Archive for July, 2009
Youtube Edges Closer to TV Numbers and TV Money with Wedding Dance
Google put up a blog post today about how they monetized the viral video hit Jill Peterson and Kevin Heinz’s wedding party dance(below). This video was posted on July 16th and has generated over 12 million hits in 2 weeks.
TV Numbers
For some perspective, the highest rated American prime time TV show during that time was America’s Got Talent with 13.2 million viewers. TV has long been light years ahead of any online numbers. This example shows that the gap is closing. Truly remarkable content is beginning to reach large viewership numbers online in shorter and shorter time spans. And it is not always professionally produced.
And the gap is only going to narrow. The online audience will continue to grow larger. The information is moving faster and faster. And more and more people are becoming savvy content creators.
Who is Making the Money?
Google is, the content middle man, the distributor. The distributors hold a lot of the power moving forward. Think iTunes on the music front and Amazon on the book front. The “rights holders” to the song in the video, Forever by Chris Brown, were also able to easily monetize (I assume his label or manager). The song has shot up to the top 5 on both Amazon and iTunes.
A Workable System
This did not happen overnight. Youtube has been a battleground for some time now, with entertainment industry giants facing off against Google on profit sharing. Google has been working voraciously behind the scenes to make this process easy for the rights holders. Instead of deleting every piece of copyrighted material, the entertainment industry can overlay an amazon download link for the song and Google Adwords in the sidebar. Everyone is happy.
Of course it would also be nice if after a certain viewer threshhold the video creator got a peice of the action as well. No word on that from the Google blog as of yet.
The Invisible Twitter
So almost 3 months ago, Twitter tried to quietly implement a “small settings update“. There was outrage, a #fixreplies revolt, and a #ductape solution.
The Invisible Twitter n. – The content users miss since Twitter stopped showing all @ replies
I doubt most people still realize how the @ replies really work. Twitter said they had a temporary and a long term solution. Until that long term solution surfaces, you only see the @ replies your followers send when you follow both people, or when the reply is not a reply.
My Conversations Are Now Silos
I went to read a blog post today from a good friend. I found this post on their Twitter stream. I thought the post was an important one and could not believe it had not generated any @ replies. I did not see much discussion. I decided to check out their Twitter.com profile to see if The Invisible Twitter was responsible. It certainly was. I was missing a lot. I am noticing more and more how siloed some of my Twitter conversations have become.
I am still missing content from smart people and I do not like it.
The Simplest Point
Just because I am talking or replying to a single person, does not mean others may not benefit from the content? Or more importantly that others may have something of value to improve a discussion.
There was almost universal use of a first character solution at first: putting any character in front of the @ symbol. But most of us, including me, are not using this solution as much if at all. It is so easy to forget. And you lose the ability to track back to the original message, forcing me to decide between two features.
Cliches Not Networks
Discovery and virtual people watching is one of the things I love about Twitter. Much of this discovery comes from seeing who the people you follow talk to. If I have a trusting relationship with one person, and I notice they are talking to other specific people quite often, it behooves me to check those people out. Yes this still happens, but I feel like it happens less and less.
The Quiet Blue Yonder
Some people on Twitter send upward of 50% to 75% of their tweets as @ replies. That can equal out to a lot of missed content if we do not follow all the same people.
Twitter is still of value to me, and I can’t really be sure how much the experience has changed. But it seems so against the original nature the social platform that is Twitter. I hope The Invisible Twitter erodes, somehow, and the simplest bits of discovery don’t dissapear completely.
Why I Travel To Conferences Last Minute
So, as I scramble around my room this morning to throw a few items in a suitcase for the #Blogher conference in Chicago this weekend (big thanks to Whrrl for giving me a free ticket), I am starting to see a pattern.
I have been to 4 conferences this year, Blogher being number 5, where I decided to actually attend the event the week before it was held. Meaning no conference registration, hotel, or flight was booked.
Seems like poor planning, but for the most part these events were not must attends for me. The most recent was the Enterprise 2.0 event in Boston. I went because there were dozens of people that I have met at other conferences that I just wanted to see.
I Invest In People
If you know me, you know I love to travel and I don’t go to conferences for the content. I go purely to see the people. Occasionally I wander into a session or keynote when I have to, but it is reluctantly.
