiated". But then goes on to remind us that this all very new. We should just try it. We shouldn't be afraid to fail. Measurement and the overall approach will evolve.
• Steve predicts that we will one day see an index of the most talked about brands. This reminded me of what we are attempting to create in Sutori.
• Steve calls the blogosphere the "most effective fact-checking machine ever". In this capacity, it is forcing honesty on advertisers.
• So what about the fact that marketers are losing control of the message? Steve argues that this control was an illusion to begin with. It never existed. You just couldn't see all the conversations around the water cooler, so they didn't seem as important. And of course the people having those conversations didn't have a potentially huge global audience!
• His closing bits of advice boiled down to three steps:

1. Find out where your community congregates.
   
2. Engage them in dialogue.
   
3. Help them to succeed at whatever they are trying to achieve.

Next up was a keynote conversation with blogger, venture capitalist and Business 2.0 contributor Paul Kedrosky. Paul was a great speaker. Scary smart, funny as hell and very down-to-earth. I have much less notes on this session, but it was a pleasure to listen to:

• The first issue was the bubble question. Is it '98 all over again? Paul's answer: maybe . . . but so what? For progress to happen, we need to make lots of mistakes. Hopefully the difference this time is that we�ll make them faster and go into it with our eyes open.
• He made the point above with this very colourful quote: "It takes a lot of bodies to fill a swamp."
• Some similarities to the first bubble--he's seeing the same business plan over and over and people are tending to mistake features for products.
• But there are still some amazing things happening. One positive sign: more ideas that serve business instead of customers at large. This is good because businesses are much more willing to pay for stuff.
• He pointed to pair of very interesting companies from the Vancouver area that are either already doing well or have a lot of promise: plentyoffish.com and Dabble db.

A third keynote rounded out the morning--this one from a personal favourite of mine: "pinko marketing" rabble-rouser Tara Hunt from HorsePigCow and riya.com.

• Tara started by painting the picture of the new market landscape. It's the customer revolution. Years of being lied to by corporations, too many choices, too much noise and above all a chance for all of us to finally have a voice. Hard not to think immediately of Sutori again.
• She went on discuss some of my favourite examples of recent months: BowieChick's movie about her Logitech webcam and Snakes on a Plane. The audience seemed skeptical about the authenticity of both. Was BowieChick a plant? Did her dad work at Logitech? But these things wouldn't have worked if they were staged.
• Of course this raises an important question--if these things can't be duplicated as marketing tools, then why do we need to know about them? There are a few answers, I think. First, you need to have a remarkable product to begin with (as Seth Godin is always saying). And second, duplicating these stories is not the point. They represent the new power that's now in the hands of customers. A power that can be used for you or against you. Which is why you need to actively engage your community.
• After a lot of lively discussion, Tara closed with a nice tidy wrap up of the principles she and her many accomplices are working to codify as "Pinko" marketing:

1. Inbound rather than outbound messages
2. Be a community advocate (not a company evangelist)
3. 100% authenticity
4. Forget the mass market, go after niches
5. Follow open source principals

And all of that was before lunch. Wow. I think the afternoon deserves its own post so I'll sign off here.

Tags: mesh06,web 2.0

Mesh day 1 round up

Some quick wrap-up notes from the first day of Mesh . . .

Today's sessions covered two broad themes: media and society. The day started with a keynote for each theme. First up was a conversation between conference organizer Mark Evans and Business 2.0's Om Malik. Highlights:

• Om thinks all this talk about on-demand TV is forgetting the traditional use of the television: a completely passive vacation for the brain after a stressful day.
• This doesn't surprise him, as he believes that tech companies in general don't pay enough attention to the realities of life.
• He doesn't see a big divide between old media and new media. For him it's more like good content versus bad content, with both types occurring on both sides.
• He thinks the real change is the power people have to "vote with a mouse click" when their bullshit sniffer goes off.
• Someone suggested that the value of blogs is opinion, but he thinks it's better summed up as context (I agree). In other words, not the thing itself, but how and why it matters.
• Much discussion around monetization. Om thinks blogs -- and the web in general -- need a new advertising.

Next up was Michael Geist, who did an excellent short presentation that was followed by a conversation with audience members and Mesh founder Rob Hyndman. Michael is a great speaker. Kind of like Canada's Lessig. My favourite bits were:

• A great anecdote about being called a "pro-user zealot" by an opponent and then turning that phrase into a bumper sticker.
• This quote: "What's more long tail than Canadian content?"

