iBreakfast

Report from June iEvening

2009-06-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

Investor Panel Included: Ellen Sandles, Tristate Private Investors Network • Mike Segal, Joshua Capital • John Ason, Angel Investor • Roy Simkhay, Greycroft Partners

After a few slow months when start-ups seemed to have left the marketplace - the tide turned. Really turned. But now, entrepreneurs are staring at another kind of challenged marketplace. The investors are back with money – since most stayed out of the stock market – but it is a buyers market, so valuations are down and investors can really afford to pick and choose.

Entrepreneurs today really have to be able to survive on their own for as long as possible. But then again, strange things happen once you they in play: one entrepreneur who pitched his plan and won an iEvening in 2008 wound up being hired by an investor on the panel to run a different, but related company.

So his start-up turned out to be his job application! We wish him well!

At this event we were oversubscribed but nevertheless managed to cram 8 new companies into the pitching arena.

First was Clothingwarehouse.com, a moderately profitable company selling men’s closeouts at highly competitive prices. Using SEO they have developed a good Internet presence but they need to build the software to handle more precise customer needs. Sometimes its better to be pre-revenue and offer the moon than be moderately profitable and ask for help to make the next step forward.

Myclasscancelled.com is a seemingly needed service that informs students if their class has been cancelled for the day. Apparently, this is a frequent occurrence and colleges have no obligation to inform the students. The investors however thought much bigger things than this and wondered if it could be used for all kinds of cancellations. As it happens, the next day I found that my dentist had unexpectedly cancelled my appointment and I never got the memo. So we get the pain!

Escapeer is an aggregator of escapist and adventurist events. There are plenty of these outings and the people who seek them out – the under 40 set - are a prized demographic. As slick as the site looked and as compelling as the presentation is, it appeared that the judges needed to be told just how big this market really is.

Parent Media is a company that first appeared to us as a profitable photo-contest site for proud parents. When we discussed the plan with the entrepreneurs before presenting - as we usually do - we found that the photo site was really the hook for a much larger enterprise: a loyalty site for parents with babies and of great interest to marketers like Proctor & Gamble and so on. So the pitch was duly restated and the proposition was compellingly delivered.

ClipboardMD is a great idea in a market that is clearly about to explode – digitized medical records. This system enables people to keep their medical records in one place and have them verified as well when being admitted with ease by a doctor or hospital. However, the issue with an idea like this – even though it only needs to be used by a relatively small number of practitioners - is customer adoption. What the investors want to know is which doctors are using it and what will it take to get more to adopt it in a cost-effective way?

Povertysdemise.org is an interesting non-profit that could, in a way, be a profit center. It also suggests how welfare and other government services will be cost-effectively delivered. With this site, you can pick a child, family, block or region that you want to help and how - then the site makes sure the insurance, grocer or whichever service you support is paid as the recipient needs it. The money goes out as it is used and never directly into the hands of the recipient. Unfortunately, it is tough getting angels to think of investing in non-profits or, as one angel said: “most of my investments are non-profit!” On the other hand, if the business partners paid for the service – it could be a profit center.

Hollyhood is a kind of hybrid music and social media site that also has a special hankering for the Philadelphia sound. Even though the presenter is experienced in the field and comes with a gilt-edged legal background, it is tough to differentiate in this market place.

ApparitionAds is a company that serial entrepreneur, Richie Hecker, has cleverly bootstrapped with some strong players from the online ad business. The idea is to sell ads that appear during that tiny moment between website loads. So the slower your site – the more you’ll be hammered. (All the more reason to get FIOS and drop your Wi-Fi router!) This could be the most successful little ad company since Gator, but it could also be just as hated! The judges probably felt it was somewhere in between.

The judges picked Parent Media as the winner with ClothingWarehouse.com as the runner-up. Congratulations, and good luck at Private Equity Forum.

The VC Outlook - Report from June 24 Event

2009-06-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

Charlie Federman, Crossbar Capital • Jeanne Sullivan, Co-Chair, StarVest • Owen Davis, NYC Seed • Ben Boissevain, Agile Equity • F. Morgan Rodd, Milestone Ventures

We usually do a VC Outlook iBreakfast once or perhaps twice a year – and they are good. But somehow the June 24th event was special in an extraordinary way.

Maybe it’s the strange times we are in. People really needed to understand where we are headed and so Investors, by telling us where they are placing their bets – are also giving us a view into the future.

It is also a tricky time because, on the one hand, there appears to be a rising tide of private equity. On the other hand, we see a lot of entrepreneurs but for all their enthusiasm, also lack a vision about the future. Most of all, entrepreneurs may not be thinking of what the Venture marketplace wants – only what they want to do.

We understand that deals have become cheaper and investors can cherry-pick them in a way they may not have been able to do in the past. But what are they looking for?

So this iBreakfast was a wake-up call to “game” the Venture marketplace – getting your plan in line with what the market wants instead of wondering what’s wrong with the market…...

According this iBreakfast - here is the lay of the land:

Most of the exits are closed – the IPO market is all but dead, few investors speak of building a great profitable company in the old enterprise-building sense of the word. M&A is the main exit. Fortunately, many companies have strong balance sheets and after having laid off staff, they are finding that buying start-ups is the cheapest form of R&D. Great. Perhaps even better, foreign companies too, are eyeing the US market and they will often pay a premium if they feel they can get market entry.

So what are investors looking for? According to Jeanne Sullivan, the companies they look for include tech-enabled service businesses, platforms and any high perceived value service that once required custom tailoring, that can be delivered in a mass format is in demand.

Charlie Federman of Crossbar, a noted early stage investor looks for the first new idea in a marketplace. First to market is big deal and if properly executed, usually carries over in the long term. He especially likes ones that "export deflation" - i.e. offer a really low-cost alternative to a current business under price pressure. More importly, he looks for entrepreneurs who can adapt, since most start-ups find their real opportunity later. The business they end up is never quite what they started with. Somewhere, they’re going to have to take a left turn. Will they be ready to respond to that…..?

Owen Davis has analyzed various investment deals and has laid out a kind of roadmap that would be an invaluable guide for an entrepreneur to determine which sector has the highest probability of raising capital in the New York area. Hint: social media and communities highest pitch topic – least invested in.

(Note to Entrepreneurs: check back with us for the best bets.)

Morgan Rodd noted that Milestone Ventures was increasingly interested in tech-enabled medical services.

Based on the surge of investor/entrepreneurial interest we will be producing a new series of Start-Up bootcamps, business and deal structure sessions and more investor meetings.

View Presentations
Ben Boissevain - Agile Equity

Media's Act II - Report from Digital Downtown

2009-06-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Media’s Act II at the Digital Downtown Conference at the CEA Lineshow in NY

Alan Brody, ViziPress (and the iBreakfast); Debbie Steirs, HarperStudio; Eric Frank, Flatworld Knowledge; Brad Inman, Vook.com

Last week I joined 3 other publishers to talk about the next phase in publishing at a consumer electronics road show in New York. We did something unusual – we talked about the way media content needs to change – and we showed eye-opening examples.

Clearly, Consumer Electronics guys are mostly interested in TV and mobile apps. Reading is not their highest priority - but then you never where convergence is going take you.

So here we talked about eBooks, mobile reading devices, the digitization of books generally but, more importantly what the title of this panel was all about: the change in media – its Act II. How content is about to become something different because the Media has changed - and so have we.

This phrase, Media's Act II, came from Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt at the American Newspapers Association convention earlier this year. He informed the execs, nervously watching their papers edge out of existence, that they had done a great first Act in the 90’s by going online but now they needed an Act II.

