SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Since leaving his post as sales chief of Google to run AOL, Tim Armstrong has kicked off a review of the long-ailing internet icon's vast array of brands, with an eye toward creating a simpler experience for both consumers and the ad community.
In an interview with Ad Age Editor Jonah Bloom here at the 4A's annual Leadership Conference, Mr. Armstrong made no guarantees about the long-term survival of AOL's current offerings, such as its MediaGlow publishing division or its Platform-A advertising platform or its numerous consumer-facing content brands. While he didn't detail any specific plans, he did say its portfolio has gotten cluttered.
"The understanding of the value of brands at AOL has gotten a little gray over time," he said in front of a crowd of ad agency CEOs, adding that the intense scrutiny of the company has had a negative effect. "The questioning from the outside" has actually bruised the company internally, he said. "There are cases where we have tens of millions of people touching a brand every day," but people inside AOL have forgotten the need to improve the products behind those brands.
Mum on spinoff
Mr. Armstrong shocked the ad business recently when he left the relatively comfy confines of Google for AOL, a trouble spot for Time Warner since its dial-up-internet-access business eroded with the advent of broadband.
More 4A's Leadership Conference Coverage:
No More Remembering What All Those A's Stand For
4A's Rebrands, Makes Other Changes in Bid to Stay Relevant in Changing Industry
Lately Madison Avenue, the media business and Wall Street have been waiting for a decision from Time Warner on whether it will spin off AOL and thus unravel one of the most calamitous mergers in business history. That decision could be revealed as soon as an earnings call tomorrow, according to a recent Bloomberg story.
Mr. Armstrong said he did not know whether the story was accurate.
Taking a page out of Google culture, he said he has put multiple executives on the task of simply studying all of AOL's brand assets and working on the Time Warner unit's mission statement. He's also met with 2,000 or so AOL employees, many in town hall meetings he's conducted.
Focus on user experience
Mr. Armstrong hinted at disapproval of the company's recent decision to allow Intuit to alter the AOL logo on the AOL home page by installing the TurboTax check mark in the "O" in AOL. "AOL needs to focus on the user experience," he said, and understand the "trade-off between that revenue and the user experience." He added, "I don't know how that decision was made, but I'd like to find out. ... There are lines to be drawn around brand monetization."
He said the future of AOL is as a "great, great, great internet products company, and products include content." He added, "People are not paying enough to put their ads on AOL content."
As Mr. Armstrong tries to sort out the future of the company, he is in part looking to the past. He said he's consulted with co-founder Steve Case as well as Ted Leonsis, AOL's vice chairman emeritus. Mr. Leonsis, who owns the Washington Capitals hockey team, even gave Mr. Armstrong a lucky green tie he wears to the team's games.
Mr. Armstrong also gave some details of the final moments of his last day at Google, owner of 5% of AOL, when, having already surrendered his security badge, he found his only way out of the building was through the loading dock.
[the article was originally published at http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=136327]
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Despite tough advertising market, Facebook is expanding
SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc. has plenty of money to overcome the economic slump and is adding new forms of interactive advertising that will boost sales 70 percent this year, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, said.
"We could not be doing better financially," Sandberg said in an interview last week. "We absolutely do not need to take money. We might take money - but it doesn't mean we need to."
Facebook is expanding amid the worst market for Internet advertising since the dot-com bust, and at a time when companies are still trying to figure out how to advertise on social-networking sites. While Facebook was "nervous" following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last year, its confidence for ad sales "grows every week," Sandberg said.
"We're on a path, a clear path, to be cash-flow positive next year," said Sandberg, who joined Facebook from Google Inc. last year. She had previously served as chief of staff for the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton.
The challenge for Facebook, the most popular social-networking site, is that people aren't used to seeing ads on its pages, said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz.
"It's a very, very tough and discriminating audience," Weiner said. "I also don't think they've totally sold the vast array of potential advertisers and marketers on the value of Facebook."
Founded in 2004, Facebook has raised more than $400 million in equity funding, including a $240 million investment from Microsoft Corp. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and venture capital firms Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, and Meritech Capital Partners are among Facebook's other investors.
Although Facebook doesn't need more money, the company uses lease-financing for equipment purchases, Sandberg said.
Sandberg, 39, said the company has improved its advertising offerings in the past year so they more closely resemble how the site works. In February, Honda Motor Co. allowed users to exchange heart-shaped virtual gifts - complete with a Honda logo - around Valentine's Day. Four days after the campaign started, 1.5 million people had either given or received virtual gifts that promoted the Honda Fit.
"It raised awareness about the Honda Fit by bringing new fans to the Honda Fit fan page" on Facebook, said Chris Martin, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based automaker.
Facebook is also using information on users' profile pages to target ads, Tim Kendall, the company's director of monetization, said at a conference in San Francisco last week. Facebook helped an Asian airline promote airfares by identifying people who expressed an interest in Japan in their profile pages, he said.
Sandberg said Facebook is experimenting with targeting ads based on information on users' virtual walls - without revealing any personal data.
Clients are spending more on Facebook than they did before the financial crisis, which contrasts with industrywide declines reported by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft, said Jordan Bitterman, a media buyer at Digitas, an online ad agency in New York.
Some companies have held off buying ads on Facebook because they worry about their brands being displayed next to pictures of scantily clad women or other questionable content, said Gaston Legorburu, chief creative officer at Boston-based Sapient Corp., which provides online advertising services to clients such as Coca-Cola Co.
"I still see a lot of hesitation from big brands to take that risk," Legorburu said. "They are still very shy around buying media next to user-generated content."
Sandberg said the increase in visitors to Facebook, as well as the site's growing popularity with older visitors, give advertisers more potential customers.
Facebook reached 200 million users this month, double the number from August last year. Much of the growth is coming from people ages 35 to 49. They accounted for about 34 percent of Facebook's US users in March, up from 27 percent a year earlier, according to researcher Nielsen Online. The percentage of users ages 18 to 24 was 7.6 percent, down from 17 percent a year earlier.
Facebook had 69.2 million US users in March, compared with 55.9 million for MySpace, its closest competitor.
One indication that 2009 is an important year: Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 24-year-old founder, has committed to wearing a tie every day to the office.
"This was a year where we were really, I think, going to have to execute," Sandberg said.
[the article was originally published at http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/04/29/despite_tough_advertising_market_facebook_is_expanding]
"We could not be doing better financially," Sandberg said in an interview last week. "We absolutely do not need to take money. We might take money - but it doesn't mean we need to."
Facebook is expanding amid the worst market for Internet advertising since the dot-com bust, and at a time when companies are still trying to figure out how to advertise on social-networking sites. While Facebook was "nervous" following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last year, its confidence for ad sales "grows every week," Sandberg said.
"We're on a path, a clear path, to be cash-flow positive next year," said Sandberg, who joined Facebook from Google Inc. last year. She had previously served as chief of staff for the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton.
The challenge for Facebook, the most popular social-networking site, is that people aren't used to seeing ads on its pages, said Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Scottsdale, Ariz.
"It's a very, very tough and discriminating audience," Weiner said. "I also don't think they've totally sold the vast array of potential advertisers and marketers on the value of Facebook."
Founded in 2004, Facebook has raised more than $400 million in equity funding, including a $240 million investment from Microsoft Corp. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and venture capital firms Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, and Meritech Capital Partners are among Facebook's other investors.
Although Facebook doesn't need more money, the company uses lease-financing for equipment purchases, Sandberg said.
Sandberg, 39, said the company has improved its advertising offerings in the past year so they more closely resemble how the site works. In February, Honda Motor Co. allowed users to exchange heart-shaped virtual gifts - complete with a Honda logo - around Valentine's Day. Four days after the campaign started, 1.5 million people had either given or received virtual gifts that promoted the Honda Fit.
"It raised awareness about the Honda Fit by bringing new fans to the Honda Fit fan page" on Facebook, said Chris Martin, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based automaker.
Facebook is also using information on users' profile pages to target ads, Tim Kendall, the company's director of monetization, said at a conference in San Francisco last week. Facebook helped an Asian airline promote airfares by identifying people who expressed an interest in Japan in their profile pages, he said.
Sandberg said Facebook is experimenting with targeting ads based on information on users' virtual walls - without revealing any personal data.
Clients are spending more on Facebook than they did before the financial crisis, which contrasts with industrywide declines reported by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft, said Jordan Bitterman, a media buyer at Digitas, an online ad agency in New York.
Some companies have held off buying ads on Facebook because they worry about their brands being displayed next to pictures of scantily clad women or other questionable content, said Gaston Legorburu, chief creative officer at Boston-based Sapient Corp., which provides online advertising services to clients such as Coca-Cola Co.
"I still see a lot of hesitation from big brands to take that risk," Legorburu said. "They are still very shy around buying media next to user-generated content."
Sandberg said the increase in visitors to Facebook, as well as the site's growing popularity with older visitors, give advertisers more potential customers.
Facebook reached 200 million users this month, double the number from August last year. Much of the growth is coming from people ages 35 to 49. They accounted for about 34 percent of Facebook's US users in March, up from 27 percent a year earlier, according to researcher Nielsen Online. The percentage of users ages 18 to 24 was 7.6 percent, down from 17 percent a year earlier.
Facebook had 69.2 million US users in March, compared with 55.9 million for MySpace, its closest competitor.
One indication that 2009 is an important year: Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 24-year-old founder, has committed to wearing a tie every day to the office.
"This was a year where we were really, I think, going to have to execute," Sandberg said.
[the article was originally published at http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/04/29/despite_tough_advertising_market_facebook_is_expanding]
MySpace Hires Two Officers To Fill Ranks
News Corp. on Monday named a chief operating officer and chief product officer to fill out the executive ranks at MySpace, after naming former Facebook Inc. executive Owen Van Natta as CEO of its social-networking site last week.
Michael Jones, a former executive at Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, was named MySpace's chief operating officer. Most recently, he was founder and CEO of Tsavo Media, an online content publisher. MySpace's operating-chief position has been open since Amit Kapur left last month.
Former MTV Networks executive Jason Hirschhorn was named chief product officer, a new position at the company. Mr. Hirschhorn worked as chief digital officer at Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. Most recently, he was president of Sling Media Inc.'s Entertainment Group.
News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
The company has chosen two executives with experience in product development and the technology industry, both areas in which MySpace has faced criticism.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124085705936260201.html?mg=com-wsj]
Michael Jones, a former executive at Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, was named MySpace's chief operating officer. Most recently, he was founder and CEO of Tsavo Media, an online content publisher. MySpace's operating-chief position has been open since Amit Kapur left last month.
Former MTV Networks executive Jason Hirschhorn was named chief product officer, a new position at the company. Mr. Hirschhorn worked as chief digital officer at Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks. Most recently, he was president of Sling Media Inc.'s Entertainment Group.
News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
The company has chosen two executives with experience in product development and the technology industry, both areas in which MySpace has faced criticism.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124085705936260201.html?mg=com-wsj]
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
NEWS -Digital Download
If Microsoft wants out of the online ad business, it has a strange way of showing it. As rumors swirl that talks between Microsoft and Yahoo over a potential search ad deal could also result in Microsoft handing over its display ad business, the software giant last week threw an upfront-esque shindig in New York.
The company formally introduced Robin Domeniconi, the Time Inc. vet who was hired to lead digital sales in January, and then unveiled half a dozen original series concepts while touting its strength in video.
Such enthusiastic salesmanship and long-term positioning seemed to fly in the face of the rumored abandonment of display sales—leaving buyers puzzled. “That would surprise me if they were willing to drop MSN,” said Michelle Lawrence, group media director, Horizon Media. “That’s such a massive site.” Indeed, MSN still reaches 100 million users each month, per comScore. Lawrence also found it ironic that Microsoft—in pursuit of Google in search—“might eliminate something that they’ve got an advantage in.”
Others suspect that Microsoft’s Google envy may be leading to ill-conceived sacrifices. “It doesn’t make sense to split up display and search for either party at a time when marketers want integration,” said Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i.
Wiener fears Microsoft may fundamentally see Web advertising as an engineering endeavor. “Microsoft has to decide if they want to be in the ad sales business altogether,” he said. Dropping display would be “indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of where the advertising business is going.”
Based on last week’s presentation, Microsoft’s programming and ad sales executives believe the business is going toward video, particularly entertainment. “That is an area that I’m absolutely leaning into in the next year,” said Scott Moore, executive producer & general manager, MSN. “The entertainment category has no dominant leader online. It’s an area we believe is ripe.”
In the works are comedy projects featuring The Office’s Rainn Wilson and The Kids in the Hall’s Dave Foley. Microsoft also is planning to launch Cinemash, a show in which comedic stars act out favorite dramatic roles; and Last Night on TV, a daily review of prime-time TV hosted by the comic duo Frangela.