So that was the morning. After lunch, my first stop was a panel entitled "Are Bloggers Journalists?". More Om Malik, who was in fine form. This time he was joined by NowPublic.com's Michael Tippet and blogger Scott Carp. Highlights:

• Blogger vs. journalist is a false dichotomy. Some bloggers are also journalists. Some blogs are journalism in and of themselves. And most blogs have no pretensions at all about replacing journalism.
• Om sees his blog as a bar-room conversation among peers and his journalistic work as something akin to polished public speaking for a broad audience.
• Om thinks it's all about quality, which will always be a rare thing -- in the blogosphere and in the traditional media.
  
• A theme came up that I would hear repeated all day: most content is crap. Sometimes the implication was that most user-generated content is crap, but some argued (and I would agree) that the mostly crap rule applies equally to mainstream media.
• The distinction between creating something and pointing to something was raised. Most bloggers do more pointing than creating. An important point, I'd say. Om summed it up with this great quote: "Think of American Idol. Everybody loves to vote, but not everybody can sing."
• This lead to another recurring theme. The collision between the "new web" and "old media" is more about democratization than competition. It's about voting with mouse clicks.
• In this sense, blogs compete with editors more than journalists. Forget "citizen journalists", think "citizen editors".
• The fear that's fueling the false journalist versus blogger dichotomy is really about losing control, and by extension losing power. But it shouldn't be so scary. It should be seen as way to listen better and ultimately create content that is more relevant to users.

The final session I'll touch on was a panel discussion of the future of broadcasting. Panelists included Amber from TechTV, CBC mainstay Jian Ghomeshi and Andrew Baron from Rocketboom. Random highlights:

• Broadcasting by big media is not going away. It's just changing. Being forced into embracing a new, often frightening openness.
• Andrew Baron makes the good point that unlike music, the means of video production are just now becoming widely accessible.
• Once again we hear the two themes of the day: most of it is crap and it's all about voting with mouse clicks.

Whew! That's it for now. Tomorrow is all about Marketing and PR. Looking forward to hearing Tara Hunt and Steve Rubel speak in the morning. G'night all.

Tags: mesh06,web 2.0

Meshing it up

In Toronto for the Mesh Conference today and tomorrow with fellow Sutoriheads Jordan and Jeff. Great stuff so far. I'll be posting highlights later. Stay tuned.

Sutori teaser is live

So this is what I've been pouring myself into lately. Today it took its first step into the world. Not a big step, but a step nonetheless.

If this all seems a little vague and confusing, a glance at the Sutori blog should help.

Hire good writers

So the folks at 37Signals have literally written the book on developing lean, smart web apps that customers love.

Getting Real is a great read, and many of the ideas can be applied well beyond the context of web app development. It�s real-world, common sense stuff about getting rid of everything that doesn�t matter and focusing on everything that does.

For example, I love this tip on hiring:

If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn�t matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off.

. . .

That�s because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else�s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.

The only problem�Getting Real is only available as a PDF. For the record, I�d buy a hard copy in a minute.

Wrestling gamers united

This grassroots group of gamers and wrestling enthusiasts are in the process of transforming themselves from lobbyists to game developers. Formed in 2002 to lobby the video game industry for better wrestling games, they�ve now decided to forget about pestering the big boys and just go ahead and do it themselves.

Here�s their mission statement:

We're more than simply a company, we're a cause. A movement founded on behalf of gamers who refuse to settle for less, for whom the same old games repackaged every year with a few half-assed new bells and whistles just aren�t good enough. For fans and players who believe that the strength of a title isn�t blind faith in a license, but the heart that goes into making the best damned game possible. For gamers who have had enough of being taken for granted. This is their voice. This is their demand for a higher standard. This is the fruits of a unified gaming community who aren�t satisfied with the status quo, whose tireless rally for something better has resulted in the first project of its kind. Built by the fans, built for the fans.

Talk about passion. Wow.

Why the gaming companies would ignore such an incredible source of insight is beyond me. Looks like they�re going to have to learn this lesson the hard way.

(Thanks to Brandi for the pointer.)

Customer-made

The always-worth-reading folks at Trendwatching.com have issued an update to a their analysis of the phenomenon they call �customer made�, defined as:

Corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with experienced and creative consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in (and rewarding them for) what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.

Loads of intersting tidbits here (open-source beer!), but I�m especially impressed by the story they tell about community-centric, post-cluetrain marketing in action at Starwood hotels:

FlyerTalk.com, [is a] a community for avid (and highly profitable!) business travellers. In fact, so many suggestions and complaints for and about major hotel chains were piling up on that site, that Starwood Hotels and Resorts seconded William Sanders, better known as the Starwood Lurker, to keep an eye on the forums, 8 hours a day. Since he penly started participating in November 2002, the Starwood Lurker has posted more than 11,000 replies, (which comes down to an average of more than 5 postings a day!), engaging in conversations with some of Starwood's most valuable customers. No word on how much money this has made Starwood, but we guess it's many times more than Mr. Sander's salary.

