Social Media – Page 2

Setting the Subscription Fee – Where’s the Line?

October 3, 2010 by tmcgMNM

This week saw two new major brand entries to the world of subscription-based content. First the Boston Globe announced that next year they were splitting and enhancing their online content offerings by creating a paid subscription site at BostonGlobe.com for $14.95 per month. Their flagship Boston.com will remain free. Magazine publisher (can I still use the “M” word?) Condé Nast announced Golf Digest on Demand as a premium subscription service for $9.99 per month, offering on-demand golf content like instruction videos. This is great. I have no problem with paid-for content. My question: how do you set these prices? I once used the HBO test when deciding if a monthly fee had value. That worked until the day I signed up for a DVR and realized that a $10/month DVR was so much more valuable by allowing me to control by viewing compared to the $12/month for HBO. Earlier this year. I tested the value of the DVR when we moved into our new place and tried to go with the HD over-the-air antenna = $free TV, but no DVR (unless I wanted to buy and pay monthly for TiVO). We quickly learned the value of on-demand Curious George as the only way to get a two-year to sit long enough to fix dinner. Back to the fees question … where do you set that value? The $9.99 for the Golf Digest on Demand makes initial sense, but every month? And that’s where the line needs to be set, you want to find that sweet spot where the subscriber is willing to pay, but not inclined to cancel. The other issue these publishers should build into their pricing is that paid subscribers are FAR MORE valuable for partnership programs. Any subscriber that is willing to pull out a credit card is going to be a FAR MORE desired target. These publishers should look to setting a price that is low enough to make the decision to join easy, and not one that makes the subscriber evaluate it’s value against another service. My take is to price low enough to cover operational expenses in order to encourage subscriptions. Then look to scale revenue on the ad/partnership side of the equation. This is especially true if you are counting on user interaction and content to drive engagement since you’ll need the people to ensure the traffic

Condé Nast Gets Deeper Into Selling Digital Content (paidcontent.org)
Boston Globe to Start a Paid Web Site (mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com)
Boston Globe to Launch Separate Paid Site (mashable.com)

Semantic Web Meets Tim McGraw

March 22, 2010 by tmcgMNM

Tim McGraw via last.fm

One of the tricks of country music song writers that are out of fresh ideas is to write a song that does nothing, but drop proper names, such as people (Conway Twitty rhymes with so much), places (Cabo is a fav) and things (happy hour). You don’t even need to be a country music fan, and I’m sure you have a jukebox of bad music in your head right now.

Well, I’m going to test one of the worst offenders of this: a song called Southern Voices that is sung by Tim McGraw and was written by Bob DiPiero and Tom Douglas — to make sure the blame is spread fairly. The opponent Zemanta and their semantic web publishing tool. I’m afraid to paste in the lyrics, because this thing will explode. The song is nothing but a name dropping brain dump in the hope that somewhere ol’ Tim will be able to hit the right note with the music public to make you, yeah you, want to buy this drivel.

(Now, before some heads explode, please note that I am not condemning the names in the song, which range from Charlie Daniels to Jesus. I’m a big fan of these people. It’s the shameless use of their names that is bad.)

Ready… time to hit ctrl-v, and I’ll tag the names that Zemanta finds:

