Steve Rubel and I exchanged emails early this morning. I asked him for his thought on how MicroMedia was taking hold. If you remember, Rubel was one of the fanatics of Twitter when it first hit the scene.

What’s really intersting is that Steve is modyfing the strategy on his blog, he’s going to be changing his strategy to accomdiate how media is evolving (well at least this month).

Here’s how Steve is evolving:

“So, net net, what does this mean? Well, by posting less on Micro Persuasion I actually am able to give you more. I am freed of the need to write here daily. This means when I do post on this site it is more substantive and meaningful and it incorporates my learnings from the conversations I have had elsewhere.

Further, micro blogging - especially because it is mobile - makes it easy for me to converse with a good number of you in real-time. This fits perfectly into a busy schedule where many days I use my iPhone more than I do a computer. It also flows with our growing need as a society for all that is brief.”

I, on the other hand, will not be changing my strategy on this blog, but will continue to make this my primary platform and continue to grow out those other tools.

Let’s hear from you, will you be changing your media, blog, or web strategy as things move faster, smaller, and more mobile?

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Just got off the phone with a person doing research at a very large technology corporation, they are doing research for their website and asked me what I though websites would be like in 3-5 years as they are planning out their web strategy.

Here’s a summary of what I predicted:

1. content will be amorphous (content will take many forms and shapes, from RSS to widgets)
2. content will be ubiqutous (content will be access everwhere)
3. Communications are moving from asynchronous to real time
4. Existing corporate websites are irrelevant, and they will become community websites
5. Employees and customers will be communicating in real time, openly and collaborating on the live web. In fact, we’re starting to see some technologies already appear, like Facebook, Ustream (I advise them) and PublicSquare
6. Corporate websites will become more ‘human’ and employees personas will show through.
7. Online video will be a huge factor, either live, or archived
8. Corporate web marketing will spread way off the corporate domain to where communities have formed elsewhere on the web.
9. The truth that the brand is owned by those that are involved in the conversation will hold true
10. Corporations are media companies (even if they are not now) and employees and customers will be creating the media collectively

I gave a lot of concrete examples, features, and companies and technologies to look at, it was far to extensive to discuss here. In fact, each of the points above are already full blog posts that I’ve already written.

Love to hear your feedback, what do you think corporate websites will look like in 3-5 years? What did I miss?

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As you know, I’m carefully watching the Social Media Measurement space (see all these posts), as that’s the precursor to improve a program, and also how companies measure value, and then increase budgets. I’m a corporate web guy, and I know how important measurement is to these programs. As you probally aready know, Nielsen has shifted it’s measurement from Page Views to Attention (PDF). Here’s a few discussions that I’ve found interesting over the past few weeks, I was saving these up, analyzing them, and looking for patterns.

Eight Meaningful Measures of Social Media

1. “Number of unique users
2. Returning versus new readers
3. Referring source statistics
4. Links from other sites
5. Google PageRank
6. The ratio of blog comments to blog posts (where applicable)
7. Total time spent on the site
8. The popularity of the content itself, which gets the most views”

Good start, but it’s leaning on the traditional attributes we already know. There’s a few that are missing from this, such as “Tone”, “Speed or Velocity of spread”, “interaction”, and of course any qualitative info that can be gleamed.

Yulia is doing some great analysis by trying to make sense of the various KPIs that could be measured during a program, she compares how different experts have different measurement attributes. Me? I say it varies depending on the type of goals you have setup.

Jeff Jarvis thinks forward in trying to understand what’s next after the homepage? He delves in to RSS, Blogs, and RIAs, do companies even need a homepage? That’s why I say the irrelevant corporate website needs to evolve.

I found quite a few juicy podcast interviews from Buzz Marketing for Tech, dive into there and learn more.

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In a recent post, I listed out all the Many Forms of Web Marketing. In fact, there are over 40 of them!

I’ve put Widget Marketing in section 5F, under Community Marketing and Social Media. Why are widgets viable? The theory of modern marketing is to join the companies where the currently exist, rather than trying to build your own.

In this great article by Alex from Read Write Web; The Evolution of Web Widgets: From Self-Expression to Media Companies:

“Media companies see widgets as an important new method of reaching audiences both inside and outside their domains. It seems that widgets cover array of tasks ranging from brand propagation to instant transactions and customer tracking. In this post we will take a look at how web widgets have evolved from cool, viral toys of self-expression to important big media tools.”

In fact, Google is offering $100,000 to developers to build widgets, details from this Keynote of Marissa Mayer.

Web Strategies: There’s a few theories that you have to understand before you engage in Widget Marketing:

1) Web Marketing is not limited to two domains only

2) Content is Amorphous

3) Content is Ubiquitous

4) The savvy join communities where they currently reside

5) Many are content publishers, widgets reward them, keeping traffic on their sites, not yours

6) APIs and hooks into multiple widget platforms will be needed

7) Your website is Irrelvant, and must evolve

There’s an interesting program by the W3C to standardize widgets. Makes sense.

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For a variety of reasons, I’m watching the online video space very closely, I see the web moving this direction: Richer media, near-real time, and content being amorphous, and ubiquitous (mobile).

I don’t have any insider information, but here’s my predictions for where Google will be headed for the online video market.

Predictions about Google and Online Video

1) Contextual Advertising
As I understand it, Google makes 80% of it’s revenue from the Search Marketing space, this is not going away. Google will apply a similiar model to Video over the coming year. Here’s how they’ll do it:

A) Contextual Video
If you haven’t noticed already, Google has been experimenting with a new player design. Just like the slick Apple OS, when a user puts the mouse over the video, other contextual videos will show up. This is contextual delivery of content. Just like text based Adsense, this will be offered to marketers who want to connect their videos with an existing channel or content creator. It’s mini-sponsorship.

