Companies need a media darling. Is this new?
If you think any of this gibberish looks interesting, you should poke around and subscribe to my RSS feed to keep up with new content.
Microsoft had Robert Scoble for a while.
AOL (and WIN) has Jason Calacanis.
Apple has Steve Jobs.
These people do a lot more than just cater to the media, but they do spend a lot of time speaking, writing, talking, and generally putting a human face on their companies.
I don’t know if this is a new school idea, but it’s a very smart move. Having someone put themselves “out there” to the media and the public for your company can make you a lot more likable. Bloggers are ideally suited for this job.
On video sites sharing ad revenue
An article in Cnet today: Google shares ad wealth with videographers, talks about how Google has offered to share its ad revenue with the people who made the Diet Coke and Mentos experiment videos.
This is a really interesting and fairly obvious development - as much as people love to upload copyrighted video to YouTube and get nothing in return, when amateurs make their own videos (and they think they’re worth putting online), they always have little dollar signs in their eyes. I know I do.
Which is one of the reasons I thought it was really smart of Google to launch their video service with an option to charge per view (or buy a lifetime pass), where the price would be set by the uploader and the revenue shared between google and the video author.
I thought that would be the way online video would go, but it’s becoming more and more clear that paid content - of any kind - on the web is going the way of the dinosaurs (one great movie and two mediocre sequels).
What’s going to be really interesting to me is finding out how many video sharing sites (with the insane bandwidth costs and unrealistic economics of serving millions of videos simultaneously individually) will collapse once they realize that splitting text-ad revenue three ways isn’t going to cut it.
A good place for cheap bodywork in Ealge Rock: KOBI Auto Center
A few weeks ago my car got hit by a cyclist who skidded out of control coming down a hill. It turned out alright because he was OK, and he also offered to pay for the damage to my car (since it was, in the end, his fault; I was stopped).
I’m a nice guy by nature, so I went around to a number of places in the area to get quotes on the damage (not really that much, just dented the lining under the driver’s door - not sure what that’s called). In any case, I got a range of quotes, the highest somewhere over $1,300 and the one at KOBI was actually the lowest - $250.
I went ahead and had KOBI do the repairs while I was out of town this past week. I got my car back today, and it looks pretty good. They charged me the exact quote price and matched the paint nicely (it’s kind of a dark green that isn’t the easiest thing to match).
I have a few other scrapes I’d like to cover up on the car, and so when I asked if I could get some extra touch-up paint, the guy said I should swing back next week when they’re doing another car this color, and he’d give me some of the extra paint.
So, nice service, good repairs, and very inexpensive. If you need some minor bodywork done and you’re near Eagle Rock (basically LA), I’d suggest checking this place out.
My battery lies to me
I’ve had my laptop for just over three years now, and I’ve never changed the battery, so I guess it’s probably about time for it to die, but the thing that I find most frustrating is that my computer doesn’t know how to measure the battery anymore.
As I type this, I’ve been using my battery for about 45-50 minutes, and if I hover over the icon it tells me:
37 minutes (21%) remaining.
Now I know from experience that even though it might actually have 21% remaining, it’s going to last a lot less than 37 minutes. In reality I have more like 10.
You’d think my computer would base its guess on how fast the battery has been draining during the past hour. But I guess it’s just a pre-set algorithm. Too bad.
YouTube finally starts to go legit
The New York Times today reports that YouTube is purging copyrighted clips all over the place.
I think there are fundamentally two options for Google’s YouTube: either they arrange a licensing system where they host user-uploaded copyrighted content with ads, or they don’t get to be really really web 2.0.
Given Google’s history running Google Video, I think it’s unlikely that YouTube will continue to host “illegal” material in such large quantities. But as long as Google doesn’t get rid of the “instant upload” that makes YouTube fundamentally so much nicer that Google Video, there will always be piracy uploads.
The problem is that there needs to be a way for users to upload clips they’ve recorded and want to share, because there’s just no way that the content providers themselves will be able to supply the clips that people want in a way that makes everyone happy. That’s back to “control” marketing - and this is all about the corporation not being in control.
