By Ben Haber
As Barack Obama accepted the democratic nomination for president last night, other candidates were left wondering how this young, lesser-known candidate leaped above them and secured all of those votes.
Well, the answer might be social networking.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Obama and his staff relied on a social-networking site, www.my.barackobama.com, to help supporters find one another and to disperse the campaign’s messages to a broad audience. Most campaigns had access to the same technology and didn’t have anywhere near the online-success of Obama.”
Obama’s online success should come as a surprise to anyone, as his Facebook page alone has almost 1.5 million supporters. Obama has also leveraged mobile media, as he announced his vice president via text message. In fact, Obama has a presence on almost every social networking site including Twitter (where he has over 68,000 followers), YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and Digg.
Then through Obama’s home page, he has his own separate social networking site for his supporters, where people can get together and discuss issues, events, and other topics. If that doesn’t appear to someone, then they can turn to his blog, where there is a plethora of information about the campaign.
With this type of groundwork (which is so easy to do from a computer) it’s no wonder that he has so many young supporters, and may be on his way to the White House in 2009.
August 29th, 2008
By Kyle Austin
I took in the “How Net Content will be Monetized Round Table (Wedding Table) at Fortune Brainstorm: TECH this morning. Hosted by Fortune’sAdam Lashinsky the round table included Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony; Neil Ashe, President of CBS Interactive; Robert Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks and Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost.
Here are some of the excerpts from the round table:
Adam Lashinsky: Good morning, we are going to be talking about “Net Monetization.” This is not the format that we planned on doing for a breakfast round table (straight table facing the audience). We had so many people sign-up we decided we’d do something like a head table at a wedding with you being the guests. However, we’re not going to talk to you we are going to talk with you.
Robert Glaser, President & CEO of RealNetworks:
- 600 million in revue last year. 2/3 of monetization comes through consumer purchases. 1/3 is from net carriers.
- Our goal is to create a balance in revenue streams.
- You look at what Google does with only one revenue stream and may think we are taking the wrong route, but you have to diversify.
- Behavioral targeting is an major opportunity, but there doesn’t appear to be an Overture type idea out there that goes beyond search.
Greg Waldorf, CEO of eHarmony:
- eHarmony was founded 8 years ago to be a series match making site. It was a crazy idea at the time because the industry was dominated by the photo-clicking approach.
- We recently released Harris Interactive numbers, which found that 236 people marry each day (on average) through eHarmony.
- This has allowed the business to become very successful and over 200 million in revenues last year.
- Lashinsky - ”My best friend met his wife through eHarmony. He’s a serious guy, so I guess he needed a serious relationship site.”
- 96 - 97 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions.
- Match.com and ourselves are really the biggest players in the space.
- We want to keep a “happy” churn rate - given our goal to match couples in serious long-term relationships (which leads to them leaving site). Usually takes a couple of months for that to happen.
- You can’t just create great content first and then say we’ll figure out how to monetize it later. I think people have this belief that good content will easily translate into ad revenue and that is just not the case when you are looking at scale.
Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost:
- Joost was created in October of last year and has slightly under 1 million unique visitors.
- We have a revenue share model that goes back to content owners.
- We’ve really been the first online video destination to use the 30-second in-spot ad that is seen on TV.
- Music has been really hard to monetize on our site because its hard to understand interests in music to target relevant ads at users.
President of CBS Interactive:
- Earlier this year I was the CEO of CNET Networks and now I am the President of CBS Interactive after the close of our sale to the CBS Corporation.
- We reach the 8th largest Internet network in the world.
- 80 percent of business is ad supported through sponsorships or advertisements.
- About 20 percent of our business is in major countries in Europe.
- We’ve found that you can’t out grow your category. The growth of advertising revenue has grown across the Internet but there is a cap in how it can grow within certain markets on the Internet.
- We’ve made mistakes along the way. We never could monetize Webshots. We could sell certain sponsorships but not for each individual page view.
Disclosure: eHarmony is a client of the Racepoint Group
July 22nd, 2008
By Ben
In yet another lesson of be careful what you put on Facebook, one college student in Rhode Island found that a picture a friend uploaded from a Halloween party is going to cost him – two years.
Just two weeks after 20-year-old Joshua Lipton seriously injured a woman while drunk driving, he attended a Halloween party dressed in a prison uniform, and the words ‘jail bird’ written on the uniform in place of his name.
A friend at the party posted the picture onto Facebook, where all of Lipton’s friends, along with the prosecutor for his DUI case, could see it.