B) Embedded Ads
In addition to just sponsoring contextually, Google (I predict) will acquire one of the companies that allows dynamic, embedded pre and post roll advertisements. What’s that? This means that a video can have a short and sweet advertisement, before, during, or after a video plays. The trick will to make it as fast as possible. The other way is to include text right on the video, making it clickable, see example.

C) Incentives
What’s in it for the content creator? Just like web managers who deploy adsense, They get a cut of the money.

2) Video Previews on Search
We already know this is coming, see my live conference notes, it was announced that Google will allow video previews in Google results. I’ve got tons of session minutes from the recent Searchnomics conference.

3) Live Streaming
If you’ve been under a rock, then you’ve not heard of companies that provide live video web streaming like Ustream (I advise them) Blog TV, Justin TV, or Kyte.tv. I predict that Google will launch or acquire a live video streaming service on Nov 18th. Why then? It’s one week before all the families of the world will want to start connecting before the Holiday season. (The week after is Thanksgiving, an American Holiday) The world becomes more connected with free online live video streaming. This tool will evolve to a ‘capture’ tool that will feed into the Web Editor.

4) Free Video Editing Software
Just like Yahoo already has Jumpcut, a webbased video editor, Google will introduce a similiar basic Video editor. Coupled with Google docs, spreadsheet, and other tools, it may be an online or even desktop application that lets users quickly create video edits. This tool will work well with live video streaming as well as archived video. The true video prosumer emerges.

5) Video Search
Not news either, Marissa Mayer told us at Searchnomics that Google is already experimenting with voice to text search ability, as well as scraping closed captions (CC). So in addition to metadata, video content will start to get analyzed for better search and ad results.

6) Measurement
This is the most critical. Advertising dollars don’t shift until measurement is in place. Google is already measuring their YouTube investment and it will continue. Social Media is different than other traditional broadcast methods, as users can interact with the content, talk aobut it, and then share it with others –it’s multi-dimensional. I expect Google to acquire one of these companies that measure online video. Oh yeah, has anyone heard what happened to Measuremap? which was acquired quite a while ago?

So there, that’s what I’ve been thinking about over the last few weeks, I see Google making some strong movements into this space, and here’s how I predict it will happen.

If you’d like to to talk to me further about this, (perhaps for an article) please leave a comment or email me

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I just got back from a bbq with quite a few famous bloggers in Silicon Valley, in fact it was at Maryam’s house, and it was her birthday. Happy Birthday!

During some of the bbq, some of us were talking about Singapore and how we’re seeing this as a great place to visit and how I see it as a new testing ground for many web 2.0 companies to sprout. I’ve met so many people from Silicon Valley that have been to Singapore, from Shel Israel to Lisa Stone.

Kevin Lim is reporting in from his “Web 2.0 in South East Asia” panel @ Microsoft ReMIX 2007“, it’s worth a read if you’re watching the web industry in South East Asia. By the way, Singapore is the cleanest and most tech savvy country I’ve ever been to, it’s very modern, and the native language is English.

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I recently provided some feedback to NBC 11’s Hometown project, an advancement for hyperlocal citizen journalism and the neighborhood network in USA. I was pleased to meet Jennifer here in Singapore who’s very involved with citizen journalism here with the one of the most notable newspapers, the Straits Times.

She toured me through a sub-site called STOMP, which is a hybrid of citizen journalists that report in and classically training journalists and editors (yes, with fact checking). From a user experience standpoint you’ll find the design of the site to be very graphic heavy which may seem foreign to western eyes.

One area is to watch the Hot Topic area Singaporean seen, which includes stories from the first-hand witnesses on the streets, pictures, testimonials are present. Some contributors don’t feel comfortable giving their identity, and the newspaper will honor that. The editors will help them write the story (as many are contributed orally) and then give a round back to the contributor for final review –it’s a merge of both words

I’m pinging my friends at the Stanford Innovation Journalism program as well as UC Berkeley, where they’re also carving out the future of Journalism. This is a good case study.

As it ends up, I’m going to be interviewed by the Straits later today, I’ll post a link when the interviews goes out. Are you familiar with what we’re doing with the San Jose Mercury news? Old and new media can work together.

Update: I’ve given this some thought, one of the strategies I recommend to clients is to consider building a community website that aggregates all types of content from the community, not just one. Check out what Techmeme does for the tech industry, it’s a combination of mainstream and social media all on one page –this is yet another form of the future of media. It’s an “and” not an “or”. It’s a “we” not a “me”

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Just landed in Singapore, an amazingly clean city, looking forward to learn about the tech culture. It was quite a commute getting here, nearly 20 hours from SFO to HK, to Singapore, but well worth it. My presentation for the main congress (I’m giving another one to the local university) is about audio and video podcasts for the enterprise.

While looking at the program, I was seeing quite a few topics on preparing the IT infrastructure for streaming media, or preparing the anticipation of the enterprise being the media producer. I’m not so sure that’s the way it’s going to unfold.

The more I think about it, I see Google, PodTech, and a variety of other media creators to be where content is created, uploaded, and distributed –it doesn’t have to be hosted on the enterprise.

There’s a lot of talk about Software as a Services (SaaS), and we’re seeing more evidence of this as raw computing power, storage, web-architectures, and I think it’s spreading to the media space.

I’m part of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, a great feed to subscribe to if this topic interests you, I hope some of those folks in the group chime in.

