Total BS

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.

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.

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 get the impression that every new startup’s business model is based on the assumption that they’ll get enough traffic to become profitable via advertising. In fact, Facebook’s whole multi-billion dollar valuation seems to be based on the assumption that they’re going to become the next Google. Note to world, there’s only one Google. Even Yahoo and Microsoft are screwing it up. If advertising is your business model and you’re not an ad server, ad network or technology/media power, then you don’t have a business model.People still hate adsContextual ads doesn’t buy you love. They’re more tolerable, because they’re more useful. But as they become more ubiquitous, they’ll become less effective, simply because of the general dilution that occurs when the entire category shifts to the same model.There’s just one GoogleAdSense as an advertising platform means your advertising-based business model is just as good as your competitor’s, and no better. Google has a continuously evolving ad serving algorithm that helps them adapt and innovate. Unless you also have a continuously evolving advertising technology, I highly doubt your business will be buoyed by advertising dominance, unless…You have massive reachEven dumb ads work fine. Ask the major TV networks, ask ClearChannel. This is where efficiencies of scale can pay off, in that if you’re able to leverage the efficiency of contextual ads and get it to scale with massive traffic then you can have a fraction of the relative “traffic” that HBO gets and still be as profitable. However, sites that get this much traffic are of a select few. The long tail means 99% of everyone out there still sucks. So if you’re one of the 99% of the tail that sucks, you probably shouldn’t be banking on advertising building your millions.

The Facebook platform is pretty frigging smart. Actually, the notion of creating an open environment in order to extend and accommodate to your user’s world is fairly obvious, but kudos to them for pushing through with it. It seems like as soon as sites get successful, they get greedy and build walled gardens to prevent users from escaping. Well, at least Facebook realizes that they are not the center of their users’ world. It’d really only take one misstep (though it’d have to be a huge misstep), for their users to ditch FB and head off to another network. But the value add provided by the FB platform gives more reason for people to stick around. It also dilutes the impact of a misstep (although it’ll end up diluting the fervor of the diehards, but alas that’s the price of success and getting big).I’d still like to see FB open up more and adopt Open ID and making it easier to interface with FB outside of facebook.com, but this is a good first step.Now when I say Facebook, the new Google, I’m referring to the platform environment, the dangers of the open API. This is somewhat of a trojan horse godsend for a lot of these smaller SNSes like Pickspal or Flixter, because in a snap of a finger, suddenly the big, hairy issue of reaching network effects has been seemingly solved. From a traffic and user engagement standpoint, it’s great. I would guess that the business goal for most of these guys is to get exposure and try to bring back traffic back onto its main site. Theoretically this would also enable them to focus on site features that are more contextual to the behavior and purpose of the site and offload the broader social networking basics to FB.In the short to medium term, I think this is fine. But eventually there’s going to be conflicts of interests for some of these guys (I’m going to call them mini-SNSes to try to avoid ambiguous pronouns). A lot of the mini-SNS’ brand engagement is going to happen on FB, so it’s going to dilute the mini-SNS’ brand image and user loyalty. Getting on the FB platform may help these mini-SNSes get a million users quicker, but it’s not going to make it any easier to keep those million users loyal.I’m also curious about how it impacts the profit model. All everyone has at this point is just advertising. And I have a thought or two about that in general that I’ve been meaning to share, but that’s neither here nor there. But if 95% of a mini-SNS’ user engagement happens on FB, that might help the mini-SNS’ user and engagement numbers, but it’s not going to bring revenue in. And FB isn’t going to allow these mini-SNSes to reap advertising dollars on FB either. But I’ve only thought about it for about 5 minutes, so who knows. I would guess (or more likely hope) these guys have a much better plan moving forward.My last point is really the whole reason for why I wrote this post. I guess I could’ve been more brief, but whatever. Google rolled out features to Google Maps earlier this year that killed off about 600 little Google-Map API based startups. This is the danger of relying completely on another’s API. If the sugar mama decides to cut you off, you get screwed. And if the sugar mama decides to move into your space, you get killed. The platform is great for the users, all the buzz is well-deserved (even though it’s not like they cured cancer, it’s just an obviously solid business decision. This is the problem when everyone keeps making stupid decisions, it makes the good decisions seem like mind-blowing, world-changing decisions.), and for FB, this is going to catapult their growth even moreso. But I can’t help but think that a year from now, we’ll be seeing a Google Maps redux.

