For years now, start-ups and technology disruptors have been trying to change the television viewing experience. Mark Cuban was hypothesizing about the death of channels, with the introduction of Internet TV in the United States in 2005. However, other than a lot of visions and aspirations the market hasn’t really caught on. Change you see, doesn’t really apply to the television industry. After the “Golden Days” of television that saw a man walk on the moon the industry has been set in decades of stodginess with little or no change — innovation shifting to bigger and better things, with all eyes eventually falling on the Internet.
However, with the introduction of Google TV today, which joins the likes of Apple, AT&T and Microsoft in trying to champion Internet Protocol Television(IPTV), there may finally be enough momentum to trigger the Internet to TV avalanche. An avalanche that some analysts believe will lead to million global IPTV subscribers by 2013.
The innovation desperately needed in the television industry is replication of the Internet innovation in search and discovery that has occurred over the last decade. And, there’s probably no better company to replicate that than Google. With more video content and channels available than ever before before, watching and searching for video content between siloed channels, cable and satellite operators just doesn’t make sense. It’s a closed structure that would be like searching and enjoying the Internet without, well, Google.
Of course the introduction of this type of technology on pre-boxed televisions from Sony and others could also mean the holy grail of television advertising, which Google is really interested in. Advertisers have been seeking and gaining access to millions of consumers shifting to the Web to enjoy video content and technologies including personalization and speech-to-text solutions have enabled them to target these consumers with targeted advertorial better than they ever could through televisions. If “Googling” goes to the tube, these technologies and Google’s own AdWords’ system will be right behind it.
Location-based News Use By the Wall Street Journal (Via Nieman Lab)
Twitter has been a great tool for the media since its inception. A fact that has attributed to its media darling status. However, as media organizations look for new ways to leverage social and digital technologies they’re becoming more sophisticated with their usage.
When the Wall Street Journal launched its ballyhooed New York Edition in April they also announced a partnership with Foursquare, the location-based social network. From the outside the partnership looked simple. The Journal wanted a way to get in front of early adopters in New York City and planned to offer three types of badges popular on the service — status symbols that Foursquare users earn for checking into a certain number locations. They also planned to offer bits of information on significant locations. For instance, when someone checked into the George Washington Bridge they might see from the WSJ: “Police were told to stop and search would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi’s car in September 2009 as he drove up to the bridge—but waved him across without finding two pounds of explosives hidden inside.”
While this was an interesting use, the Journal really took a step in social, location-based, news reporting when they broke news of the Time Square evacuation on May 7 by posting this message to folks checking into New York City locations: “Portions of Times Square have been evacuated after a report of a suspicious package.” According to the Journal, that message was posted simultaneously with additional alerts and coverage on WSJ.com.
The use of Foursquare for breaking news allowed the Journal to check-in with users who follow the media outlet on Foursquare and those who were in New York at the time would have seen the alert at the top of their Foursquare time-line. This type of targeted and localized editorial should be exciting for media organizations of all sizes. Just as marketers look for ways to improve targeting capabilities, media executives should be in the same mindset.
Meanwhile, as Facebook becomes a greater source for breaking news content and driving consumers to stories, media executives are looking at new ways to leverage the largest social network in the land. A division of Time Inc. recently began selling magazine subscriptions through its Facebook news feed, which allowed interested users to fill out their order information and pay directly through a form, without ever leaving Facebook. Meanwhile, GQ and Condé Nast, continue to leverage their Facebook page to personally engage consumers and attempt to interest them in their GQ iPad and iPhone applications, with direct links to the download pages on iTunes. Although, they’ve only sold 365 copies of their current issue to date on the iPad, they’ll be a time in the not too distant future when these more profitable subscriptions (no printing costs) surpass print subscriptions.
While this may make some folks squeamish, given Facebook’s privacy woes, they’re both examples of the progressive approaches media organizations are now taking with social media. As we’ve said before, these media organizations are becoming technology companies first and journalist organizations second. If you’re hoping they don’t disappear, it’s a change for the better.
Tom Webster of Edison Research released the findings of a three year study into the usage of Twitter in America last week.
Some interesting findings from the study, which are covered in the above Webinar, include:
Awareness of Twitter has exploded from 5% of Americans 12+ in 2008 to 87% in 2010 (by comparison, Facebook’s awareness is 88%)
Despite equal awareness, Twitter trails Facebook significantly in usage: 7% of Americans (17 million persons) actively use Twitter, while 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook.