Perhaps the greatest thing that enterprises could do is to make sure that 1) Those media networks (and whatever comes next) are never blocked from the firewall 2) there’s enough bandwidth to easily view any of those networks 3) Empower, educated, and encourage employees to join those media networks –as that’s where the conversations about a market will happen.

Media will be uploaded, edited, modified, shared, published, and mashed into new forms in the “cloud” –all outside of the corporate firewall.

I started to read Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, it’s an easy read, I’m already half way through the book by reading on the plane.

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(Left: I chatted with Erin FitzGerald, Robert Calo (who’s running the program) and evangelist Kara Andrade at UC Berkeley last night)

I shared with Berkeley’s The Initiative on the Future of Journalism
While my focus is primarily on corporate web strategy, I was asked by Kara to come in and share with graduate students at the The Initiative on the Future of Journalism, here’s their project site. The folks I met (and their facilities) are geared up to use the new (social media) tools that are present in today’s modern communications. They’re adapting quickly where others have withered.

The news room itself was rows and rows of brand new Mac computers, and when I walked in I saw Twitter, their blog, and tons of other tools, you can check out their site to learn what they’re doing. As I understand it, Dan Gillmor, (we both presented at the New Media Summit this week) is a big supporter of this program. Be sure to read his eloquent piece that Journalism isn’t dying it’s evolving, I have to agree, I witnessed it last night.

I hope that this group meets up with the Stanford Innovation Journalism program. To me, they should be bouncing ideas off each other in near real-time speed. I’ve already made some introductions via email. PodTech has hosted the Injo program at least twice.

Key concepts we talked about:

Faster and Faster: From asynchronous to real-time.
I showed them how communications are moving faster and faster with tools like Twitter and Ustream (a company I advise). As I launched Ustream (live video streaming with chat, watch the archive) Chris Heuer jumped into the chat room and started to ask questions and add to the conversation. That’s disruptive (in a good way). I’m speaking at Chris’s event the Social Media Club this Monday, and he added a very good point in the chat room. Editing still has an important role, as no one has time to watch JustinTV all the time, a 10 minute summary once a day in video format would really make it digestible. I recorded the live ustream video, usually I’d spend more time with aiming the camera, but this is more of a demo.

Amorphous and Ubiquitous media
Media is taking new forms and shapes, expect media pieces to be captured everywhere (some of the students had the new Nokia phones) distribute everywhere and into different shapes and forms (RSS will pull content into new forms) and then morph into something new as the community will help add, edit, or comment it. I’ve been discussing this amorphous ubiquitous concept since 2005.

Join vs Build
I shared how they need to start learning how to listen, by using Technorati to find people in your community (whoever has been linking to Stanford’s Injo program is in your community) and how to add them to your feedreader. Why only use Lexis Nexus, when the communities that you’re reporting on are telling their stories first person using social media tools? In many ways, journalists could be embedded reporters, by just using a feedreader to listen in on what’s being said. I mandated that those present should be using a feedreader in the next five days. How can you report if you’re not listening to the stories already being told? Those that are already sharing may be the most passionate, knowledgeable, and connected ones in your industry so you’ll need to connect to them both to get your story as well as help distribute your story.

Web Strategies
This is my focus area. I was asked to share some ideas on how to launch a story, or an interactive story. The future of media is amorphous, so be prepared for your content to take many shapes. It could appear in a feedreader, an aggregator, a widget on Facebook or on a blog. Your website is no longer a static website authored by you. Embrace the community in which you’re reporting about, include links, quotes, or aggregate their content.

I explained that I believe that corporate websites are irrelevant, and that probably relates to news websites too. The future of websites will have all members of the community writing, adding, editing, and voting on it. This is why I’m closely following tools like PublicSquare, which allow just that (more news on that soon). I forgot to share with the group about newstrust, (my review of newstrust) which is a unique multi-tiered system that I was given a demo by the founders, it uses several sources of editorial layering.

Audience replaced by Community
It’s an ecosystem where everyone is sharing (remember that you can share without ever typing, there are tools like Digg, or even sharing from your feedreader like Scoble). The concept that journalists are writing for an audience needs to evolve. Journalists should join the communities (it’s easy with social media) that they are learning about, adding value. In return, these communities will add to the piece, promote the piece, and build upon it.

Us vs Them
When I attended the WeMedia conference in Miami earlier this year, I was amazed at the tension of “us vs them”. It was clear that the hard liners were resisting and having a hard time letting go to gain more. It didn’t feel like this with this group, or with Stanford’s Injo. I remember that the hardliners were attacking blogging as journalism. Blogs are simply communication tools and can be used in a variety of ways, by no means am I a reporter or consider this blog a news source, it’s intended to be a living white paper. Of course any media revolution is only as good as it’s message. Even with mass layoffs at the SF Chronicle this last few weeks, it’s a clear indicator that the hard-liners are being asked to move off and new skills and concepts that it’s “We” not “us vs them” are needed.

Case Study: Coexistence in the Tech Industry
Let’s take for example the tech industry. For the most part journalists and bloggers co-exist (except from a minor scuffle here and there). That may be due to the ‘open source’ mentality that we all share in order to gain more collectively, or that bloggers read mainstream, and vice versa. Techmeme is a manifestation of this, as it aggregates the conversations and stories and viewpoints in near-real time. Here’s an example of Dan Gillmor’s piece and the discussions around it. On the preferences, be sure to expand discussion excerpts, there you will see the site cascade like a threaded river of news. Also check out Tailrank which has similar features.

The press room of the future
I forgot to share the future newsroom, where PodTech hosted BlogHaus at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas for 120+ hours straight at a suite in the Bellagio. Here we accepted bloggers, pocasters and videobloggers as the new journalists. It wasn’t exclusive however, we embraced mainstream journalists in addition. This video is a good sample of this event, the output, just staggering, see my clip report. What is PodTech? It’s a network of video bloggers, (some are former journalists) we’re an example of this new media generation, we break news, be interesting, or add value.

