One Year Strong!

Categories: RuminationsPosted on August 31st, 2006

This is going to be a personal post, which is rare for this blog. This weekend, I’ll be celebrating my one year wedding Anniversary!

This year I accomplished a handful of goals at work, hit some milestones in my career, and traveled more than any other year, 2005-2006 has been great to me.

The best thing has been coming home to my beautiful wife every evening. As a best friend, she’s supported me in everything I do, and even attended some geek events at my pressing.

I hope to pay her back, not just for going to geek events, but for the dinners, listening to me yammer, and all the times you’ve reminded me to take the trash out before the garbage truck comes. We’ll be heading to Lake Tahoe this weekend to celebrate our first Anniversary, staying in a quiet condo on North Shore. We’ll just unplug, unwind, wine, dine, relax, and enjoy.

Thanks Shel and Paula for the wishes! (Martin too!!!)Yes, we were compatible ever since we first met, and have felt like we were married for decades. In my mind, the ceremony was just a public formality. Shirley and I wish you and Paula a long and happy marriage, maybe, just maybe, we’ll invite you guys next year!

This weekend, I won’t be bringing a laptop, I won’t check email, and I won’t approve comments that wordpress doesn’t allow, this is one weekend the web can wait.

Update Tuesday Sept 5: Back from Tahoe!
Thanks for all the emails, instant messages, phonecalls, blog posts and comments, we had a great time celebrating our first year.

The trip highlights were the exploration the ‘un’-developed East Shore. (see Flickr set). Some trail signs showed discussed the reasons that will make Tahoeless blue. cars, development, algae, sediment from waterways.

The trail signs indicated that the water will decrease in it’s clarity over time, I’m glad I got to experience it now before it loses it’s beauty. Of course, we packed in all our trash, and did our best not to damage the eco.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our get away trip to Tahoe, I can’t help but observe the amount of SUVs that were towing large boats with huge outboard 500HP motors that would sport a “Keep Tahoe Blue” bumper sticker.

A quick Google search yielded that Yahoo Blogger Jeremy Zawodny noticed the same last year. (It amazes me how he is above the fold on so many search result pages).

‘I’ve noticed that the vast majority of vehicles I see sporting the Keep Tahoe Blue bumper sticker are SUVs.

Does this cognitive dissonance not register with anyone else?

I’ve even spotted it on two Hummers in the Bay Area. But never once have I seen one on a hybrid auto like the Toyota Prius or Honda Insight.

Is this some inside joke I’m not aware of?’

Since I don’t have a hybrid, I probably shouldn’t criticize but I do find it ironic. Selected pics below from the trip.

Posted in Ruminations | 15 Comments »

9

See the Forest

Categories: RuminationsPosted on August 31st, 2006

I’ve been taking some heat lately for my lack of writing skills. I try to get my ideas out quickly, and as a result, I don’t get to spend as much time on them as I would want to. I do hope that the lack of skill will be made up by trying to read and understand the larger ideas, concepts and my passion for Web Strategy.

I see a two phase approach: 1) I’ll try harder 2) If I bother you so much, you can unsubscribe. Let’s make a deal, I’ll start with 1, and if I’ve failed you, you do 2.

Posted in Ruminations | 9 Comments »

1

You know you live in 2006 when…

Categories: Social MediaPosted on August 31st, 2006

Got this silly email from Chris, his MySpace page has a lot of warmth. Chris is in his 20s, and MySpace is how he networks with his peers, he send me the following email:

You know you live in 2006 when…

1. You go to a party, sit down and take MySpace pics.

2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. The reason for not staying in touch with your friends is that they don’t have AIM/LiveJournal/MySpace.

4. You’d rather look all over the house for the remote instead of just pushing the button on the TV.

6. Your evening activity is sitting at the computer.

7. You read this list, and keep nodding and smiling.

8. You think about how stupid you are for reading this.

9. You were too busy to notice number five.

10. You actually scrolled back up to check if there was a number five.

11. And now you’re laughing at your stupidity.

Some of the effect of the email may be missing as the points are seperated with a generous amount of space. Yeah, of course I fell for it, I missed number 5.