Moore said each show will be developed in conjunction with advertisers, while keeping MSN’s existing user base in mind. “I’m not a fan of doing original, standalone stuff that you have to promote an inordinate amount,” he said. “I’m more interested in doing stuff that is organic to the experience we’re already programming.
We know we have an audience [for entertainment]. Why not give them more in video, which advertisers want and we can sell at a higher CPM?”
Unless, of course, if Yahoo ends up doing the selling.
[the article was originallu published at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3ida99bf36787f149a541a1a5694447cb3]
The company formally introduced Robin Domeniconi, the Time Inc. vet who was hired to lead digital sales in January, and then unveiled half a dozen original series concepts while touting its strength in video.
Such enthusiastic salesmanship and long-term positioning seemed to fly in the face of the rumored abandonment of display sales—leaving buyers puzzled. “That would surprise me if they were willing to drop MSN,” said Michelle Lawrence, group media director, Horizon Media. “That’s such a massive site.” Indeed, MSN still reaches 100 million users each month, per comScore. Lawrence also found it ironic that Microsoft—in pursuit of Google in search—“might eliminate something that they’ve got an advantage in.”
Others suspect that Microsoft’s Google envy may be leading to ill-conceived sacrifices. “It doesn’t make sense to split up display and search for either party at a time when marketers want integration,” said Bryan Wiener, CEO of 360i.
Wiener fears Microsoft may fundamentally see Web advertising as an engineering endeavor. “Microsoft has to decide if they want to be in the ad sales business altogether,” he said. Dropping display would be “indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of where the advertising business is going.”
Based on last week’s presentation, Microsoft’s programming and ad sales executives believe the business is going toward video, particularly entertainment. “That is an area that I’m absolutely leaning into in the next year,” said Scott Moore, executive producer & general manager, MSN. “The entertainment category has no dominant leader online. It’s an area we believe is ripe.”
In the works are comedy projects featuring The Office’s Rainn Wilson and The Kids in the Hall’s Dave Foley. Microsoft also is planning to launch Cinemash, a show in which comedic stars act out favorite dramatic roles; and Last Night on TV, a daily review of prime-time TV hosted by the comic duo Frangela.
Moore said each show will be developed in conjunction with advertisers, while keeping MSN’s existing user base in mind. “I’m not a fan of doing original, standalone stuff that you have to promote an inordinate amount,” he said. “I’m more interested in doing stuff that is organic to the experience we’re already programming.
We know we have an audience [for entertainment]. Why not give them more in video, which advertisers want and we can sell at a higher CPM?”
Unless, of course, if Yahoo ends up doing the selling.
[the article was originallu published at http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/broadband/e3ida99bf36787f149a541a1a5694447cb3]
Facebook Opens Site To Developers Of Services
Facebook Inc. is expected to announce significant plans to open up core parts of its sites -- namely the information that appears in the stream of updates on users' homepages and profiles -- to third-party developers so that they can build new services on top of it, people familiar with the matter say.
The announcement, expected Monday, means developers can build services that access the photos, videos, notes and comments users upload to Facebook, with users' permission. That's a big change for the social-networking site, which has exercised tight control over the look and feel of its service and how developers can interact with it.
Facebook isn't charging for the feature, instead hoping that developing new ways to access the information it houses will build user loyalty and get people to engage more often with the site, say people familiar with the matter.
[facebook] Getty Images
Developers could build a Web site that aggregates just the articles certain friends upload to the site or build a service that associates the photos a user had uploaded to Facebook with their account on another Web site, like an email service. To take advantage of the new services, users would have to allow the companies to receive access to their Facebook data, according to people familiar with the matter, and users' privacy settings on Facebook will extend to any new services built.
In addition, the Palo Alto, Calif., company is expected to announce that developers can pull the Facebook data using an open technology standard that other Web sites can also use, a decision likely to broaden the service's appeal.
The plans are expected to be discussed at a developer event in Palo Alto on Monday.
The site, which was the first major social network to allow software developers to build services on top its platform, has seen some momentum around a service it built that allows people to connect with their Facebook friends on other Web sites.
Still, Facebook, which has around 200 million users world-wide, has been heavily criticized for not doing more and for requiring developers to write some services using a customized Facebook programming language. Other companies like micro-blogging service Twitter have generated buzz by opening up more of their core features to developers.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124078628311057281.html]
The announcement, expected Monday, means developers can build services that access the photos, videos, notes and comments users upload to Facebook, with users' permission. That's a big change for the social-networking site, which has exercised tight control over the look and feel of its service and how developers can interact with it.
Facebook isn't charging for the feature, instead hoping that developing new ways to access the information it houses will build user loyalty and get people to engage more often with the site, say people familiar with the matter.
[facebook] Getty Images
Developers could build a Web site that aggregates just the articles certain friends upload to the site or build a service that associates the photos a user had uploaded to Facebook with their account on another Web site, like an email service. To take advantage of the new services, users would have to allow the companies to receive access to their Facebook data, according to people familiar with the matter, and users' privacy settings on Facebook will extend to any new services built.
In addition, the Palo Alto, Calif., company is expected to announce that developers can pull the Facebook data using an open technology standard that other Web sites can also use, a decision likely to broaden the service's appeal.
The plans are expected to be discussed at a developer event in Palo Alto on Monday.
The site, which was the first major social network to allow software developers to build services on top its platform, has seen some momentum around a service it built that allows people to connect with their Facebook friends on other Web sites.
Still, Facebook, which has around 200 million users world-wide, has been heavily criticized for not doing more and for requiring developers to write some services using a customized Facebook programming language. Other companies like micro-blogging service Twitter have generated buzz by opening up more of their core features to developers.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124078628311057281.html]
Rise Of The Advertising Robots
Tim Cadogan pities the plight of the digital advertiser.
Big brands would love to advertise on small, niche-focused Web sites--think Mountain Dew on blogs about windsurfing, or Gerber baby food on sites about vegetarian parenting--but don't have the manpower to screen every site for quality content, let alone negotiate thousands of deals with different buyers.
Yet publishers have it even worse, says Cadogan, Yahoo!'s ( YHOO - news - people ) former head of global advertising. Editors who run small Web sites are so consumed producing content that titillates readers that they turn over their ad inventory to one of hundreds of resellers in exchange for pennies per view.
Through his Pasadena, Calif., start-up OpenX, Cadogan is working on an application to alleviate the anxiety of both beleaguered ad buyers and frustrated Web publishers. OpenX recently unveiled Market, an application that allows advertisers to automatically bid on access to narrow niches of readers across an array of small Web sites.
OpenX is one of many outfits seeking to automate the selling of hyper-targeted digital ads on the Web. A slew of firms--ranging from tiny start-ups to Web giants like Google ( GOOG - news - people )--have rolled out applications purporting to analyze online ad opportunities and help publishers and advertisers figure out how to allocate their respective ad inventories and budgets.
Many of these new applications promise to deploy demographic, geographic and personal interest data to identify attractive readers for advertisers wherever they land on the Web. Such micro-targeting may seem like a potential invasion of privacy, but user data analysis is an established practice. Most data collectors skirt privacy complaints by allowing Web users to block their tracking software.
The boom in new advertising optimization tools could reshape the $7.6 billion market for Internet display advertising. Leery of attaching the brand to sketchy Web content, big advertisers have historically preferred to deal with large Web publishers, such as the digital arms of newspapers and consumer magazines.
But ad tech executives and media planners say the new ad sales tools promise a cheap and efficient way for brands to screen and buy ads on smaller Web sites and blogs.
"These systems help advertisers cut through the clutter online, which will clearly help the 'long tail' publishers,'' says Kelly Twohig, a senior vice president at media planning agency Starcom ( SCME.PK - news - people ) in Chicago, whose clients include Allstate ( ALL - news - people ) and Capital One.
The potential for a reallocation of ad budgets from big publishers to smaller rivals comes at a stressful time for media giants. The New York Times Co. ( NYT - news - people ) announced this week that Web ad sales fell 6% and overall ad revenues dropped 28% year-over-year during the first quarter of 2009.
Earlier this month, Gannett ( GCI - news - people ), publisher of 85 daily newspapers including USA Today, reported that quarterly revenue decline 18% compared to last year.
Publishers participate in the OpenX Market by entering their advertising inventory--the spaces on their Web pages where ads can appear--into an online database and set a floor price for each slot. If an advertiser bids above that minimum, their ad appears on the Web site.
Along with buying on specific Web sites, Cadogan says that ad buyers will be able to use third-party data on Web users' personal interest, browsing history and demographics to find desirable segments of readers across all publishers participating in the market. Web sites currently use OpenX's software to deliver an estimated 300 billion impressions each month.
In addition to the challenge of convincing marketers to spend their ad budgets in a drastically different way, outfits like OpenX have to figure out how to emerge as leaders in an already competitive field.
"We've seen half a billion dollars of venture capital poured into building optimization and planning companies,'' says Matthew Hulett, chief executive of ad network and analytics firm Mpire.
This week, Hulett's firm unveiled an application to help advertisers track on which Web sites networks place ads, where on the actual screen the ad appears and if Web surfers pause their cursor over the ad. The tool is intended to help marketers better figure out how much of their ad spending is essentially worthless.
Google and Yahoo! both operate advertising exchanges that allow publishers to analyze how much revenue different ad sales techniques attract and help advertisers secure the best ad placement for the cheapest prices.
Rubicon Project, a two-year-old Los Angeles start-up that processes 40 billion impressions each month, helps Web sites compare ad prices delivered by different third-party ad brokers. This week, the company unveiled OnDemand, a service that lets advertisers automatically buy ads delivered to specific geographic, demographic and personal interest groups across a network of publishers.
PubMatic, a Silicon Valley start-up known in the ad world for publishing market reports on trends in ad prices, offers a similar optimization product aimed at big media companies' digital arms.
It's too early to say whether advertisers embrace the automated ad buying tools en masse. As people spend more of their lives online, marketers are desperate to reach them cheaply and efficiently. But, as Starcom media planner Twohig says, a human salesperson and trusted media product go a long way in attracting ad dollars.
[the article was orginally published at http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/24/advertising-internet-business-media-ad-data.html]
Big brands would love to advertise on small, niche-focused Web sites--think Mountain Dew on blogs about windsurfing, or Gerber baby food on sites about vegetarian parenting--but don't have the manpower to screen every site for quality content, let alone negotiate thousands of deals with different buyers.
Yet publishers have it even worse, says Cadogan, Yahoo!'s ( YHOO - news - people ) former head of global advertising. Editors who run small Web sites are so consumed producing content that titillates readers that they turn over their ad inventory to one of hundreds of resellers in exchange for pennies per view.
Through his Pasadena, Calif., start-up OpenX, Cadogan is working on an application to alleviate the anxiety of both beleaguered ad buyers and frustrated Web publishers. OpenX recently unveiled Market, an application that allows advertisers to automatically bid on access to narrow niches of readers across an array of small Web sites.
OpenX is one of many outfits seeking to automate the selling of hyper-targeted digital ads on the Web. A slew of firms--ranging from tiny start-ups to Web giants like Google ( GOOG - news - people )--have rolled out applications purporting to analyze online ad opportunities and help publishers and advertisers figure out how to allocate their respective ad inventories and budgets.
Many of these new applications promise to deploy demographic, geographic and personal interest data to identify attractive readers for advertisers wherever they land on the Web. Such micro-targeting may seem like a potential invasion of privacy, but user data analysis is an established practice. Most data collectors skirt privacy complaints by allowing Web users to block their tracking software.
The boom in new advertising optimization tools could reshape the $7.6 billion market for Internet display advertising. Leery of attaching the brand to sketchy Web content, big advertisers have historically preferred to deal with large Web publishers, such as the digital arms of newspapers and consumer magazines.
But ad tech executives and media planners say the new ad sales tools promise a cheap and efficient way for brands to screen and buy ads on smaller Web sites and blogs.
"These systems help advertisers cut through the clutter online, which will clearly help the 'long tail' publishers,'' says Kelly Twohig, a senior vice president at media planning agency Starcom ( SCME.PK - news - people ) in Chicago, whose clients include Allstate ( ALL - news - people ) and Capital One.
The potential for a reallocation of ad budgets from big publishers to smaller rivals comes at a stressful time for media giants. The New York Times Co. ( NYT - news - people ) announced this week that Web ad sales fell 6% and overall ad revenues dropped 28% year-over-year during the first quarter of 2009.
Earlier this month, Gannett ( GCI - news - people ), publisher of 85 daily newspapers including USA Today, reported that quarterly revenue decline 18% compared to last year.
Publishers participate in the OpenX Market by entering their advertising inventory--the spaces on their Web pages where ads can appear--into an online database and set a floor price for each slot. If an advertiser bids above that minimum, their ad appears on the Web site.
