All posts by Dawn

advertising, google, search

Searching Inside Books Boosts Sales

Google’s plans to digitize libraries of books has come under fire from publishers eager to protect copyrights; however, publishers participating in Google’s Book Search Partner Program are seeing a significant benefit. According to Reuters, publishers participating in Google’s book search and Amazon’s Search Inside programs are benefiting from additional sales:

“Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers,” said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

She declined to provide specific figures, but said that sales growth has been “significant”. Scollans estimated that 1 million customers have viewed 12,000 Oxford titles using the Google program.

…

Specialty publisher Springer Science + Business reported sales growth of its backlist catalog using Google Book Search, with 99 percent of the 30,000 titles it has in the program getting viewed, including many published before 1992.

“We suspect that Google really helps us sell more books,” said Kim Zwollo, Springer’s global director of special licensing, declining to provide specific figures because the company is privately owned.

…

“Our experience has been that the revenue generated from Google has been pretty modest, whereas the Amazon program has generated more book sales,” Penguin Chief Executive John Makinson told Reuters at the Frankfurt Book Fair this week. (Quotes from Reuters)

These examples highlight the importance of open marketing that lets people see some of the content prior to buying. In many cases, showing some of the book can generate interest in a book that would not have otherwise caught someone’s eye. It also gives people the opportunity to see what they are buying, mirroring the brick and mortar book buying experience of leafing through a book. Hopefully, this trend will continue, thus giving buyers more information about potential purchases leading the way for Google and others to find similar opportunities to add value outside of the book market … who knows what Google might come up with next.

MySpace, social networking, web 2.0, young people

Are MySpace Users Getting Old?

According to the latest comScore report, over half of MySpace users are the in 35 and older age range.

“The most significant shift has occurred among teens 12-17, who accounted for 24.7 percent of the MySpace audience in August 2005, but today represent a much lower 11.9 percent of the site’s total audience. Conversely, Internet users between the ages of 35-54 now account for 40.6 percent of the MySpace visitor base, an 8.2 percentage point increase during the past year.” (Quote from comScore)

According to Liz Gannes at GigaOm, they called “Fox Interactive spokesperson Ann Burkart to ask if comScore is off the deep end on this one, and she said the numbers are actually totally accurate with what MySpace is seeing internally.”

Because the press release only has percentages, it is really hard to tell what drives these numbers. Keep in mind that the report also shows a dramatic decrease in MySpace users in the 12-17 age range making it difficult to tell how fast the over 35 age range is really growing. Increasing as a “percentage” relative to other age ranges can also be caused by dramatic decreases in another group.

Assuming that the over 35 crowd is driven by real growth, I have a number of ideas about what could cause this growth.

  • 99 year olds: MySpace has a large number of 99 year old participants, which typically fall into a couple of camps: the “too young to be allowed” group and the “old enough not admit a real age group”.

  • Parents: With the recent press coverage over the past year focused on the dark side of MySpace (exploitation, sexual predators, etc.), I know quite a few parents of teenagers who use MySpace to better understand it and to keep an eye on their teenagers who use the site. Most parents of teenagers would fit into the 35-54 age range.

  • Bloggers, Techies, and Journalists: I am 35, and I have a MySpace page. I created it as a way to better understand social networking for the purpose of blogging and other writing, but I have found that it helps me keep in touch with a few of my younger friends.

  • Perverts: I assume there are also a few wackos in the over 35 age group that join for less than honorable reasons.

It would be great if some ambitious social networking researcher could do an in depth study to figure out what exactly is driving this change in the MySpace demographics.

portland barcamp meetup

Next BarCamp Portland Meetup Scheduled for October 25

Our second informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled!

When: Wednesday, October 25
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup on October 25th will be very informal and similar in format to the last meeting. We’ll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Google Groups
Subscribe to BarCampPortland

Email:

Browse Archives at groups.google.com

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events. The next event will be held on November 29.