Jay Sullivan, the prosecutor involved in Lipton’s case, used the picture in court as evidence that Lipton was an “unrepentant partier” who “lived it up” while the female victim of the crash remained in the hospital. The judge at Lipton’s trial agreed with the prosecutor, and handed out a two-year prison sentence.
While the picture is not 100 percent responsible for Lipton’s 2-year sentence, Judge Sullivan did say that is affected the his decision: “I did feel that gave me some indication of how that young man was feeling a short time after a near-fatal accident, that he thought it was appropriate to joke and mock about the possibility of going to prison.”
While some may argue that Lipton got what was coming to him for seriously injuring the woman he crashed into, this also offers another opportunity for others to learn from this mistake. So next time you’re thinking about putting something that could be detrimental to yourself or someone else on a social network like Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube – don’t.
July 21st, 2008
By Kyle Austin
Tomorrow marks the kick-off of Fortune Brainstorm: TECH (AKA: David Kirkpatrick’s conference) in Half Moon Bay, California. Many in the industry believe that it will be the best technology conference of the year and with a speaker list that includes Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Nicholas Negroponte and even Neil Young (yes the musician) – who can argue.
Fortune has turned the conference circuit into big business and gives the conference major editorial billing thanks to Kirkpatrick’s influence over the magazine. Fortune’s special Tech issue, on newsstands now, takes a deep look at those that will be on hand at the conference. RaceTalk got a chance to sit down with Kirkpatrick late last week to preview the conference, chat broadly on the technology industry and discuss his upcoming book on Facebook.
RaceTalk: So is this the calm before the storm (Brainstorm: TECH)?
DK: It’s pretty calm. The problem we have now, so far (knock on wood, that it’s not people dropping out as speakers), are people who forgot to register and are now begging to come as attendees.
We have a PR person who says “Our CEO (of a fairly major tech company) wants to have an in-house PR handler come with him.” I’m thinking this guy (CEO), isn’t even a speaker and I look and he’s not even registered as an attendee.
It’s great though, they all want to come. They sign-up, then they back out and then they want to come again.
RaceTalk: Well it’s good that I got on the list early. I’m excited to take it all in next week. I’m really looking forward to your conversation with Nicholas Negroponte of One Laptop per Child and the “How Net Content will be Monetized” round table that eHarmony’s CEO Greg Waldorf will be on with Neil Ashe of CBS Interactive and Robert Glaser of RealNetworks.
DK: That’s great. Glad you’re going to be making it out.
RaceTalk: So, for your last “column” you asked everyone that was coming to Brainstorm: TECH to discuss their thoughts on the most exciting innovation in the technology space, what their biggest hope or fear for the future is / how tech relates to it and what should the top priority be for the next U.S. President. I was hoping you’d take a stab at answering your own questions for me?
DK: Did you see their answers?
RaceTalk: Yes, they had some great answers.
DK: I continue to think that social networking and social media at large is the biggest innovation over the last twelve months. The addition of automation to human communication has really occurred over the last five years but it has really been significantly augmented over the last 12 months.
Let me bring a little twist to that as well. Since so many of the Brainstorm: TECH attendees did say that the iPhone was the biggest innovation over the last twelve months, it also ties in. I think what you are seeing with the applications on the iPhone is a huge innovation. I’m sure more of those will be social applications that will incorporate location into the communication which they facilitate between people. Basically the iPhone 3G has three basic qualities: it’s 3G, it has GPS and it has applications – that are very easy to download. It’s the first time you’ve ever had a really easy way to get sophisticated applications on a mobile device, period. That is a huge leap forward from the first version of the iPhone, which only had a very constrained group of applications – or they were put on there illegally.
RaceTalk: I heard they sold 1 million last weekend, did you get one?
DK: I bet that is true, I got one.
Social networking, which will then be combined with the ability to put applications on mobile devices - In the new simple way that the iPhone 3G demonstrates – that is big. Social networking is different because the software makes connections for you (with other people) when it’s working in its highest level of sophistication – as it does on Facebook.
RaceTalk: What is your biggest hope for the world and how does technology fit into it?
DK: My biggest hope for the world is that the poor of the world, who are increasing their aspirations for a better standard of living, will find technology tools that will help them make a rapid transition from illiteracy, economic health and information deprivation. Technology will make a big difference there. Mobile technology and wireless technology are making a huge difference there already and are very promising.
RaceTalk: What should be the top priority for the next U.S. President? – That was another one of your questions.
DK: It was interesting - if you read my column – how many of those priorities sounded like they should be the top priority. It only makes you realize how many priorities have been abandoned or mishandled by our current administration.
I would say the single biggest priority is thinking through the integration of the U.S. with the rest of the world and conveying that understanding to the American people. I think the American people (In general), are really misinformed about the depth of their own economic integration with the rest of the planet – which is already real. However, most Americans deny or disregard it.