Hank Williams sang it

Number 3 drove it

Chuck Berry twanged it

Will Farmer wrote it

Aretha Franklin sold it

Dolly Parton graced it

Rosa Parks rode it

Scarlett O chased it

Smooth as the hickory wind

That blows from Memphis

Down to Appalachicola

It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well

Come on in I’m

Sure glad to know ya

Don’t let this old goat cross

In this Almond Brothers t-shirt and throw ya

It’s cicadas making noise

With the southern voice

Hank Aaron smacked it

Michael Jordan dunked it

Pocahantas tracked it

Jack Daniels drunk it

Tom Petty rocked it

Dr. King paved it

Bear Bryant won it

Billy Graham saved it

Smooth as the hickory wind

That blows from Memphis

Down to Appalachicola

It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well

Come on in I’m

Sure glad to know ya

Don’t let this old goat cross

In this Crimson Tide t-shirt and throw ya

It’s cicadas making noise

With the southern voice

Jesus is my friend

America is my home

Sweet iced tea and Jerry Lee

Daytona Beach

That’s what gets to me

I can feel it in my bones

Smooth as the hickory wind

That blows from Memphis

Down to Appalachicola

It’s hi ya’ll did ya eat well

Come on in child

I’m sure glad to know ya

Don’t let this old goat cross

In this Charlie Daniels t-shirt and throw ya

We’re just boys making noise

With the southern voice

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Southern Voice

I got a southern voice

A southern voice

Now, let it be said that I’m a big fan of Zemanta and their publishing tool is great for making the blogging process easier. However, Zemanta tried, but it was just overwhelmed by the country music hit formula. 10 of the 24 proper name references that I found as ‘in-text links’, but it did much better finding 20 of 24 pictures, and it offered a wide range of related articles to choose from.

To the Zemanta people and power users: If there is a way to request more in-text links, let me know and I’ll send it through again. This song should become the benchmark for all future improvements.

1 reviews of “Southern Voice” – Tim McGraw (rateitall.com)
Tim McGraw says he would consider leaving music to coach football….if he could take the money with him (nashvillegab.com)

Building with Freebase

August 28, 2009 by tmcgMNM

Freebase from Metaweb

I had a unique opportunity to attend a presentation put on by The New York Semantic Web Meetup called Content, Identifiers and Freebase from Metaweb about ways to use Freebase. I’ll use organizer Marco Newmann’s words to describe Freebase:

“Freebase is a community managed database for knowledge about the world. Information in Freebase is organized as a web of facts, which can be systematically retrieved.”

So get this: Someone else stores and maintains the data, and you get to use it. This is a great resource for building applications or as a repository to supplement content projects.

As I had covered back in June, I am itching to build something using these resources, and last night may have given me a little more inspiration. For help I’ll look to pick up Jaime Taylor’s new book “Programming the Semantic Web“. Jaime Taylor presented a mix of high-level application ideas along with some code samples to show how it works, both the ease and flexibility of accessing data. Robert Cook, the co-founder of Metaweb Technologies, covered aspects about how we can use the Freebase database, including usage allowances (100k queries/day), the Creative Commons licensing requirements, and how we can upload and maintain Freebase data

I can already think of a great semantic search application that can be built with already available data — so if you are that client I spoke to last week — call me fast this is a home run, or I’m building it myself!

Like I said: It makes you want to start building. Great presentation.

Hyperlocal is Hot, but What Is It?

August 26, 2009 by tmcgMNM

Hyperlocal Guides

Last night I attended a panel discussion on The Future of Hyperlocal City Guides that was part of the Future of Local Media Salon Series.

The panel participants had a opportunity to discuss their company and products, and also voice some opinions. The panelists were: James Tunik the CEO of Mapcidy; Dennis Crowley the Co-Founder of hot start-up Foursquare; Polly Lieberman, VP at Buzzd; and Brad Rosen the Founder of Prximity.

However this is where I thought there might have been a disconnect between the topic and the panel — I do not really see these companies as being hyperlocal. Sure they are local-based guides, and each offer their own ways to gather and display information about where you are right now, but they do not present the hyper-local qualities of our two NY entries, outside.in or Patch.

With that behind me, I have to say that Mapcidy may be the closest to a hyperlocal implementation based on Tunik’s description of the planned launch on September 10. The plan is to gather data as it is published and build a layer on top of a Google Maps API. Foursquare seems to be the most fun, and likely the best chance to deliver the ad dollars that are missing from this business. The issue there appears to be scalability, though to be fair this has always been an issue with rolling out local sites. Buzzd seems to be approaching this more from the mobile web side, which is in-line with Lieberman’s comment that the mobile apps business is nothing but a phase the mobile industry is going through. She thought that apps go back to the days that applications where distributed on CD-ROM and ran as a standalone executable. Soon enough the apps will be standardized to run using a mobile browser. In the words of Rosen, Prximity is looking to be our virtual concierge with the ability match events to our interests, location and free time. It’s certainly very early in their development, so let’s give them a chance to evolve, but you can test their beta.

The next step is to sign up for these applications and see how each delivers. I’ll follow-up down the road after I get some testing under my belt.