What’s my role with the evolving journalism industry? Honesty, I’ve not given it much though before meeting Tina (who’s with Stanford’s Injo program) who’s now on loan at Podtech this is an expanded scope in my focus. I see how it can directly apply to corporate web strategy as I will need to make sure that corporations stay relevant to adapt to the changing media landscape, and how employee/prospect/customer blogs can easily be aggregated for new stories in any industry.

I affectionately call Kara Andrade the sneezer, or the evangelist. Why? Because she got me to come, and now I’m sharing with you all on this blog, I’m sneezing to my community, and everyone I linked to, it spreads that fast. Kara gives me a tour of the facilities, there’s a pretty advanced multi media lab and video lab. Check out the video below for details.

Other resources

I’m part of the Media 2.0 Group, a collection of thought and practice leaders on the next generation of media

You can learn more about PodTech

My ustreaming gear

Forrester’s Technographics Report

PodTech and San Jose Mercury are working together

Click To Play

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We all realize this is insular sharing, and not scientific by any means but I’m learning a lot from folks sharing their Media Consumption diets. The trends are very apparent. I’m most impressed by Dan Taylor’s analysis and graphs. Technorati shows all the blog posts with the term “Media Consumption Diet“. It’s interesting to see how Google results differ using the same keywords.

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A few days ago, I gave my media consumption diet. It’s interesting that a lot of my stuff is on Demand, and has few ads. Loren’s responded with much love on his video:

(if you’re reading this in a feedreader, access the post)

I’m still waiting for Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, and Chris Pirillo share their diets. Martin did, and a few others says Technorati.

Oh, and my last name is pronounced Ow-Yang. I’m not Irish Loren.

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Chronicling the Dell Social Media Saga
I’ve been watching this Dell story for quite a while, even been on a panel with blog expert Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations discussing it.

[Dell has come so far, they’ve learned to listen, converse, and lower the corporate walls. While this saga is not over, this is becoming a classic case study of a corporation making a 180 degree turn using Web Tools]

Gone to Hell, Cursed, and Exploded
Dell’s taken a freaking beating in the past years due to social media bloggers. you can do a search on Dell Hell, and at one time, if you did a Google Search on the term “Dell Support” bloggers not happy with their support come up. (Today’s Google results show it’s still on the first results page)

Joining the Conversation, Cautiously, then with Gusto
Dell launched their One to One blog, which was met with mixed feedback. While some didn’t think they did an authentic job at joining the conversation, others supported them for the effort. A few weeks after the initial launch, Dell started to publically recognize their faults. At CES, I had the pleasure to hang with Michael Dell himself, (thanks to Lionel) where Dell said they were going to start embracing Social Media, watch the video yourself.

Turning it up with Customer Collaboration
Just a few days ago, I helped to announce IdeaStorm, the idea was for Dell to create a Customer Feedback/Collaboration web tools that will let customers and employees create products together. Marshall Kirkpatrick at Techcrunch, wasn’t sure if I was completely right that employees were fully onboard. Engadget cleverly modifies the tagline as they state that Dell Wants You to Make It Suck Less with Digg Clone.

Acknowledging the Voice of the People
Well it appears that Dell corporate (which I hope includes some employees) that they are on board and that they are taking IdeaStorm seriously. On this summary list, Dell demonstrates they are listening to what customers have been saying. A very strong meme is leaning towards open platforms (or none at all). It’s even moved it’s way up Digg, a popular user voting site. Not sure if the solution is worked out, as the costs may be even higher to get a wiped hardware machine.

Saga Timeline

Blindsided from ignorance
Learned how to listen
Built tools to join the conversation
Learned the right way to interact
Reached to community
Acknowledged customer requests

Next Step (and most important) For Dell:
This is the most important part, the final leg of this cyclical journey is to get Dell to give the products that the people ask for.

Document and Measure
It will be very interesting to see if there’s a reduction in Product Research costs from these tools. Could be a very insightful case study on Social Media ROI for corporations, I hope Dell shares this info with me. Keep at it Lionel Menchaca (the Community Manager), Michael Dell and the rest of the Dellions. By the way, if this whole concept is very new to you, I recommend you read the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Update March 2: The saga continues with IdeaStorm injures scores at Dell — “sounded like a freight train”. Apparently, Dell will not be building what the people asked for in IdeaStorm. Ars Technica speculates the many reasons why it doesn’t make sense for Dell. For what it’s worth, either way, the market knows what the market wants, and it’s documented, in addition for great buzz for Dell.

Update March 13th:
Dell has made an announcement that it plans to offer Linux to customers, the flavors will depend on how users answer the survey. I met with Lionel yesterday, and knew about this in advance. I was able to interview him for my video Web Strategy Show, he’ll be up soon.

Update March 29th:
After reviewing over 100,000 survey submissions, Dell is now offering it’s Linux flavored offerings. The company is listening.

Update April 3rd, 2007:
Lionel Menchaca visits in person with Jeff Jarvis, who first coined the business blogging case study “Dell Hell”. This community relations in real life was a success.

Update May 24th, 2007
Ubutu, a flavor of Linux is finally released as a product. Lionel uses video to tell his story.

Update June 16th 2007
The consumerist releases an ex-employees 22 tips on how to buy the best computer, although Dell demands a retraction. Jeff Jarvis sympathizes with Poor Dell, Lionel of Dell responds from the Dell one to one blog.

