Healthy Blog Reviews

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to watch AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong be interviewed by Slate’s Jacob Weisberg at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Innovation Days event during Internet Week in New York City. It was interesting to listen to Armstrong because he is an engaging guy. He comes off as very passionate about AOL and its efforts to re-establish itself as a leading brand in the Internet space. He talks about all of the things that people want to hear when it comes to the Internet and content generation. It just so happens that this talk comes on the heels of AOL’s announcement that it is hiring hundreds of journalists to add to its current 500 staffers on the content side plus the 40,000 free lancers that are out there creating content about who knows what and God knows what. FastCompany wonders aloud what all this means for ‘journalism’ Words like these, from AOL’s president of global advertising Jeff Levick don’t help: “We have insights into our audience, and can produce content they want, which leads to engagement, which leads to what advertisers want.” Content that ultimately snares the consumer, by hook or by crook, for the benefit of the advertisers? Doesn’t sound like journalism to us. As with all things on the Internet, this story / announcement is ultimately about revenue. You can talk all day about hiring journalists. Armstrong during his talk proclaimed that the average new hire has 8.8 years of experience as a journalist. He also spoke about how they are sending people into the field to cover stories like a, gulp, real news organization would. This all sounds great but ultimately is this just a way to generate what Armstrong deemed “super networks” of content that will look to corral consumers into a pen and so that advertisers can whack this ‘captive audience’ with marketing messages? The question is who wins and loses in this. Pure journalists are crying foul because the quality of this content is being questioned regardless of what credentials are being thrown around in talks. Marketers probably don’t care so much about quality as long as the audience is there. AdAge reported on the announcement yesterday that David Eun, recently appointed president of AOL’s media and studios division claimed “Our mission at this company is to be the world’s largest producer of high-quality content, period,” he said. “The content driving our traffic is home-grown, and 80% of it is now produced by folks on the AOL payroll.” All of this talk and gathering of ‘content weaponry’ by AOL and competitors like Yahoo with its purchase of Associated Content and the independent player Demand Media makes for some interesting decisions coming up for marketers and advertisers. The push is clearly to generate content that will be used to fill the void left by failing newspapers and traditional media as a whole. Who will be the winners and losers? Depends on which camp you want to believe. For the mass content producers the winner is both the content starved consumer and the advertisers that want to reach them. There are plenty of people, however, who are bemoaning this movement away from traditional journalism as the beginning of the end of quality and integrity first for journalism as a whole. If Mr. Armstrong has anything to say about it one big winner will be AOL who is looking to get into the “great big pile of cash that is moving online”. When you hear it like that you wonder what is first: journalism or just plain old capitalism. What do you think?

Tags: aol, armstrong, audience, consumer, content, Jacob Weisberg, opportunity, the-advertisers, traffic
Posted June 10, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

I don’t get very excited about many things that are touted as innovation in the Internet marketing space. Why? It’s because everyone wants to hype the newest and freshest updates to their service as a “game changer!” or some other form of hyperbole that always easily out runs the reality of the service. In other words, I am tired of being hyped (am I the only one here on this one?). This time, however, I am pretty interested in the Google Moderator integration into YouTube that is being introduced. At first glance this looks like it gives the world of video a new level of interactivity that can actually create a better experience for the end user. How about that! The YouTube blog tells us more: That’s why, starting today, we’ve integrated the ability to use Google Moderator into every single YouTube channel. Moderator is a versatile, social platform that allows you to solicit ideas or questions on any topic, and have the community vote the best ones up to the top in real-time. We previously used Google Moderator as part of our interviews with President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Here’s how it works: You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog. Nice. Features like this help everyone from a content development standpoint because now you can get feedback and input from your users. As any good marketer will tell you, the longer (or dare I say, more intelligently) you can engage your customer or prospect the more likely they are to see you in the kind of light you wish: the kind that makes them want your product or service. Here’s an example of the YouTube and Google Moderator that come from the post and features the New York Times’ Nick Kristof. So what’s your take? Is this a real “game-changer” or is it just another hyped feature that will gather dust in the future?

