… of that “not accessing technology in any way” kind. Will be back in mid-July.
Can media companies learn from dating and poker sites?
June 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Most media companies are struggling mightily as they search for a business model in the web 2.0 world – a problem exasperated by the fact that may web 2.0 companies (Facebook, Twitter) are facing similar struggles themselves. While it’s clear that there is demand for various content and services, how to actually get paid enough to support them is a challenge. Which got me thinking about what these, and other, companies might be able to learn from dating and poker sites.
Why dating and poker you might ask? Well, what I find so interesting about both of them is that the very act of paying to participate in the service being provided (either everyone, or a select group of people) is absolutely crucial to the service being provided. In other words, the free versions are distinctly worse than the pay versions, simply because they are free, even if the rest of the functionality is the same. That’s seems like a compelling business model worth exploring to me – though I suppose I should explain a bit further.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: business · marketing · social media
Tagged: communities, dating, media, poker, web 2.0
Could media companies add a VIP “room” to their conversations?
June 4, 2009 · 1 Comment
I spend a lot of time reading the comments section in numerous articles, for one reason and one reason only – it’s kind of part of my job. I generally hate it, and find it a waste of time – as they are often riddled with inarticulate responses that have not been well thought out, and the tone is often so mean / combative. But every once in a while I find a comment section that really sings – and almost every time it’s on a relatively small site, with relatively few loyal, knowledgeable contributors.
So that got me thinking that conversations just don’t scale very well – and while I know some people will argue otherwise, I don’t think they ever will. Too many people simply leads to too much noise. But I started thinking about this again when Denise Shiffman pointed me towards the Newspaper economics action plan, as I challenged myself to come up with an “experiment” for them that might have a reasonable chance of making money.
One idea I settled on was that there might be potential in having a “VIP room” for conversations that people just might pay to “eavesdrop” on – with the “velvet rope” merely being value that comes from filtering. Then I realized VIP room analogy doesn’t REALLY work, as in the model I’m proposing they’re kind of wandering through the crowd on the main site, but if you pay for the VIP room they’re the only people you see. I know that sounds confusing. Let me explain what I mean.
→ 1 CommentCategories: social media
Tagged: business model, conversations, Newspapers, social media, VIP room
Index funds and stock market irrationality
June 3, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Stock markets are one of my favorite things to look at from a “wisdom of crowds vs. uniquely qualified minds” perspective. Over the last few decades the school of thought that supports the “efficient market hypothesis” (EMH) – all known news is accurately reflected in current stock prices, thus there is no way for active investors to do better without basically cheating – has increasingly gained steam. In turn, the advice being given to many people is that they should forget about things like actively managed mutual funds, buy a bunch of index funds and ETFs instead, and they will end up better off.
But what’s interesting here is that while the suggestion makes perfect sense from an individual perspective based on historical data, the more and more people that accept the rational EMH theory actually introduces an extraordinary amount of irrationality into the market, which naturally leads to these same people invalidating the EMH theory due to the support they are giving it, and active investment strategies making sense again. So by being “right”, it makes itself wrong. Let me try to explain this apparent contradiction.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: economics · investing
Dilbert Mashup – The ironic charge code problem
June 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment
You can see the original at www.dilbert.com.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: Dilbert Mash Ups
Tagged: Dilbert, mashup
Threadless: where ‘do no evil’ means don’t advertise
May 29, 2009 · 1 Comment
There’s a fantastic story on TechRadar today about “The Secret behind Threadless’ Success“. Like many other Web 2.0 success stories, the whole thing started as a hobby and almost accidently turned into a thriving business – with crowdsourcing shifting from something they were “unknowingly” doing to the center of their entire strategy. As co-founder Jake explained while taking a break from selling 100,000 shirts a month:
→ 1 CommentCategories: prosumerism · social media
Tagged: business model, crowdsourcing, prosumers, Threadless
1,000 Awesome Things on Twitter: TwitShirts (#872)