Mets lose; Real-Time Search Helps the Suffering

August 3, 2009 by tmcgMNM

Real-time Search with Collecta

I had an geek’s evening planned where I would watch the Mets and follow along on real-time search engine Collecta. Sadly, this is not the first time (this week) I have done something similar, but usually I do it via my @METSorYANKEES twitter feed.

Doing this is the definition of social media, since I can’t be a real social gathering with other fans, this way I get to exchange information, barbs, or frequently in the Mets case — bitching. One thing to note is that through Collecta I can’t directly contribute, but it made it very easy to find other Mets fans and add them to my twitter follows list and ping away.

Overall it was interesting, but it also changed my perception of this as “search” as we have come to know it. The search engine paradigm is that I want information, that information is stored in historical archives, and I use some words that surround the topic and this hopefully gets me an answer. On Collecta, it was more of watching history unfold. The results are partial pieces of the big picture, but as time — in this case the game — played on, it was up to me to follow along and piece everything together.

The flow of information was constant, but the content mixed during the evening. Here are some samples:

play-by-play: “David Wright RBI single scores Angel Pagan, who slides under the tag at home. Mets trailing 6-4 now. 5th inning. #mets” by @citycynic
commentary: “you know if the DBacks have shut down their offense for the night like we normally would, we could actually get back in this one.” byMetsWFAN @
pictures: From carryboo on Flickr
cheering: “Daniel Murphy goes yard. Mets are within one at 6-5. Wow. by @TheRopolitans”,
of course, some bitching: my fav “The Mets suck!” By @pete807
game recap just minutes after the final out: “Reynolds powers Diamondbacks past Mets 6-5 (AP)”

So the outcome of all this: First, the experience needs to be renamed from real-time search because anything called search eventually gets compared to Google by the mass audience. The only thing that it shares with the Google activity is that I type a query in a box and click. I this case the “Now!” button.
Second, it is the perfect complement to enjoying a live event on TV or radio. The endless stream of commentary is perfect for baseball which we all know has a lot of down time. However, I’m sure it will provide the same benefits for the American Idol and Lost crowds as their geek quotient increases.

Though the Mets lost this one, I think I found a new way to add some enjoyment to the game.

Take care, and Let’s Go Mets!

Social Media Feeds – You, Now

April 3, 2009 by tmcgMNM

Gratuitous Donuts Photo

Very compelling article in Ad Age today from Peter Hershberg at Reprise Media about search and social media called What Social Media Means for Search. On the upside, it adds to the observation that search and social media are coming together, and it also provides a good backgrounder for understanding the relationship. However, it does not offer any tactical side to take advantage of this activity.

Using his Search 3.0 label, Peter and I agree that the new feed-driven social world takes us beyond the “intent” shown by a user during their search engine experience and provides us direct insight to the “it is happening now” stage, such as the millions of daily tweets for “need coffee.”

We’ve heard the story forever from proponents of mobile advertising that they will be able to deliver a Dunkin’ Donuts (my coffee of choice) coupon when we walk past a store. Great in theory, but when does it reach the masses and will it work? My answer to when, is who knows. I’m sure it can happen now with the proliferation of location-based services, but is it better plan than monitoring social media feeds — I say no.

The mobile ad plan is not marketing to a person who has shown intent in this activity; they just happen to be walking by a Dunkin’ Donuts, so now you are hoping that you can change a user behavior as they pass by. However, monitoring a Twitter/Facebook feed will directly let you know who is going to get coffee, NOW! It is up to the marketeer to hit them directly with the coupon for the coffee or a complimentary donut. I guess the next question is when will Twitter or the Twitter apps we use start monitoring our Twitter feeds, or Facebook for that matter, to match ads to its updates.

Update: As I was posting this, I took a look back at the current Ad Age they have posted an article “Google Uses Twitter to Sell Ads.” So it looks like this idea is taking its first steps. This will evolve to feed-targeted networks, not the general Adsense network, because the higher “happening now” feed network will be drive higher CPC values.

Track the Trends from Social Media to Search

March 22, 2009 by tmcgMNM

TreetStats - Twitter TrendCloud

It seems all of our favorite insider blogs are floating a heading that contains “Search” and “Social Media.” Even next week’s Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York contains no less that 6 sessions around social media, including a special social media track. However, with as many of these articles that I have read, none seem to explain how social media and search mesh other than being buzz topics for them to claim an expertise.