We are also trying to gain support for a real BarCamp event in Portland. We will start the planning process when we get enough people signed up on the Wiki, so please add yourself to the wiki if you want to attend a Portland BarCamp event!

blogging, censorship, journalism, new media, O'Reilly

Censoring the Blogosphere: The Right and Wrong Ways to Respond to Criticism

We know that the world of media has been evolving as bloggers become more prevalent, and our methods of interacting with the media must also evolve with these changes. Some blogs (TechCrunch, Engadget, The Huffington Post) have become more popular than many traditional media sources, but many people are struggling to adapt to interacting with the blogosphere.


An example from the Washington Post about how NOT to respond to a blogger caught my eye this morning:

“Memories fade, but the Internet is forever.

Murry N. Gunty found that out the hard way this summer. Well known among Washington financiers, the head of Milestone Capital Management LLC ran afoul of bloggers for an attempt to censor a Web article about a 1992 incident in which he manipulated the election for officers of the Harvard Business School’s Finance Club.

…

The Harvard flap seemed like ancient history until Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mark Pincus — no relation to Gunty’s business partner — resurrected it.

…

‘I have nothing personal against the guy at all,’ said Pincus, whose original post included numerous disparaging personal remarks about Gunty. ‘I write about ethics all the time. It’s something I’m passionate about. If Murry had responded on my blog, the whole thing would have just ended there.’

…

Gunty or someone representing him sent an e-mail to Six Apart Ltd., the company that hosted Pincus’s blog, asking that the article be changed because it was a violation of privacy.

…

When a Six Apart staffer asked Pincus to at least remove Gunty’s last name from the posting, Pincus responded by posting the request on his blog — escalating the issue beyond corporate ethics to a matter of free speech.” (Quote from the Washington Post)

Needless to say, cover ups and censorship are not an appropriate response to the blogosphere unless you really want the situation to escalate and spiral out of control.

Blogs require a different approach to criticism. Tim O’Reilly’s lynching in the blogosphere over the web 2.0 trademark controversy provide an excellent example of how something can escalate out of control and still be diffused by the right type of response.

The best way to respond is with an honest and thoughtful (not defensive) comment back to the blogger on her blog along with an entry on your blog providing your side of the story. The response needs to come directly from the person (not someone on his staff). In order for this approach to work, the responder must admit to any mistakes and help people understand what was learned and how the situation evolved. This should be followed by clarifying any errors in the original post and next steps that the person is taking in response.

Approaching bloggers on their own terms through comments and posts on your blog create a conversation where the issues can be discussed and explored in the open.

arrington, del.icio.us, digg, feed, Firefox, google, tags, techcrunch, web 2.0

New Netvibes Update

Netvibes just released a new update (code named Cinnamon) with new features, new modules, and a better user interface.

I have been using Netvibes for a couple of months, and I use it constantly. I tried more RSS readers than I can count, and I hated all of them. Prior to Netvibes, I could not find any RSS readers that worked better than than the RSS functionality built into Firefox. The beauty of Netvibes is that they manage to cram a bunch of feeds on the screen, but organize it in a way that never seems overwhelming or cluttered. I can see all of the posts from more than a dozen blogs without scrolling, mouse-overs give me the first couple of sentences, and I can chose to read any post within the Netvibes interface or natively as a new tab in Firefox. Almost everything is configurable; I can have multiple tabs; and the content is easily organized by dragging and dropping.

Netvibes has also integrated a number of very useful modules. Michael Arrington uses it daily for one stop access to a variety of web services. I can see my unread Gmail messages, my delicious bookmarks (including sort by tags), the front page stories on Digg, the weather and more from a single page.

The best part is that I rarely have to wait on anything. Quick, configurable, intuitive, and easy to use … everything I want in a web app.

arrington, techcrunch, women, Yahoo

Women take Yahoo Hack Day by Storm

Yahoo Hack day is a geeky weekend of coding competitions held at the Yahoo campus. This year the winner was a team of women who created a mobile blogging solution. According to Michael Arrington (one of the judges for the event):

“The winning project, called Blogging In Motion, combined a camera, a handbag, a pedometer and the Flickr API to create a device that takes a picture after every few steps and then automatically blogs those pictures.” (Quote from TechCrunch).

business models, humor, MySpace, social software, tags, viral, web 2.0, YouTube

Web 2.0 Exit Strategies

Marco Rosella has an interesting idea about how companies can promote their exit strategies at the upcoming Web 2.0 Conference … (Note – this is meant to be humorous):

“The success of a new service, if really demonstrated itself different from all the others, however could decree the end: where there’s a lack of Venture Capitals and/or the ads are to cover the band costs, naturally proportional to the traffic, the only reason of survival remains the sell to a big company.