Edit: In the spirit of Chris’s fun personality and MySpace page: “blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog blog” (sound)

Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

0

Blogs and Social Media used for Disaster Relief

Categories: Social MediaPosted on August 31st, 2006

This in from Brian Oberkirch, he’s using Social media to help others, doing my part to get the word out.

Friends of the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog:

I’m sure that the Katrina Anniversary has you stirred up about many of the issues we all worked so hard on last year. I wanted to update you about two new disaster communication projects I’ve started. If they interest you, please help me promote them or ping me to get involved, send me ideas, etc. Your help was key last year to so many of my neighbors finding out what was going on in our little town. We couldn’t have done it without you, which is sort of the point of social media, isn’t it?

Fix the Gulf

As we saw with the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog, blogs can be efficient tools for gathering current local news and matching resources with needs. There is still a mountain of work to do in all the communities along the coast, and this new project aims to 1) keep the spotlight on the continued disaster, 2) identify specific local needs and match those with people who want to provide help and 3) spotlight other bloggers, videobloggers, podcasters and locals using these tools to spread the word.

I’m looking for editors in each of the affected towns who want to help me aggregate information and outreach for their areas. In addition to the blog, we have a wiki we’ll use to let people post up their own links, requests, material, etc.

http://www.fixthegulf.com

HurricaneMind

When a storm comes, we all spend the week asking each other what we’re going to do about it. “Are you leaving? Getting your supplies gathered to hunker down? Boarding up? Where you headed?” And so on. HurricaneMind takes that process and writes it large. The idea is to take the wisdom of crowds and apply it to hurricane prep. In addition to telling you what your neighbors are thinking, I’d like the app to map hotel room availability, gather current open evacuation routes, show you where plywood and other supplies are still available and aggregate news sources in one central spot.

I’ve started a blog and wiki to get a team together to help me build and launch this community service focused application here:

http://www.hurricanemind.com

Love to hear from you if any of this strikes a chord. Don’t forget about us down here.

all best,

brian

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

8

Factiva, A company that listens, and then listens more

Categories: Community Marketing, Social Media, Voice of the CustomerPosted on August 31st, 2006

As a customer of Factiva, I was very pleased to have a conversation with the product teams, I was invited to a concall with the product managers located both in Bay Area to New Jersey.

I expressed my needs to find tools that will help me to monitor the blogosphere and all other kinds of ‘participant produced’ content –it’s a big task. We talked about long tail vs influencers, impact of audio, video, and the impacts on corporate reputation. We talked about active listening and reporting, and how you need both, to date, I’ve yet to see a tool that can do both well, but when I do, I’ll tell the whole world.

A few days ago, I forwarded them the meme “What should companies be Monitoring” it was a large discussion that bounced around the blogosphere (35 links to my post alone), and even went to Marketing Guru Joseph Jaffe –it’s important stuff.

I love it when companies listen, something that I lead at my company, and I love it when they involve customers as a data point to help craft their strategy. I don’t expect them to make drastic or immediate changes just because of my opinion (in fact I’m just one of many voices that matter) but it was a healthy conversation.

1) Factiva is a company that customers pay to listen to the market,

2) They also do a great job of listening to customers, reading blogs, talking, and having conversations .

See how Daniela, an employee there also listened and responded to me via YouTube –companies of the future will build products WITH customers using the conversational web as a tool. Of course, the next step is to take all these data points (I’m one of many) connect the dots to make the big picture and include in the product futures.

Update: I’ve given some thought about our conversation yesterday. One question was posed to me: “What matters most, the influential voices (well known bloggers) or the smaller bloggers”. I didn’t have a good answer right at the time, but it’s very clear to me that it’s ‘All’ the voices. I’ll bet the voices in my industry (which I’m tracking) are not all influencers or have a lower (better) technorati rank. In fact, my technorati rank is lower than most bloggers in much of the data storage industry. It’s not my voice that matters of course, it’s the small voice that influencers others. If all of the bloggers on this page are being picked up (and others like them) then I think that’s a good start.