I see it as a “Chicken or the Egg” discussion on whether social media drives search or search drives social media. More importantly, if you are in the business of identifying trends, where should you watch if you want to stay ahead of the curve? For my money, I would look at two places, Twitter analysis tools to understand breaking news events and search tools for identifying what people are interested in.

Why two places? News events get reported first on twitter. The event could be as big as the Hudson River plane landing or “I’m having coffee.” It’s highly probably that 99 of 100 event trends discovered on Twitter may have no legs to affect the social media space. However, there is still that 1 in a 100 that strikes a chord with someone. That person does an entry in their blog, that entry gets posted on a Twitter feed, that eventually finds its way into Facebook by someone who has their Twitter and Facebook accounts linked, and all of a sudden you have people searching for the topic to learn more.

The life-cycle of this event would be like this:
News Event > Twitter Post > Twitter Trend > (Facebook) > Search Trend > Steady Search Traffic

Think of the Motrin Mom story or the Octomom. To so many people these were non-issues when they first read it. I remember reading about the women who gave birth to eight babies, and then thinking how amazing that was and that she would get the hero treatment. Then someone looked closer and the story got some serious legs. Soon “Octomom” had regular Google search traffic, and the sentiment completely shifted.

Let’s look at how you can track events and that lead to social trends. Below are some tools that I have used for in tracking terms:
1) Discovering Breaking Trends – Using Twitter trending tools
Below are some tools

Twitter Search – Found below the search box
TweetStats – Provides a trend cloud and historical list
@trending – From Karelia Software (http://karelia.com/)
Twendz – Highlights conversation themes and sentiment of tweets

2) Identifying What People Actively Want – Use search engine trends

Update (4/1/09)- Thanks goes out to David Berkowitz and his fine blog, Inside the Marketers Studio, for pointing out this article on other Twitter analysis tools: 8 Excellent Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams by Yung-Hui Lim on Social Media Today.

Affiliate Marketing – Without a Net

February 17, 2009 by tmcgMNM

Install. Forget.

A few weeks ago I wrote about converting SoccerClub.com to a social network from its original Web 1.0 format and the subsequent revenue drop. The story at the time was that the Google Adsense links took a serious click-thru hit in the new format, even though page views were way up. This confirms the issues that face big-league social networks like Facebook and Myspace, but now it was affecting my “Tortured-NY-Sports-Fan” ticket account. I mean I have a late season collapse by the Rangers coming up in April to attend.

A man has to eat, so I decided to jump into the world of affiliate marketing. The steps were easy to outline:
1) Sign up for affiliate networks — The key was to find networks that offer soccer-related ads. I signed up for a couple of the leading services, Linkshare and Commission Junction, because they represent many of the big box sports stores and some specialty shops, like Soccer.com and SoccerGarage.com. I also signed up for a smaller service called Shareasale.com who represents SoccerPost.com.
2) Upgrade Ad Server — Sounds like a scary high-tech nightmare. It was. I installed the Open Ads software 3 years ago to serve banners on the original site, but I had NO IDEA how it was working. It just did. I had a message in my inbox that suggested I upgrade to the new Open X version, so I figured — why not give it a try and ruin everything. I couldn’t even remember how to do a back-up, so I was working without a net. Well I did it, and it works!! Cue the engineer dance music.
3) Find the banners — This was like crawling through a dark room to find a flashlight, only to learn that you then had to find new batteries. After pulling the HTML code for the banners, I had to figure out how to set up a test page so I could see how to set the display banners. Once again, it worked*. Amazing. So I loaded up the new banners and they are appearing now.

* The asterisk — Technically the banners are displaying, so it “works.” Unfortunately, no one is buying, so it’s not working too well. So there have been extra late-night meetings over pizza between the engineering director and the business manager. However, it’s only been two weeks, so I have continued to expand the banner coverage and monitor the reports to see what works. I have stayed true to the sports / soccer relevancy for the most part. I’ll admit that I slipped in a Match.com link to see how it performs. Ya gotta do, what ya gotta do to pay for those pizzas.

More updates after I let this run for a full month.

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