Nearly two-thirds of active Twitter users access social networking sites using a mobile phone
51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks
Ning’s new pricing system, in moving away from free community building
In his bookFree: The Future of a Radical PriceChris Anderson proposed that the rapidly falling cost of digital technology enabled companies to create digital content and spaces for essentially nothing. In addition, he added that the word free is so popular that the mere use of it will increase demand and instant engagement with consumers. Therefore, his hypothesis was that the future of digital business is free.
While this approach may assist companies in gaining traction for a new digital technology, it doesn’t always work in trying to establish a sustainable business strategy. Especially, it seems, within the social media space. One of the big misperceptions of social media use has been that it is free. The truth is for companies interested in using social media tools – it has always cost money in hours and resource allocation. However, in addition to those resources – it will cost money going forward as social media service providers realize the demand is there for premium, paid services.
Yesterday, Jason Rosenthal, the CEO of Ning, sent an email to Ning users that officially noted the company’s plans for phasing out all free uses of the Ning network by July – as part of its new pricing and business strategy. According to Rosenthal, “We (Ning) want(s) to provide a new level of innovation to Network Creators — including all the valuable features Network Creators have asked us to build. To get there, we need to focus 100% on paid Ning Networks.”
Why now? Ning’s problem seems to be the same as the issues faced by YouTube in endorsing “free.” Although, their model was able to entice millions of people to share videos, their revenue model suffered because brands didn’t want to advertise against videos made in people’s basements. Now Google and YouTube are pushing for premium video content that advertisers want. In the same vein, Ning drew lots of users (including marketers interested in an easy and free way to build a community), but the advertisements it leveraged on its free communities for revenue were hardly targeted and drew little interest from big name brands (it was mostly Google display ads). They also found that a large portion of their traffic was willing to pay for premium features. Hence, they’re now focusing on different levels of paid services. Even an enterprise or professional level for $49.95 a month. With that move, according to some reports, Ning sizes their market around $4 billion.
Yammer, which has taken a similar track towards the premium market of microblogging, may be a good case study for Ning. Unlike Twitter, they’ve cornered a market on enterprise collaboration over bits of information and now have 70,000 customers (many of those happily paying). In fact, according to Yammer , “A number of Fortune and Global 500 companies such as Cisco, Nationwide, AstraZeneca, Alcatel-Lucent, SunGard, and Molson Coors have upgraded to Yammer’s paid product. ” This news has some investors calling them the next billion dollar company. Meanwhile, Radian6, the popular social media monitoring service used by the likes of AMD, Comcast, Microsoft and Dell (to name a few) starts its pricing at $500 per month and can reach several additional figures.
Of course, there are other examples of “free” social media tools thriving with no plans to make their services pay-per-play. The aforementioned Twitter has been adamant in stating that they have no plans to charge corporate accounts. Even, Co-Tweet, which assists brands in engaging and monitoring Twitter (and was acquired earlier this year), offers its service for free. Facebook doesn’t seem to have any plans to make users pay, although they could make a nice amount for a $1 a day and would certainly find brands willing to pay for fanpages.
Others are adding paid-for, premium features, in addition to free features. PitchEngine, which has become a very popular free (and paid-for) tool (platform) for PR practitioners and social media mangers to share news and information, recently announced a new pricing system for agencies and brands interested in additional features. However, according to their CEO Jason Kintzler they have no plans to abandon free use of the service’s entry-level features. “We will still be ‘freemium’ and people will be able to publish for free. We’re just adding more premium features,” he told RaceTalk in an email.
However, any way you look at it, there is a current set of market happenings that makes pay-for services a new attractive option for social media tool or platform providers.
Online advertising cannot support most businesses (including social media services) in its current form as the only revenue stream (low CPM’s, etc.) and investors are shying away from companies that are only looking at ad revenue to support their business.
Measurement of social media campaigns is improving and any tool’s use that can be measured against (or that do the measuring!) previous strategies , mediums (traditional or otherwise), can now be budgeted for. In short, folks are willing to pay for social media tools that work.
Investments are now following in the footsteps of the demand for these tools and platforms. Look no further than investor interest in the social media measurement space. New social media service providers will now have the money and runway to move away from launching as “free.” Something that can be painful to shut the door on down the road.