Update 2: The ever-patient Glenn has responded to me from his blog. To read his thoughts and reports on blog spam, interesting and likely very valid. David Sifry should respond.

Posted in Community Marketing, Social Media, Voice of the Customer | 8 Comments »

0

Public Feedreaders, Meme Trackers

Categories: Social Media, Web ToolsPosted on August 31st, 2006

It’s interesting seeing what other people read in Feedreaders, in a way, it’s their ‘lens’ to the world.

We created a public Feedreader for our industry (that anyone can use) and we’ve aggregated all of the RSS feeds that we could find (I’m sure it’s not complete) and add to it as names are added to the wiki we created.

I talked to some folks before about exporting that OPML to create a meme tracker or for analytics, anyone have more info on tools that can do that?

Have you seen Robert Scoble’s Feedreader? He says he trusts 100 people to deliver him the trusted news without the hype. In a way, you could think of it as a representative democracy

Posted in Social Media, Web Tools | No Comments »

5

I’m Thinking Small.

Categories: Community MarketingPosted on August 31st, 2006

I work at a big company, (our reported headcount is larger than the employee base of Microsoft or Google combined) but my mission is to think small.

What does small mean?
It means that every single voice is important, and so is every customer. It means that every customer has specific needs and no too alike. It means that there are real people behind those forums, blogs, and trouble tickets, both at our company and customers.

I’m listening to the marketplace.
I teach the right people in our company to listen.
I want to have individual conversations with people using the web.
I teach the right people in our company to use web tools to have these small conversations.
It means that we don’t think of marketplaces but we think of individuals that are talking to each other using the conversational web.
As the Community Manager, I’ll be an internal advocate for customers.
Using the web, we can be a better company, listen, converse, and build better products and services with our customers.

I’ll be having lunch with Anil, an industry blogger, and a data storage expert in a few weeks. Hu, our CTO Blogger wanted to come, but he’ll be traveling –I’ll be happy to host Anil. Anil, this doesn’t mean I think you’re small, but it means that your individual opinion and comments matter both to folks in our industry and to us.

Who said big companies can’t think small?

Posted in Community Marketing | 5 Comments »

1

More Ways to Ride the Long Tail –Four and Five

Categories: Data Storage, Web TheoryPosted on August 30th, 2006

Steve Rubel wrote three ways to ride the Long Tail:

1) Rethink reach
Be very granular, think small, individuals matter and influence others. “Marketing” by “Markets is dead.

2) Fund niches
To me this really means cultivate, harness and encourage communities. I’ve quite a bit of thoughts on Community Marketing, view all my thoughts on the subject.

3) Demand more from media
Linking to individual content producers is not enough, enterprise media needs to become, interact, and mesh with the participants
Ok, here’s my additional points:

I’ve included four and five:

4) Align your workforce
Line up the right people in your organization to have discussions with each hair on the long tail in your community. Employees (just like consumers) are niched too! Folks will have a natural background or connection with specific haris, everyone in your company can become a specific community advocate. Get organized, and connect –I’m living the dream, as a Web Professional at a Data Storage Company my employer thinks I’m the best person to talk to Web Market –so off I go! (Yes, big companies can think small)

5) Build options into products
One size doesn’t fit all, If the long tail holds true for Marketing, Media, and Economics, then product teams need to start socializing that ‘one size fits’ all products are not going to cut the future. Building products that can easily be changed (either by company or consumer) need to be considered. So many choices.

Lastly, I’ve been having some very interesting thoughts with colleagues at Hitachi Data Systems about how the Long Tail applies to Data storage. Did you know that not all data is equal, and only a small percentage is used frequently –treating it equal can be a very costly situation. Our CTO Blogger Hu Yoshida has more information on “Tiered Storage”.