Do not get me wrong, there is plenty of great content out there, though I would argue at most events it is pretty hit and miss. And I am sure I am missing out on some of it. But I much smaller intimate conversations with the smart people and people that I call friends at these events. I go to connect with them, to learn from them, to challenge and be challenged by them.
This connecting and challenging happens less for me when I sit and listen to an unorganized panel or a speaker talk about how to improve my blog.
Events Get Louder As They Get Closer
So considering my focus on people, I rarely see a conference announced and KNOW right away that I want to be there. What typically happens is I hear a little bit about it from one person, and then another, and so on. As events get closer, these little teasers get more frequent and louder.
And while I love meeting new people, the more friends I know will be at an event, the more likely I am to attend. It seems this usually builds to a crescendo the week before the conference. I eventually see too many cool cats are going, and I have to give in and share in the fun.
So if you see me at a conference, please say hello, and let’s skip a session or two and talk shop.
How I Filter The Noise, Wayne Sutton
Wayne Sutton is an entrepreneur, strategist, and producer who blogs at SocialWayne.com. He is also co-founder of OurHashtag, a community and technology event company.
Some describe noise as irrelevant content in reference to a subject matter when looking at data in a particular channel. Noise can be spam. Noise can be repeat content from the echo-chamber of the world wide web. Either way, filtering the noise should be on everyone’s mind today as we’re evolving from the static web to the conversational web to the real-time in your face web.
As someone who loves technology, gadgets and information, the real-time web is a geeks’ dreamland, but it’s also a huge time waster if you don’t have filters setup. Not only do you need filters to manage information gathering and filtering information online, but you also need self control. There are plenty of tools available, but it’s how well you manage those tools to filter the noise. Below are a few of the tools that I use.
RSS Reader
To manage my RSS feeds, I use Google Reader, just like Jason and Taylor. I’m currently subscribed to over 1600 feeds, each categorized into groups by topic. Some of my groups include Wordpress, Social Media, business, mac news and mobile. My RSS feeds list continues to grow, therefore having them categorized is very important. Inside of Google Reader I have a personal star rule. I star items that I want to read later and share items that I think others will find interesting. In other words, RSS feeds are not dead, and are very important to the social web.
Social Bookmarks
For social bookmarks, I use Diigo to bookmark blog posts that I may not be subscribed to, and save them to content-based groups. I have set up groups for topics like wordpress plugins and wordpress premium themes for blog posts pertaining to each.
Real-time
Gmail Filters
Filtering day to day activities involves constant email management with filters I’ve created in Gmail, which need to be constantly updated. Filtering emails and setting time slots to read emails daily and weekly can increase productivity so you’re not always checking your inbox. The same rules apply to a select list of blogs that I’ve created where I “try” to read and comment on daily.
Brand Reputation
When dealing with clients and brand reputation, businesses can filter the noise depending on the customer base and engagement level. Tools like filtrbox, trendrr, blogpulse trackur and tons more can do a lot of work for you if setup and use them correctly.
Needless to say, filtering the noise is about being organized and having the right tools in place and accessible. Therefore my iPhone is always nearby, able to access almost the same content when I’m mobile. 
Then the challenge becomes filtering your time after you have filtered the noise. New web apps and tools are created daily, such as lazyfeed, to constantly push and gather information in front of us and filter that information will become more important as we continue to use the web as a learning and communication platform…. Good luck.
Your Blog As A Beer Tasting
I’m thrilled to see North Carolina is on the verge of approving a bill that will “permit beer companies to hold tasting sessions in food stores.”
I hope it raises the level of the beer culture in this blue law heavy state. And who doesn’t want to taste a good beer in the grocery store?
The product sample is an old marketing method and is about the lowest barrier to entry you can give the customer. Take the concept online, and the economy of free really negates the free sample, or more correctly, is an extreme extension of the free sample.
Consider all the free content you produce online as a taste of your full personality or company culture, a sample of what you have to offer as a person or business.
What Does Your Culture Taste Like?
The entire art of writing a blog is a free sample of your business or personality, a taste. You are sharing insights and stories for free, as an investment in your audience. So what does this sample taste like?
How are your readers remembering you? Does your content taste like everything else that is out there? Is it refreshing? Is it a deep, strong flavor?
One thing I have had to get better and better at as a blogger is writing as a person and not as a journalist. I think the best blogs share a lot of personality and culture of the writer or company. A personal touch builds more of a relationship, more of an investment.
photo credit: dave apple