Along with buying on specific Web sites, Cadogan says that ad buyers will be able to use third-party data on Web users' personal interest, browsing history and demographics to find desirable segments of readers across all publishers participating in the market. Web sites currently use OpenX's software to deliver an estimated 300 billion impressions each month.
In addition to the challenge of convincing marketers to spend their ad budgets in a drastically different way, outfits like OpenX have to figure out how to emerge as leaders in an already competitive field.
"We've seen half a billion dollars of venture capital poured into building optimization and planning companies,'' says Matthew Hulett, chief executive of ad network and analytics firm Mpire.
This week, Hulett's firm unveiled an application to help advertisers track on which Web sites networks place ads, where on the actual screen the ad appears and if Web surfers pause their cursor over the ad. The tool is intended to help marketers better figure out how much of their ad spending is essentially worthless.
Google and Yahoo! both operate advertising exchanges that allow publishers to analyze how much revenue different ad sales techniques attract and help advertisers secure the best ad placement for the cheapest prices.
Rubicon Project, a two-year-old Los Angeles start-up that processes 40 billion impressions each month, helps Web sites compare ad prices delivered by different third-party ad brokers. This week, the company unveiled OnDemand, a service that lets advertisers automatically buy ads delivered to specific geographic, demographic and personal interest groups across a network of publishers.
PubMatic, a Silicon Valley start-up known in the ad world for publishing market reports on trends in ad prices, offers a similar optimization product aimed at big media companies' digital arms.
It's too early to say whether advertisers embrace the automated ad buying tools en masse. As people spend more of their lives online, marketers are desperate to reach them cheaply and efficiently. But, as Starcom media planner Twohig says, a human salesperson and trusted media product go a long way in attracting ad dollars.
[the article was orginally published at http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/24/advertising-internet-business-media-ad-data.html]
Local Tech Savvy Duo Steps Onto Federal Stage
Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra met nearly a decade ago as entrepreneurs in Northern Virginia's Indian American business community. They worked together in Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's administration and then as technology and innovation advisers on President Obama's transition team.
Now the two longtime friends will work in tandem to help meet Obama's ambitious goals of using technology to improve public access to government data, create new jobs, expand broadband services, reform the way health records are stored and build a modern electric grid.
Chopra, Virginia's secretary of technology, last week was named the nation's first chief technology officer, although he still awaits confirmation by the Senate. The long-awaited announcement comes six weeks after the administration named Kundra, former chief technology officer for the District, to the post of federal chief information officer.
The chief technology officer will focus on overall technology policy and innovation strategies across departments while the chief information officer will oversee day-to-day information technology spending and operations within agencies.
They will work within the White House with direct access to the president. Chopra will be in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Kundra in the Office of Management and Budget.
Some in Washington's technology policy circles had questioned whether the jobs were too large and unwieldy for tech czars who have never worked on the federal stage and will now have to navigate deep-rooted federal agency structures and processes.
There also had been much debate about whether the CTO job should be filled by a tech industry veteran rather than someone with more policy experience.
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"They face huge challenges of inertia and ramping up new staff . . . but they know how to bring the potential of technology to government," said Blair Levin, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus who was also an adviser on the transition team. "Silicon Valley has a vested interest in not so much having their own person in the job, but in someone who can hear what they have to say and translate that into government."
Their appointments to the newly created federal positions have been generally well-received. Supporters say both have track records for taking innovative approaches to using technology in government. For example, Chopra, 37, created a social network for clinicians in remote health clinics, and also spearheaded a state-sponsored venture capital fund to let Virginia agencies try out unconventional tools to improve their services.
Kundra, 34, got attention for inviting software developers to use the District's government data to create Internet and cellphone applications intended to give citizens easier access to city information. His efforts to let the public watch the city's contract-letting process helped spur the development of Recovery.gov, designed to track stimulus funding.
"We are both going to be driving innovation, whether it's health IT and broadband or how federal agencies use technology," Kundra said in an interview. "We're also embracing the open government principles to make sure we are democratizing data and to make sure agencies deliver results. At the same time, we need to leverage the ingenuity of the American people and the private sector to help us."
Chopra could not be reached for comment.
[you can read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/26/AR2009042602262.html]
Now the two longtime friends will work in tandem to help meet Obama's ambitious goals of using technology to improve public access to government data, create new jobs, expand broadband services, reform the way health records are stored and build a modern electric grid.
Chopra, Virginia's secretary of technology, last week was named the nation's first chief technology officer, although he still awaits confirmation by the Senate. The long-awaited announcement comes six weeks after the administration named Kundra, former chief technology officer for the District, to the post of federal chief information officer.
The chief technology officer will focus on overall technology policy and innovation strategies across departments while the chief information officer will oversee day-to-day information technology spending and operations within agencies.
They will work within the White House with direct access to the president. Chopra will be in the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Kundra in the Office of Management and Budget.
Some in Washington's technology policy circles had questioned whether the jobs were too large and unwieldy for tech czars who have never worked on the federal stage and will now have to navigate deep-rooted federal agency structures and processes.
There also had been much debate about whether the CTO job should be filled by a tech industry veteran rather than someone with more policy experience.
ad_icon
"They face huge challenges of inertia and ramping up new staff . . . but they know how to bring the potential of technology to government," said Blair Levin, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus who was also an adviser on the transition team. "Silicon Valley has a vested interest in not so much having their own person in the job, but in someone who can hear what they have to say and translate that into government."
Their appointments to the newly created federal positions have been generally well-received. Supporters say both have track records for taking innovative approaches to using technology in government. For example, Chopra, 37, created a social network for clinicians in remote health clinics, and also spearheaded a state-sponsored venture capital fund to let Virginia agencies try out unconventional tools to improve their services.
Kundra, 34, got attention for inviting software developers to use the District's government data to create Internet and cellphone applications intended to give citizens easier access to city information. His efforts to let the public watch the city's contract-letting process helped spur the development of Recovery.gov, designed to track stimulus funding.
"We are both going to be driving innovation, whether it's health IT and broadband or how federal agencies use technology," Kundra said in an interview. "We're also embracing the open government principles to make sure we are democratizing data and to make sure agencies deliver results. At the same time, we need to leverage the ingenuity of the American people and the private sector to help us."
Chopra could not be reached for comment.
[you can read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/26/AR2009042602262.html]
Monday, April 27, 2009
Microsoft Sales Fall Way to Short
Microsoft (MSFT) posted its first year-over-year sales decline in its 23 years as a public company Thursday, highlighting the tech sector's challenges as the recession drags on.
The Redmond, Wash., software giant missed Wall Street's third-quarter sales forecast by a wide margin, but met expectations on earnings, excluding one-time charges.
For the quarter that ended March 31, Microsoft earned 39 cents a share, excluding charges totaling 6 cents a share related to layoffs and money-losing investments. That was 17% below the same period last year, its second straight dip in year-over-year earnings per share.
Sales fell 6% to $13.65 billion, well below the $14.09 billion estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. It marked a historic low for the company. Since going public in 1986, Microsoft had never reported a year-to-year drop in quarterly sales.
"While market conditions remained weak during the quarter, I was pleased with the organization's ability to offset revenue pressures with the swift implementation of cost-savings initiatives," Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said in a statement.
Though Microsoft did not provide specific financial guidance, Liddell said company officials "expect the weakness to continue through at least the next quarter."
Microsoft shares rose 4% in after-hours trading following the earnings release. During regular session trading, shares rose 0.75% to 18.92.
Investors were likely encouraged that the company preserved EPS through cost-cutting, says Jeff Gaggin, enterprise software analyst at Avian Securities.
Investors also may be enthused about the upcoming release of Windows 7, the company's next-generation PC operating system, Gaggin says. Microsoft said it remains on track to release Windows 7 in fiscal year 2010, which ends in June next year.
"Microsoft had a fairly weak first (calendar) quarter, but I don't think anyone was expecting anything differently," said Toan Tran, an analyst with Morningstar. "What investors are going to focus on now is the upcoming release of Windows 7 and how that might get the Windows business back on track."
The current version of Windows, called Vista, is a "damaged brand," Tran said. Critics have called the software slow, bloated and subject to annoying security alerts. Many PC users have avoided upgrading to Vista and continue to use its predecessor, Windows XP.
Microsoft felt the effects last quarter of the personal computer sales slowdown and corporate tech- spending cutbacks.
Analysts are forecasting year-over-year declines in sales and earnings per share for the next two quarters as well.
[the article was originally published at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=474927]
The Redmond, Wash., software giant missed Wall Street's third-quarter sales forecast by a wide margin, but met expectations on earnings, excluding one-time charges.
For the quarter that ended March 31, Microsoft earned 39 cents a share, excluding charges totaling 6 cents a share related to layoffs and money-losing investments. That was 17% below the same period last year, its second straight dip in year-over-year earnings per share.
Sales fell 6% to $13.65 billion, well below the $14.09 billion estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. It marked a historic low for the company. Since going public in 1986, Microsoft had never reported a year-to-year drop in quarterly sales.
"While market conditions remained weak during the quarter, I was pleased with the organization's ability to offset revenue pressures with the swift implementation of cost-savings initiatives," Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said in a statement.
Though Microsoft did not provide specific financial guidance, Liddell said company officials "expect the weakness to continue through at least the next quarter."
Microsoft shares rose 4% in after-hours trading following the earnings release. During regular session trading, shares rose 0.75% to 18.92.
Investors were likely encouraged that the company preserved EPS through cost-cutting, says Jeff Gaggin, enterprise software analyst at Avian Securities.
Investors also may be enthused about the upcoming release of Windows 7, the company's next-generation PC operating system, Gaggin says. Microsoft said it remains on track to release Windows 7 in fiscal year 2010, which ends in June next year.
"Microsoft had a fairly weak first (calendar) quarter, but I don't think anyone was expecting anything differently," said Toan Tran, an analyst with Morningstar. "What investors are going to focus on now is the upcoming release of Windows 7 and how that might get the Windows business back on track."
The current version of Windows, called Vista, is a "damaged brand," Tran said. Critics have called the software slow, bloated and subject to annoying security alerts. Many PC users have avoided upgrading to Vista and continue to use its predecessor, Windows XP.
Microsoft felt the effects last quarter of the personal computer sales slowdown and corporate tech- spending cutbacks.
Analysts are forecasting year-over-year declines in sales and earnings per share for the next two quarters as well.
[the article was originally published at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=474927]
Yahoo Set to Shutter GeoCities
Yahoo Inc. said it plans to shut down GeoCities -- the personal profile service it bought for more than $4 billion in 1999 -- the latest casualty in Chief Executive Carol Bartz's campaign to shutter duplicative and underperforming products.
The company posted a notice on the GeoCities site saying it is no longer giving out new accounts for the service, which hosts user-created Web pages. The company said it would close the site later this year and will notify customers about how to save data they have uploaded to it, encouraging customers to upgrade to Yahoo's subscription Web hosting service.
The news comes as Yahoo said it will lay off 675 workers in the coming weeks through cuts targeted at certain products.
Ms. Bartz, who joined Yahoo in January, has already begun to reduce Yahoo's sprawling portfolio to focus on flagship services. The company recently announced it was closing two start-ups it acquired and tried to integrate in recent years: Jumpcut, an online video-editing service, and FareChase, a travel Web site.
GeoCities allows users to create personal pages with photos and other information, and to associate them with particular communities or neighborhoods. But its technology, designed for slower Internet connections, is crude by today's standards. Later social-networking sites, such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook, have attracted much larger audiences.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124052150483049791.html]
The company posted a notice on the GeoCities site saying it is no longer giving out new accounts for the service, which hosts user-created Web pages. The company said it would close the site later this year and will notify customers about how to save data they have uploaded to it, encouraging customers to upgrade to Yahoo's subscription Web hosting service.
The news comes as Yahoo said it will lay off 675 workers in the coming weeks through cuts targeted at certain products.
Ms. Bartz, who joined Yahoo in January, has already begun to reduce Yahoo's sprawling portfolio to focus on flagship services. The company recently announced it was closing two start-ups it acquired and tried to integrate in recent years: Jumpcut, an online video-editing service, and FareChase, a travel Web site.
GeoCities allows users to create personal pages with photos and other information, and to associate them with particular communities or neighborhoods. But its technology, designed for slower Internet connections, is crude by today's standards. Later social-networking sites, such as Friendster, MySpace and Facebook, have attracted much larger audiences.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124052150483049791.html]
Amazon quarterly sales jump 18%
Amazon, the online retailer, underlined its ability to thrive amid the global consumer slump on Thursday, announcing an 18 per cent increase in first-quarter revenues to $4.89bn, and a 24 per cent increase in earnings to $177m.
Excluding the impact of the stronger dollar on the overseas businesses, which account for almost half of its sales, Amazon’s net sales would have grown 25 per cent against the same period last year.
The strong quarter, which delivered earnings per share of 41 cents, beat Wall Street’s expectations and was at the high end of the company’s own forecasts, and continued the strong growth seen in the preceding holiday quarter.
