May 23, 2008

What's outside my window.

Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research is a good read into the use of social media technologies as it relates to business. Using the traditional funnel of awareness, consideration, preference, action and loyalty they have a wide variety of case studies showing what happens after advertising does its thing of generating awareness - people check things out with each other. Control is given up in the middle of the funnel. Its all about the relationship.
The difference between direct response and branded response comes down to whether you accomplish your goal in one session or in multiple ones. "Click-through" rates may be indicative of something, but certainly not down-stream conversion. Be careful of measuring (and stopping campaigns) purely on response.
Magazine publishers are attempting to charge for total readership, including pass-a-long. That will be a stretch.
YouTube and Flickr are following the groundwork laid by Facebook and are opening their platform for developers to put video features on their own sites. We're slowly breaking down the notion that the Internet is a set of destinations. In a parallel move Yahoo! is (has) joined OpenSocial, the alliance the allows social network portability.
Got an idea you think is worth investing in? ideablob and LaunchBox08 are two sites that provide a forum to vet and vote on ideas. The winners get a little seed money and in the case of LaunchBox08 a course in developing the business.
As Internet penetration reaches the three-quarters mark the primary of source of news is nearing the 50% mark. A survey by WeMedia/Zogby shows that majority of traditional journalism is 'out of touch' with what Americans want. "... the U.S. news industry .. frets about its future, Americans are dismayed by its present..." Web sites are more trustworthy than traditional sources to nearly a third of the respondents. The core question is what do we want vs what do we need? In related research - NON-readership indexes over 100% for all ages under 44.
Just because we can doesn't mean we should - the value of in-text ads is much debated as a negative idea. Mouse over an ad and you're interrupted with something that may or may not be relevant. Guidelines on what triggers the ad need to be better established.
The heat caused by the friction of changing one's behavior when switching products is a strong deterrent to switching. Banks know that if you have 3+ accounts, you aren't likely to switch -- its just to hard. Max Kalehoff of OnlineSPIN recounts his switch of Internet and cable services and references an HBS article entitled "Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers". Bottom line understand the trade-off between benefit and behavior modification. The acid test - if your product isn't 10x better then it isn't good enough - why? Customers overestimate current benefits by 3x and sales overstates benefits by 3x.
Surge.com is a referral network for music. Fans who promote and support an artist are rewarded. Bring a new artist to the site and get 1% for life.
UGM (user generated media) is not traditional media on steroids. Adam Shlacter of Mediaedge focuses on anywhere the person has a voice - and this is usually in micro-audiences; a thousand here a thousand there. It's all about the conversation.
More Democrats and Independents IM Online than Republicans - not sure what it means; but nearly half do it. In other news alternative media spending will exceed $100b in 2009.