At least it seems to have happened to Rolling Stone. It could be a DNS server issue as Mashable notes, but it does look very similar to the generic hosting service page you get when your site in unpaid.
The site is now updated to an error message, but still no content. Being down for the full day won’t help with Web traffic for the magazine’s Website, which has steadily decreased over the last six months.
In what may be a sign of things to come, Inc. magazine is leaving its plush Greenwich Street digs in Manhattan (which includes one of the best views on the island), and hitting the virtual road – at least for the foreseeable future.
In what the magazine is promoting as “a little experiment” to see if an established business can become a virtual office, Mansueto Ventures (parent company to Inc. and Fast Company) is kicking its Inc. staffers to home or nearby hotels.
One wonders if the move is really “a little experiment” to see if a virtual news room can work; with an eye towards ridding themselves of what must be very expensive property in Wall Street. However, there is no word of Fast Company staffers making the move as well (they share the space).
Mansueto isn’t the only media owner conscious of high-figure “space” costs, which can no longer be offset by media revenues. Steve Forbes just unloaded Forbes iconic 5th street offices to NYU and the New York Times has been executing on sales-leaseback plans with its new New York Times building.
Although it puts a damper on desk side chats and media tours, fans of the Inc. (like myself) should root for the experiment to succeed. If they can’t make it outside New York, they can’t make it anywhere.
Live-blogging has become an important aspect of launching products and services at media events. The 1440-minute news cycle is influenced on a tweet-by-tweet basis and if you can maximize “live buzz” the chances of your news sticking around for more than a Hollywood-minute are pretty good.
Apple has mastered the craft of creating venues for live-blogging. They set up venues with stadium style seating and fast connections, while always saving the biggest piece of news for last. This creates the need to hang on every word, sentence and slide they present.
Despite Apple’s polish though; live-blogging has struggled to become enjoyable to follow for tech fanboys. In fact, mainstream publications like the New York Timesproved again yesterday that they don’t quite get what readers are looking for in a live-blog. Namely, speed and visuals.
That said, tech blogs used yesterday’s event as a coming out party to illustrate that they’ve come a long way since the live-blogging of 2006. Today, live-blogging produces several high-quality photos a minute and real-time updates. There were probably too many live-blogs to count yesterday, but I happened to stumble across a few of the best as Leo Laporte and Ustream managed to loose me with their inconsistent audio. Here’s my thoughts on the best:
#1: gdgt: Ryan Block kept my attention the best. His posts appeared to be faster than anyone else that I saw and picture updates were seamless. Or as Nick Bilton of the Times’ Bits Blog called their posting “like an Olympic diver; not even a splash.” It sounds like Ryan may have had the Rackspace hosting guys working a little overtime to make it happen.
#2: Gizmodo: Jason Chen and Brian Lam took the live-blogging on in tandem, which was unique. True to their nature their sarcasm was a little stronger than engadget’s or gdgt’s and their pictures were just about the same. However, it appeared that Gizmodo may have been better prepared for the lighting than engadget.
#3: engadget: Joshua Topolsky, who pals around with Jimmy Fallon in his spare time, did almost as well, although he did seem to lag behind Ryan on speed of posting information. He was on pace with posting pictures but they appeared to be of slightly less quality and darker than Gizmodo’s (may have been his angle). Topolsky stayed focused on bits of information and direct quotes from Jobs’ himself. Engadget’s servers also appeared to be less prepared as the site struggled with traffic.
One would have to be living deep under an enormous rock not to know that today Apple is launching its new product – the iPad. As the media continues to flood with buzz about the product launch, there are several key takeaways for businesses planning their next product launch:
1) Who are you again? – Part of the reason the Apple iPad is creating such a stir is that it’s attached to a major brand name. If the press and consumers already know about your company, they will be more eager to see what you do next. Building strong brand recognition should be a top priority in on-going business strategy.
2) Go big or go home – Although this may seem obvious, when launching a new product, be sure it is actually new. Offer your target market something completely unique that the industry has not yet seen or experienced.
