Details

Domain Name Length Counts

2010-03-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

When choosing a domain, or even a show/company/product name, keep in mind this fun fact: most popular domain name length worldwide is 11 characters (example.com is 7). So if yours is close to that it's good news for systems that recognize domain names and do things to make them more usable to users. For example, Twitter shortens URLs over a certain length by default, which does in part pass on Google "link juice" but not as effectively as an un-shortened URL (domain length data from yafla.com).

Change, then What

2010-02-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

-Hannah Arendt

In 2 years, when things have changed even more then they have already, will today's vanguard be the old establishment resisting further change? Might be good to keep your eye on the future, even as the present becomes what yesterday's future was.

Is The Game Really Changing?

2010-02-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

The game only appears to be changing. Network Executives aren't screwing things up any more than they always have screwed things up...it's just that we hear about it more now because of technology. When Cinema discovered that Television was taking over people's relaxation hours, the entire industry scrambled like morons to find its way. In the end, making movies evolved on it's own and all they needed to do was keep working.

It's the same with the internet. Together, we have to make shows and projects the same way we always have. We have to unify business, technological, and theatrically creative minds and point them all in the direction we want our projects to go

(from Darren Ewing).

Social Media Marketing Explained in 61 Words

2010-01-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

...you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a Facebook page

(from WebInkNow).

Connection Can't Be Detached

2009-12-29T11:22:00.000-08:00

We are all faced with clients that want to know ROI, that don't "get it" and I know that when I'm looking to educate these types of clients, every piece of data and every quote that supports my point of view comes in handy. So, here are the pieces I think will help me, and hopefully you in future decks and meetings:

Simply put, digital brand experiences create customers.
Our findings lead us to believe that marketers need to be dramatic...and not simply settle for awareness or impressions: engagement = affinity

(from she dorks out). Off the cuff, by the way, and without fully thinking it through I'll say this: "engagement" is often another word for connecting with an audience, and "affinity" is a way to keep at arms length the idea of people liking you (or your brand). In both cases they seem to be accepted ways to gloss the audience's desire for human connection, and intimacy. While I understand the corporate reluctance to embrace things like intimacy, moving people emotionally can't really be done from a distance. Someone must take that risk, and if companies aren't willing to, perhaps they just choose to hire someone who will and hope it will still work.

Web Video: An Intermediate Case

2009-11-24T13:51:00.001-08:00

Video on the Web is an intermediate case between broadcast video (TV) and page-based Web navigation. Preliminary data indicates that most Web videos should be short - typically 2–10 minutes - indicating a usage velocity between Web and TV, but closer to the Web's velocity of one user decision every 10–120 seconds.

When you develop content, services, and designs for the Web, remember that this medium has a much faster velocity than older media, whether print or TV

(from Velocity of Media Consumption: TV vs. the Web).

Yahoo Abandons More Than 20 Millions Pageviews (Closing Geocities)

2009-10-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

5 years ago I paid 1/3 of my bills with a 1 page Geocities site. Today Yahoo takes more than 4.8 million geocities pages offline permanently. That's about 11.9 million visitors a month, who made about 21,420,000 pageviews a month, now getting some sort of 404 or "we removed this page" site instead of what they expected (data from Quantcast and Alexa).

Yahoo didn't make enough money with Geocities to keep it online because they didn't know how to, because they didn't try.

5 years ago Yahoo stock was trading near $35, today it closed at $16.87, losing 2% of it's value today. It's a shame to see a company misstep as badly and often as Yahoo has, and I'll miss the opportunity to make money with them through their Geocities sites.

19% of US Internet Users Tweet

2009-10-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

Twitter and Facebook have been to big too ignore for sometime now. While estimating pageviews of sites is inexact, some numbers help reveal just how big these 2 sites have become.