Edit: This just in from one of my colleagues. 88% of all data stored is “long tail” Maybe 12% is “production” data: databases, files, etc. that is “Bighead”. Does long tail have specific percentage breakdowns?

Posted in Data Storage, Web Theory | 1 Comment »

4

TV Shows Only Available on the Internet

Categories: IPTV, Rich Media, VideoPosted on August 30th, 2006

Jeff Pulver has a nice list of Internet TV shows, I expect this list to triple by the end of year. The barriers to create online content are pretty low, and will continue to drop. The Consumers are becoming Producers.

“Somewhere between the world of professionally “produced” TV shows and personal video blogs lies the world of what can be best described as “TV Shows Only Available on the Internet.”

I’m keeping an eye on Internet TV, I’ve written a few other things (and taken video) of what the future could be.

Posted in IPTV, Rich Media, Video | 4 Comments »

12

How do you Pitch to a Blogger?

Categories: Social Media, Voice of the CustomerPosted on August 30th, 2006

How do you Pitch to a Blogger?

It’s pretty simple, you don’t.

I get pitched to blog about products via email, comments, and in person. People send me free products (I even got a nice bag of alcohol) and some companies treat me like a web industry analyst.

“Pitching” is a horrible term to use for communicating with someone that you’re trying to build a relationship with. It means you ‘throw’ something at them, and you hope they catch it.

So rather than pitching, Instead, build a real relationship with bloggers, be their advocate, listen to them, talk to them, build a community. Once you achieve this level of trust you can have real and trusted conversations. Customers and bloggers are important –they are in control. The savvy companies will learn to be let go, and embrace the open conversation on the web.

As a Community Manager, I promise to be a customer advocate. I will listen, dialogue, then listen again, I think small (Edit: My thoughts about thinking small). I wrote about this very topic a few months ago –it still holds true.

Posted in Social Media, Voice of the Customer | 12 Comments »

6

Scrapblog Tells a Story using my Flickr Pictures –This one is about what REALLY happened at TechCrunch7

Categories: Feedback, Mashups, Rich MediaPosted on August 30th, 2006

A few days ago, I had a wonderful conversation with Carlos Garcia, the CEO of the self-funded Scrapblog startup. I promised to give a trial run of his Visual Mashup, I just tried creating a Scrapblog, which is an online version of a scrapbook.

I quickly imported my flickr pictures, and then selected a theme. I grabbed some of my more famous photos –those from the most recent TechCrunch 7 party.

Scrapblog Demo of TechCrunch7
Find out what REALLY happened at TC7. You’ll see pics of Scoble (and his Camera), Pepper, Laughing Squid, the Guy, Winer, Canter, and Flockstar.

I had the same issues as Tara, the Scrapblog would not embed. The player is kinda slow –that needs to be improved (Hint: Flatten to image). I also want to see collaboration between multiple authors, perhaps use your ‘flickr contacts’. The editor is a tad slow, however the interface is pretty intuitive. So far, I’m really impressed by this mashup –there are other features I think that should be included, I sent the info to Carlos.

I’m not employed by Scrapblog (Although a few of my friends are helping them) –but I’m willing to try interesting or cool new products and blog about it.

Maybe, someday he’ll fly me out to Miami to meet the team –I’ve got some other ideas.

Posted in Feedback, Mashups, Rich Media | 6 Comments »

0

The Difference between Usability Professionals and Information Architects

Categories: User ExperiencePosted on August 30th, 2006

Recently, I’ve encountered a Usability Professional who may or may not realize that he is really doing Information Architecture work (but considers it Usablity). By performing a content audit, analyzing data, and sorting for display, he is really thinking in a larger perspective than just process orientated usablity.

Difference between Usability Professionals and Information Architects:

Information Architect:
Content Focused. Goal is to understand and categorize information in a way that makes sense to the user. Understands that content may be accessed in multiple methods –data is perceived and consumed in different ways. Analogy: They organize the products, aisles, and signs in the store.
Usabiltiy Professional:
Process Focused. Goal is to create efficient process to complete a task. Seeks to create process to benefit majority of users. Analogy: They streamline how folks get around the store, organize the checkout process, and also help with signs.

