Overclocked

You should not judge the latest Wired magazine by its cover (though that probably can’t hurt)…

The Clive Thompson-Fred Vogelstein one-two punch on conversational marketing is absolutely game-changing. For anyone wishing to dig deeper on this, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s Naked Conversations is the fount of all knowledge on this subject.

The bottom line for marketers and communicators: More content = unalloyed good. And you can’t go halfway on the Web; either you decide to be open and transparent or you’re not (although there is something to be said for the Steve Jobs model).

We’ll probably still need press releases for low-information consumers who get their news filtered through television and the papers. But there is no reason you can’t unpack the message for people on the Web, letting people consume as much information as they want to consume about your brand. Soon you will no longer have consumers but evangelists.

An interesting note: Microsoft’s PR firm committed an oopsie by sending their detailed file on Fred Vogelstein… to Fred Vogelstein. (Yeah… unreal.) And surprisingly, Vogelstein did not set out to sandbag Redmond in his article, producing a mostly upbeat piece until he slipped that point in at the end of the piece. It shows the tension between the openness of blogging coexisting with the message control of PR firms keeping detailed files on reporters and their lines of questioning.

Rex Hammock makes the case why no one should freak out over Twitter.

I’ll happily admit that I’m on the other side of this particular social disconnect. I get the Internet. I get blogs (or at least I think I do). But I fully understand that these are mature / tapped out media. Updating my status every fifteen minutes and/or texting my buddies is something I just don’t do. (Heck, I even hate using Google Calendar.) This makes me very self-conscious about my own early adopter credentials, seeing as I’m not even 30 yet.

I don’t do any of these things because they seem like a lot of work — for very little payoff. I don’t know if very many of the young ‘uns feel the same way or not.

To get mainstream adoption (particularly among folks my age or older), all of these status updates / social bookmarking / lifestream tools could use a layer of passivity built in. Which means I don’t have to tag, upload to Flickr, upload to Facebook, Twitter in, etc. to use them; just analyze my clickstream and inbound mail to build patterns for me. One of the concepts that intrigued me at SXSW was the idea of passively multiplayer games — comparing my activity to that of others through an objective look at clickstream data.

Just as Rex notes, there will be business applications to Twitter beyond the initial silliness we’re seeing now. When that happens, the real power behind these tools won’t be in forcing users to update their status, but building systems that will do it for them. I’ve been using Attention Trust’s clickstream data to analyze my browsing habits for a while, telling me how many hours a week I’m online, or how much time I spend doing email or reading blogs. Facebook’s news feed is another great auto-discovery tool, altering me to new groups and interesting people on the network. Auto-tagging would be great for a CRM platform; the thought is that all inbound email could be tagged based on the prevalence of statistically anomalous terms. A tag cloud could tell you what your customers are saying right now before you even read their mail. The clear benefit: it’s objective where normal tagging is editorially biased.

This bit from Mark Zuckerberg’s interview in the WSJ is really getting me going:

In fact, the success of Facebook may well underscore a major shift in the way we gather information, a trend that Mr. Zuckerberg picked up early on. He describes a class he took at Harvard called Rome of Augustus: “For the final exam, we had to learn the historical significance of something like 500 pieces of art from that period. Having not really read that stuff, I was in a lot of trouble, spending my time building Facebook instead of studying.”

Right before the final, Mr. Zuckerberg went to the course Web site, downloaded all the images and made a new site with a page for each image, along with a box to add comments. Then he forwarded the site’s link to the class list. Within an hour or two, a bunch of his classmates visited the site and filled out all the information about the photos. Mr. Zuckerberg went back and “kind of absorbed it all,” eventually getting an A in the class. He believes that the grades on that final were much higher than they have ever been.

“By taking the understanding that all the individuals have and pooling that knowledge together, you get a better set of knowledge,” he explains, which perhaps is what Facebook is all about. “That’s kind of what we are doing here, but with ‘What’s going on in the world with these people that I care about?’”

Is this cheating? Or is it a mass technology-enabled study group? And does it matter?

My wife and I are expecting two girls in the next few weeks. And I can’t help but think that school is going to be a radically different experience for them than it was for me. Will Wikipedia be accepted as an authoritative source in term papers? (Is this already happening?) Why use textbooks, when the stuff that’s available online is probably 1) just as accurate, in the aggregate, and 2) much, much, much more comprehensive. Also: won’t the exclusivity of Harvard get diluted if lectures can be put online (as I believe MIT and Berkeley are already doing?).