Maybe a system where the user can tag what “network” their clip comes from, and then YouTube can have a stock set of endroll ads they can tag onto the video.
The problem is that Calacanis is right about 70% of YouTube’s traffic: it goes to copyrighted video uploads. If content providers don’t continue to bite, which frankly, they should, YouTube may be in for a rough ride.
Jason Preston in a podcast? No way!
It’s true, I’m on tape (OK, mp3) making an ass of myself talking about blog metrics. It’s kind of an odd podcast that was taken at a cocktail party during the Blog Business Summit I just got done working.
It’s kind of haphazard, but Tris Hussey and I are batting ideas back and forth about using comments as a metric in blogging - it was a question that came up during his panel earlier that day.
You can check out the podcast here.
Auto-correct has probably ruined my spelling
I just realized that it’s been a long time since I spelled the word “pieces” correctly.
This is because I hardly ever handwrite things anymore, and when I do handwrite things, I don’t ever write “pieces.” When I do it’s on a computer, and usually in Word.
But every time I type “peices” into Word (which comes much more naturally to my fingers), Word uncomplainingly and effortlessly switches the letters around so that the word is spelled correctly.
I think I’d rather have it underline the word and show me that I’m incorrect, because that way I could make sure I spell correctly. So Auto-correct is getting turned off.
Second Life does weather - is it an operating system?
According to Second Life Insider:
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with Aimee Weber Studio just unrolled a sneak preview of their educational project in Second Life (due to open in mid November). This appetizer of things to come features the three dimensional visualization of live national weather (now on display at the Science Center).
This is way cool, because it’s a weather service I’m not sure you can get anywhere else. How great would it be if you could sit down on your computer and direct your avatar into a little weather building where they had a 3D map of US weather? Pretty cool.
This is why I wonder if SecondLife is becoming an operating system or not. Everyone’s seen or thought about that mystical “VR Cyberspace” where people walk around as little avatars and simulate real live but in a digital way. Second Life is the first step towards that world, and the more and more companies, bands, and people start to use Second Life for real events and make it a platform for standard interactions, the more it becomes unnecessary to have the old “Windows” model of navigating your computer.
Think about it - walk into the arcade to play your games. Walk outside to hang out with people on your computer. With constantly connected broadband internet, this isn’t so far-fetched. You can build calculators or launch a word-processor from in the program.
If I were a company, I wouldn’t want to get caught without a presence in SL. Think about it: if I’m looking to go shopping and my desktop interface is SL (or I have the “game”), wouldn’t I rather go meandering through a SL store than try to navigate some byzantine web site? Of course.
Pluck RSS shutting down…not the end of consumer RSS readers
Just found this article via techmeme. Pluck is giving up on its RSS reader, and Richard says that this is an indication of the death of consumer RSS readers, but I think he’s wrong.
As I mentioned in a post just a few days ago, I think that the real solution to RSS is not “enterprise RSS readers,” but Calacanis’ idea to bring out an RSS reader that draws ad revenue and shares it with the content providers.
If you have both content providers and a reader working together with a legitimate and shared source of income, a lot will get done, and RSS will come a lot closer to hitting the mainstream.
Another quick How-To: Schedule posts in Wordpress
This is a pretty simple trick, but it’s probably one that most basic Wordpress users might not know. The only reason I know how to do it is that I’ve done it accidentally before, and it confused the hell out of me until I figured it out.
In your posting section in Wordpress, down on the right sidebar, there’s a little box titled “Post Timestamp.” If you expand this box, it’s basically a little timestamp setup.
So if you want to schedule a post for future publication, (almost) all you have to do is set the timestamp to a future date by typing the date and time into the available boxes.
Now I said that’s almost all you have to do. There’s one more step: make sure you check the “Edit timestamp” box. If you don’t check that box, it will post normally.
That’s it, you just scheduled a post in Wordpress.