Both of the above fall in the realm of User Experience Research –if you’ve not done so already, please learn Jesse James Garrett’s Elements of User Experience –memorize the 5 planes (PDF). Have you seen the website Ok Cancel? Worth a look, the cartoons are pretty funny.

Posted in User Experience | No Comments »

0

Defining Microformats –Attention Information Architect Community

Categories: MicroformatPosted on August 30th, 2006

Attention Information Architects!
A few days ago we discussed what a Microformats for the Non-Technical Web Professional or Marketer. I’d like to try to further narrow down the definition:

Microformats: Structured Information from Unstructured Content

I hope the Information Architecture community gloms onto Microformat concept by the end of the year. Not only do we need their help to guide the content criteria, but this is a tool that can really help them structure unstructured content from a ‘bottom-up’ approach –In many ways this is ‘organized folksonomy’.

The internet community as a whole needs to start thinking about these standards as we the web continues to become an unstructured conversation, and mobile access becomes mainstream. Soon, content producers and content consumers will want content in a structured way.

Posted in Microformat | No Comments »

1

Book: Word of Mouth Marketing

Categories: Web Advertising, Web MarketingPosted on August 29th, 2006

Damon just sent a link to this book called Word or Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz. It’s really worth reading Guy’s thoughts on this –he has a summary in some clean bullet points.

Posted in Web Advertising, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

3

Renaming Web 2.0. What term to use?

Categories: RuminationsPosted on August 29th, 2006

David doesn’t like the term Web 2.0, nor does Andy (read comments) so what should we call it?

Social Media?
No, as that doesn’t include Rich Internet Applications like AJAX.

Modern Web?
No, as that term won’t be relevant 10 years from now.

Participants Era?
Same issue as Social Media –it doesn’t account for RIA.

I give up, please help –what’s the best term to use?

Posted in Ruminations | 3 Comments »

0

Flickr integrates with Yahoo Maps

Categories: Geo Tagging, Mashups, Social Media, Web MarketingPosted on August 29th, 2006

Flickr has integrated it’s Photo feature with Yahoo Maps. I’ve selected a few photos by dropping them on a map at Hitachi Data Systems. Stewart has posted more details from the official Flickr Blog.

Ian from Yahoo has some additional info about Upcoming.org and maps.

I’m watching Thomas Hawk as this is a space that Zooomr has been in already –Zoomr will be one of the companies presenting at the Web Expo at Lunch 2.0.

Folks are already using Flickr for Marketing such as events, people, companies, and products, this will add yet another level of richness –more to come on this soon.

Posted in Geo Tagging, Mashups, Social Media, Web Marketing | No Comments »

0

Blogging for Dollars in Business 2.0 Magazine –Key Facts

Categories: Social Media, Web Advertising, Web UsagePosted on August 29th, 2006

Surprised?

It’s true, I have paper magazine subscriptions that I actually read. I read tech magazines as they provide me with confirmation of what I already read on the blogospere, or summarize information with additional facts. Of course, paper is still helpful when I don’t have internet access –I’ll spare you the details of when and where that is.

I really enjoyed reading the article “Blogging for Dollars” on page 65 of this Sept 2006 issue. Here’s the highlights:

Michael Arrington is picture smoking a cigar while money if flying around –(Valleywag had way to much fun)
It mentions the TechCrunch parties (I did photoblogs for Naked and August).
1.5 Million regular readers to TechCrunch.
TechCrunch earns $60,000 in ads a month.
Boing Boing gets $1 Million a year in Ad revenue (Split between 4 people).
Web Advertising will grow 50% to 23 billion by 2010.
The average cost of an Ad is $8 per 1000 impressions.
50 Million Blogs and growing (That doesn’t include many social sites like MySpace).
A new blog is launched ever 2 seconds.
71% of Americans have Internet access at home.
Americans age 13-24 spend moretime online than using TV (That means Web is the primary medium for adults at work, and for their kids at home).
Federated Media has a strong model, and an aggressive eight person sales team (see bud James Gross if you need help).
Average CPM (Cost per 1000 impressions) is $8, the aim is to get $20 to $30 dollars CPM.
36% of TechCrunch readers spend more than 40 hours per week online.
More than one-third of the TechCrunch audience e have a salary of $100,000.
12% makes more than $250,000.
Arrington make $50,000 from the August Techcrunch party (and I got a ton of traffic).