RaceTalk: Let’s get to your book. Can you tell us a little bit about it? It’s called the Facebook Effect from what I’ve read and aiming for September of 09’?
DK: That is a bit optimistic. I’m hoping to get it out in the fall of 09’. The book industry, its wheels turn slowly. Simon & Schuster is publishing it. Got the signed contract in hand – just got that yesterday – so that’s very exciting. It is going to look at the history of Facebook but the real intention is to explain what I started to describe earlier. I want to illustrate how there is a new kind of communication arising, as a result of what is popularly described as “Web 2.0” or “social media,” and that it is profoundly transformative.
It takes us beyond the era of email to something new. It is the new killer application for the Internet. The killer application up to now has been email and the Web. Social media uses the Web to create a much more sophisticated set of connections between people that allows a whole new set of things to happen in society between people; which I don’t think is yet fully appreciated. I think Facebook is the product or business that is most fully realizing that.
RaceTalk: I saw your one piece on Jeremy Burton and Serena software and how they are using Facebook for a collaborative R&D culture. Are there other ways you’ve seen so far in your research where companies are using Facebook to affect the bottom line? Different types of social networking?
DK: Social networking as a concept still goes against the grain of the impulses of most modern managers. For all the verbiage to the contrary, they are still oriented to the top-down hierarchal structure. Only the smartest companies are willing to experiment with the true empowerment that social media represents. I think you will start to see that companies are performing better when they empower employees with these new tools. Whether it’s Facebook or something else that makes it happen – I don’t know.
The single best example that I’ve seen on how Facebook creates fundamentally new opportunities for society was the demonstration in Columbia last year, where 4.8 million people went into the streets to protest FARC - in the largest demonstration in the history of the country. It happened one month to the day the first message was put on Facebook by a simple 30-something programmer who had the idea. He got it all started on Facebook by himself and it mushroomed into 4.8 million people in the streets one month later – and that’s largely due to the viral power of Facebook.
RaceTalk: Wow that’s interesting. So you also said that you’re going to take a look at the history of Facbook. So are Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg giving you carte blanche access to the company?
DK: I have total access and they are very much behind it and excited about it. It’s not their idea, it was my idea, but they are enthusiastically helping and participating.
RaceTalk: I was talking with Steve Levy a couple days ago and he’s pursuing a book on Google – will you be comparing notes on the access you’re getting?
DK: I’m sure I’ll get much better access.
RaceTalk: I’ve seen some of your latest columns on Microsoft and moving on after Gates’ retirement. It was interesting that you were taking the stance that Microsoft is still better positioned in the marketplace as a technology company then Google.
DK: I think Microsoft is a more successful well-rounded technology business then Google is. Google is a stock market phenomenon on one brilliantly managed business. But that business is not impervious to competition. Just like in all things, diversification is the best way to avoid risk. Google does not have a diversified risk portfolio. Microsoft does. Given the respective valuations, Microsoft is a far better risk for an investor (in my opinion) then Google. I think that Google is brilliantly managed company, managing a marketplace for advertising using search. They’ve done an extremely good job maintaining that.
However, I don’t think they have proven themselves to be a durable, continually innovative technology company - at least not yet. Microsoft has been challenged on the innovation front but they have succeeded in creating a wide variety of new successful businesses.
RaceTalk: I know we had talked about this awhile back, and your thought was “There is no way Microsoft is not going to get Yahoo!.” Do you still feel that way?
DK: I wouldn’t say there is no way. I would say they desperately want it and predicted they would get it. I wouldn’t’ say there is no way. Microsoft has mishandled the process so badly and it has been such a comedy of errors for Microsoft, Yahoo! and now Carl Ichan. I wouldn’t say anything is easy to foresee. They’re doing such a bad job managing this negotiation. Microsoft badly wants Yahoo!’s search and they need it.
RaceTalk: Out of all the people that are going out to Brainstorm: TECH, who are you most looking forward to running into or interviewing.
DK: I’m not interviewing him, because I generously passed him along to my bosses’ boss, but Neil Young is who I’m most excited about. John Huey, Editor-in-Chief at TIME, is interviewing him and he closes out the conference. You knew that right though?
RaceTalk: I think I knew that.
DK: Out of the ones I’m interviewing I’m excited for all of them: Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt and Nicholas Negroponte.
RaceTalk: Cool. So in general you are excited about Brainstorm: TECH and it sounds like you are planning to make this an annual thing?
DK: I think it is the best technology conference of the year and I think that will be proven true.
RaceTalk: Sounds like it’s well on its way. So you’re taking a leave when you get back for your book?