Amazon’s shares, which have almost doubled since early December last year, gained more than 2 per cent in after-hours trading to $82.68.
The company’s robust performance is being sustained by its ability to offer prices on goods that compete with conventional discount retailers, combined with free shipping, and the comparatively prosperous demographics of online customers.
Amazon is also continuing to expand its sales range, recently launching a stand-alone shoe and accessory site in Japan, called javari.com, which is built on the architecture of its US Endless.com site.
It has launched digital music downloads on its German site and launched an online video game trade-in service.
The retailer soundly outperformed leading bricks and mortar rivals, while its growth in North America – up 21 per cent – was roughly twice most estimates of overall US online retail growth. International sales rose 15 per cent to $2.3bn, but increased 29 per cent on a constant currency basis.
The quarter also saw a dramatic 38 per cent increase in Amazon’s sales of non-media products such as electronics, clothing and food, which now account for 42 per cent of worldwide net sales, compared with 36 per cent last year.
Jeff Bezos, chief executive, highlighted the performance of the Kindle electronic bookreader, whose second version the company introduced this spring, saying sales “have exceeded our most optimistic expectations”, but gave no further details.
Tom Szkutak, chief financial officer, said that Amazon’s cloud computing web services business was gaining corporate clients and hedge funds. The company is also starting to market its web services to state and federal government clients.
For the second quarter, the company said it expected net sales to grow by 6-17 per cent to $4.3bn-$4.75bn. It forecast a decline in operating income of $110m-$190m compared with last year.
[the article was originally published at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8463ea90-3046-11de-88e3-00144feabdc0.html]
Excluding the impact of the stronger dollar on the overseas businesses, which account for almost half of its sales, Amazon’s net sales would have grown 25 per cent against the same period last year.
The strong quarter, which delivered earnings per share of 41 cents, beat Wall Street’s expectations and was at the high end of the company’s own forecasts, and continued the strong growth seen in the preceding holiday quarter.
Amazon’s shares, which have almost doubled since early December last year, gained more than 2 per cent in after-hours trading to $82.68.
The company’s robust performance is being sustained by its ability to offer prices on goods that compete with conventional discount retailers, combined with free shipping, and the comparatively prosperous demographics of online customers.
Amazon is also continuing to expand its sales range, recently launching a stand-alone shoe and accessory site in Japan, called javari.com, which is built on the architecture of its US Endless.com site.
It has launched digital music downloads on its German site and launched an online video game trade-in service.
The retailer soundly outperformed leading bricks and mortar rivals, while its growth in North America – up 21 per cent – was roughly twice most estimates of overall US online retail growth. International sales rose 15 per cent to $2.3bn, but increased 29 per cent on a constant currency basis.
The quarter also saw a dramatic 38 per cent increase in Amazon’s sales of non-media products such as electronics, clothing and food, which now account for 42 per cent of worldwide net sales, compared with 36 per cent last year.
Jeff Bezos, chief executive, highlighted the performance of the Kindle electronic bookreader, whose second version the company introduced this spring, saying sales “have exceeded our most optimistic expectations”, but gave no further details.
Tom Szkutak, chief financial officer, said that Amazon’s cloud computing web services business was gaining corporate clients and hedge funds. The company is also starting to market its web services to state and federal government clients.
For the second quarter, the company said it expected net sales to grow by 6-17 per cent to $4.3bn-$4.75bn. It forecast a decline in operating income of $110m-$190m compared with last year.
[the article was originally published at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8463ea90-3046-11de-88e3-00144feabdc0.html]
Current Puts RFP Call on Twitter
Every day brings new uses for Twitter. Now, the short-messaging service has found its way into the agency-selection process.
The Current Network today became the first brand to solicit agencies via Twitter to receive RFPs for its account review. "This is a TwitteRFP for The Current Network. Searching for a full service ad agency partner," wrote Jordan Kretchmer, vp of brand at Current.
In a longer posting linked from the initial tweet, he explained the type of agency Current is seeking:
"Our ideal agency will help us formulate a brand/ad strategy that communicates who Current is through compelling, inspiring, and even controversial advertising. The ideal relationship for us is based on collaboration, dialogue, and a reciprocal excitement for the potential that Current has to attract a mass audience."
In an attempt to open the opaque RFP process, agencies are instructed to post their responses publicly.
Kretchmer said he hatched the idea earlier this week as a way to fill out the roster of shops Current will evaluate. He already has chosen five agencies to receive RFPs separately from Twitter.
"The whole idea is searching for an agency...that lives and breathes social media rather than claiming they do," he said.
So far, Kretchmer has gotten dozens of responses. Most are from small shops and include little more than an expression of interest. One to One Interactive, a Boston agency, went the farthest, putting together a video linked to in a reply to the "TwitteRFP."
Many of the responses have come from small creative firms that Kretchmer -- who worked at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners before joining Current -- did not know.
"This is not a stunt at all," Kretchmer said. "I'm short-listing people with interesting responses."
At the very least, it's made the often-tiresome RFP process more intriguing, Kretchmer said. At Butler, Shine and earlier at Mullen, he often chafed at the formulaic nature of the mating dance between agencies and potential clients. "While this may not get us any different work at the end, the approach is much more fun," he said.
Shops have until Monday to respond to Kretchmer's call by replying to him using @jkretch. Kretchmer declined to state the size of the account. Current plans to have an agency chosen by June. Current has no agency relationship at present.
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3ic65aba1d643fc23caaf0f251ba580cbc]
The Current Network today became the first brand to solicit agencies via Twitter to receive RFPs for its account review. "This is a TwitteRFP for The Current Network. Searching for a full service ad agency partner," wrote Jordan Kretchmer, vp of brand at Current.
In a longer posting linked from the initial tweet, he explained the type of agency Current is seeking:
"Our ideal agency will help us formulate a brand/ad strategy that communicates who Current is through compelling, inspiring, and even controversial advertising. The ideal relationship for us is based on collaboration, dialogue, and a reciprocal excitement for the potential that Current has to attract a mass audience."
In an attempt to open the opaque RFP process, agencies are instructed to post their responses publicly.
Kretchmer said he hatched the idea earlier this week as a way to fill out the roster of shops Current will evaluate. He already has chosen five agencies to receive RFPs separately from Twitter.
"The whole idea is searching for an agency...that lives and breathes social media rather than claiming they do," he said.
So far, Kretchmer has gotten dozens of responses. Most are from small shops and include little more than an expression of interest. One to One Interactive, a Boston agency, went the farthest, putting together a video linked to in a reply to the "TwitteRFP."
Many of the responses have come from small creative firms that Kretchmer -- who worked at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners before joining Current -- did not know.
"This is not a stunt at all," Kretchmer said. "I'm short-listing people with interesting responses."
At the very least, it's made the often-tiresome RFP process more intriguing, Kretchmer said. At Butler, Shine and earlier at Mullen, he often chafed at the formulaic nature of the mating dance between agencies and potential clients. "While this may not get us any different work at the end, the approach is much more fun," he said.
Shops have until Monday to respond to Kretchmer's call by replying to him using @jkretch. Kretchmer declined to state the size of the account. Current plans to have an agency chosen by June. Current has no agency relationship at present.
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3ic65aba1d643fc23caaf0f251ba580cbc]
Friday, April 24, 2009
MySpace founders step aside
The founders of MySpace are leaving the helm of the pioneering Web site that made social-networking a mainstream phenomenon, as owner News Corp. seeks to reinvigorate the once-hot property it scooped up four years ago.
The pushing aside of Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, whose contracts weren't due to expire until October, represents a pivotal test for the viability of social-networking sites. While social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have exploded in popularity in recent years, they have struggled to generate the kind of revenue and earnings prospects that can sustain them as businesses over the long haul.
News Corp. now aims to show that a large conglomerate, with a portfolio that includes many old-media properties including newspapers, can succeed at that task.
People familiar with the situation said News Corp. was completing a deal to name former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Owen Van Natta as chief executive to succeed Mr. DeWolfe. He would report to Jon Miller, the former AOL chief executive who was recruited to join News Corp. this month in a newly created position of chief digital officer. Charged with all News Corp.'s stand-alone digital properties, he was particularly given the mission of shoring up MySpace.
Spokeswomen for News Corp. and MySpace both declined to comment beyond a news release. Messrs. DeWolfe, Anderson and Van Natta couldn't be reached for comment.
News Corp. sees MySpace as critical in its transformation from a conglomerate of traditional television, movie and newspaper businesses to a new-media titan. But while MySpace grew quickly following News Corp.'s purchase, last year its revenue fell short of executives' targets. News Corp. also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
MySpace is still the dominant social-networking site in the U.S. But its U.S. audience has fallen this year. In March, MySpace attracted 70.1 million unique visitors, down 3.6% from a year ago, according to comScore Media Metrix. Meanwhile, Facebook is nipping at its heels. Facebook surpassed MySpace's world-wide audience a year ago, and is growing fast in the U.S., with 61.2 million unique visitors in March, up 72% from a year earlier.
More broadly, MySpace, like other social-networking sites, still must overcome doubts about the medium's viability. Advertisers, for one, remain leery. "Advertising doesn't fit so neatly into a conversation that people are having among themselves," says Tom Bedecarre, chief executive of independent digital-ad firm AKQA. "The interruptive model of advertising hasn't been successful."
MySpace was founded in 2003 by Messrs. DeWolfe and Anderson. Their email marketing division of a Los Angeles company called eUniverse, which later renamed itself Intermix, was floundering, so they imitated a popular site at the time, Friendster.
They made two key improvements on Friendster: They allowed users to customize their profile pages, and they allowed users to create any identity they liked. Friendster, like Facebook today, encouraged members to use their real names.
But just as MySpace was taking off, fueled in large part by its popularity with musicians, it was sold to News Corp. MySpace's parent company, Intermix, negotiated the $650 million deal directly with News Corp., leaving the MySpace founders out of the loop until the last minute.
News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch immediately sought to mollify the founders with lucrative two-year pay packages of $30 million each, but Messrs. DeWolfe and Anderson still chafed at the fact that MySpace ad sales were taken over by executives at Fox Interactive Media, according to people familiar with the situation.
The rank and file of MySpace were also angry that their stock options were canceled after the acquisition and that they were forced to move from Santa Monica, Calif., to Beverly Hills, the people said.
Relations fell apart further. Mr. DeWolfe ignored suggestions from Fox Interactive Media President Ross Levinsohn about ways to improve the site. Mr. DeWolfe sought to amend a $900 million advertising deal News Corp. cut with Google Inc. -- delaying its implementation, the people said. That deal is due to expire next year.
Mr. Levinsohn also clashed with Mr. Anderson, who is president of the site. Mr. Anderson controlled the product development and was criticized for not moving fast. In April 2006, MySpace bought the online karaoke service kSolo. MySpace launched the karaoke feature on its site in April 2008 -- two years later.
The tension between the MySpace founders and News Corp. eventually led to Mr. Levinsohn's dismissal in November 2006. He was succeeded by his distant cousin, Peter Levinsohn, who eventually gave Mr. DeWolfe control of the advertising sales at MySpace that he had sought.
All this time, Facebook was steadily gaining on MySpace. Founded by Silicon Valley computer programmers as a social network for Harvard students in 2004, Facebook expanded to other college campuses and opened to everybody in 2006.
Facebook focused on building innovative features and encouraging third-party software developers to write applications to run on Facebook.
Meanwhile, MySpace, with its marketing and music background, fought back with entertainment, such as a celebrity news site and an expensive music joint venture.
Three top MySpace executives, including Amit Kapur, former chief operating officer, left the company in March to work on a start-up. MySpace has yet to name successors for those positions.
Mr. Miller began discussing the job with potential candidates including Mr. Van Natta, but hadn't finalized anything when the news of the talks leaked, according to people familiar with the situation. Mr. Van Natta helped expand Facebook but stepped into a less prominent role as chief revenue officer as the site grew, ultimately leaving the company in February 2008. At MySpace, he could serve as a bridge between Silicon Valley and MySpace, which has struggled to match Facebook's technology prowess.
Hearing of the talks, Mr. DeWolfe called Mr. Miller to discuss his future, these people said.
In the statement News Corp. released Wednesday announcing the move, it said Mr. Anderson would take on a new role in the organization. It said Mr. DeWolfe will continue to serve on the board of MySpace China and will be a strategic adviser to the company.
[credit : http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124043324710044929.html]
Microsoft answer to Google AdSense
Microsoft on Wednesday opened its PubCenter advertising service up for public beta testing, providing more of an alternative to Google's AdSense and Yahoo Publisher Network technology that places ads on publishers' sites.
All the services scrutinize the content on a Web site and place advertisements the service deems to be relevant to that content. As with ads on search sites, the advertiser pays only when a reader clicks on one of the ads, and revenue is shared with the publisher and the company operating the ad service.