3) Anything you can do, I can do better – Consumers are already able to read content on their laptops, mobile phones and e-readers, but those screens can be small. Apple is bringing to market a product that will enhance electronic reading with a large, sleek screen and agreements with newspapers and magazines to display their content on this new wider lay out. Why have something that only meets some of your needs, when you could have something that meets all?
4) X Marks the Spot – When blocking off a day on the calendar for a launch, be sure to do your homework. Find out what other stories and events are taking place that same day or week. For example, launching a product today, the same day as the Apple iPad announcement and the President’s State of the Union address would not be a good idea. Choose a date for your launch when the story will have the biggest impact.
5) Plant the seed – Want to make a splash on launch day? Let your top press targets know about the announcement in advance. Although the topic of embargoes is a heated debate amongst PR professionals and reporters, if a reporter is willing to honor an embargo, giving them time to research their story in advance of launch day is extremely beneficial. Highly informed, accurate news coverage is the best kind of coverage.
Disclosure: Racepoint works with Sony’s e-reader division.
Some waking from a coma this week might think the Apple Tablet is able to find the cure to cancer or create world peace due to all of the attention that it’s getting. There are articles popping up left and right telling us all about this new tablet, even though we still don’t have real confirmation that it exists. It’s overshadowing everything, including President Obama’s speech tomorrow – which seems to be a lot more important then Apple’s rumored new device. Has a gadget ever received so much attention before it was launched or confirmed?
Sure, the Apple Tablet sounds cool – I admit, it should be good for newspapers and magazines if it can provide them with a decent revenue model, but it’s not like people are going to need to purchase this product – it’s very much a luxury. First, it will likely be very expensive, just like all of Apple’s products. This means then a very small percentage of the population will actually purchase one. Second, is a tablet the right product for right now? People have been purchasing smaller mobile devices (smart phones), not larger ones. Since the Tablet won’t fit in your pocket, it simply replaces a laptop, or becomes another gadget for the living room.
I understand that people follow Apple’s every move, but this time it seems a bit overdone (how funny would it be if tomorrow’s announcement is about a completely different topic!) Can we please see the Tablet for what it really is: another device Apple wants us to purchase and add to our collection of gadgets so that we can post tweets and brag about which gadgets we have and how cool they are.
I’m not against the Tablet (although the constant talk is getting pretty old at this point), I’m just questioning how it can possible live up to the hype. If it was some other lesser known company that was developing it, there would be a lot of questions brought up instead of people drooling over the chance to see some photo-shopped picture of the device.
So let’s take a step back and see what the Tablet is all about before we credit it with changing the world.
Disclosure: Racepoint Group works with Sony’s eReader division.
I’ve written before about the need for press releases to evolve. Yes, the formal release that some folks still cling to may be dead – but there is a growing need for social or digital media releases that distribute multi-media information to consumers and media members.
At Racepoint Group we’ve been using PitchEngine for several of our clients who are interested in distributing announcements and news via a more social, cost-effective platform. The service has been good for the most part. The free service that PitchEngine offers, in it’s most basic form, distributes social media releases that live for 30 days. The use of this platform (which gets picked-up by Google News), in addition to a release going live and living on a corporate Website, has been a good mix for most companies.
PitchEngine allows you to add images and links to video to each social media release – in addition to making it easy to share on social networks. However, despite the growth of the service (they note 14,000 brands have created thousands of releases since it launched in October 2008 ), the ability to physically embed video and other multi-media files is still a challenge. The overall feeling you get is that the text is still more important than the visual – which in this day and age seems backwards.
This is where PressLift enters the equation. The new service and platform created by Drop.io - a New York-based, social, file-sharing service – will officially launch during Social Media Week in February. However the Beta or Meta version of the Website is now live at PressLift.com. PressLift aims to be the simplest and best way share multi-media with press and consumers – all of which will be easily embeddable.