Update October 18, 2007
Dell’s continued push to reach to customers has paid off, relationships, communication and conversations are starting to be the very fabric of their company. Business Week runs this story, praising Dell for all that they have done. A few times people have told me they are tired of hearing about Dell as the case study of success, the problem is, few or no other companies have moved this far in such a short time. The deserve our applause.

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I’m hoping to start this meme, that others will join in and share their media consumption diet, in hopes, that we’ll start to learn how they get information or be entertained. I’ve sort of mixed up mediums, and media types, but after some thought, that’s the best way to organize it.

My Media Consumption Diet (most used at top, least used at bottom):

Web: This is primarily where I get most of my news. I get my news from my Feedreader, I’m plugged into 160 subscriptions, but some of those are news feeds, techmeme, digg, and scoble’s shared feed (an incredible filter). I rarely go to ‘news sites’ like CNN, MSNBC, NYT, like I used to, although for a while, I was subscribed to Al-Jazeera and BBC to get other perspectives.

Music: I listen to Pandora at work, sometimes at home. I play CDs in the car most of the time, rarely listen to the radio. Used to have XM radio but canceled it in my car as the sound quality was crap. (I have ‘dog’ ears, after playing music starting at the age of 4) Sometimes I plug in the iPod while driving (but haven’t done that as much as the sound quality is not that great)

TV: I rarely turn on the TV, in fact, I only watch it if my wife has it on at home. I’d prefer to turn it off and turn on music (rarely radio, most often MP3, or Pandora, as I have my computer hooked up to my PC). We recently got comcast ondemand at home, that’s interesting. We don’t have Tivo. I really don’t watch TV, it was just last year that we got cable. Like most Gen Y (I’m Gen X) I use the computer in the foreground, and the TV is on in the background.

Communication: I access my email via my laptop. I have a 3G card now (thanks PodTech), or wifi at home. I have a LG phone where I check techmeme and personal mail while mobile. I’ve removed IM from my life as much as possible. I’m experimenting with Twitter but don’t think to use it all the time.

Update March 15, 2007:
I’ve starting to use Twitter more and more, and it’s cutting into my feedreader consumption.

Movies: We sometimes like to watch movies at theaters, which I tend to focus completely on, as they tend to be higher signal to noise, minus the ads forced during a theater experience. We used to rent movies from netflix and even the in-store blockbuster, but now that we have ondemand, we may just shift to that.

Magazines: I get Business 2.0, Wired, Forbes at home, and like them as they help to give summaries, and sometimes in-depth stories. I sometimes like the ads, as I can determine who’s got budget (A marketing hunt trick). I rarely find the news as ‘breaking news’ but often a symbol that the buzz I’ve already been reading about for a month or two is actually getting traction.

Books (Just added this as an update)
Yes, I read about 6-12 books a year, most are web or business related, I rarely read fiction. Yes, I find these books enjoyable, and many authors send me copies, which I often review from my blog. Often, I read these books while on travel.

Newspapers: What’s that? I was in the New York Times two days ago, and I didn’t even buy the physical paper.

What’s your Media Consumption Diet?
I’m signaling to Calacanis, Loren, Scoble, Martin, Pirillo, and all my contacts at the Media 2.0 workgroup to share how they get their information. Or if you don’t have a blog, leave a comment to your media consumption diet.

Update: Quick Analysis by Peter Kim shows that our diets are void of advertising dollars, does that mean that web advertising is efficient, or that I’m avoiding it?

Update Feb 27th: Folks are sharing their diets, you can see all of the blogs linking to this post from Technorati. Not a surprise that bloggers consume most of their content via the feedreader or the web, and overwhelmingly, most have newspapers at the bottom of the list. Over time, we should be able to see some real patterns in media consumption, this really will help those in the web and media industry to deliver the right tools.

Technorati Tag: Media Consumption Diet

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Many viral video networks
I know some companies that are deploying viral videos, the challenge for them is that they’re releasing them on more than one video network. There’s quite a few, from Revver, Blip, YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Grouper, and quite a few others.

I created a list of video sharing sites back in August, it’s already way outdated. If you’re not sure which video site to use, you could always compare all the video sites in this side-by-side comparison.

Measuring still a challenge
The goal in today’s distributed web marketing strategy is to get your content to go far, and have ‘legs of it’s own’. With that come challenges in measurement and tracking. It appears companies like VidMeter Tracker can aggregate instances of all forms of media, aggregate total views, as well as comments, making the job of a marketer a little bit easier. Although they track 32 video networks, I’ll suspect that only about 5 really matter, and at the end of the year, only 3 will really matter.

Also, If you’re just using YouTube, check out TubeMogul which apparently has robust reporting features.

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A friend of mine wanted a list of Social Media Applications that he could rebrand and use for his clients. I gave him a list of 7 or so on email, then decided to start a blog post on it. Within the hour, I had about 10.

I count over 30 White Label Social Networking Suites
Now, a few days later, the submissions have slowed down. Check out this list of 37 Social Networking Applications that one can download, or use a hosted version to rebrand.

Remember the CMS and Portal Craze?
This reminds me of the first web movement when everyone was crazy over CMS systems from late 90s to early 2000l, and then how everyone went crazy over portals (I myself worked on one at Exodus, called MyExodus, which even got awards). Now, many web managers have expressed their frustration with CMS systems never working, either they’re too complicated or inflexible. The portal strategy is dying, the new way is distributed content networks. I’m sure like all things, it will swing back over to centralized.

Google and Yahoo could play
I’m waiting to see if a company like Google can figure out how to white label such a tool, they already did it with Blogger, so why not take on a social networking tool. It would seem that Yahoo has a lot to gain, as they have one of the top viewed sites, tons of IDs and registered users, Yahoo Groups is antiquated and Yahoo 360 is irrelevant.