…too much cash, no $@#!ing clue.What could you do with the $1-1.6 billion they have earmarked for Facebook or Bebo or the next hot SNS?Steps 1-5:Fix Yahoo! 360 so it doesn’t suck (or just start over): $25 million (I’m being very generous with figures here)Pay the top 100,000 MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/etc. users $1,000 each to hang on the new and improved Yahoo! 360. (total: $100 million)Pay each of those users $10 for each new friend they bring over, up to 90 million friends: $900 million.Massive marketing/PR for general promotion and to handle all the bribery bad press: $200 millionCharitable donations, just for the heck of it: $375 millionStep 6: ???Step 7: ProfitGrand total spent: $1.6 billion, give or take several hundred million dollars on tactical variations.

Why does MySpace.com now require horizontal scrolling? Did they start designing their pages for 1280px widths? As you can see below, a good 70% of what I can see is either ad or useless space. Until I get a widescreen LCD, I’m on 1024×768 like most Internet users. This is probably just a temporary goof up, but it’s indicative of MS’ general sloppiness.Also, MySpace released a new profile editor feature which is swell. But it boggles my mind that they wouldn’t have put any effort into creating a nice design in the before and after scenarios, see below:What the heck is up with the retro blue look? And tiled picture wallpaper went out with flying toasters and windows 3.1. WTF! Couldn’t they even have tried to appear like they gave a crap? So this is what profiles are supposed to aspire to look like?Just sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Clearly more work went into the Die Hard promotional elements than anything on the site. Regardless of MS’ growth stats, I’m convinced that MS is primed for the taking. And not even by facebook, but by some other “up and comer.”

I like Guy Kawasaki. I’ve read some of his books. Generally, I think they’re well written and helpful. However when I heard the rumors for Truemors (haha, get it?), I wasn’t sold on the idea. I didn’t see a clear purpose for it. Now that I’ve seen it in live, I still don’t know what it’s for. Originally, I thought it was going to be solely entertainment news focused. And while entertainment represents a fairly large chunk of activity, it’s not the focus. Actually, there’s just a general lack of focus. Already, there’s a fair amount of spam, or what I’d consider spam, on it. Unless they get a quick hold on it, I can see it devolving into a mess. I get a feeling that uncov, my new favorite blog is going to have a field day with it.

On the heels of the news that the DoD is blocking access to a variety of social networks and ugc media sites, I’d just like to bring up a point of surprise that the dod hasn’t already created its own social network. I’ve felt that the military is a social context in which a self-sustaining sns would work, sort of like facebook. I’m sure there’s some difference in that soldiers probably have more of a desire to connect outside of their walls versus college students, but there’s still value in keeping in touch with each other as they’re shuffled to various parts of the world and when they eventually leave the military. There’s plenty of commerce opportunities too, from classifieds to networking. Plus, as the owners, the DoD would, obviously, have more control over what happens. There’s an issue of openness and user privacy that needs to be addressed. But I think they’re surmountable issues.Now all they’ve done is ensure that some second rate SNS or ugc media site is gonna clean up.

I’d lie if I said the thought of this didn’t cross my mind at least once over the past couple weeks. But ultimately there’s really no value. Niches’ core values comes from its distinctiveness and identifiability, e.g., I am a college student, I am a professional, I am a dog lover, I am a biker, etc. and we all have different needs.On the flip side, if being laid off defines you as a person to some degree, I’d suggest a shrink, not an SNS. Plus, layoffs don’t last forever, and if it did, I certainly wouldn’t be tooling around with SNSes the rest of my life. With that said, the thought behind it is appreciable I guess. But it’d serve better as a group within a more broadly defined job SNS like LinkedIn (if LinkedIn had groups that is).Now if the economy tanks in a hurry, and we hit a new depression… well the whole depression thing would suck, but I still don’t think the site would fly. But what the heck, the cost of entry is cheap.