While it doesn’t appear that PressLift, will offer a “free service” – its Drop.io creator Steve Greenwood noted recently that it would be competitively priced (although not subscription-based) – the paid service may be appealing to brands and digital-minded agencies who realize the need to address a better delivery mechanism for rich content.
Unlike PitchEngine’s customizable news rooms (paid service – ($35/mo or $400/yr for standard archiving/hosting for unlimited releases), which offers a slightly customized experience (Vanity URL’s often have numbers attached, video is hard to bring in); PressLift aims to create a real customized experience that offers a real sub-domain for brands (company.presslift.com).
In fact, one way to look at PressLift is as an “informational micro-site” rather than a press release or even a press room. One of PressLift’s promises is that creating a PressLift page “is as easy as creating a Facebook page.” Will the service deliver on its promises? Time will tell. We’ve begun to try out the service in its meta form and will have more to report back over the next couple weeks.
It didn’t take long for 2010 to produce its first acquisition in the social media space. Seesmic made news today by acquiring Ping.fm, the social network aggregator. Together the two services will now allow users to update 50 social networks using Seesmic+Ping.fm from email, chat, sms, Blackberry, Android, the Web, etc.
The acquisition is likely a sign of things to come this year as consolidation takes hold of the industry. Not only with services but also with agencies in the space (as Chris Brogan noted recently). The service consolidation in this case makes a lot of sense given the business value of simplifying social media use, especially for companies that are active in numerous social networks with their brand.
Start-ups in the space like Seesmic and Radian6, which address issues that corporations realize they must tackle with their “owned media strategy” in 2010, are poised for big years.
Ayelet Noff put up a very insightful post last week on the top five misconceptions about Social Media, which had a good answer to the “is social media only right for certain companies” question. Her answer: “Social media is right for every brand as long as the brand is able to find its target audience within a certain platform and converse/interact with it in an effective manner,” is what really got me excited about this announcement from Zipcar last week.
Yes, Zipcar is already a really, cool, consumer company. Look no further than the recent cover of Fortune. However, when we talk about finding the right social media channel to reach your customers / target audience, this is still great example.
Find available Zipcars on a map using their current location, favorite location, or any location
Reserve a Zipcar anytime, anywhere
Sort cars by time available, car type and model
View upcoming reservations
Get directions to their Zipcar
Easily locate their reserved Zipcar by telling it to honk its horn
Unlock and lock their Zipcar after scanning their Zipcard at the start of each reservation
Extend or cancel reservations on the go
Sounds like great value, but what makes it truly great as a business / marketing move is the stat which Scott Griffith, Zipcar’s chairman and CEO, was using in media interviews as well as the press release. In polling their user base, Zipcar uncovered that 25 percent had iPhones. Talk about a marketing / channel sweet spot! In addition, in an interview with Wired, their CTO noted:
“There are currently 15 million people within a block of a Zipcar service station and about 47 million iPhone customers,” he said. “We therefore estimate that our car sharing network could potentially increase to 32 million customers in years to come as a result of our new partnership and expansion into new markets.”
Zipcar is obviously on the leading edge of integrated marketing. With more than 23,000 fans on Facebook, past use of ’social experiments’ and a broad understanding of the power of their brand advocates, their use of an iPhone isn’t necessarily surprising. However, their understanding of the new channels available to reach their target audience, and the research that brands / agencies need to put into finding the right channels, should serve as a case study for other brands.
Earlier this week Advertising Age took a look at how PR heads are shifting towards the center of marketing departments. The role shift at top levels evidence of a larger shift for communications and PR as a whole. The media meltdown, combined with the explosion of social media, has served as the great equalizer for the PR and marketing / advertising industries.
Corporations no longer able to leverage “old media” to reach mass or niche audiences with messages are moving their budgets online to new media channels. Channels that are up for grabs in the agency world. And guess what? PR agencies have the early leg up on owning these channels.
PR leads marketing in the management of all social media communications channels.