Kevin McCabe, senior product manager of PubCenter, announced the move at the AdSpace conference Wednesday. People can sign up for the beta service at the PubCenter site, though it's only open to people in the United States at present.
Click-through rates on such services typically are far lower than for ads on search engines. But the technology still is significant, particularly during the recession, in part because advertisers can bid for keywords and limit their investments only to areas where they see a return.
[credit : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224959-93.html]
All the services scrutinize the content on a Web site and place advertisements the service deems to be relevant to that content. As with ads on search sites, the advertiser pays only when a reader clicks on one of the ads, and revenue is shared with the publisher and the company operating the ad service.
Kevin McCabe, senior product manager of PubCenter, announced the move at the AdSpace conference Wednesday. People can sign up for the beta service at the PubCenter site, though it's only open to people in the United States at present.
Click-through rates on such services typically are far lower than for ads on search engines. But the technology still is significant, particularly during the recession, in part because advertisers can bid for keywords and limit their investments only to areas where they see a return.
[credit : http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10224959-93.html]
TiVo Promotes Ads It Hopes You’ll interact with, Not skip
The company that attacked television advertising is trying to resuscitate it.
TiVo, which allows viewers to digitally record programs and fast-forward through ads, is trying to sell ad spaces on its screens.
It is in a footrace with other companies, including Cablevision, Cox Communications and DirecTV, to offer interactive alternatives to the zapped-through television spots. The ads are called interactive because they ask the viewer to do something — enter in a new channel number, press a button on the remote — to get more information.
“In the last 18 months, the momentum has just lifted,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, the chief executive of BrightLine iTV, which designs interactive ads. “It’s started to become a staple of very large advertisers.”
In December, TiVo began offering ads that appear as a small piece of text when viewers pause a show. Advertisers can choose the specific show or genre they want their pause ad to appear on — Mercedes-Benz USA used it to promote a new car during football games earlier this year. TiVo also offers ads that appear when viewers fast-forward through shows. Advertisers that run regular 30- or 60-second spots can buy these, and when the viewer presses fast-forward, a static box appears. One for Tourism Australia shows a photograph of a girl on a beach with the text, exclaiming, “Don’t tell me I just skipped the Australia ad!” TiVo viewers are instructed to press the Thumbs Up button to see the ad and get more information.
Once a viewer interacts with its ads, TiVo can show them a video about the product, let them request more information or a coupon, or even let them configure a car with different colors and options. TiVo also sells ad space on TiVo Central, its home screen.
“By catching them at a time when they’re pausing the program, when they’ve finished with a program,” said Tara Maitra, vice president and general manager of content and advertising at TiVo, “the viewer’s main reason for being there isn’t being interrupted.”
TiVo is not the only company devising a solution to commercial-skipping. Cable and satellite companies, and technology providers like Microsoft’s Navic Networks, are also working on interactive ads.
The cable offerings vary by market. In Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego and Las Vegas, Cox Communications sells interactive spots, with graphics on top of commercials that direct viewers to vote or ask for more information using their remotes. In the New York metro area, Cablevision sells special video-on-demand channels to companies like Disney, which runs videos about its amusement parks and stars and a “talk to agent” button that is associated with the viewer’s phone number, provided by Cablevision; selecting it results in an immediate phone call from a Disney representative.
Time Warner offers some interactivity, too. Last September, the media company MPG ran a test for the insurance company American International Group with about 180,000 Time Warner subscribers in Hawaii. MPG, a unit of Havas, used Navic technology to send different ads to households with different demographics, and a banner sat on top of the ad as it ran, telling viewers to click a button on their remote for more information. Only 566 of the households interacted with the ad, said Mitch Oscar, executive vice president of televisual applications at MPG. But, he said, that number was promising.
“We’re doing branding spots anyway,” he said. “If advertisers are going to run commercials one way or the other, and we can add this element to it.”
For now, the cable company’s interactive offerings are largely limited to the two minutes of advertising an hour that each local operator sells. But Canoe Ventures, the consortium of the nation’s six largest cable companies, has announced it will make interactive request-for-information ads available by the end of 2009, and those will be available nationally.
The satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, also offer interactive ads that can run nationwide — a recent Nike ad on Dish Network allowed viewers to zoom in to see a shoe, among other features.
Unilever, the consumer products company, which owns brands like Bertolli and Dove, has been aggressive in the interactive television space for the last couple of years, so much so that it held an “upfront” in the winter to book and negotiate for interactive television slots.
“What we love about it is, if you think about it, the remote control and DVRs have really been a marketer’s worst nightmare,” said Anne Jensen, brand-building director at Unilever. “What we’re doing with ITV is we’re actually making the remote control our friend.”
Last week, Unilever introduced an interactive campaign for Axe on DirecTV that had new interactive features. The campaign promoted Axe’s body washes for men, which come in four varieties, like “Shock,” to wake you up, and the exfoliating “Snake Peel,” so “if you’ve had a very questionable hookup you can scrub away the shame,” Ms. Jensen said.
The idea with this campaign was that “guys don’t really talk to each other about personal hygiene,” Ms. Jensen said. The interactive piece, designed by BrightLine, comes when the commercial’s host points to a space on the screen, and a button pops up that viewers can select for more information. Then, there are clips where Axe diagnoses what variety is appropriate for the viewer, and suggests pranks the viewers can play on friends.
Axe receives reports on how many people responded to the ads, what sections of the extra video they watched, and how much time they spent with the Axe material. “What’s nice is that this medium can be quite flexible in terms of how we optimize our campaigns and improve it as we go along,” Ms. Jensen said.
For all of the data and features that interactive ads offer, the fragmentation of the industry tended to scare off advertisers, said Craig Woerz, managing partner of Media Storm, an agency based in Norwalk, Conn., that has run interactive ads for clients like Magnolia Pictures and the Food Network.
“Advertisers and agencies love to take the easy way out, which is, I’m not going to look at this interactive stuff until I’ve got 90 million households, 60 million households,” Mr. Woerz said. “There’s a heck of a base out there. But you’re not going to do it with one phone call.”
[credit : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/media/23adco.html?_r=1]
TiVo, which allows viewers to digitally record programs and fast-forward through ads, is trying to sell ad spaces on its screens.
It is in a footrace with other companies, including Cablevision, Cox Communications and DirecTV, to offer interactive alternatives to the zapped-through television spots. The ads are called interactive because they ask the viewer to do something — enter in a new channel number, press a button on the remote — to get more information.
“In the last 18 months, the momentum has just lifted,” said Jacqueline Corbelli, the chief executive of BrightLine iTV, which designs interactive ads. “It’s started to become a staple of very large advertisers.”
In December, TiVo began offering ads that appear as a small piece of text when viewers pause a show. Advertisers can choose the specific show or genre they want their pause ad to appear on — Mercedes-Benz USA used it to promote a new car during football games earlier this year. TiVo also offers ads that appear when viewers fast-forward through shows. Advertisers that run regular 30- or 60-second spots can buy these, and when the viewer presses fast-forward, a static box appears. One for Tourism Australia shows a photograph of a girl on a beach with the text, exclaiming, “Don’t tell me I just skipped the Australia ad!” TiVo viewers are instructed to press the Thumbs Up button to see the ad and get more information.
Once a viewer interacts with its ads, TiVo can show them a video about the product, let them request more information or a coupon, or even let them configure a car with different colors and options. TiVo also sells ad space on TiVo Central, its home screen.
“By catching them at a time when they’re pausing the program, when they’ve finished with a program,” said Tara Maitra, vice president and general manager of content and advertising at TiVo, “the viewer’s main reason for being there isn’t being interrupted.”
TiVo is not the only company devising a solution to commercial-skipping. Cable and satellite companies, and technology providers like Microsoft’s Navic Networks, are also working on interactive ads.
The cable offerings vary by market. In Tucson, Phoenix, San Diego and Las Vegas, Cox Communications sells interactive spots, with graphics on top of commercials that direct viewers to vote or ask for more information using their remotes. In the New York metro area, Cablevision sells special video-on-demand channels to companies like Disney, which runs videos about its amusement parks and stars and a “talk to agent” button that is associated with the viewer’s phone number, provided by Cablevision; selecting it results in an immediate phone call from a Disney representative.
Time Warner offers some interactivity, too. Last September, the media company MPG ran a test for the insurance company American International Group with about 180,000 Time Warner subscribers in Hawaii. MPG, a unit of Havas, used Navic technology to send different ads to households with different demographics, and a banner sat on top of the ad as it ran, telling viewers to click a button on their remote for more information. Only 566 of the households interacted with the ad, said Mitch Oscar, executive vice president of televisual applications at MPG. But, he said, that number was promising.
“We’re doing branding spots anyway,” he said. “If advertisers are going to run commercials one way or the other, and we can add this element to it.”
For now, the cable company’s interactive offerings are largely limited to the two minutes of advertising an hour that each local operator sells. But Canoe Ventures, the consortium of the nation’s six largest cable companies, has announced it will make interactive request-for-information ads available by the end of 2009, and those will be available nationally.
The satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, also offer interactive ads that can run nationwide — a recent Nike ad on Dish Network allowed viewers to zoom in to see a shoe, among other features.
Unilever, the consumer products company, which owns brands like Bertolli and Dove, has been aggressive in the interactive television space for the last couple of years, so much so that it held an “upfront” in the winter to book and negotiate for interactive television slots.
“What we love about it is, if you think about it, the remote control and DVRs have really been a marketer’s worst nightmare,” said Anne Jensen, brand-building director at Unilever. “What we’re doing with ITV is we’re actually making the remote control our friend.”
Last week, Unilever introduced an interactive campaign for Axe on DirecTV that had new interactive features. The campaign promoted Axe’s body washes for men, which come in four varieties, like “Shock,” to wake you up, and the exfoliating “Snake Peel,” so “if you’ve had a very questionable hookup you can scrub away the shame,” Ms. Jensen said.
The idea with this campaign was that “guys don’t really talk to each other about personal hygiene,” Ms. Jensen said. The interactive piece, designed by BrightLine, comes when the commercial’s host points to a space on the screen, and a button pops up that viewers can select for more information. Then, there are clips where Axe diagnoses what variety is appropriate for the viewer, and suggests pranks the viewers can play on friends.
Axe receives reports on how many people responded to the ads, what sections of the extra video they watched, and how much time they spent with the Axe material. “What’s nice is that this medium can be quite flexible in terms of how we optimize our campaigns and improve it as we go along,” Ms. Jensen said.
For all of the data and features that interactive ads offer, the fragmentation of the industry tended to scare off advertisers, said Craig Woerz, managing partner of Media Storm, an agency based in Norwalk, Conn., that has run interactive ads for clients like Magnolia Pictures and the Food Network.
“Advertisers and agencies love to take the easy way out, which is, I’m not going to look at this interactive stuff until I’ve got 90 million households, 60 million households,” Mr. Woerz said. “There’s a heck of a base out there. But you’re not going to do it with one phone call.”
[credit : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/media/23adco.html?_r=1]
Thursday, April 23, 2009
New Stuff from Google Labs
Today, Google’s introducing some early-stage new products and services coming out of Google Labs at a press gathering hosted by R.J. Pittman, director of product management in search properties. I’ll be liveblogging the hourlong press conference being held at Google’s San Francisco (and there’s more here on the Google Labs blog):
Here’s Pittman: “We’re still not exactly sure where the economy is headed. But innovation is alive and well at Google.” The challenge is keeping the innovation framework going when the company is growing so huge.
Pittman mentions several recent innovations that are intended to “catalyze the Web,” such as Streetview and turn-by-turn directions, Audio Indexing, Picasa facial recognition, and Google Translate.
“The (innovation) garden is actually overgrown.” Lots of local opportunities getting built off Google’s overall platform. The key is getting users’ participation earlier in the food chain of product development, to get products in the hands of consumers as soon as possible. “We think it’s really important to engage the users as soon as possible.”
OK, now on to the products. First up is Radhika Malpani, director of engineering, on Similar Images. You can take a favorite query, say on Porsches, and specify the color. Now taking that further. You can do a search on Paris, say, and you get images of the city, the star, etc. Then you can choose which image for which you want more that are similar. Google looks at color, texture, and shape to determine similarity, with a little metadata (accompanying information) to help.
She shows a demo: Search on beaches, and you get a wide variety of images, most of which probably aren’t what you had in mind. So you can click on a Similar Images link under each image to get more of the same. You can keep clicking on images to get closer and closer. Hundreds of millions of images are in the database.
Pittman says they’re putting this out even before they have similar images for each image search to get quick feedback.
Pittman again on another new product coming into GoogleLabs: News Timeline. This is legendary former Apple software engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s project. Hertzfeld: It’s Google’s mission to organize the world’s information, and certain information is best organized by time. That’s the purpose of this project.