The Future
In the end only a few will matter. Some will get swallowed by large web or software companies, their features integrated or dismantled. There will be a some mergers and partnerships. Some will cease to matter, as they fall off the map. Others will evolve into something else. Will be interesting to see what happens.

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This is one of those posts to send to your field marketing team in Asia.

This makes me want to start a China division for PodTech in Shanghai, Beijing, and HongKong. 43% of the Global internet users in the world are in China. Jennifer Jones interviews Sam Flemming in Shanghai.

If you’re seeing this in a feedreader, here’s the podcast player.

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(Left: A scribe at the conference was capturing the big “Aha” ideas and sharing on the screen, photo by David Parmet)

It was fascinating for me to observe as an outsider looking in to the world of journalism and traditional media at the WeMedia conference in Miami this week. My notes from day one are the same as my summary, now that I’m back at home. Social Media is impacting them in ways that some are having a hard time grasping while some have already figured out advanced adoption models.

I noticed frustration and during some of the heated conversations. There was certainly conflict there was in how the industry was trying to figure out how they fit into this new model. Questions of we vs me, lack of fact checking in social media and bloggers, time to market, first person reporting, local vs hyper local, and of course, how the hell does one make money?

I heard some executives from large media companies stand up and really speak in the ‘command and control’ voice, they used terms like audiences and messages, rather than communities and conversations.

One lady made frequent complaints that her voices was not heard from her hyper local neighborhood. She blamed media for only covering her community when something bad happens. I was confused, why doesn’t she start a blog and be her own news creator?

Towards the end of the conference I finally grabbed the mic and introduced myself. I made it clear I was a blogger and I help corporations figure out how to stay relevent. I told the conference how they’re not alone, (in fact I think the media industry is ahead of the general marketing industry) and that they should look towards the Tech Industry as a model for success.

The Tech Industry is unique, we’re early adopters, and most of the time (but not all) we collaborate online sharing and arguing ideas. I told them to check out the beautiful playpen of TechMeme, where traditional media and selected bloggers already coexist in harmony (and sometimes in dissonance, and that’s ok too, as we do it together).

As I said that, several folks at the conference went to the site, only to see a meme on the WeMedia conference already taking place.

In the end, it’s pretty simple, the big media folks that figure out how to co-exist, to me an AND, more than an OR will be a thriving part of the community which they serve.

Lastly, I suggested to several folks that the next conference have an ‘unconference’ style, this WeMedia conference was not how I thought it was marketed (PDF) as an ‘audience’ driven conference. Several complained about the $1000 price tag, which is more of the element of a top down event.

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This document has been updated for the 2008 version: The Complete list of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008. Please visit there for the updated and enhanced version, quite a bit has been added.

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Summary and Audience
This document catalogs the many tools and tactics available for corporate web strategy in 2007. Even if your strategy or resource limitations restrict you from entering all spaces, awareness of the changes in our digital landscape are critical.

This document is intended for CMO/VP/Director of Web and Marketing. For those seeking a quick read, normal programming will resume in the near future.

Changes in communication require corporations to adapt and evolve
The Web in the number one medium in the workplace and second at home, a significant portion of your resources should be developed around your online programs, research indicates the web medium will continue to grow. We also know that prospects in a variety of stages in the buying stage use the web to make decisions, this is an arena no company can afford to ignore. Most importantly, future generations (digital natives) are barely reachable by other mediums, start planning your Web Strategy now.

For many corporations who’re not fully aware of all the tools available, deploying web marketing goes beyond your corporate website and google results.

The Many Forms of Web Marketing:

1) Corporate Domain
This has been a standard since the late 90s, nearly every company, mom and pop boutique now has a web presence. The primary purpose of this is to provide the public with information about your company, it’s products, and anything else they may need. Corporate websites often compose of several features that are listed below.

A) Corporate Site
Little explanation is required here, today’s standard requires for every company to have a home on the web. The methods and tools are highly discussed in a variety of locations, books and conferences, but do remember that some tools are creating an impact on their relevance and marketing in general.

B) Portal Strategy
Widely popular in the late 90s this strategy was intended to serve up all user information on one page, and keep users on one’s domain. A few well known portals now exist such as MyYahoo which is a form of a feedreader. Most modern marketers realize that content is now distributed.

C) Microsites for Segmentation
Typically deployed around new product launches or campaign focuses, or specific market segments, these often short term websites are used for calling specific attraction. They typically have a unique URL and are tied to an integrate campaign. See Microsoft’s Origami microsite. Caution: some companies overly deploy these microsites and end up with a distributed and unfocused web strategy.

D) Interactive Web Marketing
The web is more than a ‘read only’ medium, unlike other mediums, companies can make the website interactive, encouraging a new dynamic of engagement. There’s a variety of technologies to use from uses of Javascript, AJAX and Flash based. (Thanks Lisa D for suggestion) Of course, one can only go far where the limitation is that it is still a ‘user to computer’ interaction. A few examples include Subservient Chicken experience, What kind of M&M are you, and Geico’s Caveman Crib.

E) Intranet/Extranet
The web isn’t just for communicating to prospects and employees, simliar strategies apply to both your employees, resellers, partners and suppliers. You can get more information by joining the Intranet User Experience Group, or find other online resources to this specific field..

F) Regionalization
In today’s global web, websites are translated, reformatted and segmented by region, culture, class. Be sure to focus on France, China, Japan as fast emerging languages. Also see report on internet usage in third world countries.

