I’ve been impressed by Amazon this past year. If only I’d bought their stock back in the beginning of the year, but alas. But through their backend web services, such as S3 and EC2, they’re clearly branching out in ways that go beyond their core offering as an online retailer, but have the potential to pay off in a big way in the future, if they’re able to aggregate everything and connect it back to their products and services database. I’m also impressed by some of their higher visibility efforts, such as their DRM free music download store. So when I heard that they were also making an effort to a new sheen to ebooks, I figured, well why not? Who better? Well, after seeing this quick comparison, game over. Amazon’s product is broken and a complete disappointment.I’d start off simply with the design, I’m not sure if that gizmodo link has those readers displayed to scale, but regardless, the Kindle is clearly a rookie effort by a company that has had no experience in designing people-friendly real world products. A website is one thing, a physical item another (which by the way, I know Amazon gets much kudos with their website design, but I think the way they organize and filter their products is and has always been total garbage). Anyway, it’s humongous, it’s unnecessarily jagged, and it looks like a pocket protector’s best friend.More importantly though, for a company that’s been crucial in pushing Apple to open up their own music formats, I’m appalled at how much restrictions there are to using the Kindle. The EVDO is great. Everything else sucks. You have to pay to view your own files? Seriously? On top of the 400 bones they expect you to plunk down for this? That’s it. Game over. I don’t even have to go into the additional charges to subscribe to blogs and RSS or the fact that you can’t view PDFs on it. I’m still stuck on the fact that Amazon somehow turned the reading rainbow into some bizarro time-share nightmare.What a disaster.
We have now hit a point in time in which advertising is positioned as a value-add, not to marketers, but to users. I can’t say I’m not intrigued by the concept, if only to see if people will buy the shtick or see through it as total BS (ah yes, my first BS-related pun ever).Facebook notes:
Advertising doesn’t have to be about interrupting what you’re doing, but getting the right information about the purchases you make when you want it.
Much appreciated, I guess. And it makes perfect logical sense. This is why the contextual Google ads are such a success. But it fits better on Google, because “searching” has a much more natural bridge to buying. “Socializing,” however, doesn’t have that. Consequently, the ad model feels unnaturally shoehorned into Facebook. Never have I visited Facebook with a product or purchase intent in mind. Not to say it won’t work - at worst, it’ll provide better results compared to the randomizer ads they put out now - but the opportunities for it to work will be much more limited compared to Google, IMO.Also on a separate note, there’s been some recent buzz about Facebook replacing Yahoo as part of the “big 3,” along with Google and Microsoft. That’s the most retarded thing I’ve heard this week. And anyone who thinks so, is by extension, a moron. Facebook gets to be in the big 3 when it stops having its traffic quintupled by Yahoo or when its real market cap hits $37B+, not when internet geeks play chutes and ladders with imaginary numbers.
I already knew that Amazon uses cookie history to affect the recommendations it shows you on its homepage. But this was the first time I’d seen it in effect so quickly… Literally a minute after I’d visited Wharton’s home page.
ESPN’s featured a “Fan Favorites” section on espn.com for several months now, I think. It used to be that I’d often see a pretty witty comment highlighted in their “Featured Comment.” Occasionally racy, but usually appropriately snarky. However, I wonder if ABC’s been tightening up the reins, as I’ve been noticing more and more that the featured comments are bland. For example, this latest incredible insight:
Thanks “fans.” You sound just like the broadcasters now.
Gmail has upped the ante by offering IMAP access. At least for me. It’s probable that this is inconsequential for most people, but this is something I’ve been hoping for a very long time now. Lack of IMAP was the major reason I held off on making gmail my primary email service.This also ups the ante on Yahoo and Microsoft, both of whom offer only limited pop3 access (Yahoo, if you pay. Hotmail if you use Windows Mail Live or pay.). Again, for the common user, not a big deal. But for the hardcore user, IMAP is pretty huge.