If by some chance Technorati leads you here, Mr. Sanders, I�d love to here more about what you�re doing�and your take on the bottom-line results.

Cinema 2.0

Screenwriting via wiki? Why not?

Cory at Boing Boing reports on an extremely interesting collaborative filmaking project (he's actually on board as an advisor). For 25 pounds per person, British filmaker Matt Hanson is recruiting 50,000 investors/collaborators in a film project called A Swarm of Angels:

A Swarm of Angels is about making a ?1 million movie and giving it away to one million people in one year. By using the Internet to gather together 50,000 people willing to pay ?25 to join an exclusive global online community�The Swarm�the project�s ambition is to make the world�s first Internet-funded, crewed and distributed feature film.

User-generated roundup

Once more, a Google News search for �User-Generated� yields some interesting nuggets:

• YouTube sees user rebellion (Business 2.0)
  Careful guys, you�re nothing without your users.
  
  
• User-generated...trash?
  Nick Carr tears a strip off user-generated content and clearly has a lot of fun doing it. And InfoWorld�s Matt Asay tries to coax him back from the edge. Like Matt, I think that the quality of the content is subjective and ultimatly beside the point. But Nick does ask some interesting questions about who will ultimately profit from YouTube and its ilk.
  
  
• China cracks down on Internet blogs
  (As opposed to those other non-Internet blogs?) User-generated = user-empowering. Go users!
  

Beware of pantloads

Cartoon by Doug Savage. Visit savagechickens.com if you enjoy laughing.

When it comes to stringing together meaningless buzzwords to form jargon-ridden, tangled-up explosions of meaninglessness, nobody is worse than marketers . . . especially tech marketers.

Well, almost no-one. I suppose politicians do a pretty good job at it too.

After having been exposed to this phenomenon for many years, some of my colleagues have given a name to these enemies of clarity, these bloated clusters of ripe, smelly language abuse.:

PANTLOADS

(I�m actually not sure who came up with the term originally, although I think it may have been Kate. Please let me know if I�ve got this wrong.)

It�s an evocative name, and yes, more than a little disgusting. It�s meant to illustrate both the strong odor of self-indulgence given off by this kind of copy and the sense that it was emitted hurriedly by someone with very little control over their actions.

Pantloads have two common causes. The first�a danger that�s specific to the tech world�is the preponderance of technical terms. The common misconception here is that people buy software based on technical specifications. They don�t. At least not very often.

They buy it for many reasons�to fix a problem, to make their lives easier, because their boss told them to, because everyone else is buying it . . . whatever. But they don�t usually buy it because they have a burning need for more best-of-breed J2EE-based server side whatchamacallits in their lives.

So here�s the first rule of pantload-free marketing:

For the most part, technical jargon means little or nothing to your customers.

Now at this point I suppose I should fess up. I myself have been guilty on more than one occasion of (gasp!) creating this sort of insidious pantload.

There, I said it.

And while I take full responsibility for my crimes against my readers, my own experience also allows me to sympathize with my fellow offenders.

In other words, I�m not trying to shoot the messenger here. I know how hard it can be to fight the good fight against �that�s jut how it�s done� or �everyone else does it�.

But naming the enemy is the first step towards defeating it, right? So by calling a pantload a pantload, I hope I can help you fight the good fight the next time the someone tells you your web copy needs more information about XML schemas or somesuch.

The second cause of pantloads is much more universal�and much more insidious. Let�s call it naval gazing. Naval gazing is characterized by an over-inflated sense of corporate self-importance�a pervasive company-centric (as opposed to customer-centric) mindset.

Turns out that looking at your own navel for long periods of time can actually cause you to lose touch with reality. Once this happens, sprinkling everything you write with meaningless platitudes and over-the-top superlatives starts to make perfect sense. Stretching the limits of the English language to fit all three (or four, or five) of the things that you believe make your company/product/service unique and special into a single, unfortunate sentence seems like a perfectly natural thing to do.

It isn�t.

And of course, losing touch with reality means losing touch with customers. And that�s the real problem. So here�s the second rule of pantload-free marketing:

Check your ego at the door and focus on connecting with your customers in language that is meaningful and valuable to them.

Related: Apple's refreshing press release policy