The army of Twitterers is growing quickly, per the Pew Internet Project report released today. The report found that 19 percent of all U.S. Internet users now use either Twitter or smaller services, such as Yammer, to share social updates. This was up 8 percent from the 11 percent who used such services in April 2009

(from Adweek). Things change quickly, and twitter is a big part of the audience, as is Facebook:

In the US Facebook accounts for, now get this, 1 in every 4 or 25% of our total pageviews

(from Drake Direct). Drake bases his numbers on compete.com data, which can be imperfect. Alexa estimates Facebook got about 4.5% of global pageviews in the last month. Suffice to say, big enough to be important to anyone doing anything online.

Search Comments on YouTube in Real-Time

2009-10-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

YouTube's real-time search of comments may compete, someday, with Twitter for in-the-moment audience reaction to moving pictures.

Comments Search moves into Test Tube, the place where our engineers and developers test out new features and gather data and feedback before pushing them out to a wider audience. This feature allows you to search the comments people are making on YouTube in real time. The full comment will appear on a continuously updated results page, and 'trending topics' indicates the hottest topics of conversation on YouTube at that particular moment

(from YouTube Blog).

TV Windows Collapsing

2009-10-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

Traditional television viewing patterns are collapsing and the industry needs to quickly figure out how to profit in a world where people can watch TV shows anytime, anywhere, NBC Universal's TV chief said.

The challenge now was drawing viewers to network shows at designated times when people can either record those shows or turn to online outlets to watch at their convenience, said Marc Graboff, Chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios.

Networks need to figure out how to make their content more immediately available in a lucrative way, such as by charging viewers to stream episodes shortly after airing - narrowing viewing 'windows' - or providing them to multiple outlets, he told an industry conference.

The biggest U.S. networks are currently struggling with declining advertising revenue, dwindling viewership and rising production coasts [sic]

(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).

Hollywood's Present is Online

2009-10-09T00:47:00.000-07:00

Many talk of online video as a wave of the future; they are flat wrong. It is now, right now. I know a government employee that 4 months ago discarded their TV and now watches only online. I know a lawyer that uses Tivo as an on-demand that in combination with online TV and DVDs doesn't watch broadcast, cable or satelite live, ever. I have never owned a television, yet I watched three shows tonight and also appear on TV from time to time. Anyone who thinks online entertainment is a future, and denies it is a growing present tense event, is either not paying attention, about to lose their job or both. All things are more online and mobile than ever before and they are right now (I write this post on my phone; please forgive any spelling mistakes ;-).

"Hollywood's future is in Bannen's hands" by Lisa Marks may be over selling a single show as some sort of vangard. I love that this show is being made and am excited to see it, but Sony is not first with web content that costs more than $1 million (Seth MacFarlane, Burger King and YouTube did that over a year ago) and the CEO of Sony Pictures (parent of Crackle) said he "...doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet... Period." This show may be Sony's late, half-supported-by-the-studio attempt to be in the now.

A month online is equal to a year offline, and to not learn from history a from a year ago (like 12 years online) is to retrace steps taken by many before, and risk being obselete before you've begun. In 3 months, the generation referred to as digital natives will be the largest and most important demographic for entertainment. This demographic is already watching, listening and experiencing their entertainment where and when they want to and media companies are only just now pretending this will happen? That is like acting as if the wheel or fire might catch on when it's already the year 1500. People's careers and livelyhoods as employees and stockholders are suffering because of antiquated thinking (yes, 3 month old is antiquated). Get present or be irrelevant; there is no half way.

Scarcity and Social Media

2009-09-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

In social media and in fact online in general many are trying to create scarcity as they would in the off-line world. This is a mistake that will, in pretty much every case, lead to destroying businesses and brands.

Seth Godin has written some interesting Principles of Scarcity and points out that with scarcity the ...danger is that you can kill long-term loyalty. You can annoy your best customers. You can spread negative word of mouth. You can train people to hate your scarcity strategy.