So what was Act I? I argue that it was what we used to call, in an earlier era, “shovelware” – they shoveled the contents of a newspaper online and threw in a few bells and whistles – a little search, a little feedback, a slide or two and a place to click. But for the most part, you read just like you did in print but with the inconvenience of a monitor.

Shouldn’t the computer enhance the reading experience – either make it faster, better or something else? And now, with mobile (why we were at the Consumer Electronics space), something more suited for on-the-go reading?

We showed 4 new publishig models, each unique but each complimentary in a way that probably defined the 4 corners of this coming universe: We showed books that are way shorter (ViziPress), way richer (Vook.com), way more social media involved (HarperStudio) and way more adaptable to higher educational needs (Flatworld Knowledge).

Vook.com is about taking you into the world of a book – using video, interviews, multimedia and so on. If you love Sherlock Holmes, you’re in heaven. They hope that every great author will bring you into this afterworld of their creative space. If you’re the kind of person who watches the extras on your movie DVDs then you’re going to want this for your favorite books. They even hope you will pay a little extra for the privilege and publishers are interested in - not just the book - but the book world.

ViziPress, my creation, is about visual condensations – a kind of visual "Cliff Notes" – of popular business books. If you are lacking in time we can tell you what a book is about in around 3 minutes - and do it in a profound a memorable way. We add music because it makes the process a lot more digestible (according to mysterious research) and we think their world will demand this for every book in existence. Interestingly, it doesn’t kill books - it excites interest in books that people may have otherwise ignored. It also helps that we can cite Albert Einstein as using visualization in all his theorizing (remember the one about riding next to a light beam?) and that we have the best-selling "What Would Google Do?" as an example of a visual summary.

HarperStudios is a new kind of publishing arm of HarperCollins – like Saturn was for GM but, we hope, with all the upside. Their idea is to create a new kind of relationship with authors and booksellers alike – something like the 360-degree relationship record labels are establishing now with their artists. They look for authors to share the burden on marketing - especially through social media and they actively seek out authors who have already developed major online followings (e.g. Gary Vaynerchck from the Wine Library). Instead of high advances and low royalties, they offer low advances and high royalties hoping the author is more motivated to make waves. And they don’t take returns, so they force the booksellers to be more judicious in how they order and place the books. All told, they represent the newer, leaner and more entrepreneurial style of publishing.

Flatworld Knowledge is a start-up comprised of savvy college textbook people who have similarly reinvented their space but with even more twists – they have added a kind of modified Wiki. They hire the top educators to create college textbooks, enable the professors to customize the books for their own courses and then they give it away online. What students pay for is the on demand version of the book - printed for them at the college bookstore - but at much, much lower prices than typical textbooks. They also sell multimedia course material. As their investor explained to me, they plan to take a declining $10bn industry and turn it into a high growth $1bn industry – with Flatworld leading the growth.

One thing is clear, the book as we know it – this final and only product of the writer’s creative process is about to become something quite different – an ongoing conversation delivered over many media and probably on the go…..

UPDATE Google is about to launch its version of news condensation with Flipper. Look out for this market to take off!

iPhone Apps - Report from May Mobile iBreakfast

2009-06-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

iPhone & Mobile Apps

As cell phone users increasingly turn to smart phones – how important is it to offer a mobile App? It is cheap ($99 registration fee with Apple), relatively easy to develop and distribution is assured. However, with 35,000 apps out there, it is tough to stand out from the crowd.

THE APP LOTTERY
If you are lucky, like iBird (see NY Sunday Times) and Apple thinks you can really showcase the iPhone - they will give you millions of dollars of free advertising. A little less lucky - and you become the featured selection and so on. But this is a kind of lottery, most developers have to think about the long hard slog and such time-tested techniques as piggy-backing on other platforms.

AD SUPPORTED
According to Eric Litman, whose company, Medialets helps companies track and optimize the use of apps, having a mobile app may be a necessity of doing business. Instead of selling them though, many will become ad-supported. Think mobile widgets…..

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION – GOING MOBILE
More significantly, as mobile increasingly becomes a business platform as well as a lifestyle utility, the applications will become useful extensions to existing businesses – whether it is mobile sales people on a contact- and order-management system, or field engineers using specialized software to solve technical problems. These will be more than cool apps - they will be the future of the workforce. Any business that can put you in the field, will. And they can manage their workforce through control software - and stop paying rent on your cubicle.

MANY SMART PLATFORMS
While Apple is leading the mobile App charge because of the iPhone’s extraordinary range, power and graphics, the other platforms are already in the game and are likely to follow their example. In the case of Alex Muller’s Slifter, local shopping has been an important driver. Since his company began developing in 2007, having reached out to many platforms and worked with many telcos - they are mindful of the developments from Google’s Android, Nokia, Palm Blackberry and that dark horse in the race, Microsoft. Apple is hot but still has only 26% of the Smartphone marketplace.

No one expects Microsoft to lay low for long. When they wake up to this marketplace - it could spell opportunity for developers since Microsoft has a way of spending itself to the top.

NEW WORLD TRADING PLATFORM
Mobile use is not only likely to grow, but it is poised to become a ubiquitous platform: it is a computer that happens to be a phone. In many parts of Europe, where the telco’s charges are less onerous, it is a kind of charge card. In the 3rd world, especially Africa, phone usage has grown in 15 years from a few million landlines to over 50 million cell phone users with generally high quality service. As smart phones enter the picture they have the potential to become the standard trading platform that could transcend national borders and economic systems. Ditto for many parts of Latin America and Asia. The new versions of SmartPhones (iPhone 3.0) will greatly enhance the eCommerce possibilities of this platform.

MULTIMEDIA TRAINING AND SUPPORT
The specifics of Ken Engels' Curious Brain, a guitar teaching tool that uses the sound and graphics of the iPhone in an extraordinary way – think iChord instead of iBird - make it clear that the iPhone's potential to train, inform and empower will be tapped worldwide.

That may just be the beginning - Version 3 of the iPhone adds the ability to sell within applications. This way users of an app – say a training store - can buy more lessons or other content while they are on the training site. This opens to the door to new kinds of upsells and giveaways. The current model is typically, the Fremium – give away a trial, low-cost or free app and then upgrade the user. Now it’s about selling add-ons or more content – giving away the razor and selling the blades.

NEW TECHNOLOGY LINEUP
While no one thinks that mobile will displace the laptop or even the desktop, it is clear that a reordering is taking place – technology will exist over a complex system with a server, a network, possibly a desktop and a laptop workstation. In all cases, whatever can be done quickly, on the road or on the run, will be on a smartphone. Everything bigger will be support or back-up, the smartphones will be the tip of the technology spear

So have have you taken your place in the mobile App space yet?

“Blogola” – FTC to go after paid blogs

2009-05-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Defining a new Social Media Contract
[More on story reported in BusinessWeek]

It’s about time that we got real with the Social Media world. If you have an audience and you want to pay off your rent/mortgage/student loan/Tesla Roadster, you’re going to have to confront the issue of getting paid for your blogs.

Companies will offer them to you – generally in the form of goods – but sometimes cash. So why shouldn’t you take it. I don’t have a problem with it although most Social Media orgs do.

My only issue is transparency – if you’re getting paid, let me know. Not only that, but what is the level of sponsorship? Are they giving you stuff or money and is it your unfettered, if perhaps biased impression? Or do they have the final word or feeding you the talking points? There’s quite a difference and an industry symbol cold clear that up in a heartbeat.

Like advertising, once the public realized that ads underwrote their newspapers and TV, they accepted it – it was a social contract. We clearly need the same thing here – and business will take off.