The demo: It’s literally a timeline with stories listed under each date and you can scroll back and forward in time. You can also scroll up and down to get more stories. The stories include video and other rich media that plays when you click on them. And of course you can make a search and then those stories relevant to those queries show up. “It’s a visual map of what’s going on in the world.”
You can search by source, such as a range or magazines or specific magazines, newspapers, Wikipedia events, movies, blogs, sports scores, prizes, and so on—looks like about 15 or 20 sources or categories. Hertzfeld says Google might eventually eliminate that “corpus” selection so you don’t have to specify the specific sources. You can do the timeline daily, weekly, yearly, or even by the decade.
Lots of other interesting things to display on the timeline besides news. He shows how you can choose to look at Time magazine, with Time covers for each month decades back. Or Popular Science. And if you click on the covers (except for Time, which doesn’t make full content available for free), you go into the Google Books interface to see the full issue content that has been scanned in.
It’s essentially a new user interface for the same information already available through Google News (and in some cases Google Books or publications Google has scanned, under license from the content owners).
No plans to make money from it yet. “Literally we haven’t thought about it all.” Pittman adds: “We’re doing this to push the envelope on the user experience.”
OK, last announcement from Pittman: It’s a new Google Labs itself—that is, the site for the company’s products in development. You’ll be able to follow what’s new in Labs more easily. You’ll also be able to comment on and rate projects and engineer profiles. There are new “Meet the engineers” profiles.
And that’s it. Even with all the projects Google has cut or reduced in recent months, it’s clear there’s still a lot going on—at least that’s the impression Google wants to leave here.
After the event, Pittman added a bit more color that to my ears added up to this: Google wants to get products out faster, and to do that, it needs to get more people outside the company involved in providing feedback on early versions of products. Thus the redesign of the Google Labs site and today’s announcements on products that are being let out into the wild a bit earlier than they previously might have.
[the article was originally published at http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/04/live_new_stuff.html]
Here’s Pittman: “We’re still not exactly sure where the economy is headed. But innovation is alive and well at Google.” The challenge is keeping the innovation framework going when the company is growing so huge.
Pittman mentions several recent innovations that are intended to “catalyze the Web,” such as Streetview and turn-by-turn directions, Audio Indexing, Picasa facial recognition, and Google Translate.
“The (innovation) garden is actually overgrown.” Lots of local opportunities getting built off Google’s overall platform. The key is getting users’ participation earlier in the food chain of product development, to get products in the hands of consumers as soon as possible. “We think it’s really important to engage the users as soon as possible.”
OK, now on to the products. First up is Radhika Malpani, director of engineering, on Similar Images. You can take a favorite query, say on Porsches, and specify the color. Now taking that further. You can do a search on Paris, say, and you get images of the city, the star, etc. Then you can choose which image for which you want more that are similar. Google looks at color, texture, and shape to determine similarity, with a little metadata (accompanying information) to help.
She shows a demo: Search on beaches, and you get a wide variety of images, most of which probably aren’t what you had in mind. So you can click on a Similar Images link under each image to get more of the same. You can keep clicking on images to get closer and closer. Hundreds of millions of images are in the database.
Pittman says they’re putting this out even before they have similar images for each image search to get quick feedback.
Pittman again on another new product coming into GoogleLabs: News Timeline. This is legendary former Apple software engineer Andy Hertzfeld’s project. Hertzfeld: It’s Google’s mission to organize the world’s information, and certain information is best organized by time. That’s the purpose of this project.
The demo: It’s literally a timeline with stories listed under each date and you can scroll back and forward in time. You can also scroll up and down to get more stories. The stories include video and other rich media that plays when you click on them. And of course you can make a search and then those stories relevant to those queries show up. “It’s a visual map of what’s going on in the world.”
You can search by source, such as a range or magazines or specific magazines, newspapers, Wikipedia events, movies, blogs, sports scores, prizes, and so on—looks like about 15 or 20 sources or categories. Hertzfeld says Google might eventually eliminate that “corpus” selection so you don’t have to specify the specific sources. You can do the timeline daily, weekly, yearly, or even by the decade.
Lots of other interesting things to display on the timeline besides news. He shows how you can choose to look at Time magazine, with Time covers for each month decades back. Or Popular Science. And if you click on the covers (except for Time, which doesn’t make full content available for free), you go into the Google Books interface to see the full issue content that has been scanned in.
It’s essentially a new user interface for the same information already available through Google News (and in some cases Google Books or publications Google has scanned, under license from the content owners).
No plans to make money from it yet. “Literally we haven’t thought about it all.” Pittman adds: “We’re doing this to push the envelope on the user experience.”
OK, last announcement from Pittman: It’s a new Google Labs itself—that is, the site for the company’s products in development. You’ll be able to follow what’s new in Labs more easily. You’ll also be able to comment on and rate projects and engineer profiles. There are new “Meet the engineers” profiles.
And that’s it. Even with all the projects Google has cut or reduced in recent months, it’s clear there’s still a lot going on—at least that’s the impression Google wants to leave here.
After the event, Pittman added a bit more color that to my ears added up to this: Google wants to get products out faster, and to do that, it needs to get more people outside the company involved in providing feedback on early versions of products. Thus the redesign of the Google Labs site and today’s announcements on products that are being let out into the wild a bit earlier than they previously might have.
[the article was originally published at http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/04/live_new_stuff.html]
Yahoo Posts 78% Profit dip, job cuts again
Yahoo Inc. posted a 78% quarterly profit decline as the recession hit its slumping advertising business and the Internet company said it would eliminate about 675 more jobs, or 5% of its work force.
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company was hurt across the board as companies scaled back their marketing budgets and flocked to cheaper alternatives. In particular, search-ad revenue, which had been a bright spot for Yahoo, declined 3% after several quarters of double-digit growth.
The results did little to alleviate the pressure on Chief Executive Carol Bartz to make big changes at Yahoo. While she has cut costs, Ms. Bartz is still working through strategic options, including possible sales of business units and a search-ad pact with Microsoft Corp. Yahoo executives declined Tuesday to discuss any talks with Microsoft.
Yahoo's display-ad business, which historically has been fed by spending from major brands such as car companies and telecommunications providers, dropped more quickly during the quarter. Revenue from display ads on sites Yahoo owns, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail fell 13%, compared with a 2% decline in the fourth quarter.
Ms. Bartz, who joined Yahoo two weeks into the quarter, said the company was being pressured by the economy but that "brand advertising will grow in an economic recovery," allowing Yahoo to "take meaningful share." She said that some companies, such as non-U.S. auto makers, have increased their spending with Yahoo.
Overall, Yahoo's revenue fell 13% in the first quarter to $1.58 billion, from $1.81 billion a year earlier. Net income declined to $118 million, or eight cents a share, from $537 million, or 37 cents a share, in the 2008 first quarter, when Yahoo recorded a $401 million noncash gain.
Yahoo and Microsoft are still discussing an agreement that would enable the two companies to combine search-ad assets, with Microsoft taking over the business of selling search ads on Yahoo pages, people familiar with the matter said. But no deal appears imminent, said a person familiar with the situation, adding that it appears both sides "are still talking conceptually."
Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen in an interview said he was pleased with the company's quarterly results given the "headwind in the economy."
He added that Yahoo would continue to pay close attention to costs, beyond the fresh layoffs. The company laid off roughly 1,500 employees in December and about 1,000 people in the first quarter of 2008.
Ms. Bartz said the latest cuts would be targeted at certain businesses rather than across the board. She added that the cuts were designed to give Yahoo "flexibility to accelerate hiring in other areas" and said she is continuing to focus resources on larger products that are performing well, such as Yahoo Mail.
Shares of Yahoo, which reported earnings after the market's close, rose 3.8% in after-hours trading to $14.92, after rising 5.3% to $14.38 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq composite trading.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124034487471340099.html]
The Sunnyvale, Calif., company was hurt across the board as companies scaled back their marketing budgets and flocked to cheaper alternatives. In particular, search-ad revenue, which had been a bright spot for Yahoo, declined 3% after several quarters of double-digit growth.
The results did little to alleviate the pressure on Chief Executive Carol Bartz to make big changes at Yahoo. While she has cut costs, Ms. Bartz is still working through strategic options, including possible sales of business units and a search-ad pact with Microsoft Corp. Yahoo executives declined Tuesday to discuss any talks with Microsoft.
Yahoo's display-ad business, which historically has been fed by spending from major brands such as car companies and telecommunications providers, dropped more quickly during the quarter. Revenue from display ads on sites Yahoo owns, such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Mail fell 13%, compared with a 2% decline in the fourth quarter.
Ms. Bartz, who joined Yahoo two weeks into the quarter, said the company was being pressured by the economy but that "brand advertising will grow in an economic recovery," allowing Yahoo to "take meaningful share." She said that some companies, such as non-U.S. auto makers, have increased their spending with Yahoo.
Overall, Yahoo's revenue fell 13% in the first quarter to $1.58 billion, from $1.81 billion a year earlier. Net income declined to $118 million, or eight cents a share, from $537 million, or 37 cents a share, in the 2008 first quarter, when Yahoo recorded a $401 million noncash gain.
Yahoo and Microsoft are still discussing an agreement that would enable the two companies to combine search-ad assets, with Microsoft taking over the business of selling search ads on Yahoo pages, people familiar with the matter said. But no deal appears imminent, said a person familiar with the situation, adding that it appears both sides "are still talking conceptually."
Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Blake Jorgensen in an interview said he was pleased with the company's quarterly results given the "headwind in the economy."
He added that Yahoo would continue to pay close attention to costs, beyond the fresh layoffs. The company laid off roughly 1,500 employees in December and about 1,000 people in the first quarter of 2008.
Ms. Bartz said the latest cuts would be targeted at certain businesses rather than across the board. She added that the cuts were designed to give Yahoo "flexibility to accelerate hiring in other areas" and said she is continuing to focus resources on larger products that are performing well, such as Yahoo Mail.
Shares of Yahoo, which reported earnings after the market's close, rose 3.8% in after-hours trading to $14.92, after rising 5.3% to $14.38 in 4 p.m. Nasdaq composite trading.
[the article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124034487471340099.html]
The Rise of the C-Tweet
Social media has obviously given voice to employees in ways that never existed before. Early corporate bloggers were often brand enthusiasts themselves and tended to "get" the brand a gut level; soon enough, voice and tone guidelines became more actively put in play to govern blog writing. But Twitter is different. The nature of the medium encourages users to transmit an interchangeable mix of musings about life, work, daily observations and whatever else. Employees on Twitter are either designated brand ambassadors or simply have personal accounts -- and these lines of distinction help offer guidance. But that line grays with the advent of the "C-Tweet." C-level execs are part-lead ambassador, part-celebrity. Twitter accounts can build a cult of personality and extend a dynamic that has long existed for top CEOs into a broader set of C-level executives.
Among C-level execs, Twitter holds an allure as a seemingly simple vehicle to communicate thought leadership while staying connected to the market. Yet a daily supply of profundities in 140-character increments is a lot harder to pull off than it sounds. One natural obstacle blogs offered was the demand to actually have to write. Twitter is much less intimidating -- and the immediacy and ostensible intimacy of the platform may suggest that it is perfectly alright for executives to say things ranging from "Wow that was a delicious hamburger! Jalapenos, yum" to "Holding firm in my negotiations with Yahoo right now." And herein lies the greatest challenge of the C-Tweet: Where does the voice of the brand end and the voice of the individual begin?
Notable tweeting CMOs include Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak (@jeffreyhayzlett) and Barry Judge of Best Buy (@BestBuyCMO) -- each of whom ties his account closely to his brand. And each interprets the boundaries between the personal voice and the voice of the brand a bit differently. Of course, each brand has different social-media agendas that these executives are trying to push forward -- with variables ranging from the brands themselves and the strategic objectives to the audiences they serve (and aim to serve) and the styles of these individuals. Is there a blueprint for doing this right?
Tony Hsieh (@zappos), Zappos CEO, has come to be considered the gold standard for CEO tweeting, thanks to a comfortable style that leverages both the brand he helped create and his own personal voice. And he has gained a reputation for responsiveness and accessibility via Twitter that has come to epitomize the entire Zappos aesthetic. Padmasree Warrior (@padmasree), Cisco CTO, has also built a successful account on Twitter, finding that balance between business and personal that offers some good, relevant insight into the Cisco brand while putting a very human voice on a heretofore more removed role. While Hsieh's efforts are overtly endorsed by the Zappos brand, Warrior's does not carry the official endorsement of the Cisco brand.
As we see more such accounts in the rise of the C-Tweet, three things to think about:
1.The objective
An executive's objectives for a Twitter account are likely a mix of the brand's interest and self-interest. A simple rule of thumb here: If it is conspicuously endorsed by the brand (via the account name or use of the logo, for example), then the objectives should directly align with the vision and mission of the brand. If the brand is merely a description of the executive's occupation, there is more room for flexibility. And, with an endorsed account in particular, have a discussion with internal counsel to set up some basic legal guardrails before you jump in.