2) Search Marketing
Ever heard of Google? Many prospects use google in the ‘hunt’ phase for a product. By paying a third party or a search engine directly you can obtain a strategy to get your website listed in search results. I’ve heard a variety of stats demonstrating success of natural vs paid results, however the ROI is usually positive. It’s likely your competitor is also present on the Search results page. View my few posts on Search Strategy or contact Andy Beal, David Berkowitz or Brian Keith.

A) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Many web groups at large corporations have a document, a process, or even a dedicated resource who’s goal is to make sure web content is easily found, indexed, managed and correctly served in search results. There’s been some recent discussion the state of the SEO industry.

B) Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Frequently, companies will hire a specialized search company to purchase keywords that will help drive contextual links in search results. These ads are contextually displayed based upon the search query. There’s a growing and sometimes controversial industry focused on these techniques.

3) Out Bound and Syndicated Web Marketing

A) Email Marketing
While certainly not completely native to the web, they certainly are tied. Modern email campaigns (sometimes even direct marketing) involves barely personal emails blasted out to indviduals on a mailing list. These modern versions typically have the option to be HTML based, and have hyperlinks brining users back to the corporate site or Microsite. I hear the conversion rate for these are 2-5%, and typically deploy a positive ROI. Having spoken with many Web directors and Marketers, this is a task best suited for an outsourced vendor. Be sure to read the research on the growth for this industry in 2007.

B) Invasive Marketing
“Pop-ups”, and “Pop-Unders”, trojan and tracking software are both disruptive methods to obtain the attention and data of users. Research indicates this form of marketing is diminishing, use with caution, or not at all (ask your Ad Agency if they are doing this without your knowledge) remember the market can associate your brand with the way you reach them, and users are now in charge.

C) Syndicated Content and RSS
I lump Syndication into this category as I see it as being an evolution as marketing shifts from Push to Pull. RSS is quickly becoming a method where users can opt-in for additional content. For more information start with Six RSS Resources for the Internet Professional or Web Strategist, when you’re ready to deploy read Web Strategy: Understanding Syndicated Feeds for your Corporate Website.

4) Brand Extension
This is not a new concept, it’s simply been applied to web properties. The concept is simple, where your audience is, your brand should be also.

A) Web Advertising
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the banner, tile, or skyscraper advertising model on websites. This age old strategy simply suggests that if there are eyeballs your brand should ‘impress’ upon the users. Click through rates are typically in the 1% or lower rate, sometimes success is measured by brand impressions, (visitation by traffic). These ads are static and do not change even if the content on the webpage changes.

B) Contextual Advertising
These targeted ads will be served up on the webpage depending on the content that’s on the page. This is a more ‘intelligent’ and therefore more relevant than Web Advertising, which may not be targeted at specific content. This form of advertising can be text, images, media or other form and are common on websites, blogs, and are now appearing on web based emails sites. (Submitted by David Berkowitz: Feb 13th. 2007)

C) Sponsorship and /Cross branding/Affiliate
This is a method of promoting your brand with the right audience in which the property is rewarded for integrating your brand. This can occur on content sites, shows, media properties, blogs, podcasts, and just about everything else. This is expected to increase in 2007.

5) Community Marketing and Social Media Marketing
eMarketer’s research indicates that this is the fastest growing area of growth for Web Advertising and Marketing is in the Social Media space. In my experience, the awareness rate is around 30% and deployment 10-20% for most corporations. Some of the tools listed below are not new, while some become critical in how prospects find information about products. For a high level overview please read 10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations.

A) eCommerce/Rating Sites
For most consumer products and a majority of enterprise products, there’s a variety of websites that rate products both by expert (sometimes called analyst) or peer review. The most popular site that has done this in the text industry is CNET reviews which deploys both editorial reviews, video demos, and user ratings and opinions. Content can be both positive and negative about your company as well as your competitors. Ratings and voting has evolved with popular news voting sites like Digg.

B) Social Networking, Forums, Wikis, Collaboration
I’m tying these two together as both features are starting to merge in many modern versions. While founded from early usenet days, forums allow for communities to form around similar ideas and collaborate. Approximately 33% of companies deploy forums. Wikis have also been used to tie industries together as well as. Savvy marketers are starting to also realize the power of social networking sites in every flavor of focus, including image sharing sites like flickr for marketing. I’ve created a list of all White Label Social Networking platforms.

C) Syndicated Marketing
See section 3C above.

D) Podcast Marketing
Many corporations are reaching their community though on demand content on mobile devices, the key to this medium is certainly in the ‘pull’ strategy. I’ve listed out my recommendations in a recent post called Corporate Podcasting Strategies for 2007.

E) Blogging
I estimate about 30% or less of businesses are considering blogs (web logs) as forms of business communication. The subject has been talked about quite extensively, I recommend reading Naked Conversations, the Weblog Handbook, and the Corporate Blogging Book. To learn about all the forms of businesses blog. If you’ve not yet deployed a Corporate Blogging program, I reccomend learning from my experience as a corporate blog evangelist.

F) Widget Marketing
Widgets are light weight web applications that are being embedded in websites, blogs, forums, and social sites. Flickr badges, MyBlogLog, and in ways even the Firefox community marketing campaign are companies that are engaged in this way. This isn’t anything new, I noticed this trend before the term gained popularity, and called it Viral Chicklets, to learn more there’s a growing list of examples on Widgetbox.

G) Online Video
While Online Video has existed for many years on the web, it’s most notably been gaining traction from the video blog, or video sharing sites of great popularity such as Google Video, or it’s recent acquisition YouTube. In addition to third party video sites, colleague Robert Scoble is well known for being the ‘Video Guy’ at Microsoft, while he took behind the scenes footage and shared on a Community networking site. Other companies have seen the success in this and have also launched online video sites such as General Motors. I recommend starting with thinking about Video for your Executives and thought leaders.