Posted in Social Media, Web Advertising, Web Usage | No Comments »

7

Google launching it’s Online Office Suite –What’s the Catch?

Categories: Social Media, Web ToolsPosted on August 28th, 2006

I just signed up for Google’s office suite that is being announced and released this week. Scoble wonders if Google is hiding information from bloggers, as they told the traditional press on Friday before sharing with bloggers. Often, Google will give a sneak peak to bloggers as a way to get the word out. This time they’ve done the opposite.

Questions Raised:

What if I need more than the 2gigs of data storage they provide?
What will they do with this data?
Will it be shared with others?
Will it be used to learn more about me and my communication style?
What’s the catch? I know there’s a catch.

I knew this was the future –let’s get rid of desktop applications when possible and just use browsers.

Posted in Social Media, Web Tools | 7 Comments »

10

Project Manager, Product Managers, and Product Marketing Manager

Categories: Community Marketing, User Experience, Web TheoryPosted on August 27th, 2006

Great write up from Rob Grady about the Difference between a Product Manager and a Project Manager.

Thanks Ron, now that’s cleared up, let’s take a look at another similar role.

Product Manager vs Product Marketing Manager
I know that folks have a hard time understanding the difference between product managers and product marketing managers. At many startups, the Product Manager may do the marketing role, or in some cases the roles will be split between the Product Manager and Community Manager.

Here’s a definition of a Product Marketing Manager from Wikipedia:

“In smaller high-tech firms or start-ups, product marketing and product management functions can be blurred, and both tasks may be borne by one individual.

However, as the company grows someone needs to focus on creating good requirements documents for the engineering team, whereas someone else needs to focus on how to analyze the market, influence the “analysts”, press, etc.

When such clear demarcation becomes visible, the former falls under the domain of product management, and the later, under product marketing. In Silicon Valley, in particular, product marketing professionals have considerable domain experience in a particular market or technology or both.”

I typically view that Product Marketing Managers are ‘outbound’ and are responsible aligning the product with the market/customer. The could/should deliver the requirements to the Product Manager who will build the requirements into the development or engineering cycle.

Community Managers can obtain requirements
As mentioned above, the Community Manager (a new role that’s emerged) can also deliver customer requirements to product teams. I’m a Community Manager, and I know several, we’re working on a project to start to define our role. Unlike a PM or PMM, the primary role is to be a customer advocate or community advocate. Sometimes a CM should line up the right folks in the company to communicate with the community –kinda like a messenger. More to come on this later.

Compensation
In my experience, usually the Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager in Silicon Valley often justly deserve a six figure salaries. I suspect project managers depend on experience and skill level.

Posted in Community Marketing, User Experience, Web Theory | 10 Comments »

4

Student Collaboration Site ‘mynoteIT’.

Categories: Social Media, Web ToolsPosted on August 27th, 2006

MynoteIT allows students to collaborate using the web to share notes, class schedules, and create project teams reports studentl.inc.

When I was in college I heard of students that actually paying for rent by going to the large class (400+ student lecture halls) taking notes, and then selling to other students.

This model by mynoteIT will allow groups to quickly share. Could this create an opportunity for professional note takers to sell notes using paypal or will this encourage collaboration among all students?

The internet is helping folks to quickly connect –interesting the impacts it makes on socienty. Lifehack has a review of mynoteIT.

Posted in Social Media, Web Tools | 4 Comments »