So way back in the day, I noted that closed messaging was retarded and it’d make more sense for an SNS to align with a major email provider, or vice versa to gain/steal new users. Fmail is a Facebook app sort of gives you a retarded stepchild glimpse of this execution, except that I would never use it due to security concerns and general uselessness. The point is not to simply embed an email system as a separate entity to a closed messaging system, but to replace it completely. (Through no fault of the application’s developers, as they’re just doing their thing. It seems fine for what it’s supposed to do.)Previously Facebook noted that you can now send messages to non-Facebook users by sending it to their email address. That’s like a half-step in the right direction, except it’s inconvenient for the non-user since they have to click on a link to get the message. It’s sort of like if you called a person but wouldn’t talk to them until they came over to your house to pick up on the other line. Thanks, but no thanks, you jerk.But if they would ingrain the email service as an integral part of the messaging system it’s a win-win for everyone. SNS gets a foothold with a larger audience base, increased user interaction numbers, and more advertising revenue sharing opportunities, while the email provider, e.g., Yahoo, Microsoft, Google gets the hot SNS interaction they’ve all been clamoring and offering billions of dollars for, not to mention a very good foot in the door to steal new users, and additional user data to fatten their search intelligence (which is all they really want in the end), and the SNS/email user doesn’t have random messages from various friends coming from various directions. Om Malik touched on this when he asked if email was the ultimate social environment. Oh, I’m sure there’s sharing issues that get in the way, i.e., how to share advertising revenue. But it just seems like it makes perfect sense. Which is why it’ll probably never happen.
Bill Simmons wrote something this past Friday which made me reflect. someone asked, “Can you tell me why it is necessary for all the networks to have like 12-20 people on their pregame shows?” and Simmons responds:
“You know how everyone always wonders why networks make so many bad decisions and ignore common sense so often? Well, the problem is every network has too many executives, and when you have a lot of executives, you have a lot of meetings, and if you have a lot of meetings, those same executives feel obligated to come up with ideas for those meetings just because they don’t want the head boss to say, “Gee, that was weird, Bob didn’t come up with a single idea in today’s meeting.”That leads to people feeling obligated to throw out bad ideas because a bad idea is better than not having ideas at all. And there are times when everyone in the room talks themselves into a bad idea — mainly because they couldn’t think of any other ideas — and once the bad idea springs into motion, everyone starts working on it and eventually talks themselves into the idea.”
I’ve never been a fan of large brainstorming meetings. The larger the meeting, the more likely I am to mentally disengage from it.I understand the “noble” goal of large meetings is to throw out all sorts of crap and see what sticks and hope that whatever’s out on the table will inspire others to build upon it. Because simple arithmetic would tell you that the more smart people you have in a room, the smarter the room collectively gets. However, this rarely happens. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I’ve never seen it happen. Like Bill Simmons so comically describes above, I’ve seen bad ideas turn into terrible ideas, I’ve seen good ideas turn into ok ideas but I’ve never seen good ideas turn into great ideas.My perspective is that great ideas never come from large meetings, because great ideas require continuous iteration and dialogue that you just can’t get in a large meeting. I do believe that good ideas can can result from these meetings, because good ideas can be conceived independently and be acknowledged as such. But then a lot of the struggle comes in fighting to keep the good idea, good, and not hodge-podged with any bad ideas. Ultimately, it ends up being counterproductive and fairly frustrating.Everything great has been born out of the vision and work kickstarted by a couple or a few people. I’m making that statement without any facts to back it up. I can, because I feel like it. But for name-dropping sake I’m going to throw out Google, Microsoft and Batman. Occasionally, greatness might be born from one genius, but for the rest of us, we usually require some help. I’m not sure if I’m in the minority on this, but I don’t know why more people/companies haven’t realized and acted upon this. My guess is that it’s mostly a logistics and politics thing.
Approach a random person in a supermarket, in a church, in a club. You get 5 seconds to make an impression. In that 5 seconds, you can be confident, funny, interesting, mysterious, compelling and win your target’s interest or you can be boring, uninspiring, awkward, boorish, stupid and lose your target’s interest, or every once in a while, you can offer just enough to not really engage nor disengage your target… ostensibly, this is limbo. Either way, it only means you’re not buried yet, and you still have an uphill battle to fight.Unfortunately, limbo is where most people end up. Fortunately, when you’re engaging with people on a personal basis, it’s a lot easier to make this ground up. Generally, people are willing to put in more effort and working it out and finding a common ground. Because the potential reward is high and relative barrier to engagement is low.Unfortunately, limbo is where most ads end up. Unfortunately, when you’re engaging with people on non-personal basis, it’s a lot more difficult to make this ground up. Generally, people are only willing to put in the effort to work it out if they have a directly vested interest - basically it’s like two mercenaries making a deal.I’m not saying anything insightful here. It’s basic. And I’m sure that everyone in the industry realizes this on a intellectual level.However something gets lost in translation in reality. If I’ve seen one shoe company ad with crazy CGI and an athlete doing unrealistic feats I’ve seen them all. If I’ve seen one aspirational credit card company ad I’ve seen them all (MasterCard’s initial campaign was brilliant and is still clearly the most resonant, but with Visa & Amex ripping off the tone, it maybe time for MC to change the game moving forwards). And if I’ve seen one pharmaceutical ad with more airtime devoted to reading the important safety information than the benefits of the drug itself, I’ve probably seen them all.This is pretty much akin to all the guys who approach the knockout dime lounging in the club with “Hi, my name is X. How are you?” “Thank you very much. Next!“Why advertisers would think it’d be any different in a situation where they have even less ability to calibrate to their target’s needs and desires? I don’t know. Some people just don’t get it.Like most marketers, I’m wary of tying sales and revenue metrics directly to marketing/advertising campaigns, but I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Perhaps instead of killing innovation, it’ll actually root out bland advertising for what it is - marginally impotent.