Moreover, absorbing rote knowledge won’t be much of an individual challenge anymore. Looking at Zuckerberg’s example, students seem more than happy to put competition aside to enhance the knowledge of the group. Looking forward, I see an exercise where a class is asked to build an in-class wiki on an obscure subject. Students are judged on the overall quality of the article, and also their individual contributions (how many times did you contribute? were your contributions of high quality?). That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The key difference is that arriving at a common kernel of knowledge will be much less the end goal, and much more of a jumping off point to the next level. After all, much of the stuff I used to have to go to the library for (particularly in middle school and high school) is now on Wikipedia. Why should teachers expend as much time and effort assigning and grading 30 virtually identical papers on the French Revolution, when a much more complete understanding can be arrived at via a wiki. If you wanted to challenge their individual knowledge, students could then be given (personalized? computer-generated?) assignments on more advanced or comparative subjects leveraging the class’s common knowledge base.

And the kids will get this stuff. They are the original “early adopters” because they aren’t burdened by crappy old technology.

Voice your opinion on Web 2.0’s most inscrutable technology trend. Is Twitter here to stay or is the flash mob dispersing?

Was this just a SXSW phenomenon? Is it sustainable?

Are the first 10.

Things aren’t quite that dire for this blog. But it’s probably no secret that traffic here isn’t through the roof. SXSW coverage aside, lately I’ve been spending most of my time on my political blog and Hugh Hewitt’s, not to mention the small matter of my day job. And it’s reflected in the number of people that come here on a regular basis.

And, incredibly, I’m cool with that. Because I’m discovering that your most important readers are the diehard early adopters.

Tech blogs are fundamentally different than political blogs. Sure, both need great content. But a tech blog won’t go stale if you’re not covering the controversy of the day; more often than not, the focus is on products and how-tos which have relevance beyond the day they were written. And though those trends evolve quickly, the analysis is valid until someone changes their product or it’s superseded by something better. That can take months.

So, my post on the Blackberry and Google Apps may be becoming something of a definitive record on the subject, if this Jason Calacanis post is to be believed.

Moreso than political blogs, search and RSS are the key drivers on tech blogs which gives them a longer shelf life. Already this blog has built a decent-sized RSS audience that will return when I do post something new. RSS makes a semi-dormant blog eminently discoverable. And if I’m troubleshooting a tech problem, more often than not my search will lead me to a blog post from someone else who had the same problem, with solutions outlined in the comments. Oftentimes, these posts are months to years old, but they’re still relevant. As such, whenever I have a problem and/or have found a solution, I see it as a public service to document it in a post that someone can Google it. Moreso than on a political site when you’re commenting on the issue of the day, I view this as an archival exercise. Maybe someone will come back months from now and find my SXSW posts useful.

And despite the pathetic traffic to this blog, a number of people I talked to in person were able to find my SXSW play-by-play just fine, without me pointing it to them. And if you can’t influence that immediate circle, who can you influence?

As promised, here is a rundown of the good folks in the room who blogged our panel yesterday.

Roving Sheila: “It was so nice to see a congenial bunch of wonks who were not trying to draw blood and were quite cordial. We need more of that these days.”

Fixin’ Supper has a great near-transcription.

Web Teacher also live blogged.

Wired says the Internet can’t make you President.

I’m sitting on a quick (30 minute) session on mobile. I’ll be heading back to D.C. tonight.

Just finished my panel on net politics and it was one of the better ones I’ve been involved with. It was ideologically balanced with myself and Mark SooHoo (McCain) for the Republicans and Texas State Rep. Mark Strama (the moderator) and Clay Johnson (Blue State Digital/Obama) for the Dems. Strama has a very interesting story. He was an Internet entrepreneur turned politician who probably has the most technically sophisticated approach to field organization I’ve ever seen from a local candidate. I’ll post links from any coverage of the event.

One general observation about this conference and others. Conference attendees are always the perfect stereotype for the demographic being represented. Whether it’s techies, conservatives, or sales guys… this is always true.