More often than not, a piece of the entry I’m working on for RaceTalk revolves around a tweet, or at the very least includes a quote from a tweet. The one problem with illustrating that has been there is no easy way to get that tweet into a blog entry. Sure, you can take a screen capture or simply link to the tweet. However, that doesn’t offer you the same customization that you get with embedding content (YouTube videos, uStreams, etc.). Not any longer, according to a post on the Twitter Media site. Twitter will be enabling embeddable tweets starting tomorrow.
Now WordPress blogs like this one to outlets such as the New York Times can simply embed tweets for reference or citation within a story. Twitter highlights the way Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb covered the HP and Palm deal leveraging the best tweets on the topic within his post. Now, unlike those sometimes grainy photos, bloggers will be able to embed visually pleasing tweets with the click of the button. In short, they’ll look like the one above, only it will be click-able and much better looking.
Since unveiling its play into mobile advertising on April 8 with its iAd platform, questions have circled around how Apple will implement advertising on certain applications and how much ads or campaigns will cost for brands and media buyers. However, MocoNews.net is reporting today that “CPMs (on the iAd platform) could wind up being triple what marketers are used to paying for banners, and double the price of a current video ad on mobile devices.
The cost and appeal of reaching consumers through the iPhone, iPad and thousands of apps on Apple’s App Store could finally drive mobile marketing into a “big” business. Analysts have already been bullish on mobile coupons driving the fledgling mobile ad market this year. In fact, a new study from Borrell Associates sees mobile marketing growing into a $57 billion market by 2014. Coupons and the iAd platform alone, could make for a watershed year in 2010.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple will “charge close to $1 million for ads on its mobile devices this year and perhaps even more to be among the first brands featured (on the platform).” While some would think this limit would deter most advertisers, big name brands like Nike (who Apple is using in demoing with other media buyers) seem excited about the opportunity to reach consumers within application engagement on Apple’s line of mobile devices (video above).
The iPhone-leak saga rolled on today as news broke that the home of Gizmodo editor Brian Chen was raided by California’s Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT – couldn’t make this name up) last Friday night. According to Chen’s account of the story, the team broke down his front door without him present, seizing four computers and two servers, in serving a warrant issued by the Superior Court of San Mateo.
The warrant and the ensuing confiscation of Chen’s computers hinges around the investigation into if Chen, Gizmodo and its parent company Gawker Media committed a felony by paying $5,000 for a lost, iPhone prototype. Was picking up the lost iPhone in a bar, asking around a bit and then selling the iPhone to Gizmodo a felony? Was the subsequent purchase of lost goods a felony? John Gruber thinks so.
Meanwhile, Nick Denton and Gawker seem happy to see this saga continue (free marketing and publicity). In fact, they’ve taken the issued warrant and seizure to propose that the Shield Law protects Brian Chen from the search and seizure as a journalist (full Gawker memo below). Denton proposed via Twitter that this case may finally give us the answer to the age old question – Are Bloggers Really Journalists? He may be watching too many old newspaper movies.
The Shield Law was established to protect journalists from having to give up sources that may have committed a crime, which would likely not apply in this case. Especially, if prosecutors are basing the search and seizure on the premise that Chen has committed a crime himself in this case. Therefore, while the reality is that California has been clear in defining bloggers as journalists (especially those working at a media company such as Gawker), the statue may simply not apply.
To make matters even more interesting (for conspiracy theorists) — many bloggers are pointing out that Apple serves on the steering committee of REACT.
Twitter is finally taking the first step to monetize its service on Tuesday by launching an advertising platform called “Promoted Tweets.”
Co-founder Biz Stone officially announced the move this morning on the Twitter blog, citing that the company will start running “Promoted Tweets” from companies such as Starbucks, Best Buy, Sony Pictures, Bravo, Virgin America and Red Bull at the top of Twitter.com search results. So as an advertiser, what does your money on “Promoted Tweets” buy you? Similar to Google’s ad sense, it will buy you the top search result for certain keywords that you’ve bought. But that seems to be about it. Other than clearly stating that the tweet is sponsored, it will take on the same characteristics of a typical tweet on the micro-blogging service.
According to @Biz, “Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.”
Similar to Facebook, Twitter also seems to be taking measures to ensure that the “advertisements” do not take away from the Twitter ecosystem. Therefore, “Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users.” If users don’t interact with a “Promoted Tweet” (by replying to it, favoriting it, re-tweeting it, etc) the “Promoted Tweet” will disappear.