Signal to Noise Ratio for Social Networks and Social Media

2009-09-21T21:30:00.001-07:00

The more the recipient wants the message you are sending, the better. As with all online communications, it is more important to send what they want to read/view/hear than to send what you want them to read/view/hear. This is by and large what being a good producer is in the offline world as well.

Typically a email list with a growing subscriber base only sends messages that make people want to subscribe and/or stay subscribers. It is the same with social network profiles. A social networking profile only communicates with its friends/connections/people-who-opted-in-and-gave-you-permission-to-communicate-with-them when the communication will make them want to remain your friend/connection or become your friend/connection.

I've heard people refer to doing an "email blast" to get the word out about something, or to try to connect with key bloggers or online influencers.

As Seth Godin said:

Don't bother engaging with customers unless you are prepared to invest enough to exceed expectations and delight them. It's better to do nothing at all.

In social networking, your friends/connections/anyone you communicate with are your customers.

Twitter Analysis Tools

2009-08-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

Here are three useful sites for analyzing your tweets/twitter accounts:

TweetStats - reveals frequency and timing of your twitter behavior
TwitterFriends - examines how and who you connect with and converse with on twitter
TweetEffect - shows what impact your tweets had on followers starting or stopping following you

These ought to be only used to organize the underlying realities of what you tweet. Getting lost in the numbers and graphs and forgetting it is about communication and people will not be good.

Distribution Is Part of the Show

2009-06-16T01:41:00.000-07:00

Your plan for getting your work out there has to be as original as the actual work, perhaps even more so. The work has to create a totally new market. There's no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one

(from gapingvoid). The old school way to put it is: The Medium is the Message. Perhaps I can help you figure out how to get your work out there /plug.

Viewership Growing On YouTube

2009-06-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

Basically, we took the top 100 all-time most-viewed "mid-tail" or "new media studio" content creators (i.e. Next New Networks, Howcast Studios, The Wall Street Journal's videos etc.) and looked at their viewership growth. The results? Over the past six months, publishers saw their daily average views grow by an average of 4.98% per month. Although there have been several recent failures in the space (60Frames, ManiaTV), overall the sector is growing in terms of viewership

(emphasis added, from TubeMogul's blog).

Social Media Salaries

2009-06-13T12:02:00.000-07:00

There are no surprises, but I can tell you that consulting fees range from $20 an hour to $400 an hour, salaries range from $24,000 a year to $170,000, and the difference is based almost entirely on your non-social media employment background

(from Social Media Headhunter).

Social Network Dominance by County

2009-06-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

While now some months old, there is a map of the world with the dominant social network for each country shown. Might be useful as a starting point if trying to reach a given country's audience.

Page Rank Is Not What It Once Was

2009-06-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

Google's pagerank is shown most commonly by the green bar in the Google toolbar in your browser (if you have it installed). While Wikipedia says this ...numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet... denotes a site's importance in the eyes of Google, this is no longer true. Pagerank is now a deceptive, essentially useless number leading many to make bad decisions (e.g., buying ads on sites based on pagerank, when foreseeable results will actually disappoint).

There was a time, a few years ago, that Google's pagerank was a great indicator of how much traffic Google would send to a site. After that traffic got to the site, the site would have a chance to connect with, or sell things to those visitors. That is no longer the case, pagerank is no longer very important and like so many things online and in life, numbers aren't everything.

In all things, the shorthand of a number seems convenient, but is likely useless for revealing the most important truths (e.g., "I love my parents 72" is fairly meaningless).

Printed Newspapers Are Yesterday's News

2009-06-13T11:28:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show pointed out online news is faster than print. This is part of what makes people prefer online news, and by extension, makes advertisers shift their focus and spend from print to online.

Market Value of Content Hard to Assess

2009-06-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

There are new untried ways to make money with moving pictures with synchronized sound, and lots of other ways it's currently being done, but I think who pays for the means of distribution and how is interesting and worth noticing. Substitute "moving pictures with synchronized sound" for "journalism" in this quote and interesting ideas form.