Entering the Conversation: Audience-Generated Content is the title of a white paper I co-wrote with a colleague, Arch Dumenigo, with special contributions from Jason Snyder and Jedd Davis, a lifetime ago… the chart data’s from July, but I think the writing was finished back in April or May 2006. I had a lot of fun writing this at the time. I think my favorite part was coming up with a title. Let’s just say the code names and working titles were much better than what it officially landed as. But the white paper was basically a cheatsheet full of background information to inform certain clients about the changing digital landscape and bring them up to speed with what was going on with the web2.0 world, particularly audience generated content. I thought I’d take a quick look back on it to see if I’d just been drinking the kool-aid or whether it still made sense.The consumer engagement model… the thought behind it was good… we had a heckuva time with that cloud diagram, however. That was all my doing, I’ll take the blame. I think after several iterations I stopped caring and conceded that it made sense. In retrospect, it’s a bloody disaster. I don’t know what the heck is going on in that diagram. But the thinking behind it is still solid. Advertising still fails to successfully engage consumers in true conversations… by design. Which was fine back in the day when every advertiser were shouting down from the clouds at their markets, but once one of them starts trying to get chummy on a personal level, then to some degree everyone needs to get chummy. It’s an arms race. And I think consumer goods companies and marketers have done a pretty good job in trying to engage the consumer on their level. Although most of the time the strategy and the execution behind it is terrible and just basically ham-handed advertising in disguise. But I give them credit for trying and at least “getting” it in a Dilbert sort of way. But don’t get me wrong, advertising still serves a very important purpose. It’ll never go away, despite the naysayers. And I don’t think the paper is arguing for that. But generally, it’s good to mix it up. Rule of thumb: everything is good in moderation.The MySpace section… I can’t say I was ever a huge fan of MySpace page advertising, and anyone who’s been following along will know that I think MySpace is a colossal piece of crap - the web’s largest adware application. But adware’s quite profitable even though it’s about as appealing as goatse. So kudos to their billions of dollars. Anyway, I think the points all still apply. I spend zero time on MySpace, so I can’t speak to its adworthiness, but according to the MySpace kool-aid, it’s still far and away the most popular social networking site on the net, so anyone advertising there would do well to follow the suggested best practices. I couldn’t let a discussion about MySpace go without commenting on the puke-worthy design, so I’m most happy with bullet point 4. Advertisers… If it looks like it was designed by a color-blind toddler, it probably was. Stop wasting our time.In retrospect, there’s not much to argue with here. There’s a lot more facts and background research than I remembered. I can’t for the life of me figure out why it took so long to get out of the door then. But the more qualitative aspects of the paper still ring true I believe. There’s still work left to be done. I may personally be sick of the term “web2.0,” and there’s much rumbling in the tech blogosphere that seems to echo that sentiment and wants to move onto the next big thing. Momentum and excitement seems to have all but dissipated. But “web2.0″ is just starting to hook onto the mainstream. And large swaths of the population - if my parents are any indication - still have no idea what “web2.0″ is. Of course, maybe I’m just sick of the label. No self-respecting non-geek refers to flickr or facebook as “web2.0.” Same as no one referred to amazon or ebay as “web1.0.” Note to advertisers and geeks: do not reference “web2.0″ in any mass-market facing communications. Otherwise, you deserve to get smacked by a cold fish. But, back to point, there’s still much work to do in getting the basic tenets, qualities and executions of web2.0 implemented in a manner that’s seamless, useful and frankly… good.
I do my best thinking after 2am. Sometimes I do my only thinking after 2am. On some sense, this is somewhat frustrating, as it’s created a never-ending cycle of sleep deprivation. On another sense, as I’m writing down thoughts for a work concept, I can live with it… I just need a healthier food source at this time of night… and a sledgehammer in the morning for my alarm.