Two posts in one: Firefox 2.0 rocks, and MyBlogLog makes me feel cool
I’ve been blogging like hell these past few days, and since I’m spending all day at the Blog Business Summit, I guess that makes sense. But even with all this posting, I’ve let two topics fall by the wayside, so I’m going to wrap them up in the same post.
First is the release of Firefox 2.0. I’ve been using it since Wednesday, and it’s been flawlessly awesome. I like the new tab look, I love the built-in spell-checking, and they have this really cool feature where they try to stop you from putting info into a fraudulent site:
Firefox, with features like these, is really stepping out of the “techie” user-base and moving more into the mainstream, which is awesome, because Firefox is the best browser I’ve used, and I’ve used (well, use) a fair number of them.
Also, if anyone’s noticed how well FF2.0 is running on a Mac (specifically, is it as fast as Opera & Safari), that would be interesting to know.
Secondly, MyBlogLog, which I installed on my site early Wednesday morning, hasn’t showed a ton of visitors to my blog since then, but it has shown a disproportionate number of really cool bloggers looking at my site.
I just noticed that Fred Wilson stopped by. I’ve been reading A VC for about two years, and it’s one of my favorite blogs and is frequently inspiring. I hope he comes back.
A quick How-To: Get your short numerical permalink from Wordpress
As far as I know, there’s no automated process for getting the short, numeric-based permalink for your Wordpress entries, however, since it is both short and numeric, it’s really easy to come up with it yourself.
Why do you want it? Well, a lot of the human-friendly (and search-engine friendly) permalinks are really looooooooooong. So if you want to paste a link into an e-mail (or a comment) without wrapping, it’s handy to have a little tinyurl built into your blog (so you get Google juice).
So here’s how it works. All of your entries in Wordpress have a unique numerical ID. You can get to this through your back-end, under “Manage” -> “Posts”
Next to each post, on the far left, there’s a column called “ID.” This is the number you’re after. And guess what? They’re sequential - so if you can remember what your last post number was, you can skip this step.
Now the short URL follows a particular form, always. And this link is always valid (no matter how you set your long permalinks). It is like this:
http://www.yoursite.com/?p=[number]
So I can take this long URL (notice how it runs into my sidebar):
http://www.jason-preston.com/index.php/2006/10/27/what-is-rss-good-for-musings-at-the-blog-business-summit/
And make it this url:
http://www.jason-preston.com/?p=874
Voila!
John Battelle - afternoon keynote at the BBS
Just met John Battelle, he’s a really chill guy. I feel like he would be a really awesome guy to sit down and hang out with. Maybe someday I’ll get that privilege.
He’s giving an afternoon keynote at the BBS, I’m assuming that Teresa is covering it on BBS homepage, so I’ll write here…
History of John Battelle - graduated from Berkley, started Wired, started the Industry Standard, invented the top banner, and so on. Not bad for a lifetime, eh?
Anyways, he starts out with the three humps of technology: “Digitize Back-Office” (fortran, the first people touched technology), then “Digitize Front-office” (big leap to more people with a GUI), “Digitize the Customer” (This is web 2.0, more or less). This is a LOT more people touching technology than ever before.
Google is the interface to that third wave. Google is how we navigate this third wave.
This is an awesome connection: Search interface is still in the 1.0 area - because it’s a command line (just like DOS was with DIR). The humongous difference is that search is in real language. We are starting to use computers with real language.
The Web itself is a platform. It is the platform for this third hump of technology - it doesn’t matter what browser you use, it’s all about the web itself. If you can figure out, in your business, to make a mutual-building relationship between you and your customers, you win.
Search is the first cultural artifact that has a permanent record of everything you do.
Battelle just put up a chart for the price of converting leads to customers - search cost per conversion is about $8.50, direct mail is $70.
We use search to declare our intent (in that little box), and then search re-organizes the world for you. That’s radically different than the old model. You used to buy the media that gets to the right demographic (you hope). Now you get the ability to buy intent (buy the keywords - they’ll match with someone’s intent).
‘Join the Point-to Economy (links = votes = attention)” In other words, make a site that lives, as individual pages, in the world that can be linked to, and link.