Since the Social Media community couldn’t develop its own Social Contract, it appears that the FTC will take a crack at it. Hope it works……

[iBreakfast’s March Social Media Report Anticipated FTC Action on Blogola]

Social Media Report Anticipated FTC Action on "Blogola"

2009-05-20T11:58:00.000-07:00

iBreakfast’s March Social Media Report Anticipated FTC Action on Blogola

According to the FTC in a story reported in BusinessWeek, bloggers who get paid for mentioning products – sometimes known as Blogola – will become subject to their scrutiny.

For those of you who took the time to attend or read the iBreakfast’s Social Media Council Report, you’ll know that not only did we discuss this issue, but we described its resolution as an essential part of the Social Media Economy – providing of course, that it was transparent.

More than that, there are various degrees of blogola – from free product usage to our right payment and control over the actual content - and we should be able to rate that so the reader knows.

The main point is that if we establish an open, transparent system, we help everyone. But someone has to establish the ground rules and they have to be implemented.

My guess is that we’d all hate the FTC to be the ones to do this (just look how hard the banks are trying to pay off the TARP so they can get the government off their backs). But can we, as an industry, do it ourselves? WOMMA and Blog Council have guidelines but who really

Share your thoughts with us – maybe we’ll be the ones to take on this quixotic effort!

iBreakfast/LA report: Social Media Invades Hollywood

2009-05-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

Jayson Dinsmore, NBC Universal · Cristian Cussen, MySpace Video · Allison Dollar , ITA · Kevin Chou, Watercooler, Inc.

Social Media Invades Hollywood. This event was sold out thanks to great speakers from MySpace (Christian Cussen), NBC Universal (Jason Dinsmore), ning and Watercooler (Kevin Chou) plus a cameo appearance by a child star Aria Wallace from Niceklodeon. Social media is having a great impact in managing the fan base for shows and in developing the career of individual talents. Most significantly, both MySpace and NBC a re suing social media to develop shows both in generating ideas, tsting them and then building buzz. MySpace has developed custom concerts and NBC has synergized well with reality TV shows.

Click for the full report

Alternate Funding Conference report

2009-05-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Todd Walters, Loanio
David Feldman, Feldman Weinstein & Smith
Lawrence Langs, iBusiness Partners
Dana Stetson, The Receivables Exchange

How do you access capital in these very trying times? VCs and Angels still have money but unless you are a successful serial entrepreneur or are prepared for ridiculously low valuations and high equity giveaways you may want to hold on to your business plan. Likewise, banks are tighter than Fort Knox, so unless you don't need their money and your credit is too good to be true, you might not want to bother. That seems leaves a few choices other than rich Uncle Joe, assuming he kept his money out of the market.

So, in this half-day conference we looked at some of the near and long-term solutions to this problem. If you are a company with receivables - purchase orders from creditworthy companies - then factoring is the shortest way to raise money. However, the rates are legally usurious - up to 38% APR. But with the internet, a company like The Receivables Exchange has opened your receivables up for auctioning and could theoretically lower that rate by half or more.

For those who need smaller loans - under $25,000 - then you could have used crowdfunding with sites like Loanio, Prosper etc. At least you could have until November of last year. That's when the SEC, probably reeling from its criticisms over poor market regulation and overlooking the Madoff's $50bn scam, stumbled upon the one true threat to the banking system - the online aggregators of people to people loans backed by little more than good credit scores. This $100 million industry worth say, one grommet on the "Tarp" was determined to be in the business of selling securities, so they shut them down pending new filings. The solution appears to be some legalistic maneuver of repackaging the loans as bonds and so on. Nevertheless this type of funding will in likelihood return and probably become increasingly available to small business.

One side benefit is that Loanio found that it could go public by self-registering, which is way to dramatically lower their underwriting cost. This leads us to the closing presentation by reverse merger guru David Feldman and iBusinessPartner Larry Langs who specializing in taking companies public through so-called sell deals - i.e. using a defunct public company shells to go public instantly (the stock exchange used this technique itself when it went public!). This is a great idea if you can attract investor money - especially when the market recovers. The only downside is the high cost of quarterly filings.

Then again with the internet, those costs could come down.

April Report: Google & the Future of Newspapers

2009-05-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

Gordon Crovitz, Journalism Online · Stephen Arnold, Arnold IT
Myles Fuchs, Pressmart · Jeff Bogart, Bogart Communications ·
Mo Krochmal, Hofstra University

by Alan Brody

This breakfast came at a critical juncture in the Newspaper industry - Seattle, Chicago and now, Boston face the possibility of losing newspapers. So what has happened and where are we going?

It was no small irony that the headlines of the day trumpeted the "Craigslist Killer" - the med student who found his victims on the classifieds site - because in many ways, Craigslist, by undercutting the formerly profitable newspaper classifieds sections (by some $64 million in one year in San Francisco) became the Jack the Ripper of the newspaper world.

The other big player in the newspaaer world is Google - but whether they are the Jekyll or the Hyde is no small debate.

According to Google's Eric Schmidt, Newspapers did a great Act 1 in the 90's by going online - but haven't come up with an Act 2. I couldn't agree more - what they did was to put print up on a screen and add search with a little feedback mechanism. But that is really what we used to call "shovelware." They took the content from an old media - print - and shoveled it onto a new medium - online.

(As a matter of disclosure, I have a dog in this race - a new publishing company called ViziPress that addresses this issue through visualized storytelling.......)

Over time what I believe happened is that online papers taught people they don't really need to pay for the print product, and then they learned that reading a paper online wasn't such fun either. But then, returning to print was now unwieldy and a huge time sucker. Ergo - newspapers actually trained their readers into becoming dissatisfied customers seeking their news elsewhere.

From a strictly viewing point of view - they need to find a way to tell stories that are more readable online - especially as we go to mobile. We also need information compression and that calls for way of telling stories conceptually.

(With ViziPress, by experimenting with semiotics, graphic novels and music we have developed a kind of visual "cliff notes" for business, non-fiction and entertainment. You be the judge!)

The presentations began with Journalism.com's Gordon Crovitz, a new venture backed by the legendary Steven Brill that hopes to gang the newspapers together and, in some ways, take on Google to overcome the "original sin" of giving away their stuff for free. Through subscriptions and the artful of use of "fremiums" (giving some stuff away and then charging for the more desirable parts) they believe the public can be encouraged to fork over again. It happed with iTunes vs. the pirate music sites and certainly, as former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Crovitz has shown it can be done with a business newspaper.

But according to veteran Google analyst, Stephen Arnold, while that might work - assuming as in my analysis, the victim has already been dispatched (sorry about the metaphor, but that was the news of the day!), the better answer may just be in finding more ways to work with Google.

In Arnold's view, Google is a technologist with the world's biggest audience, finding ways of working with them and their various payment mechanisms (Adsense being the simplest) will probably enable you to do very well indeed. Fight them and they will incrementally swallow you because the news flows to them anyway. In his view, their ability to bring all data types - the video and pictures as well text along with fantastically big audience are unstoppable and their way to aggregate advertisers and buyers is not to be ignored either. Message to publishers, if Google doesn't call you, call them. You'll be glad you did!

Myles Fuchs at PressSmart offered another view which is that by using multiple digital delivery systems, his company can monetize whatever content newspapers already have. This is particularly the case in the one healthy area of the newspaper economy: hyperlocal news. Jeff Bogart agreed, noting that his local town blog outdistanced the big area newspaper in terms of true local coverage - events, town hall meetings etc. Interestingly, locals may have survived since most local newspapers stayed behind the technology curve, so their resistance made them a subscription necessity when everything went online for free. But again, according to Bogart, his success with aggregating local bloggers could also undermine that sanctuary - it only takes one local news blog aggregator and the local papers will be staring down the same storm the big city papers are facing.