May 26, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Have to give props to my colleague Ian Da Silva for finding this, which is a blend of my two favorite research topics right now – Prosumerism (getting “customers” directly involved in the creation process) and Twitter – TwitShirts. If you opt in via the website, any of your wonderful tweets can be purchased as a t-shirt by other people that want to wear your thoughts on their sleeve, er, chest. If somebody buys it, you get $1 – and of course there is a handy Twitshirt tool you can drag into your toolbar to expediate your own purchases, if you so desire. Just a fun application for those that might want to give one of the people they follow the ultimate Re-Tweet… I’ll give my first shot at a twitshirtable tweet shortly. Be kind 
.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: prosumerism · social media
Tagged: 1000 Awesome Things on Twitter, twitshirt
1,000 Awesome Things on Twitter: The Naked Pizza Promotion (#295)
May 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment
If you start a new business, it is likely to fail – and one of the main reasons is that it can be so difficult (and expensive) for small upstarts to get the word out to enough people to make a real go of it. In turn, it’s always great to hear about newish companies that are finding a way to leverage tools like Twitter to reach their customers for free – and it’s even better when you can see some actual numbers behind the experiments. Naked Pizza – a New Orleans healthful Pizza shop that’s backed by Mark Cuban – is one such story, having tested a Twitter-exclusive promotion on April 23rd that led to no less than 15% of that day’s business. You can read all about it here.
It’s easy to lose sight of it, but the ability for companies large and small a like to reach out directly to customers – for free- is a rather transformational change to underlying marketing models. And companies like Naked Pizza that show just how powerful the platform can be is #295 of the things I find awesome about Twitter (and yes, I’m applying the numbers at random ).
→ Leave a CommentCategories: social media
Tagged: 1000 Awesome Things on Twitter, Naked Pizza
1,000 Awesome Things on Twitter: The Sports Guy Hops On Board (#726)
May 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment
In homage to the amazing success of 1,000 Awesome Things (great job Neil – and you were awesome on the panel at our conference two weeks ago!), I thought I’d start profiling 1,000 Awesome Things that are happening on Twitter as I continue to explore how different people, companies, and other organizations are using the service. In order to kick it off, I wanted to start with a recent and high profile (if you like entertaining sports writing) conversion – The Sports Guy deciding to hop on the Twitter train. Let me briefly explain why.
When I did a presentation on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, I opened with a simple question to the audience- “forced to choose between Twitter being a ‘useful application’ and being a ‘waste of time’, which one would you pick?”. The room was split roughly 2/3s useful, 1/3rd a waste of time (which made sense given the audience), but what was more interesting is that few could give a straight answer without any qualifiers – “I think it’s useful, but…” or “it seems like a waste of time, except…“. Few could really commit one way or the other. If I’d posed this question in April, and The Sports Guy had been in the audience, he certainly would have been in the latter group – and almost certainly wouldn’t have used a qualifier. He was very, very vocal in his belief that Twitter was a total waste of time.
→ Leave a CommentCategories: social media
Tagged: 1000 Awesome Things on Twitter, Sports Guy
Does Twitter lead to an increase or decrease in blog comments?
May 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment
The proper metrics for social media have always been difficult to pin down, but I think there’s been an interesting cycle that’s emerged over the last few years. Before twitter exploded in popularity, comment counts on blogs were often used as a crude measure of community engagement – the number of people willing to take the time to add something to a given discussion – augmenting simple view counts and link backs on the metrics sheet. As twitter has exploded in popularity, RT’s (re-tweets) and @replies have emerged as new indicators – the former having some similar properties to the “recommend to a friend” question so popular on consumer surveys, and the latter being somewhat similar to engaging in a conversation / making a comment.
One interesting piece of this in the very nature of community / engagement metrics shift a little bit – from being something within the “corporate boundaries” (i.e. on your site), versus out there in the Twittersphere (or some other ecosystem). But the big question I have – and I’d love to hear if anyone has some potential metrics on this – is simple: Does the rise of Twitter lead to more or less comments on people’s blogs?
Keep reading →
→ Leave a CommentCategories: prosumerism · social media
Tagged: blogs, comments, social media, twitter