Battelle says that criticism is OK - that responding to criticism properly can actually build your brand.
Now, he’s turned his attention to advertising in the new system - how big companies are taking new steps, in many cases it’s taking content and using it as advertising. MS used regular “did you know” copy to advertise Outlook.
Symantec is running their RSS feed (their blog posts) as ads.
Now he’s going to chat a little bit about FM. Sounds really cool - it’s a big support structure for medium to large blogs and these blog’s “authors.”
Question: What kind of blog would you start right now if you wanted to get into Federated Media? Answer: Anywhere there’s a good ecology, and make sure you have a good voice. Question: Do you get ads for a network you don’t yet have? Answer: Absolutely. Like HP might ask for a “printing” federation, etc.
Question: What technologies are coming up that are really exciting to you? Answer: Well, one, I think Vox is really cool, and I think it’s awesome how it makes it possible to integrate tons of things that are not normally easy to integrate. Also, I think something that’s going to come down the pipes is a tool that lets developers easily mash up RSS.
Question: If you sell ads against content, how do you feel about your idea that you must attach ads to intent? Answer: Because we advertise against content that understands its users intent - a blogger is, at least FM bloggers are, connected fairly well with they’re audience.
Is running a contest cheating?
We’re talking about good practices in online video in the current panel here at the BBS, and the panel is giving a segment on how useful a tool contests are for generating creative content, and I was reminded of my friend Ben, who doesn’t like contests.
And I can’t help but think he has something valid to say. It’s like reality TV for every other inudstry - running a contest is like outsourcing the work normally done by professionals to a lucky amateur.
Really cool for the business running the contents, and cool for the amateurs(especially in anything artistic, like photography, video, or design, where you have good people and you have people that get lucky once every couple of years), but it really hurts someone who makes a living by producing consistently professional work.
On the other hand, contests are cool. Not sure where I sit on this fence.
What is RSS good for? (musings at the Blog Business Summit)
I have always said that RSS, before it really makes its way into the big time, needs to be completely invisible. It is by its very nature a conduit for content, not a platform.
The problem is that the platform isn’t there yet. There are too many problems with RSS syndication at the moment - there’s no standard presentation, browsers are integrating it differently, and some people feel like their content is being stolen (because it is).
As a result, a lot of people aren’t willing to give RSS a try, or are confused by it, or, like me, just can’t find a way to make it do what they want. I’ve given up on using a feed reader, because I can’t get the right experience for the way I like to read things. (I like the speed of RSS over HTML, but I hate the segmentation of RSS and I have to use a browser because I like to click links. Maybe what I need is WizzRSS on a really really fast connection).
A few days ago Jason Calacanis wrote on his blog that what he wants to see is a reader that shares revenue with content providers. I think that’s a brilliant idea:
Yesterday I talked to Feedburner about starting an RSS reader that shared revenue with content producers/RSS publishers, and I think they will do it. If they don’t I’ll get AOL to do it, and if AOL won’t do it I’d back a startup to do it (feel free to ping me if you’re looking for an angel investors).
One thing I’ve noticed about Calacanis is that he has a really good knack for spotting problems to which the answers make really good business ideas (and then, in many cases, he does it himself).
(At the moment, I’m listening to the Scobles present “Ten ways to a killer blog,” and, as you’d expect, most things are right on the money).
But the great thing about mashing up the content providers with a solid feed reading service (and this part is extremely important - the feed reader MUST be great), is that it gets everyone working towards the same goal. People reading feeds get the service (for free, ad supported), and the people who produce the content get a cut (for their work), and the RSS reader gets to have a legitimate source of revenue (this is big).
Also, if we get one service that kicks back to content providers, content providers are more likely to promote this particular reader. This will push towards a standard “form” for receiving RSS, which would, in my mind, be awesome, since it would push the “actual” RSS further into the background, and make it more “mainstream friendly.”
Long story short, this is the next step for RSS. And it’s going to make somebody rich. It’s just that nobody else has spotted that yet.
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