Finally, Mo Krochmal a former journalist turned J-School professor at Adelphi talked about what he teaches his students. If, like me, you are about to fork over $160,000 for a fancy degree for one of your kids you might want to reflect a moment. According to Krochmal, as long as the students are comfortable with the fact that no fancy job awaits with a corner cubicle and networked computer, that they understand the reporting fundamentals and can blog well then, with a little entrepreneurship they should be happy. They might not make rent but they'll be happy.

Download presentations.
See other reports on Steve Arnold's blog.

March Report: Search Meets Social Media

2009-04-15T08:42:00.001-07:00

Social Media has become all the buzz for its ability to build an audience and create buzz. But how do you get the viral action going? This was the topic of the Search and Social Media iBreakfast.

By now, most Business users understand that Social Media is a way to build a network that was either difficult or verboten under the traditional Catch-22 Permission Market rules of email list building. You can't spam but if you ask people for their permission to market to them, they are likely to say no.

Kevin Lee showed how Didit.com's relationship with Dun & Bradstreet enables companies to be found on the search engines in conjunction with D&B. This is a classic piece of brand leapfrogging but it works and the cost is relatively low: you list you company's Power Profile on their site and you look all the more credible for it.

Chris Winfield shared some of his secrets for building lists for publications - get them listed on recommendation engines. Digg, deli.cio.us, Stumebleupon are all sites that people have become used to sharing their online finds. By directing your website and press releases to these sites as newsworthy.

It just so happens that one of the companies that presented at the iEvenign for Start-ups, GenGreenLife.com found itself in the public eye with upcoming coverage in Forbes and Entrepreneur magazine, precisely because they got noticed on StumbleUpon.com.

Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank and leading Midwestern SEO company talked about using all these techniques for building your own professional and corporate visibility. The key is using metrics from sites like buzzlogic and quarkbase to keep you on track of the viewers.

The bottom line with getting picked up on Social Media and recommendation sites is that if you're not popular be useful, that will get you picked up.

Be sure to read the Social Media Council Report on the iBreakfast Blog .

SOCIAL MEDIA COUNCIL DRAFT REPORT It's All About Marketing.....and Measurement

2009-03-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

The Social Media Council held its inaugural steering meeting on Wed. March 18.

Initially, this group was formed by members of the iBreakfast to give some form and understanding to explosive growth of Social Media. What had only recently seemed like one more online time-sucker has suddenly become perceived as a salvation of sorts for marketers, job seekers and consultants.

The most compelling interest of this group was in its marketing value – particularly from the perspective of what works and then, how to measure it. Everyone loves the idea of “viral” – getting your message out for free. But how do you measure it is effectiveness and how do explain its ultimate value – as well as some of its possible drawbacks to a client.

At that same time, we are all users of Social Media and we are concerned with issues of best practices as well as a kind of users Social Contract – what is the best way to interact with uses and what are the right ways to reward or monetize the users’ efforts. Finally, there is a concern – if somewhat less compelling among our tech-savvy members – about strategies and tactics and which social media are best used and how.

DEFINING SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The biggest concern at this meeting was measurement and expectations: what exactly is a Social Media campaign, how do you measure it and how do you explain to clients and colleagues – in the face of hype, misuse and uncertainty – just what outcomes they can reasonably expect?
The extent of this question quickly came to life in the words of one member who noted that clients just say: “Make us viral!” While that may sound simplistic, Social Media is all about spreading the word.

The next issue becomes a matter of expectations – can clients realistically expect to be the next Obama Girl? Would they really like to be in the middle of the “How to Smoke Smarties” controversy where preteens simulated smoking with a secondary brand of candy. Most of all, what is the real chance of becoming a viral hit vs. what is a more likely to outcome?

(In many cases what looks like a viral hit, was really an orchestrated effort in some hidden, but substantial way. )

Assuming this is how most clients view Social Media then we can start with this basic working definition:

Social Media is about getting the public to promote you, essentially for free, or at least, of their own volition.

(This definition works for individuals and professionals too, assuming they are trying to promote their public exposure).

In terms of marketing, this puts Social Media in a unique category somewhere between PR and paid ads. It is all human-driven content as opposed to the “create once” mentality of conventional ad placement, yet unlike PR there, are a numerous acceptable as well as arguably more controversial ways to drive exposure.

A SUBSET OF PERMISSION MARKETING – BUT EASIER TO GET PERMISSIONS
In many ways, Social Marketing is like Permission Marketing in that you can only proceed with the permission of the users, their rules and etiquette. Blackballing and retaliations are possible – but so is growth. The main difference, however, is that prospects are leery about signing on to opt-in lists is hard because it is assumed to be mostly about marketing and clogging their emails. With Social Media you are trading information, not necesarrily marketing and may do so without clogging their email.

SOCIAL MEDIA “USER COVENANT”
At its bottom, Social Media is an easier way to get permissions. Moreover, it evades Permission Marketing’s Catch-22 rule: it is NOT unethical to ask strangers for permission, again, because is understood not to be purely about marketing but about many kinds of networking that may lead up to some kind of marketing usually in the form of exposure or attention-seeking. However, this is a kind of unstated user-marketer covenant which means that overly aggressive clients need to understand this before proceeding - or they will do so at their peril!

BASIC TOOLS
Most clients view either blogs or viral videos as the key to getting their message across. In many case adding a widget it’s a plus. Games are a great viral ploy. Twitter is now an integral though not fully understood part. Wikis play a role but are generally absent from the marketing conversation.
Most individuals and professional users view blogs and Facebook page plus a business networking tool like LinkedIn or Plaxo as the basic tools for the trade.

(Attendees noted there too many offers from too many platforms for their efforts which opens up a numerous opportunities for entrepreneurs to consolidate or at least harmonize platforms. Filtering is another growing user issue.)

MEASURING RESULTS

The next question is how do you measure results? There are many ways: sign-ups, pass-forwards, Facebook fans, followers, chatter in the form of blog-postings, story leads and ultimately some type of sales.

There are numerous commercial services to help do this. Buzzmetrics offers trending reports that show how a brand is being perceived. Social Media sites like Facebook and council attendee Ripple6 provide comprehensive stats from their platform usages.

METRICS
As the principals of Pandemic Labs pointed out, the industry would be greatly aided by agreed-upon metrics somehow impression-based (like a social media CPM) as well as something engagement-based that traditional marketers could understand. The holy grail would be sentiment-based digital footprint metrics.

Another suggestion from JB Barlow of LifeWorkAlliance.com is a Digg-like model that uses social media to rate social media.

However – Social Media CPMs are different from traditional advertising because they carry blowback risks. So even if measurement is somehow unitized it still has to be seen in the context of an overall campaign strategy.

HOLISTIC MEASUREMENT
What all of these approaches miss is the big picture – what did Social Media, and Social Media only - do for my brands, service, product, career etc? While no media ever can do all that, most media, particularly digital, offer increasing levels of measurement. Social Media however, complicates much of this because monetization at every level is elusive and even among obvious viral successes there have been difficulties in achieving monetization.