2. The commitment
Twitter is a hungry beast. If you're truly in it, you've got to tweet. Conventional wisdom seems to have it at somewhere between five to 10 tweets per day as the minimum for an active account with a healthy following. Generating 30 to 50 compelling, pithy statements (or links or retweets) each week may sound simple, but it can easily turn into a chore. Carve out time in the day to address this need -- to feed the beast without turning this into a distraction.
3. The exit strategy
Admittedly, this is a tough one -- considering the lifespan of Twitter itself and the questions that may exist around its own future. At the end of the day, an executive's account will be more of a reflection on him or her than it is on the brand. Executive impermanence is a fact of life -- and while creating deeper connections between a brand and its key executives can have tremendous value for partners, customers, analysts, employees and investors, an executive's inevitable departure along with several hundred thousand Twitter followers is likely to sting a bit. A strong Twitter following is becoming a brand asset -- and succession planning for the future of this asset is an important consideration. It may be worthwhile to try to mirror an executive's Twitter following within a more overtly corporate account. Or perhaps encourage junior executives to build their own followings, assuming this does not conflict with the points above.
Twitter is yet another example of where brands have to accept a loss of control. In this case, it is not about putting the brand in the hands of the market but in the hands of the people for whom the brand is their livelihood. A certain amount of letting go is a necessity. We will undoubtedly see a few missteps in C-tweets, and we'll learn and move on. Ultimately, the medium may change but basics of branding still apply -- both for the brands themselves and for their executive stewards: Be true, be relevant, be transparent, respect your brand and your customers, don't make a promise you can't keep.
[the article was originally published at http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=136159]
Among C-level execs, Twitter holds an allure as a seemingly simple vehicle to communicate thought leadership while staying connected to the market. Yet a daily supply of profundities in 140-character increments is a lot harder to pull off than it sounds. One natural obstacle blogs offered was the demand to actually have to write. Twitter is much less intimidating -- and the immediacy and ostensible intimacy of the platform may suggest that it is perfectly alright for executives to say things ranging from "Wow that was a delicious hamburger! Jalapenos, yum" to "Holding firm in my negotiations with Yahoo right now." And herein lies the greatest challenge of the C-Tweet: Where does the voice of the brand end and the voice of the individual begin?
Notable tweeting CMOs include Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak (@jeffreyhayzlett) and Barry Judge of Best Buy (@BestBuyCMO) -- each of whom ties his account closely to his brand. And each interprets the boundaries between the personal voice and the voice of the brand a bit differently. Of course, each brand has different social-media agendas that these executives are trying to push forward -- with variables ranging from the brands themselves and the strategic objectives to the audiences they serve (and aim to serve) and the styles of these individuals. Is there a blueprint for doing this right?
Tony Hsieh (@zappos), Zappos CEO, has come to be considered the gold standard for CEO tweeting, thanks to a comfortable style that leverages both the brand he helped create and his own personal voice. And he has gained a reputation for responsiveness and accessibility via Twitter that has come to epitomize the entire Zappos aesthetic. Padmasree Warrior (@padmasree), Cisco CTO, has also built a successful account on Twitter, finding that balance between business and personal that offers some good, relevant insight into the Cisco brand while putting a very human voice on a heretofore more removed role. While Hsieh's efforts are overtly endorsed by the Zappos brand, Warrior's does not carry the official endorsement of the Cisco brand.
As we see more such accounts in the rise of the C-Tweet, three things to think about:
1.The objective
An executive's objectives for a Twitter account are likely a mix of the brand's interest and self-interest. A simple rule of thumb here: If it is conspicuously endorsed by the brand (via the account name or use of the logo, for example), then the objectives should directly align with the vision and mission of the brand. If the brand is merely a description of the executive's occupation, there is more room for flexibility. And, with an endorsed account in particular, have a discussion with internal counsel to set up some basic legal guardrails before you jump in.
2. The commitment
Twitter is a hungry beast. If you're truly in it, you've got to tweet. Conventional wisdom seems to have it at somewhere between five to 10 tweets per day as the minimum for an active account with a healthy following. Generating 30 to 50 compelling, pithy statements (or links or retweets) each week may sound simple, but it can easily turn into a chore. Carve out time in the day to address this need -- to feed the beast without turning this into a distraction.
3. The exit strategy
Admittedly, this is a tough one -- considering the lifespan of Twitter itself and the questions that may exist around its own future. At the end of the day, an executive's account will be more of a reflection on him or her than it is on the brand. Executive impermanence is a fact of life -- and while creating deeper connections between a brand and its key executives can have tremendous value for partners, customers, analysts, employees and investors, an executive's inevitable departure along with several hundred thousand Twitter followers is likely to sting a bit. A strong Twitter following is becoming a brand asset -- and succession planning for the future of this asset is an important consideration. It may be worthwhile to try to mirror an executive's Twitter following within a more overtly corporate account. Or perhaps encourage junior executives to build their own followings, assuming this does not conflict with the points above.
Twitter is yet another example of where brands have to accept a loss of control. In this case, it is not about putting the brand in the hands of the market but in the hands of the people for whom the brand is their livelihood. A certain amount of letting go is a necessity. We will undoubtedly see a few missteps in C-tweets, and we'll learn and move on. Ultimately, the medium may change but basics of branding still apply -- both for the brands themselves and for their executive stewards: Be true, be relevant, be transparent, respect your brand and your customers, don't make a promise you can't keep.
[the article was originally published at http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=136159]
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Public Turns To Twitter for News
Twitter, for the uninitiated, is a social media Web site that began with the idea that people could stay connected by "tweeting" each other short answers to one simple question: "What are you doing?"
And while it may have been a bit frivolous at first, Twitter is increasingly being used by companies as a marketing tool, and for many, it's become a source for news.
How we get news and who reports it is changing dramatically. Breaking stories sometimes appear on Wikipedia and Twitter before they are reported by mainstream news organizations.
Hanson Hosein, for example, gets much of his breaking news from tweets — the Twitter messages of 140 characters or less that dance across his computer screen.
"I know if something really crazy happens in the world or something really interesting happens in my world — which is technology and communication — someone is going to pick it up pretty quickly and let us all know about it," he says.
Hosein, a digital media expert at the University of Washington, follows about 250 people on Twitter and receives everything they post on Twitter's Web site.
The Silicon Valley startup doesn't have any reporters or photographers; rather, anyone and everyone who sees or hears just about anything can post it online. Sometimes it's nonsense; sometimes it's breathtaking.
Hosein says that while many New York City reporters were in their offices on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2009, many Manhattan residents and ferryboat passengers witnessed a US Airways plane land in the Hudson River.
"There were people there with their cell phones who could report on this," Hosein says. "Not necessarily professional journalists, but they're there, and that makes all the difference."
Hosein says that within minutes of the plane going down, an eyewitness snapped a photo.
"So that's the million-dollar shot — that's the money shot," Hosein says. "He's on the ferry, and he shot that. There's a plane in the Hudson, and I'm on a ferry going to pick up people. Crazy."
That and other Twitter messages were forwarded around the globe within minutes. They were picked up by traditional journalists who used that information as a starting point for their own reporting.
Similarly, traditional reporters sometimes take cues and get breaking news from Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia. Just about anyone can write and edit it, which explains, for example, how John Updike's death could be noted on the author's wiki page even before NPR could confirm that he had died.
Trusting News From Social Media
The big question: Can you trust the news you get from social media? Maybe not, says Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a training center for journalists.
"You know, just because a person says it, and says it online or says it on a Twitter page, does not make it true — not even close," Tompkins says.
Professional reporters, says Tompkins, have an obligation to verify information before they publish or broadcast it. But the widespread use of cell phones, computers and digital cameras has turned that tradition on its head. For non-journalists, he says, it's often "report first, verify later — if at all."
"The enemy of truth is speed, and in our business in journalism, we are always fighting that friction, aren't we? The Web, very often, has very little concern for truth and verification — let's get it out there, and then we'll sort it out," he says.
The challenge is to figure out what's true and what's not to be believed.
[The article was originally published at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103221268]
And while it may have been a bit frivolous at first, Twitter is increasingly being used by companies as a marketing tool, and for many, it's become a source for news.
How we get news and who reports it is changing dramatically. Breaking stories sometimes appear on Wikipedia and Twitter before they are reported by mainstream news organizations.
Hanson Hosein, for example, gets much of his breaking news from tweets — the Twitter messages of 140 characters or less that dance across his computer screen.
"I know if something really crazy happens in the world or something really interesting happens in my world — which is technology and communication — someone is going to pick it up pretty quickly and let us all know about it," he says.
Hosein, a digital media expert at the University of Washington, follows about 250 people on Twitter and receives everything they post on Twitter's Web site.
The Silicon Valley startup doesn't have any reporters or photographers; rather, anyone and everyone who sees or hears just about anything can post it online. Sometimes it's nonsense; sometimes it's breathtaking.
Hosein says that while many New York City reporters were in their offices on the afternoon of Jan. 15, 2009, many Manhattan residents and ferryboat passengers witnessed a US Airways plane land in the Hudson River.
"There were people there with their cell phones who could report on this," Hosein says. "Not necessarily professional journalists, but they're there, and that makes all the difference."
Hosein says that within minutes of the plane going down, an eyewitness snapped a photo.
"So that's the million-dollar shot — that's the money shot," Hosein says. "He's on the ferry, and he shot that. There's a plane in the Hudson, and I'm on a ferry going to pick up people. Crazy."
That and other Twitter messages were forwarded around the globe within minutes. They were picked up by traditional journalists who used that information as a starting point for their own reporting.
Similarly, traditional reporters sometimes take cues and get breaking news from Wikipedia, the free, online encyclopedia. Just about anyone can write and edit it, which explains, for example, how John Updike's death could be noted on the author's wiki page even before NPR could confirm that he had died.
Trusting News From Social Media
The big question: Can you trust the news you get from social media? Maybe not, says Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute, a training center for journalists.
"You know, just because a person says it, and says it online or says it on a Twitter page, does not make it true — not even close," Tompkins says.
Professional reporters, says Tompkins, have an obligation to verify information before they publish or broadcast it. But the widespread use of cell phones, computers and digital cameras has turned that tradition on its head. For non-journalists, he says, it's often "report first, verify later — if at all."
"The enemy of truth is speed, and in our business in journalism, we are always fighting that friction, aren't we? The Web, very often, has very little concern for truth and verification — let's get it out there, and then we'll sort it out," he says.
The challenge is to figure out what's true and what's not to be believed.
[The article was originally published at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103221268]
Bloggers for Hire - A profession in America
In America today, there are almost as many people making their living as bloggers as there are lawyers. Already more Americans are making their primary income from posting their opinions than Americans working as computer programmers or firefighters.
Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."
This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.
What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry -- and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.
All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The barriers to entry couldn't be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.
Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.
As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.
Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.
The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an "absolutely brilliant" idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.
As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn't seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.
The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.
For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession.
It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can't be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.
And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the "Wild West" eventually became just the "West."
[The article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html]
Paid bloggers fit just about every definition of a microtrend: Their ranks have grown dramatically over the years, blogging is an important social and cultural movement that people care passionately about, and the number of people doing it for at least some income is approaching 1% of American adults.
The best studies we can find say we are a nation of over 20 million bloggers, with 1.7 million profiting from the work, and 452,000 of those using blogging as their primary source of income. That's almost 2 million Americans getting paid by the word, the post, or the click -- whether on their site or someone else's. And that's nearly half a million of whom it can be said, as Bob Dylan did of Hurricane Carter: "It's my work he'd say, I do it for pay."
This could make us the most noisily opinionated nation on earth. The Information Age has spawned many new professions, but blogging could well be the one with the most profound effect on our culture. If journalists were the Fourth Estate, bloggers are becoming the Fifth Estate.
What started as a discussion forum for progressive politics and new technologies has now been applied to motherhood, health care, the arts, fashion, dentistry -- and just about every other imaginable area of life. What started as a hobby and an outlet for volunteers is becoming big business for newly emerging sites, for companies that now depend upon their reviews and for the people who work in this new industry.
All this fits with the trend toward Opinion TV. Less and less of our information flow is devoted to gathering facts, and more and more is going toward popularizing opinion. Twenty-four-hour news channels have been replaced by 24-hour opinion channels. The chatter is the story.
Demographically, bloggers are extremely well educated: three out of every four are college graduates. Most are white males reporting above-average incomes. One out of three young people reports blogging, but bloggers who do it for a living successfully are 2% of bloggers overall. It takes about 100,000 unique visitors a month to generate an income of $75,000 a year. Bloggers can get $75 to $200 for a good post, and some even serve as "spokesbloggers" -- paid by advertisers to blog about products. As a job with zero commuting, blogging could be one of the most environmentally friendly jobs around -- but it can also be quite profitable. For sites at the top, the returns can be substantial. At some point the value of the Huffington Post will no doubt pass the value of the Washington Post.