DK: Yes, I’m taking a leave August 1st.
RaceTalk: Well thanks for your time David, good luck next week and hopefully I run into you there.
DK: Thanks Kyle.
Disclaimer: One Laptop per Child and eHarmony are clients of the Racepoint Group.
July 20th, 2008
Four Months After he Announced His Departure from Newsweek - On Facebook - Steven Levy is WIRED for Sound
By Kyle Austin
Back in March, we broke news by confirming the rumors that Steven Levy was leaving Newsweek for Wired. Well, he actually broke the news by posting it on Facebook - we just happen to be his “friend.”
Four months later, after penning his final column for Newsweek last month, Levy is now working from his desk in Wired’s New York offices. We managed to steal his attention (for a few minutes at least) while he caught some air.
Racetalk: Steve you officially announced your move to Wired on March 21st – through Facebook no less – after more then 12 years at Newsweek. It was reported at the time that Wired wooed you with a huge book deal to go along with your move. What was the biggest decision behind your move?
SL: The book deal and the Wired job were independent. I had been thinking of doing a book about Google for a while and finally figured out how to do it. Around that time Newsweek offered buyouts to people who had been there a certain amount of years, and I qualified. I had been talking to Wired previously about making the move, and the timing seemed ideal. I had a great run at Newsweek, and now I’m looking forward to more long-form journalism.
RaceTalk: So you answered my next question. Google is the book project - Why?
SL: Google is a fascinating company and I hope I can explain why.
RaceTalk: Fort the most part – PR folks like myself didn’t waste our time bothering you at Newsweek unless we were going to connect you with Bill Gates or Steve Jobs – what will you be looking for from PR pros at your new job at Wired and what main beat will you be pursuing?
SL: If you didn’t contact me for that reason, you made a mistake (You contacted me on OLPC and I responded). I am lucky to have long-standing relationships with some significant figures in the industry but am always looking for up and comers — and just good stories in general. Basically my “beat” hasn’t changed — Wired is devoted to the range of subjects I covered at Newsweek — but I will have a chance to get deep into stories. I’m also doing a front of book column that’s more consumer oriented, so I welcome early news of breakthrough gadgets and stuff (I do mean early–I’ve got a longer lead time to deal with).
RaceTalk: You’ve contributed to Wired for more then a decade as a side job to your regular gig at Newsweek. Sounds like you’ll keep a similar role there?
SL: My job is a writer and my hope is simply to do great stories.
RaceTalk: I was always impressed by your ability to elevate technology stories for mainstream audiences and understood which technology stories had the potential for serious social impact. Do you think you will have to move away from covering those types of stories now that you are at a pub that is more targeted on tech specific issues?
SL: Well, take the “Future of Reading” story I did for Newsweek about the Kindle. Can’t imagine Wired wouldn’t want to do something similar.
RaceTalk: Where will you be based for your new gig? I know you have been spending more time in Silicon Valley but will you be making your residence there or will you still be working at large from your home office?
SL: I will be working out of Wired’s New York City office.
RaceTalk: What do you see as the biggest trend currently happening in consumer tech? Is it the touch-screen phenomenon that Apple has spawned or perhaps something larger like the transition towards greener cconsumer tech products?
SL: Everything, from multi-touch to social networking, stems from the increasing power and ubiquity of computation, storage and broadband. It just gets juicier.
RaceTalk: Finally, is just me or is it somewhat ironic that Newsweek has pegged Fake Steve Jobs (UPDATE: At press time Fake Steve Jobs is now Dan Lyons) to take your old beat after you literally trashed the MacBook Air in one of your final columns for the magazine? Should we look for journalistic revenge from Fake Steve?
SL: It’s just you.
RaceTalk: I tried.
July 15th, 2008
By Ben
We’ve heard about it for a while, but it appears that Facebook is now getting closer to launching its new profile design.
The new set-up will divide profiles into different tabs – one for the wall, info, photos, notes, etc., and appears ready to handle the additional content that’s on the site from the many applications that have been created. This new layout will hopefully give users added security measures. My personal hope is that we’ll be able to select entire tabs to be private, or parts of the limited profile.
Facebook really seems to have the leg up on MySpace when it comes to its ability to design a clean and user-friendly layout. This new profile should not only create the appearance of having more content on the site, but also enable Facebook to add more outside content to the site. Users are currently able to post articles, videos, etc. to their profiles, but it seems like this tab layout could be the beginning of users being able to monitor all of their communities through one source.
Supposedly, Facebook members can preview their new profile layout by going to www.new.facebook.com, but I have been unable to get through the site yet.
Are you a fan of the new design?
July 15th, 2008