Exposure: Giving Up Control & Blowback
The biggest problem for traditional marketers may be that unlike old Media, here the public can talk back. Inappropriate campaigns can get you into trouble. Unlike the old adage of no such thing as bad publicity, here it can be really bad. Often, the negatives can stay around search engines forever. So campaigns carry liability as well as opportunity. Again, as consultants, technologists and campaign providers we need this phenomenon to be an understood issue

CAMPAIGN PROFILES vs. CASE STUDIES AND UNDERSTANDING BLOWBACK
Since it is possible to measure various elements in Social Media, the key then is how we define success. In addition, we need to balance it against the risks – how much does the pursuit of success expose the enterprise. Or another way of asking, how much brand control do you need to give up in order to get the public the freedom to viralize you.

VIRAL VALUE LEVELS
Since creating virality is the holy grail of Social Media we should begin by defining a kind of Viral Value chain.

Viral Hierarchy - from Most Viral to Least Viral
1. Platform: Pass along – users commend – attach themselves
2. Widget
3. Conversational
4. Pass-along
5. Link
6. Mention
7. Banner
8. Adword

CAMPAIGN PROFILES
Just as a Financial Analyst would show a client a portfolio profile based on risk vs. reward Social Media advisors should have a “model portfolio” approach.

High Growth vs. High Risk
Maximum Virality – Wow! or controversial campaign vs. risk of online retribution. Favors breakthrough ideas, outrageous videos etc.

Medium Virality – medium chance of blowback. Favors games, contests, cute ideas or useful tactics like widgets and cool or useful videos.

Low Virality - little chance of blowback. Pass-along with little or no interactivity, commentary etc. Favors videos, pictures, jokes , interesting videos etc.

CAMPAIGN PROGRAM TYPES
Since many attendees of the Council Meeting are in a position to sell campaigns, they asked for standards or baseline measures. Just as the Interactive Advertising Bureau spent its early years developing standards for banners – this group saw a need for Marketing Units or standards as well as away to describe the work effort required.

Social Media Marketing is inherently more complicated. Nevertheless, there is a way to provide standard guidelines both in terms of basic integrated campaigns, their likely outcomes and the level of labor and effort required to establish and support these campaigns. Another measure is the issue of strategic needs: are these branding efforts, product sales, customer retention, reputation management etc.

Some Guidelines are:
Basic Campaign: Integrating Social Network Page (e.g. Facebook) with weekly updated blog and Twitter account.
Estimated development time 20 hours. Estimated maintenance 10 hours per week.
Likely outcomes: customer outreach, modest growth for small enterprises. Modest effort level.
Basic Campaign enhancements – Business Network outreach (e.g. LinkedIn, Plaxo) seeking clients and hires by seeking for past contacts etc. Simple videos, homemade or semi-professional.
Email campaign to old and new clients.

Medium Campaign: Retention/Loyalty Campaign
Integrating Social Network Page (e.g. Facebook) with weekly updated blog and Twitter account. Outreach to existing clients. Raise and improve profile. Premium offers/Loyalty programs.
Estimated development time 50 hours. Estimated maintenance 20-40 hours per week. May require team or dedicated staffer.
Likely outcomes: customer outreach, customer feedback, and double-digit growth for small to medium enterprises. Team-effort level. May require third party providers of games, loyalty programs and content
Medium Campaign enhancements – Business Network outreach (e.g. LinkedIn, Plaxo). Professional videos. Good content and editing.
Email campaign to old and new clients. Partnering, linksharing, affinity groups and affiliate marketing.

Advanced Campaign: High Growth
Requires a Big Idea – an exciting new product, outrageous video, a major celebrity, nation TV campaign etc.
Integrating Social Network Page (e.g. Facebook) with a Website with “Big Viewer Driver” from TV or “talked about content.” Gets attention online and on other media (Press, TV etc). High risk of controversy.
Estimated development time 100-400 hours. Estimated maintenance 100+ hours per week. Will require team or dedicated staffers. Generally requires agency or outside partners.
Likely outcomes: dramatic media and customer growth, high traffic, geometric growth for medium to large enterprises. Quantum leap for small sites. Team-effort level. Generally requires third party providers of games, content, ideas, tech support.
Campaign enhancements – General and specialized digital PR, Business Network outreach (e.g. LinkedIn, Plaxo). Professional videos. Good content and editing.
Email campaign to old and new clients. Partnering, linksharing, affinity groups and affiliate marketing.

BLOWBACK & REPUTATION MANAGEMENT – WHEN THE PUBLIC RESPONDS
Traditional organizations generally require some change of thinking in order to enter the world of Social Media because they must allow some level of “brand release.” If they place too much control over the conversation they will be shunned or worse. On the other hand, they may have trouble handling the controversy. Enterprises with already bad public relations may have difficulty just entering the field. Worse, search engines have a way of keeping bad news in the public eye long after they have been dispelled.

The industry should therefore pose guidelines as to the following (outside of legal remedies such as libel):
Fair comment vs. unfair comment
Fair response
Fair deletion of comment
Fair counter PR such as in responding to URLs that inherently attack certain enterprises.

PAYMENT OF INFLUENCERS – TRANSPARENCY vs. MORALITY
In general Bloggers and other providers of User Generated Content are expected to work gratis. The only universally accepted exception is the placement of AdSense ads. Clearly, the real issue is that UGM is attractive precisely because it is supposed to be the honest voices of the netizens and uninfluenced by outside forces – he blogosphere as a kind of online folk medium a vox populi. The reality is that onliners are always pushing something – their business, their views, their reputation or just their own excuse to grab your attention. Even the placement of AdSense has influence over the way some bloggers address issues known to attract the highest click rates.
Aside from the “moral” issues raised by tech purists – there are two issues:
1. Transparency – if bloggers etc. declare their sponsors or biases, is that OK?
2. What is fair – ads, sponsors or direct influence in the content itself?

SPONSORED BLOGGER/UGM GUIDELINES
Since AdSense is rarely lucrative for the long tail of content providers it is quite likely that more and more bloggers, vbloggers etc. with sizable followings will increasingly seek out more lucrative revenue sources – most of which will somehow influence their work.

TRANSPARENCY LEVELS
As long as transparency is the acceptable standard, then are basic levels of transparency –
1. Full Transparency: Declared sponsors with no edit control from sponsors. Free to be critical.
2. Partial Transparency: Sponsors declared with final edit control from sponsors.
3. Minimal Transparency: Sponsors Named. Content may be developed by sponsor.

OTHER GUIDELINES
Attendees noted other areas of concern that required a list of guidelines and best practices.
Approvals
Privacy ID
Protection of Copyrights and other Intellectual Property Rights
User Generated Media (See Transparency levels)
Ads and Sponsorship
Ownership of Contact and other Social Media Platform data.
Wiki Ethics

MEETINGS
The Council could establish public meetings in multiple cities.
It could also establish conferences and professional/best practice training programs for individuals as well enterprises.

MEMBERSHIPS
As the group grows, based on the recommendations of the committee members we should consider its charter as a membership group, with paid dues, a mission to represent the interests of the industry.

Why Newspapers Die - Our April iBreakfast: Google's Solution

2009-03-21T09:18:00.000-07:00

OK here's a Big Timely One. Why are newspapers dying - and is there a way out?

Google thinks so and they are launching a new initiative to respond to this. Newspapers - stay tuned: we will be examining this in great detail at our April iBreakfast.

But in many ways the conversation is still about reconfiguring what's already out there - digital text with a few visual enhancements.

THE FUTURE IS IN VISUAL THINKING

For those who know, I have been exploring the world of Graphic Novels (OK, Comics for Smartypants). There is a method to this madness......

Everyone knows that ComicCon is takng over the world.....or so it seems. Comics are the basis of most of Hollywood's blockbusters. Graphic Novels are the only growth area in publishing and they are all the rage in education (we even started a conference called Graphica in Education).