…

As we know by now, Web 2.0 web application’s interfaces have their peculiar style defined by reflections, fades, drop-shadows, strong colors, rounded corners and star badges, these standing out in the header of every homepage.

Badges are the key element of this kind of design, being the first to flash user eyes, and so extremely important for the right communication of a message with fundamental importance.

Below you’ll find some example badges, arranged in four incremental levels, each one related to a different business model.” (Quote from Central Scrutinizer)

This is a humorous way to portray the current environment; however, it highlights a serious issue facing web 2.0 companies. With so many new web 2.0 companies, it becomes difficult to stand out in the crowd. Not all of them are looking to rise above the crowd in order to exit the business, but even getting mindshare with users can be difficult. Those that succeed in growing a large user base tend to do so virally, YouTube / MySpace / del.icio.us / etc., which is difficult to predict. Web 2.0 companies will need to focus on finding ways to get attention. Maybe the acquire me badges are not such a bad idea 🙂

bubble, MySpace, valuation

Is MySpace worth $10 – 20 BILLION?


Doubtful.

According to RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan, it might be possible. “Rohan said MySpace could demonstrate a value of between $US10 billion and $US20 billion within a few years. Acknowledging he was making an ‘audacious claim’ he justified the forecast on the basis of MySpace’s ‘raw, unprecedented user/usage growth.’” (Quote from Sydney Morning Herald).

This is bubble talk. Paul Kedroski thinks that “putting up oversized estimates of a company’s value is mostly a marketing move for a financial analyst, not an exercise in company valuation. The number doesn’t matter; it is simply a piece of red meat to attact the media pack.” (Quote from Infectious Greed).

Occassionally analysts get caught up in the excitement of the next new thing to make wild predictions about technology (aka the hockey stick projection). We saw way too many of these predictions during the dot-com bubble. Looking back at projections made in 1999 and early 2000, how many predicted that [insert name now defunct company here] was in a position to take over the world in just a few short years?

In reality, technologies rarely, if ever, continue meteoric rises, and MySpace is no different. Yes, MySpace has had tremendous growth. Yes, they are one of the most frequently visited sites on the Internet. However, two things are likely to prevent MySpace from hockey stick growth:

  • First, young people are fickle when it comes to trends. MySpace is the hottest social networking site right now, but it may not be as hot in a few years. The younger participants may find another site more interesting as they become old enough to participate, or another company may target the below 14 crowd and keep them as they grow older.

  • Second, growth will stabilize as the market gets saturated. A new group of 14 year-olds become old enough to use the site every year; however, at the same time, others will drop off as they outgrow it or move on to other interests.

I am not saying that MySpace will crash and burn anytime in the near future. I suspect that it will continue growing at a *reasonable* rate (just not at an exponential rate).

aol, privacy, security

Class Action Lawsuit Against AOL for Privacy Violations

In classic AOL fashion, when receiving complaints about privacy concerns related to the release of search results for 600,000 customers, AOL responded by offering them a free month of AOL … a service that is already free. Interesting.

Here are the details from John Paczkowski at SiliconValley.com:

Filed Friday, the suit accuses AOL of violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, of fraudulent and deceptive business practices, and beyond that of a peerless ineptitude in its handling of the matter. “As of the date of this complaint it is the understanding of plaintiffs and their counsel that AOL has not done anything to help the members whose personal sensitive and confidential records were released to the public by AOL,” the complaint alleges. “AOL members who sought assistance from AOL about the disclosure of the Member Search Data were not offered any assistance. AOL’s only response, if any, was to offer the victimized member a free month of AOL service, a service which AOL is now offering for free.” (Quote from SiliconValley.com)

As we move more and more of our lives online, we need to spend more time thinking about privacy and security concerns, especially when we start to centralize our searching, email, calendars, blogs, chat, etc. with a single provider (AOL, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) At the minimum, people need to better understand the risks of what can happen when our private information is made public.