Tags: audience, customer, google-moderator, hype-the-newest, internet, Internet Marketing, kind, president, President Obama, time, video
Posted May 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Microsoft is premiering two social-network-enabled phones designed to appeal to younger users (aged 14-34) who already live on social networks. And they know just where to reach them—even before the product launch, Microsoft has set up Pages on Facebook for the Kin One and Kin Two. Naturally, appealing to your audience where they already are is a great way to generate buzz for a new product. With more than a month to go before the official launch, according to MediaPost , “the Facebook page supports more than 100,000 Fans.” I’m not sure what they mean by “supports” (can support?), since I only see 210 fans (Likers?) among the three pages for the Kin ( the Kin main page, the Kin One and the Kin Two ), including any duplicates. However, the overall point remains true—and the product itself is still weeks away from launch. Says MediaPost: Facebook Fans are important — but Mich Mathews, chief marketing officer at Microsoft, told attendees at the exclusive 40-exec invitation-only PTTOW event in Dana Point, Calif. that when brands play in social, it’s just as important to follow the writing on the wall, whether it’s positive or nagative. [sic] Marketing experts who gathered for the two-day event agree that it has become a continual learning process to integrate social media into campaigns. And it’s even tougher when the audience becomes consumers ranging in age between 14 and 34. This age group tends to discuss likes and dislikes online more freely. They talk about brands whether or not those brands have official sites and pages on Facebook or YouTube. Drumming up early interest and making sure you have a place to host conversations about your product is always a good idea. Microsoft is using their Facebook page to tout reviews around the web as well—which also enables followers to bring the conversation onto the Kin’s Facebook page, instead of Gizmodo or Techcrunch, et al. Meanwhile, as FB’s chief revenue officer, Mike Murphy, puts it, the fan pages offer another advantage: they’re “a sustainable asset even after the campaign ends.” The pages give the brand a home for their interactions with consumers. But it’s important that the brands don’t forget or neglect those interactions, too What do you think? What other ways can brands host the conversations and find fans in social media?

Tags: among-the-three, audience, interactions, live-on-social, media, product, Social Media, writing
Posted April 30, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

It’s been just recently that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google both gave their own versions of how the idea of privacy on the Internet was so 20th century. Facebook has faced the music of some serious backlash to their “everything is public stance and just in the past week there has been a considerable amount of controversy surrounding Google Buzz and its own privacy concerns. Google got the official word that they pushed the envelope just far enough to generate the first class action lawsuit about the service by some circling buzzard or a lawyer (Get it? Buzz-ard.) Since Facebook has been under the microscope longer they are getting more advanced in their “return to privacy”. The Facebook blog announced yesterday that there are new controls that are much more granular as it relates to how you share information through Facebook applications. There are now granular privacy options that enable you to personalize the audience for each piece of content you share through applications. Simply select the group of people you want to share with from the drop-down menu near the lock icon on the Publisher on your home page or profile, or the prompts that appear when you share from applications or Facebook Connect websites. Got something that might make your friends laugh but would appall those annoying family members you are connected to on Facebook? Below is a look at how you can keep the information “regionalized’ by sharing only with those that would laugh rather than faint at your exploits. This is definitely a step in a better direction as it applies to controlling your information that you share on Facebook. Of course, the vast majority of Facebook users never read the Facebook blog, pay little attention to notifications and are likely to not even know that this option exists. Don’t think that the Facebook crew isn’t banking on this. They want everything to be as shared as possible. It makes their service more marketable to advertisers and the like. This looks like a classic case of Facebook doing a little CYA so they can say that they offer these privacy options but they can’t control if a user actually uses them. Of course, if that user is just oblivious to the options that’s all the better for Facebook. It’s the “Hey, we warned them!” defense and it’ll probably work. The blog continues These new controls give you the power to determine who sees the content you post to Facebook through any third-party application, whether it is on Facebook.com, your desktop, mobile phone, or from a Facebook Connect website or service. Seesmic, a desktop application from which you can view and update your News Feed, will soon offer extended privacy options so you can specify audiences for each update you make from the application, such as uploaded photos and status updates. The one line in the post that really was interesting was the following in which the word “may” plays a prominent role. You may also start to see additional prompts in applications asking if you’d like to set privacy for certain pieces of content that differ from your default setting. Whether you choose to keep your default setting on everything you share or change the audience for different pieces of content, the choice is yours. I wonder how long it takes the Facebook employees to get these posts through legal? I know I am a skeptic on these issues but I think it is the safe way to go. The more that is public for Facebook and Google the better so they need to ride the fine line of making sure options exist but not much more. These are going to be fine print matters in T&C’s and know how much everyone pays attention to those in this day and age. These privacy matters aren’t going to go away and the cat and mouse game between these social networks and their users has a long way to go to be sorted out. Since, in many cases, the two sides are diametrically opposed this will be an interesting battle.

Tags: application, audience, default, desktop, facebook, friends, internet, music, news, power, publisher, since-facebook
Posted February 18, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media