Why is this and what does it mean for Newspapers?
The short answer is that people - especially young people - are attuned to reading with both sides of the brain. Text favors only one side of the brain. Bringing pictures to the story acitvates the other. Adding deep archetypes (the comic superheroes) substantially enhances interest in the storylines. One reason why celbrity gossip with pics sells so well (substitue Madoff for Madonna and you bump up readership in the Wall Street Journal just as much).

What this means for Newpapers is that when you go digital you can't just do newspapers online and add a few pictures. People want to experience the news with more of "dual brained" balance. Stories have symbolic value and they have to be told via the language of symbols - or else your just beating a dying horse. What the net encourages is short, sweet, high impact and easy drill-down.

When movies began, they often filmed plays. Motion pictures oringinally showed skits and visual effects. When the narrative of drama was combined with filmed action we had a substantially new medium.

So that's why we started ViziPress, teamed up with sites like Empressr and a series of projects that will illustrate new ways to make digital media more readable.

In the meantime, stay tuned for our April iBreakfast and you will hear about the current issues and peek into the big ideas going forward..

Social Media Council Meeting

2009-03-21T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Social Media Council met for the first time on Wed. in NY.

The report will be out shortly. Tell me if you want an early glimpse......

The bottom line is - it's all about marketing, measuring and managing expectations.

Then comes professional and personal usage - strategies and best practices.

This report will outline some really compelling ways that we, as a community can substantially affect the developments of all of the above.

Stay tuned.....!

Don't forget the next iBreakfast on Wed. March 25th is about the dramatic combination of Search and Social Media.

Report from the Business Side of Social Media iBreakfast

2009-02-27T15:50:00.000-08:00

What we saw at the February iBreakfast was the sudden embrace by businesses and professionals of a group of technologies that have been kicking around for several years – with the aura of diversion and not business.

Due to crash and the dramatic loss of trust in the financial system, we are looking at them with different eyes. At the macro level, we may be entering a new kind of economy – one that that has gone from the Post-Industrial Economy (1964-1984), the Knowledge Economy (1984-2004 to the Social Relationship Economy. We have exported industrialization, western education and now, thanks to the Internet, we can access those educated people worldwide and outsource our knowledge economy about as efficiently as we did the industrial and postindustrial economies. Since shipping is relatively cheap and globalism has undercut most of our protected markets, and our knowledge-based industrial economy turns out to be flawed and so we seem to be left up the proverbial creek.

The only thing we own that cannot be undercut, is our trusted relationships.

Many of the errors of the market and arguably, the stimulus is they pay no attention to this shift and are throwing resources at a dead economic model. (Some of the comments from my opening presentation will be available in a separate report.)

So we’re on our own with this new paradigm. Fortunately, with Social Media tools, we now have the means to reach, manage and, as we are learning, extract value from these relationships.

For many people out of work – their relationships are probably what is going to deliver their next job or consulting opportunity.

For companies looking to survive and grow, it is these relationships that will help them understand what their clients thinks of them and how they can promote it in the hopes of setting off the magic grail of this universe: viral growth.

Jared Hendler of EdelmanDigital showed how his company had successfully used these techniques to enhance the brand relationships for Pepsi and Axe using approaches that PR people understand: motivate the influencers in a group and the others follow. With Social Media they are using this techniques directly with the consumer and in that way, replacing or at least supporting, traditional advertising.

Rich Ullman of Ripple6, a Social Relationship engine that was recently acquired by Gannet, offers a controllable white-label product for corporate America with varies tools to monitor the feedback loop. Having customers talk back in a public forum is challenging area for many companies and they will have to learn to rethink their relationship to consumers. But in reality, for those who get it, it is an opportunity. Ripple6’s tool makes it possible to follow,measure and target. With his platform it is easy for the client typically, the marketer ,to monitor the conversation and the general rule is anything that gets people fired up – like Mom’s or people suffering pain – will garner a highly involved conversation.

Matt Peters of the relatively new marketing company, Pandemic Labs, discussed the taste test campaign his company did for Dunkin Donuts which is considered part of the reason many coffee drinkers were willing to forgo a trip to Starbucks. Neverthless an audience member asked the key question “how many cups of coffee did it sell?” The answer was awareness, mentions, etc. On the other hand, try asking that question to an ad exec!

In the end, this series of events has shown a deep need for companies and now, individuals, to develop a genuine Social Media Strategy - to understand what works and what they need to work at to get results. Contrary to the few “viral lottery” stories, very little of this success happens just by itself but at the same time, it is no longer a time-wasting luxury - it is a tool for survival.
To that end we will be launching a Social Media Council and a series of low-cost, hands-on workshops to deal with the issue of Social Media Management Strategies and Promoting Your Digital Footprint.

If you are interested in the Council and the workshops please send a note to Somc@ibreakfast.com

To download the Presentations go to:

Edelman Digital (Jared Hendler)
Ripple6 (Rich Ullman)
Pandemic Labs (Matt Peters)

Other blogs from this event:
Bloggers School

The Glitter in Twitter - iBreakfast Report

2009-02-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

For all those fencesitters who wondered, "Why Twitter?" this iBreakfast gave them a reason to take the tweet. There is plenty of tweasure in Twitter (sowwy!) as long as you use it right and forget the early hype.

The early adopters made Twitter seem like a new way for the underemployed to twitter away time. But with StockTwits, investor and entrepreneur Howard Lindzon (ho founded and sold WallStrip) not only made a case for using this as a platform, but also offered a clue as to the career possibilities for thousands of free-range experts. He new ronin. The Wallstreeters that Madoff & Co. let loose.....

Stockpickers and analysts and can develop a following on StockStwits and build up a client base. The beauty of Twitter - and this is the key - is that it favors any business tha needs immediate, up-to-the second information. Stock trading is one really good example.

But there are plenty of others. David Pogue in the Times recently talked about how they use it to check the originality of an idea for the MacArthur grant committee meeting.

If you want to know whether the wine you are about to buy at a restaurant or the wineshop is the right year - then go to WineTwits. According to Steve Gilbert, founder and long time online wine-selling pioneer (Happyhours.com and winestillsoldout.com) he has generated over $15,000 in wine sales from his small but growing wine-lover following.

A great example of the virality of Twitter is the Shorty Awards developed almost as a lark (note the bird reference here!) by entrepreneur Greg Galant of Sawhorse Media. In a very short time they received ten's of thousands of submissions from all over the world and now they have a long list of people hoping to attend the award ceremonies.

Finally, if your company needs to put together a comprehensive short messaging plan then mCommoms offers a way to tie it all together. According to co-founder, Chris Muscarella, only 5% of Twitter traffic originates from cell phones (although the iPhone thwarts these numbers because it is seeen as a computer and not a phone) and so the management is complex and more web-oriented. In any case, as people understand the usefulness of mobile mass instant messaging the need will increase.

For additional reports read these blogs about the Twitter iBreakfast.

Flirting with Twitter - "Glitter in Twitter" iBreakfast « Press ...
The best advice of the the ibreakfast "Glitter in Twitter" session on 1/22/09 was that this is the last thing you want to "tweet."

Kevin Rose: 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Dec. iBreakfast Report - Wealth in Widgets

2009-01-08T05:56:00.000-08:00

Michael Chin, KickApps
Chris Damsen, Netvibes
Chris Kobran, Clearspring

"Snaggable" is the big word in Widgets according to Chris Kobran of Clearspring which is a Widget distribution network. By creating a useful mini-site, people will upload them to their own sites or portals and h client stays alive in the eyes of its consumers. The classic widgets are weatherbugs, clocks alerts, traffic cams or anything that someone finds useful on a regular basis. Contests, updates and so on are another useful application.