It will be interesting to see just how useful the tweets are for advertisers and brands, who associate much of their success on the Twitter service to engaging with fans one-on-one. Will a simple text based search ad on the top of a Twitter.com search result provide additional value?
Twitter COO Dick Costolo will address the new offering in further detail today at the AdAge Digital conference.
Tiger Woods makes his return to golf this afternoon at the Masters. Ending what seems like an eternal wait for golf fans, a media circus, casual bystanders and the few sponsors that stood behind him. His tee off at 1:42 p.m. ET will signal the next step of his rebranding from the downward spiral he initiated on November 27 in a car crash outside his Florida home.
After months of silence, Tiger and co. began the rebranding on February 19 in a heavily-controlled and choreographed apology. They took no questions and although they signaled that a return to golf wasn’t imminent, word spread a few weeks later that Tiger Woods would return at the Masters. They followed by making Woods available for exclusive interviews with Tom Rinaldi of ESPN and Kelly Tilghman of Golf Channel. Questions were vetted and once again Tiger managed to say something without really saying anything at all. Only this Monday at the Masters did Tiger address questions without parameters from a throng of reporters. To be fair, he answered every question and finally seemed genuine.
Galleries around Augusta, who’ve been following Tiger through his practice rounds this week, have marveled at his interaction with fans (something that has only occurred during disputes with them in the past). Jim Nantz, who will call the Masters on CBS, is already calling Tiger a changed man.
Folks may be getting a little ahead of themselves. As I’ve heard several pundits rib on Tiger’s camp over the last couple days “A Tiger doesn’t change his stripes overnight.” Perhaps, Nike understands that. In an ad created by Nike creative partner Wieden + Kennedy that began airing on Wednesday night, Woods stairs speechless at the camera. Not appearing as a new man but someone who seeks understanding. The only voice heard is of his late father Earl, who eerily addresses Tiger’s scandal without his own knowing.
“Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive, to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything?”
This certainly isn’t a remake of the Nike’s “Hello(again) World” Tiger ad, but a controlled message to viewers that tries to establish that Tiger is listening to his father and learning from his own missteps. Then again, nothing that Tiger has “accomplished” over the last 6 months has been awe inspiring enough to say “hello” again.
Let’s remember that Tiger’s image has been controlled since becoming a pro. During his first news conference in August 1996 to mark his pro career, he casually said “hello world.” Those in attendance and at home found it endearing. Until of course, it was revealed to be the headline for his Nike campaign that hit television sets across the world days later.
This ad from Nike is no different. Although it may draw controversy for using his late father’s voice, it stays in-line with his message to reporters and fans over the last few weeks: staying true to who he is as a person, strengthening his practice of Buddhism and introspection. This is who Tiger, and his team, want him to be during this transition period. When he has recaptured his greatness on the course (and he will), it’ll be time to say “hello” or “he’s back.” Now is not that time.
It’s shortcoming is simply that it’s another advertisement. A one-way message. It has always been with Tiger. He seeks the same control for his image that he has with a seven iron in hand at Augusta. Unfortunately, that’s not possible, especially in today’s 1,440-minute, Internet news-cycle. Fans will ultimately determine if and when Tiger is a changed man and no matter how many ads he throws their way, their words will count more than his or his late father’s in determining the future of his brand.
According to documents that Facebook is providing ad agencies and brands, the language they use when people connect with brand pages will be changing. People will soon connect with your brand pages by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.”
The reason behind the change is somewhat telling of the way Facebook believes brands and advertisements should fit within the “social graph.”
“People already ‘Like’ their friends’ status updates, photos and links everyday. In fact, people click ‘Like’ almost two times more than they click ‘Become a Fan’ everyday.”
In that sense, the move to clicking “like” will naturally fit within the daily interactions of people on Facebook and no matter how you define it, those that are willing to click on brands are powerful brand endorsers. A recent Harvard Business Review case study of one brand’s efforts on Facebook illustrated that. Dessert Gallery, a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain, found that their “fans” (people that now “like” them) :
Went to their stores 20% more often than non-fans and gave the chain the highest share of their overall dining-out dollars
Were the most likely to recommend the chain to friends
Reported significantly greater emotional attachment to the chain
Were the most likely to say they chose the store over other establishments whenever possible
Those are impactful metrics that have bottom-line value for businesses.