In 51% of organizations, PR lead digital communications compared to 40.5% where marketing leads
PR is responsible for blogging at 49% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for blogging at 22% of all organizations. PR is responsible for social networking at 48% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for social networking at 27% of all organizations.
PR is responsible for micro-blogging at 52% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for micro-blogging at 22% of all organizations.
Capitalizing on the fact that social media is relationship-based, a top PR characteristic, and that we specialize in creating content, a big part of social media, it’s not that surprising.
However, a troubling stat caught my eye on Mashable earlier this week, given that PR and communications are leading the way with social media. An August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education found that 84% of professionals using social media – in a variety of fields – don’t currently measure the ROI of their social media programs.
RED FLAG. No wonder the head of the PRSA is calling out the entire industry to establish measurement standards – Fast. The fallout of Madison Avenue, combined with the digital media evolution, is a huge opportunity for the communications and PR industry. One opportunity that we better get right – with measurement. If we’ve learned one thing from our peers in online advertising, it’s that today, companies pay for measurable ROI. While Google may not have been recession proof, it’s successful because it efficiently provides and measures ROI with its search marketing services. If we hope to move corporate communications where we believe it belongs – into a key component of marketing’s media planning stage, we better make numbers (more than 3)a top priority.
Some folks I talk to still despise the “Silicon Alley” term to describe the New York technology scene. The connotation that New York City’s second fiddle, technology innovation only occurs in the “alleys” of the Flatiron District is outdated and inaccurate in their eyes. Others, obviously embrace what the Alley has become.
However, the question remains as we begin to come out of the downturn: Can New York City’s technology scene grow out from behind the “Valley’s” shadow? Could it even rival the the Valley’s leadership position as an innovation hub?
As others have mentioned – the Valley still appears to be shuttered, stuck in a cycle of hesitation, negativity and despair. There isn’t hard statistics to back this up, but everyone that has set foot in the Valley over the last several months seems to point out that the anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. The gloom, contagious.
The mood on the East Coast, although not overly bullish, seems to be better. The door appears to be open for New York City’s technology entrepreneurs to take a leadership position, along with some of the glow, from the Valley.
As Chris Dixon, a long-time personal investor and current co-founder of Hunch.com, notes – the New York City investor ecosystem is alive and well:
Union Square Ventures is one of the best VC’s in the country, with early stage investments in companies like Twitter and Etsy (that were followed on by top West Coast VCs at significant markups). Bessemer is an old firm that has a managed to stay relevant with investments in Yelp, Skype, and LinkedIn among others. There is also a new wave of scrappy Boston firms spending a lot of time in New York City – specifically Spark, General Catalyst, Flybridge, and Bain Ventures. First Round Capital out of Philadelphia is extremely active in early stage investing in New York.
However, as Chris alludes to with Union Square’s investment in Twitter, these VC’s may spend a lot of time in New York, but that’s not necessarily where they are investing. In fact, according to ChubbyBrain (via SAI), which aggregates investor data, only 10% of the $2 billion invested by New York venture firms in the first half of 2009 went to New York City-based startups. Where did the majority of their money go to? You guessed it – The Valley.
Maybe they also believe, like Marc Andreessen, that startups outside the Valley are typically 3-9 months behind? Whatever the case may be, one could strongly argue that this will have to change if New York City is ever to challenge the Valley as the leading tech hub.
According to an industry report from a year ago the Alley currently surpasses the Valley in hi-tech jobs. This is pretty remarkable given the fall in these jobs after the Web bubble burst and 9/11. Now it’s time to attract the best talent in the business. As Chris also notes, and Fred Wilson of Union Square also references, the scaling back of hedge funds and Wall Street firms should make it easier for New York tech firms to attract the top talent.
With top talent streaming in and still-private startups like Etsy, Thumbplay, TheLadders, Vibrant Media and Meetup all growing within the Alley – there is some definite hope in NYC challenging the Valley as the hub for technology innovation. The VC’s and the $$$ will likely follow. They usually do.