KickApps Michael Chin talked about widgets displacing banner ads as the principal ad format of the internet. Is company builds wedgets as sponsored ad units for clients.

Chris Damsen from Netvibes showed the widget-driven portal for users - with the online world of social media and blogs, the focus is on providing useful ad-driven products that users will hopefully festoon on their home pages.

Bloggers School Report from the Widget iBreakfast

Video from the Widget iBreakfast

Interactive TV Reinvents Itself - Nov. 20 iBreakfast

2008-11-24T08:18:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the world of the SuperDVR - getting the show you want when you want it. It is really the convergence of IPTV, what speaker Shelly Palmer elaborates in his book TV Disrupted (version 2 is coming out shortly) in what he calls the migration from Network TV to Networked TV.

Mark Risis, TiVo; Alan Body iBreakfast; Shelly Palmer, Advanced Media; Gary Lauder, Lauder Partners

In its simplest form it just means that any video anywhere – whether Network TV, Cable, Pay-per-View or any YouTube or Internet Video can be retrieved and called up on your TV. This is where the giant screen TVs and those increasingly elaborate set-top boxes will really earn their keep.

Moreover, as you see this evolve, the convergence with mobile both as a kind of smart clicker (that’s where Bluetooth really kicks in) and as a remote viewing device for what you have overcaptured. There is also an emerging video conversation that young people are already engaged in over the internet, is as we can see from TiVo, moving on to interactive TV.
This is where TiVo is getting interesting.

For all the early hype, there is really only one company that has brought us a successful form of iTV and that is TiVo – wich is really just a vision of making a TV work like a VCR thanks to some cool software and a big hard drive. So their next steps into the future are compelling – now they are offering a convergence with broadband so you can start doing what kids everywhere are doing, looking at YouTube videos, but on your giant TV instead of a laptop. To pay for it, and all the commercial zapping that takes place with commercial TV, they are getting advertisers to offer special TiVo friendly versions of their ads that send out a banner message as they are being skimmed.

This in turn is another new frontier of the TV experience, enabling viewers to get a video shorthand of all the material they are now amassing……and this, along iwht the mobile component will be the topics we revisit when we do iTV Reinvented Part II.

VC Outlook

2008-11-24T08:13:00.000-08:00

Alan Meckler led this iBreakfast that examined the investor outlook in a new era of financial failures. In a strange way, the last bubble and the virtual closing of the tech IPO market has insulated many investors from the fallout. They just weren't part of the public markets. On the other hand, the general climate is bad and that will tend to lower valuations dramatically. Lean and mean is the watchword and major investors like Sequioa are sending out the word to cut back - or else.

iPhone vs. Android

2008-11-24T07:43:00.000-08:00

The iPhone still has a lot more going for it than Google's Android, but the market is excited about a viable competitor that has the ability to improve dramatically and open up the smart phone to widespread development.

Click for more on the comparison and a report on the iPhone vs Android iBreakfast.

Web 2.0 Best Practices Conference Report

2008-11-23T23:06:00.000-08:00

Implementation of Web 2.0 concepts at companies in all sectors of the business world, was the theme of this event. Mobile became an important part of the discussion with the features of Android being compared to iPhone.

For more details visit:

Dorian Benkoil's Report

General Report

Greg Verdino's Report

Monetizing Social Networks - iBreakfast Video Report

2008-05-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Report from our April iBreakfast

SPEAKERS:

David Birnbaum, Takkle
Michael Lazerow, BuddyMedia
Steve Ennen, Neighborhood America

Monetizing Social Networks was a revealing event where companies shared their secrets for extracting revenue from his key Web 2.0 phenomenon. The basic challenge is that the trusted social environment of these networks makes it hard to pay of referrals or otherwise tap the interactivity of the medium.

However, since the involvement factor is exactly what makes these networks so compelling that is where these there companies have developed solutions. (As an example of this involvement factor we showed how under 30's were willing to make complete fools of themselves taking on a Zulu dancer where a generation before them would have been content simply to watch.)

The favored solution is a high involvement contest or ratings game. The extent and variations are all over the place but they call come down to this key Web 2.0 idea we call "Collaboratition" driving people to work for you by creating a competitive environment. The main thing here is that people are encouraged to spread the work and grow the campaign virally.
Brands are typically using them to expand involvement with their products and the system, according to Lazerow is forming into the next ad unit.

WIKINOMICS REPORT

2008-03-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

March 19 - iBreakfast

Katarina Skoberne, OpenAd.net
Nic Perkin, The Receivables Exchange
Jessica Morris, OurStage.com

The March iBreakfast was notable for showing how to put the world to work for you by tapping into idea marketplaces. This is not about Wiki software per se but about extracting value from the universe simply by putting it to work for you. We call it Collaboratition – motivating people to work together or against each other for a common purpose.

This is truly a revolutionary concept even though it has been talked about for a long time. What is clear now is that all the tools and public sentiment is in place for those who can think outside of conventional parameters to harness. This point is so important because it also explains why your next competitor is not likely to be your current one – since they are probably as captive as you are to conventional wisdom.

We looked at 3 companies using some form of Collab – in music, advertising and monetizing receivables.

OpenAd.net is a really good example of all of the above because it is a great way for marketers and advertisers to reach out to the world creative community for ideas. They pay OpenAd a fee of several thousand dollars and then put out a brief to their community of 10.000+ creatives worldwide and offer a prize – typically between $500 and $2000 – for a fleshed-out campaign idea. The concepts pour in. The most famous being one set up by Bono to retire 3rd World Debt. But many Fortune 500 companies like Gillette participate too.

And where does this groundbreaking company, now with offices in the US hail from? Slovenia.
Next, we looked at The Receivables Exchange, which monetizes the short term loan you give to customers when you allow them terms of 30 – 90 days. From their perspective this is a free loan which, worldwide is worth around $2.3 trillion. Now that’s a nice number!
This is often called factoring and normally, companies call their bank or a factoring company and get the best deal they can which is typically around 15-25% in annualized interest. By creating an open exchange, suddenly you have made your business opportunity available to the world and your interest comes down dramatically. Investors tend to get a very good return for their risk too.

Finally, there is OurStage.com, a music judging and promotion site which covers just about every genre from rap to world music as well video. It is open to all comers and has a monthly contest for around $500 in prizes in each category. The dynamics are very interesting. Aside from raising $13 million, the site has grown quickly and attracts 1.2 million monthly uniques.
Visitors are asked to judge two songs whenever they log on and here’s the secret – it is a “thin slicing” approach - you only have to listen to the first 15 seconds to judge. Naturally, that favors songs with the hooks up front, but even so, by aggregating the scores on these microjudgements, they come up with a good index of what is hot. Any musician, amateur or pro can submit and there is no fee. The site makes money through ads, selling songs and sending out the cream of the crop to record co.’s and concert organizers.

The eye-opening part is how they grew – by the musicians themselves, of course. That’s because today, every busker worth their salt has an email list and their own little marketing machine called: “emails to fans.” It can be postcards toom but you can’t beat the price of emails

So the lessons learned are: figure out who can be motivated to help you (especially ones who can multiply your message), how to reach them and how to execute with a great site. This is a key point because so much of this intangible that the IP rights are a critical issue.

The metaphor we chose to set this show in motion are UFOs and the Web, partly because, like the value concepts of Wikinomics, they have a way of popping out of nowhere and people seem hellbent on uploading these videos by boatload onto YouTube. The motivator appears to be the ubiquity of camcorders and a desire to let the world know you’re not crazy. Or is it too much Photoshop? Either way, the world works for you – you just need to figure out how to tap into it.