Austin is a very cool town but probably has the worst designed convention center I’ve ever been in.

11:37 — I’m now in a panel on “After Bust 2.0.” MUCH more crowded than the first panel of the day so I’m sitting on the floor in back.
11:40 — Gina Bianchini of Ning and panel say a shakeout is probably coming, but it doesn’t involved public markets so it won’t be as bad. It’s fundamentally different if a private investor loses money instead of the NASDAQ crashing.
11:44 — Two-way media like blogs kill bad ideas early on. So no more selling pet food over the Internet. But still do we need 600 digg and del.icio.us clones?
11:45 — WiFi is VERY slow.
11:46 — Web2.0 is lower scale than Web1.0 but that’s not exactly what venture investors want to hear. The crash won’t be as bad but the peak won’t be as high.
11:47 — It’s easier to fund things that work (duh) (i.e. once something has 2 million users). Secondary rounds of financing are bigger and make sense.
11:49 — Bianchini: It’s just as hard to build a small business as it is to build a big business. The shift from “not proven” to “proven” is getting a lot shorter. “This is a great time to be an entrepreneur.” Venture firms are quicker to jump on stuff. Do NOT go to a venture firm and ask for $5 million to prototype something. You have to be lean and cost-effective.
11:51 — In my corner here: 7 Macs, 1 PC (me).
11:53 — One way to start a business. Go back to your failed business plan from ‘99 and try it again.
11:55 — Bianchini: Don’t go chasing conventional wisdom. In the first bust it was B2B. The ones that stayed B2C (selling handbags) put their heads down and survived the crash. Trust your gut. Don’t build your business to look cool to VCs, build it around the consumer. VCs will eventually come along.
11:58 — Discovery Channel producer talks about how to apply Web 2.0 to existing offline companies. ABC News is getting innovative. USA Today is getting very Digg-like. Will their users nav to that? Interesting tidbit is that a lot of this new content isn’t indexable by Google, representing a view within the company that this doesn’t represent their brand.
12:01 — Don’t get distracted by the technology audience.
12:03 — In technology failure is not rewarded, but if you fail you are viewed as contributing positively to the ecosystem. A lot of the companies we really admire now were founded in 2001, 2002, 2003. Flickr, Dogster, etc. It was driven by passion not economic concerns.
12:04 — “Speaking of Dogster…” starts off a questioner from Dogster. What’s making things expensive is salary inflation — same problem as Bust 1.0.
12:09 — Google is very profitable because of search. Beyond contextual ads, it’s very, very, very hard to monetize based on ads. CNet probably has the best non-Google model. Also Ajax is throwing out assumptions about pageviews (preach it!).
12:10 — Hottest market is video, but advertisers are skittish about content. People don’t want their ad seen next to a beheading video, which was a theme in the last panel I attended.
12:13 — A guy from Satisfaction (great company name) has a model that relies on putting a layer of play over a boring industry like customer service. I feel like I’m porting back to the Joi Ito/Justin Hall panel from yesterday…
12:18 — Bianchini: What’s fun about right now is that anyone with passion and an idea can get in on the action. Big industries constrained by legal departments and IT departments. The most important thing about right now is authenticity (I see this in politics too).
12:20 — A guy from Harvard Business Review on the panel is talking about porting over Web2.0 into their efforts. Harvard was considered the “voice of God.” USA Today redesign was a paradigm shift in media. When people first propose building Digg or Slashdot-like features on traditional sites, it scares the crap out of people. Once competitors adopt them, that’s fine. Bianchini: eBay was doing community 11 years ago. This is not new.
12:22 — Will average USA Today readers adopt the Digg model. (Netscape users didn’t.) Remember, USA Today as a brand is thoroughly average. You read it because it’s at your hotel room door in the morning.
12:27 — There’s a talk about outsourcing now. People bragging about “cheap engineers in Buenos Aires…” Don’t you want good engineers? Let’s break down a lot of this crap about someone in the Bay Area is better than someone outside.
12:30 — One guy from Burlington, VT survived the bust by migrating his dot-com to a web development shop. He asks if a particular industry is more bust-worthy?
12:31 — Answer: The market probably can’t support 15 more video sharing sites.