H) Instant Messaging, Presence
Clever marketers are figuring out how to involve real time conversational media using Instant Messaging tools, presence, and status tools, such as Twitter. These tools tie to online and mobile devices. My experience with Generation Y is that they are using IM as their primary way to communicate over all other mediums.

I) Tagging, Collective Tools
I’ve discussed how tagging can be used to harvest marketing intelligence as well as help your SEO results. See using Delicious for Market Research. Properly tagging content as well as researching how tags are used will help communities find your content.

J) Infinite Other Flavors
The list of potential applications can go on and on, from Toolbar plugins such as Delicious plugin, Alexa Plugin Attention recorder, etc, to web based mobile applications. User voted news sites are rapidly appearing such as Digg. There’s a whole another category (read all my posts tagged Community Marketing) on the many different forms the above tools create when they’re combined, from Community sites like Microsoft’s Channel 9 to real time Conversation indexes like Techmeme or Technorati’s WTF, new ways to find, sort and harness information will emerge over the year. The notable attributes include a ‘community’ or ‘viral’ and ‘conversational’ tone to them.

6) Emerging Mediums tie with the Internet
The web will be a platform and will extend to other mediums as well as create new ones.

A) Internet TV (IPTV)
While still emerging, the web will marry the TV and content, communication will evolve to a new form of media we’ve not yet seen yet. I doubt it will be as simple as ‘TV content online’ or ‘Reading websites in the living room’. Something new will appear, and it will impact your web team. See all my thoughts on IPTV.

B) Mobile Content
Websites are already being viewed on mobile devices, either full browsers, or fast load browsers. Many executives, decision makers, road warriors and techies are accessing the web using mobile devices, so a strategy to deliver correctly to this medium is necessary. See all my thoughts on Mobile Technology.

C) Online Massive Multi Player Games, Console Games
If you’re not heard yet, Second Life is being trialed by large companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Sears and a variety of retailers. Also popular are Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG for short) are appearing online such as World of Warcraft (WoW), and Club Penguin a growing online game for kids, teens, and some adults. XBox 360 has IPTV capabilities and most console games have online components, so there are multiple experiences to tap into.

7) Real World and Virtual World are Tied
What happens in real life echos online. We’re seeing that more and more as politicians, CEOs and organization involve bloggers, podcasters, and other influentials to real life events. The role of Online/Offline Community Relations is becoming more and more important. I’ve dissected how Microsoft hosts blogger dinners. Train your orginsiation to tie both strategies together. Read my post on Web Strategy: Overlaying Social Media for your Corporate Events

Putting it all Together
Whew, that’s the major families, but remember for many corporations, these elements will not be successful in a vacuum, the opportunity for momentum happens when they are combined and used strategically. At least one person or group should have full knowledge of how your brand is being used online and in other mediums.

About this Document
Web Strategy (How companies use the web to connect with customers) is my passion.

As the Director of Corporate Media Strategy at PodTech network, I’m a social media consultant to some amazing clients). I use this blog to answer clients questions, and to share my knowledge with the web network. You can learn more about me on my profile page.

I’d like to thank Christopher Coulter to helping me brainstorm this post, as well as David Berkowitz for asking for follow-up content from a previous discussion.

I will update this post based upon feedback from the community, both in comments and other blog posts.

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CEO of Technorati Dave Sifry was interviewed by my colleague Jennifer Jones of Marketing Voices on the PodTech network. For those that are responsible for listening to your customers (which should be quite a few folks at your corporation) listen to Dave.

Dave does some practical analysis of Technorati vs other search engines, authority, trust. I like Dave’s response to “What should you do if your management doesn’t get social media or blogging” Toby likes this interview, and recommends that business leaders listen to this podcast. English is no longer the majority blogosphere language, Japanese, Chinese are rising in dominance quickly.

Dave, Regarding the low adoption of German blogging discussions, I’ve talked with a few folks from Germany, there is some hesitation for an individual to step up and be a public figure and give out their opinion. This person told me this is primarily due to the last few people who did that in the the 1910s and 1930-1945 did that ended up in disaster.

What would you ask Jennifer Jones?
A few folks have told me and Jennifer how impressed with the type of folks she has on her show, in my opinion it stems from her wonderful personality and amazing network within the tech industry. There’s a very brief discussion in her comments. In the near future, I’ll be interviewing Jennifer Jones regarding her extensive experience in the PR and Marketing industry.

What questions would you ask Jennifer?

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I’m now on Twitter, will check it out for a while, profile page here. I don’t be doing any of the mobile updates or checking that content from my phone. I’m wondering how much is signal vs noise. I’m also wondering if this is a tool that Gen Y will use to communicate, or if they still prefer chat tools. Also, I’m wondering how this is anything new? The unremarkable Yahoo 360 had a status type bar, as well as most IM clients, is it just because it’s tied to mobile?

I’m a second generation adopter, I look for signs from the network before trying out new tools, there are certain people that I watch and listen for indicators before jumping in, a ‘network filter’ in some way.

For example, I tried out MyBlogLog a few weeks ago, I visit the reporting pages once in a while. Brian Oberkirch told me he finds the intelligence helpful to find out about his audience. I suspect that anyone who is so engaged into blogging to sign up for MyBlogLog (which assumes they are also a blogger) is also likely to interact with my blog at some point, either linking to me or leaving comments. While he’s right, one should pay close attention to their audience, I’m under the impression that my corporate audience is unlikely to sign up for MyBlogLog.

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