Other Blogs about this iBreakfast:
Why the Big 4 Labels are Dead by Ray Beckerman

Attention Surplus & The Fastest Monetized Music Site - Ever

2008-03-17T08:07:00.001-07:00

If the record business needs a lesson in how to make money, then the former Governer of New York has one for them.

Think about it - within 48 hours of the public discovering that Ashley Dupre, the high priced call girl who took him down, was a budding singer with two moderately good hip hop songs on the 'Net, she sold something like 200,000 downloads.

This is truly a first. Hookers didn't used to sing. And if they did, they almost certainly didn't have a record contract.

Now you don't need a label and a scandal is worth more than a record deal.

The moral of the story is this is: this truly an attention economy and you have to be ready at any given time with monetizable product. We, of course, prefer you stick to more distinguished efforts but the principle is there.

More importantly, it explains why someone like Edgar Bronfman was willing to put up $2 billion for Warner Music. The record business may be dying, he said in a Daily Deal conference, but not the music business. So when an Asian star has a hit, his company has 400 SKU’s from ringtones to keychains, to sell.

The question for everyone out there is:

1. What do you have to sell at your moment of attention?

2. How do you get that moment of attention (without quite that moral turpitude?)

To be discussed at our Wikinomics iBreakfast on Wednesday, and many more to come........

Wikis & UFOs: The "Rodney King" Moment in "Star Land?"

2008-03-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

Here I stick my neck way out and instead of focusing on Digital Media, I talk about what it has enabled.

UFO's, right? Has the power of the 'net made a difference to this great controversy?

You’d think by now that the prevalence of camcorder phones and other cheap image-capturing devices would generate a lot of videos. And with Youtube, they could be seen from anywhere in the world. No possible government or media intervention to worry about.

So, has there been a Rodney King moment? The kind where something we've been talking about for years is captured right there for everyone to see.....

Is that happening with UFO's.?

Perhaps. Not only that, but it may be happening every day.....

Top of that list is aol.com with this little picture:

This picture of a UFO over London was shown last month on the front Page of the London Sun.

This picture of a UFO over London was shown last month on the front Page of the London Sun.

On Youtube, UFO's are so plentiful and convincing that you would not have enough time to see them all in a week. Not only that, but many are shot in broad daylight or with digital camcorders that somehow pick up infrared or other parts of the light spectrum not otherwise visible to humans.

Here are a few that simply bowl me over:

The Live Turkish Broadcast

The Chinese Shakeout

The French Freakout

The Haitian Hover (could be fake but WOW!)

Usually, it is the user reaction that sells it even though its the easiest part to fake. In any case, the highlights include great still images, video on live TV and credible-looking images over world cities. In January 2008, there were widespread reports of a mass sighting of a UFO Fleet in Stephensville TX.

Then, there are compelling documentaries with the testimony of credible people like Fife Symington, former Governor of Arizona, describing the famous mass Phoenix sighting in the 90's in a CNN special. Even video from NASA - which includes the famous "Tether Incident" displaying dozens and dozens of UFOs, are appearing, making it clear that something is going on out there.

Air Force video clips from all over the world are appearing on the 'Net. China is full of UFO Clubs and high levels of sighting are reported in Latin America.

Increasingly, these craft are being seen in formations. There just aren’t enough Photoshop hours in the day to make all of them fakes.

So the question is what’s going on?

As it happens, an old school friend who lives in Hong Kong contacted me a few months ago to answer that. The big word is Exo – as in Exo Politics and Exo Worlds and Exos of all kinds.

The short story is - there certainly are other intelligent life forms out there from other planets. Why, for heaven’s sake, wouldn’t there be? Thinking of mankind as unique has to be the highest form of self-flattery - of the delusional kind, that is.

But aside from that, these forms have technology that enables them to move at amazing speeds and at very high levels of maneuverability. They may pop in and out of other dimensions or wormholes and they can be huge - the size of several city blocks. Some are as big as a whole neighborhood.

They are usually saucer-like and some have a recognizable cut-out making them look like Pacman. But they also come in chevrons and oblong shapes.

Naturally, there have been encounters and experts have patched together a storyline from the collected reports.

Since the first major sighting in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 seems to have occurred within a few years of the first nuclear weapon, people think they are connected. The gap in time gives us an idea of how far they traveled though we think their tech may have improved so more can get here quicker. It may also be that the escalating nuclear threat could be an issue.

If they are truly here, they come at a very good time because they know how to use free vacuum energy from the universe. So there could be economic interests at play. Also, their technology is more advanced, so the military is deeply interested. They are generally more highly evolved beings using, more of their brains, and they can access telepathy. They don't seem to suggest war although they do abduct us - but only if we are willing to go through with it.

They come in what has been identified as over 50 races. Some look like us - others really don't. And there may well be a federation. Since their craft do crash and leave bodies, we have reports that their anti-immune system doesn't work well here.

So what are we to do? There really may be Star People and aliens and a Star Land - if the evidence really stacks up.

So we need to get a heads up on the other side. The government does have knowledge of them. Why wouldn't they - since they are responsible for dealing with any invasion to the land. There are reports they not only classified the races but actually kept a little colony of "Tall Whites" as they are known, in Nevada caves. These beings are a paler version of us, are intelligent, have higher consciousness and so on. However, if the Nevada story is true, then they may have been left behind in the home furnishings department.

Then there is the question: so why are they here and what should we be doing?

My friend Neil Gould, has plenty to say about this in an English language news interview.
He claims to have seen them since he was a boy. I have known him since then and can only say that even if true, he never mentioned it to me!

In any case, this calls for a conference…….Exo-Con.....coming soon!

And here's the best part about this conference we are planning - skeptics and believers pay different prices.

My question to you, dear reader, is: who should pay more, the skeptic or the believer? Who should subsidize who?

We welcome your comments. Or just the vote: skeptic or believer? Who pays more?

(C) 2008 Alan Brody

Web Video: Is There Money to Be Made?

2008-03-04T21:54:00.000-08:00

Report form the Feb 2008 iBreakfast

Marcien Jenckes, Voxant
John Lumpkin, Heavy Media
Bryan Thatcher, Empressr

TV may be going the way of Web Video but according to Marcien Jenckes, a former AOL exec, “TV dollars are only giving us Web Video pennies.”

So how do you make a pile of pennies, these days?

It turns out that YouTube and IPTV in general has attracted thousands of competing sites but in order to stay alive, they have had to reinvent themselves.

Heavy.com which was originally just a destination site for young men has become a kind of media aggregator and sales that sells and syndicates young male-oriented content to its major ad partners.

Voxant redistributes high value video streams for free to new viewers who mind wind up as subscribers to the premium sites.

Empressr is a hybrid video and slideshow site that enables viewers to communicate in new ways.

For the most part, however, whatever money is being made is through advertising and there, pre-roll, those annoying ads that run prior to the video, are king.

At the end of the day, the challenge video is arbitraging the half-penny or so a stream into a profitable cpm. For many, the solution, at least in part, may come form Google's recent introduction of Adsense for Video.

Long Live the Pre-Roll (for Now)
ClickZ News, NY - Feb 27, 2008
Heavy Media's John Lumpkin and Voxant CEO Marcien Jenckes both made that assessment today at an iBreakfast program, "Web Video, Where's the Money? ...

For VideoEgg and Its Platform, Ads Trump Content Delivery
ClickZ News, NY - Feb 28, 2008
The company's shift was pointed out by Alan Brody, organizer of an iBreakfast panel discussion in New York City about the Web video business. ...