So long as our information economy treats journalism as overhead, valuable only as advertising-bait, then our economy will be glutted with free, low-value journalism. We won't be able to study specific indications of value - in terms of price or quality - so long as it's produced as a subsidized commodity. The Web merely revealed that truth

(from The fire that frees the seed).

Various forms of infrastructure are needed for video/film/TV distribution, for example:

physical DVDs and shipping
movie theatres and their films which can cost >$30,000.00 per print
cables/wires/wireless systems that carry the internet to you
etc.

The costs of the moving picture distribution infrastructure are covered directly and indirectly in different ways.

Movies in theatres can have the physical reels of film paid for by the distribution company which often affords to pay for the prints by getting a part of the box office receipts (charging the viewer directly). The final stages of distribution, like the projector and screen/speakers, are paid for by the exhibitors that get part of the box office but make most of their money through concessions (candy, popcorn, drinks).
Broadcast television through the air has its first stages of distribution paid for in the early stages by the station (transmitter and licensing fees) which it sells ads to pay for. The final stage, as with online video, is a viewing device usually owned by the viewer.
Video uploaded online, say to YouTube, has its hosting and first stages of distribution paid for by a web site (an internet company) like Google, which often sells ads to make the money to afford do so. The final stages are covered by the telecommunication companies (which charge the viewer) and finally the display device which is usually owned by the viewer.
On-Demand, be it iTunes-like or through a cable or satellite company, is paid for by charging the viewer directly.

This is not a complete list. All of these models can change, with the last two changing most quickly today (internet ad supported and on-demand).

Paid-Content for Newspapers Not a Solution

2009-06-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

Quality journalism is expensive, and to the extent that it provides a public good, we will find ways to fund it. But top-heavy, poorly run, arrogant-to-the-bitter-end media companies? This is their crisis, not our crisis, and it certainly isn't about journalism.

Newspapers that are turning to paywall plans today are gambling on a risky revenue stream that even the experts aren't predicting will provide a replacement to their lost advertising revenues (their biggest financial problem is the rapid decline in advertising rates, not the slow decline in print circulation). It's a "well, we've got to do SOMETHING" solution, not a logical, do-the-math solution.

They don't get it. They don't want to get it. And in many cases, they're literally paid not to get it

(from The newspaper suicide pact).

Google In Upfront Marketplace

2009-05-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Google is now buying and selling TV ads in a big way.

Google TV Ads has begun booking upfront deals with major agencies and advertisers for the first time.

Marketers are committing upwards of seven figures to buy ads through the TV spot buying system in the year ahead, with agencies like Deutsch and Saatchi & Saatchi and advertisers like Coldwell Banker coming to the table, said Mike Steib, director of Google TV Ads.

Steib explained that marketers can still buy or tweak their campaigns daily; they're simply agreeing to use Google TV Ads throughout the year.

What our customers told us if the planner can put us into the upfront plan, then the buyers are free to utilize the platform in the way they works best for them, he said.

They can also buy ads on YouTube now using Google TV Ads

(from The Hollywood Reporter).

Legal Terms of Video Hosting Services

2009-05-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

...I was researching a video hosting service that would match my requirements of:
Which rights of my work I would have to give away,

what usage rights I could assign to my viewers,

what level of privacy I could expect in terms of disclosure of my data,

and where a service had its legal residence in case of a dispute.
I’ve decided to collect and extend my findings in this post in the hope that it can help others in choosing their preferred video hosting service

(from Owned? Legal terms of video hosting services compared). Since these can change at any time, double check, and consider speaking with a lawyer; caveat producer.

Numbers and the Net

2009-05-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

But the great thing about the internet is that it allows every minor interest, every academic specialism, every rare and refined hobby a place, so the numbers really don't matter in the same way as the old media

(Emphasis added, from Codecs and Capability).