9:58 — The crowd at the Austin Convention Center has thinned out (that or lots of people are massively hung over) and people are filtering in for the film festival. A panel on independent video content is about to get underway here with Mike Pettis (Blip.tv), Violet Blue, Amanda Congdon, Nate Pagel (Podaddies), and Bre Pettis.
10:02 — 7,000,000,000 video streams last year.
10:03 — Different approaches to monetization — getting jobs as video bloggers, advertising on videos, and building your reputation first then monetizing.
10:05 — Young men (the early adopters) are not watching TV anymore. They’re watching video online, says Pagel. True, but they’re mostly gaming.
10:06 — Pagel: People are getting close to quitting their day jobs with video content.
10:07 — Apparently, Ze Frank has made an obscene amount of money selling virtual rubber duckies. For $250. It’s self-sponsorship. (I’m officially in the wrong business.)
10:09 — Hudack: Do you need an audience as big as Ze’s and to be as crazy as him to “sell rubber duckies.” I’m going to venture that the answer to that is yes.
10:13 — Is the sponsorship model more pure than advertising?
10:15 — When do you transition from indie media that people will want to donate money to to Big Media where brands will want to pay you? There’s no road map.
10:17 — Congdon: Brands sponsor my show. Monthly she does a web chat… users see a “plaque” of her thanking a sponsor. Doesn’t compromise the “Web 2.0ishness” of her site.
10:17 — Congdon: “My site on ABC News is such a mess.” That has 30 second pre-roll video. So she has control over her personal site.
10:19 — Hudack: Preroll video on one site killed 75% of traffic and it never recovered.
10:19 — General consensus that preroll is icky. Pagel: There are many different types of formats. It’s key to come up with stuff that is contextual.
10:21 — Hudack: They have seen a 50% dropoff for watching a postroll ads.
10:24 — Hudack: Brands are scared to death of user generated content. Blip matches brands with popular video blogs, like Dove with Amanda.
10:26 — Pagel: Popular video bloggers should contact advertisers who might be a good fit.
10:28 — A questioner is talking about user generated video that pimp products for free.
10:29 — Commercial advertisers are massively fearful of what is in your archives. On TV they rely on the networks as a filtering mechanism.
10:32 — Pagel prints an email on screen from the agency repping the Air Force. They don’t like UGC:

Hi Nate,

Thank you for reaching out to us. The Air Force has requested we do not run on UGC or social networking sites given content control and associated risks.

If you’d like us to meet we can, but I want to be upfront as this is a challenge or ours as we try to reach teens/young adults.

So they’re trying to reach young people, but can’t advertise on MySpace. Great.

10:34 — Question from the panel: What’s a GRP? There’s a cultural disconnect here…
10:35 — No one has a good video ad serving platform.
10:36 — As I’m blogging a panel about bloggers potentially embarrassing advertisers, the AdSense unit to the right is running an ad with Ann Coulter. The irony…
10:38 — Video CPMs range from $1.75 on MySpace up to $25.
10:38 — This panel is very ad driven. Amanda Congdon and Violet Blue haven’t said very much.
10:44 — You actually have the read to terms of service on whatever video sharing site you’re uploading to.
10:45 — If you have an ad you know will go viral, make sure there is a clickthrough action at the end to generate revenue.
10:47 — Blue (finally): Indie media can say things big media can’t.
10:48 — Video to make money is fundamentally different than video for art. There’s a tension there.
10:49 — Hudack: Advertisers haven’t asked for a change in content to advertise; they are sensitive to it. They are making a business decision about whether to associate their brand with a site.
10:52 — Hudack again warns against putting up a bad video for fear of scaring off big advertisers.
10:54 — switching to blackberry since battery is dying. CPC will eventually become the thing in video advertising but not yet since advertisers don’t get it.
10:55 — an old time video guy is asking a question. He’s produced lots of documentaries for networks. Nothing has happened to them beyond the network run - a testament to the lack of stickiness in traditional media.
10:59 — bottom line; sure people can make money from this but it won’t be a lot. Starving artists will always be among us.
11:01 — lots of advertisers don’t want clicks. They just want their logo there. But interactive enables you to measure beyond generic branding. Is it a paradigm
shift? Big agencies don’t care because its not enough of their budget.
11:05 — Congdon: build your brand before advertising b/c that will determine the nature of your advertising. Blue: we lead advertisers follow.