Daily Archives: July 13, 2008

apple, microsoft, vista, windows

Lively attack on Microsoft’s poor marketing – from within

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Microsoft employee Kirk Allen Evans has a go at Microsoft’s marketing efforts:

I am so completely and utterly sick, as an employee and a Microsoft shareholder, of seeing empty spending on crap like "People_Ready".  Remember the completely ridiculous Office Dinosaur spots?  C’mon, marketing, grow a pair… let’s see some results.  No, I don’t want to see a retort ad making fun of the "I’m a Mac, I’m a PC" goons.  That ship has long since sailed.  Let’s see what all that Microsoft money and some of the smartest people in the world can come up with.

He’s right. So are the comments to his post, observing that marketing isn’t the only problem, or even the core problem.

Still, Vista is now actually better than its reputation. That’s a marketing issue.

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internet, search, Uncategorized, web authoring

Web 2.0 for the rest of us?

We all know what Web 2.0 means. Google, Flickr, Facebook, Yahoo, mash-ups usually with Google Maps or Flickr, Salesforce.com, and anything but Microsoft. But what does it mean for everyday businesses, like some of the small businesses I talk to from time to time? Some are sceptical. One I can think of sells a successful software application but does not even run a support forum – why make it easy for others to discuss and publicise flaws and problems in your product?

I was interested therefore in a recent book by Amy Shuen, called Web 2.0: A strategy Guide. A foreword by Tim O’Reilly says, "it is the first book that really does justice to my ideas". It was O’Reilly who popularized the Web 2.0 concept – and yes, it is anO’Reilly book.

Shuen writes enthusiastically about network effects, using Flickr, Netflix, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon and Apple (iPod/iTunes/iPhone) as case studies. I enjoyed it, but the problem with this kind of book is the chasm between these few web giants and everyone else. Another problem is the tendency to ignore the Web 2.0 graveyard – thousands of start-ups that fail, or moribund and/or spam-infested blogs and forums. Since there are more failures than successes, it would be sobering to investigate these rather than riding a wave of Web 2.0 hype. Nevertheless, it is a thought-provoking book with an extensive bibliography, and not a bad starting point for investigating Web 2.0 concepts. I liked the “five steps to Web 2.0”, which begin with finding collective value and end with perhaps the most important, which is what Shuen calls “recombining innovations”:

New-style click-and-mortar, online-offline network partnerships focus on bridging and building new networks rather than replacing or disrupting the infrastructures of offline companies.

I’ve also received a short Web 2.0 book by Marco Cantù, called The Social Web. It is a brisk tour of the sites and concepts that form today’s online communities. Typical readers of this blog probably won’t find anything new here; but I liked the common-sense tips on things like blogging and creating interactive web sites.

I would argue that almost all businesses either are, or should be, “click-and-mortar” entities. Whatever business you are in, a useful question is: what proportion of purchases in your sector begin with or include a Google search? If the answer is significant, you are in the Web 2.0 business.

That does not mean SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the answer to everything. I am an SEO sceptic. All too often, SEO is lipstick on a pig. Optimise your web site for users, not robots. Further, it is no good trying to get users to interact with you, if you are not willing to interact with them. Surprisingly, I see this all the time. I suggest spending less time worrying about high Google ranking, and more time worrying about what users find when they do land on your site.

The case studies that interest me most are where old-style businesses have found ways to engage successfully with Web 2.0 innovations. For example, I’ve written about kitchons.com, which services domestic appliances and tunes its business via Google ads. I came across another example today: a financial company which lets you put an image from Flickr on your credit card. Clever.

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide by Amy Shuen (ISBN: 978-0-596-52996-3). O’Reilly $24.99.

The Social Web written and published by Marco Cantù. $17.39 print or $8.70 electronic, from Lulu.

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Uncategorized

Changing models of journalism

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Chris Green, editor of IT Pro, has written about analysing professional writers in terms of “costs per unique user visit”. He says:

I honestly believe that in the not too distant future, online publications in all sectors, not just technology, will have to adopt a results-driven approach to freelance commissions in order to maximise revenue and to achieve maximum return from their freelance budgets.

The most likely outcome will be that publications begin paying writers purely on how much traffic an article pulls in. Also likely is that commissioning editors will need to take a more frequent and brutal approach to deciding which freelancers to commission regularly and which to drop from their rotation, based on the kind of metrics I am currently looking at.

I write for several publications, print and online, and in every case I am paid per word. If this prediction is accurate, how will this affect me and others who write for money?

Green says writers will have to work harder at pulling in readers. He talks about search engine optimisation (SEO), link seeding, cross-linking, encouraging comments, and supplying photos and even videos as well as words (no doubt to the fury of pro snappers).

If writers are paid per view, clearly they will have more incentive to do such things. Best tread carefully though. Link seeding done badly is spamming. Encouraging comments done badly is trolling. SEO done badly is keyword madness.

Further, there must be a reason why writers rarely write their own headlines. Publishers decided long ago (in print and online) that writing attention-grabbing headlines, which is a kind of SEO, is a job best done by specialists. So is snapping pictures, designing page layouts, and marketing the results. Giving the writer more of these roles doesn’t make sense except for low-budget publications like, errm, blogs. It also gives writers less time for their core competency, which is researching and writing.

Another problem is that not all traffic is equal. If a publication is ad-funded, then the traffic that counts most is that from potential purchasers, those who approve budgets or click ads. Click ratios are easy to measure, but profiling readers per-article is harder.

I agree that the Web is changing journalism, mostly for the better. One of my reasons for starting and persevering with this blog is that I value its immediacy, the feedback from readers, and the comments from those about whom I blog. The quality of the writer-reader interaction is immeasurably better than in the old days of occasional letters printed ages after publication.

Further, I don’t think any writer should mind being paid in some sense by results. Book authors have always had to put up with (or enjoy) this approach.

The problem is how to measure those results. Pay per view sounds good; but it punishes writers who happen to get commissioned for less popular subjects. If those subjects are nevertheless ones that the publication wants to cover, that suggests scope for bargaining.

What about measuring quality? The Register now lets readers rate some articles from one to ten. Nice if you get a good score; but is this more a measure of excellence, or of what readers agree with?

Kudos to Chris Green for throwing this open for debate.

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