The barriers to entry couldn't be lower. Most bloggers for hire pay $80 to get started, do it for about 35 months, and make a few hundred dollars. But a subgroup of these bloggers are the true professionals who work at corporations, serve as highly paid blogging consultants or write for sites with substantial traffic.
Pros who work for companies are typically paid $45,000 to $90,000 a year for their blogging. One percent make over $200,000. And they report long hours -- 50 to 60 hours a week.
As bloggers have increased in numbers, the number of journalists has significantly declined. In Washington alone, there are now 79% fewer DC-based employees of major newspapers than there were just few years ago. At the same time, Washington is easily the most blogged-about city in America, if not the world.
Almost no blogging is by subscription; rather, it owes it economic model to on-line advertising. Bloggers make money if their consumers click the ads on their sites. Some sites even pay writers by the click, which is of course a system that promotes sensationalism, or doing whatever it takes to get noticed.
The United Kingdom has just had a major scandal in which an official at 10 Downing Street had planned to leak to a friendly blogger all sorts of lurid stories about the Conservatives, complete with descriptions of secret sex tapes. But all of it was to be made up, and the friendly blogger who was going to post it all thought it was an "absolutely brilliant" idea. Someone blew the whistle, but had the plot gone through, this blogstorm could have played a major role in the upcoming election.
As a political pollster, I always observed that the poll that often got the most coverage was the one that was different from the others, regardless of whether it was right, or whether the pollster had any track record. This is true with opinions, too: those on the extreme right or left, or those that are the most titillating, seem to drive the most traffic through their sites. The center doesn't seem to have either the edge or the passion to grab the same kind of traffic.
The implications of bloggers for hire are substantial. While many bloggers probably support unionization in general, they have no union of their own. Most have no benefits, yet they work long hours in front of computer screens which could cause a variety of health ailments. And the owners of the big sites most often pay their bloggers as freelancers, avoiding all of those taxes and benefits that newspapers have to pay for their writers.
For now, bloggers say they are overwhelmingly happy in their work, reporting high job satisfaction. But what happens if they, too, lose work; are they covered by unemployment insurance if tastes change and their sites go under? Are they considered journalists under shield laws? Are they subject to libel suits? Are there any limits to the opinions they churn out, or any standards to rein them in? Is there someone to complain to about false blogs or hidden conflicts? At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Panasonic outfitted bloggers with free Panasonic equipment; did that affect their opinions about the companies they wrote about? There are more questions than answers about America's Newest Profession.
It is hard to think of another job category that has grown so quickly and become such a force in society without having any tests, degrees, or regulation of virtually any kind. Courses on blogging are now cropping up, and we can't be far away from the Columbia School of Bloggerism. There is a lot of interest now in Twittering and Facebooking -- but those venues don't offer the career opportunities of blogging. Not since eBay opened its doors have so many been able to sit at their computer screens and make some money, or even make a whole living.
And with millions of human-hours now going into writing and recording opinion, we have to wonder whether being the blogging capital of the world will help America compete in the global economy. Maybe all this self-criticism will propel us forward by putting us on the right track and helping us choose the right products. Maybe it will create a resurgence in the art of writing and writing courses. Or serve as a safety net for out of work professionals in the crisis. But for how long can nearly 500,000 people who are gradually replacing whole swaths of journalists survive with no worker protections, no enforced ethics codes, limited standards, and, for most , no formal training? Even the "Wild West" eventually became just the "West."
[The article was originally published at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124026415808636575.html]
Monday, April 20, 2009
Kodak Zooms In on Women
NEW YORK Kodak is using an arsenal of national media properties anchored by assets under the recently formed Women@NBCU banner to drive a value message for its fledgling printer and ink business.
The new campaign, which directly challenges some of the leading competitors in the field, uses a combination of branded integrations on properties including Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage, and, to a lesser degree, Nickelodeon. Print, online and TV spots drive viewers to a Web site, printandprosper.com, where users can compare ink prices with those from brands including HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark and Brother. Those companies either declined comment or didn't return calls seeking comment on the Kodak campaign.
Leslie Dance, vp, brand marketing and communication at Kodak, said the company is targeting "ultra-high burners." Internally, said Dance, Kodak marketers profiled the consumers they're after as female, "40, feisty and facing frugality." These women, she added, are usually a family's "memory keeper."
Market research, Dance said, also showed that "by far the largest consumer dissatisfaction with home printers is the cost of ink."
Deutsch, the Interpublic shop that won the estimated $40-50 million media account (printer and ink) last November, approached NBCU about anchoring the TV portion of the campaign around the Women@NBCU properties.
Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch, said the combination of platforms and properties within the Women@NBCU collection of assets and the network's ability to offer creative integrations appealed to the marketer.
The Kodak deal, said Maryam Banikarim, svp, sales marketing at NBCU, was "one of the first" major packages assembled under the Women@NBCU banner since the unit was formed last summer. Other deals will be unveiled soon, she said.
[read more : http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3if46ca983d59bcb8f9fe55c5778f64bac]
The new campaign, which directly challenges some of the leading competitors in the field, uses a combination of branded integrations on properties including Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage, and, to a lesser degree, Nickelodeon. Print, online and TV spots drive viewers to a Web site, printandprosper.com, where users can compare ink prices with those from brands including HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark and Brother. Those companies either declined comment or didn't return calls seeking comment on the Kodak campaign.
Leslie Dance, vp, brand marketing and communication at Kodak, said the company is targeting "ultra-high burners." Internally, said Dance, Kodak marketers profiled the consumers they're after as female, "40, feisty and facing frugality." These women, she added, are usually a family's "memory keeper."
Market research, Dance said, also showed that "by far the largest consumer dissatisfaction with home printers is the cost of ink."
Deutsch, the Interpublic shop that won the estimated $40-50 million media account (printer and ink) last November, approached NBCU about anchoring the TV portion of the campaign around the Women@NBCU properties.
Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch, said the combination of platforms and properties within the Women@NBCU collection of assets and the network's ability to offer creative integrations appealed to the marketer.
The Kodak deal, said Maryam Banikarim, svp, sales marketing at NBCU, was "one of the first" major packages assembled under the Women@NBCU banner since the unit was formed last summer. Other deals will be unveiled soon, she said.
[read more : http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3if46ca983d59bcb8f9fe55c5778f64bac]
Digg Ends Exclusive Advertisement deal with Microsoft
Digg is ending its two-year-old exclusive ad selling relationship with Microsoft, one year earlier than the deal was set to expire.
The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called "network reserve" inventory. Microsoft's network reserve ads represent high visibility placements sold to advertisers on a blind basis.
But beginning in July, Digg will be solely responsible for all custom ad deals and a significant portion of its own Interactive Advertising Bureau standard ad inventory.
The partnership initially was supposed to last until summer 2010, but the two always had an understanding that Digg would at some point step up to rep the bulk of its own ads, according to Mike Maser, Digg chief revenue and strategy officer. He said the company's internal sales efforts will focus on custom, non-IAB inventory combined with standardized banner ads.
"We've had a great relationship with Microsoft over the last year and a half," said Maser.
Digg hired its first ad sales executive, former Yahoo sales exec Thomas Shin, in January, and is now recruiting a national sales force. The company said it would soon make regional sales appointments for the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. By the end of the year it hopes to hire a total of five to seven reps in San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Chicago and New York.
Even though it will work with Digg on remnant inventory, Microsoft remains dedicated to high-engagement ad deals, according to Robin Domeniconi, VP U.S., Microsoft Advertising.
"We want to do custom," said Domeniconi, who was appointed in December to oversee a dizzying array of ad products at Microsoft. Those products -- represented by over 1,100 sellers -- include MSN, Microsoft Media Network, Live Search, partner deals like those with Facebook and Digg, and game products like Massive and Xbox Live, among others.
Under her leadership, Microsoft is moving away from pitching those products individually. Rather, reps are proposing custom ad packages that combine non-standard advertising, premium display placements, and remnant ads across all its channels.
For instance, Discovery Channel recently graced Microsoft with its entire online ad budget for the fifth-season debut of "Deadliest Catch." High-engagement placements spanned mobile, Web, gaming and other channels.
"I don't believe [IAB standard ads] are the only thing the Internet is good for," she said. "These types of packages let us get out of an ROI conversation."
[read more : http://www.clickz.com/3633453]
The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called "network reserve" inventory. Microsoft's network reserve ads represent high visibility placements sold to advertisers on a blind basis.
But beginning in July, Digg will be solely responsible for all custom ad deals and a significant portion of its own Interactive Advertising Bureau standard ad inventory.
The partnership initially was supposed to last until summer 2010, but the two always had an understanding that Digg would at some point step up to rep the bulk of its own ads, according to Mike Maser, Digg chief revenue and strategy officer. He said the company's internal sales efforts will focus on custom, non-IAB inventory combined with standardized banner ads.
"We've had a great relationship with Microsoft over the last year and a half," said Maser.
Digg hired its first ad sales executive, former Yahoo sales exec Thomas Shin, in January, and is now recruiting a national sales force. The company said it would soon make regional sales appointments for the West Coast, Midwest, and East Coast. By the end of the year it hopes to hire a total of five to seven reps in San Francisco, the Los Angeles area, Chicago and New York.
Even though it will work with Digg on remnant inventory, Microsoft remains dedicated to high-engagement ad deals, according to Robin Domeniconi, VP U.S., Microsoft Advertising.
"We want to do custom," said Domeniconi, who was appointed in December to oversee a dizzying array of ad products at Microsoft. Those products -- represented by over 1,100 sellers -- include MSN, Microsoft Media Network, Live Search, partner deals like those with Facebook and Digg, and game products like Massive and Xbox Live, among others.
Under her leadership, Microsoft is moving away from pitching those products individually. Rather, reps are proposing custom ad packages that combine non-standard advertising, premium display placements, and remnant ads across all its channels.
For instance, Discovery Channel recently graced Microsoft with its entire online ad budget for the fifth-season debut of "Deadliest Catch." High-engagement placements spanned mobile, Web, gaming and other channels.
"I don't believe [IAB standard ads] are the only thing the Internet is good for," she said. "These types of packages let us get out of an ROI conversation."
[read more : http://www.clickz.com/3633453]
Major brands learn they'd better respond quickly to Digital
Amazon.com Inc. shut like a book.
Domino's Pizza Inc. was late but eventually delivered.
When the three major brands engaged with their Web-savvy fans and critics in separate incidents last week, their responses demonstrated how corporations are still learning how to control their messages -- and reputations -- in a fast-twitch online world.
The mixed track record so far shows that fluency in the evolving language of digital public relations comes easier to some companies than others.
First, CNN: As Ashton Kutcher edged out the cable TV network last week to become the first to attract 1 million followers to his Twitter account, an odd quirk of the much-hyped race was overshadowed: CNN hadn't actually owned its account until a few days earlier.
For more than two years, the CNNBrk account (for breaking news) had been created, maintained and run by a 25-year-old British Web developer who just wanted a way to beam short news alerts to his cellphone.
But when CNN found out that James Cox had appropriated its name and content, it took a direction that might seem a bit surprising for a major media company. Instead of suing Cox or trying to shut down the account, CNN quietly hired him to run it -- and then acquired it last week when Cox was visiting the company's Atlanta headquarters.
"We've been managing the feed through him," said KC Estenson, the head of CNN's online operation, noting the huge increase in the number of Twitter followers since the November election. "As Twitter took off and became more prominent, we decided it was time to take our engagement and make it a marriage."
Other companies may find that unexpected uses of their brand have a less than fairy-tale quality.
Last week, Domino's was handed a PR nightmare when a video showed up online showing two employees laughing as they prepared food in a deliberately unsanitary way.
The video quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
Domino's initial instinct was to try to dispose of the situation quietly by responding only to concerned consumers who had already seen the video, rather than risk broadening its exposure by making a public statement.
But chatter about the problem spilled over into Twitter, whose expansive micro-messaging network is becoming an online circulatory system for news, pumping information between media organs, consumers and businesses themselves.
The Ann Arbor, Mich., company posted a YouTube response of its own and even established a Twitter account to answer direct questions from customers.
"What we've learned is if something happens in this medium, it's going to automatically jump to the next," Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre said. "So we might as well talk to everybody at the same time."
When Amazon was faced with its own consumer outcry last week, it decided to forgo the social media route.
Without warning, many gay- and lesbian-themed books began disappearing from the site's search results and sales rankings. The Twittersphere instantly saw red, accusing the Seattle company of discrimination and censorship and demanding a response.
But Amazon stayed mostly mum. It waited most of a day only to cite an unspecified "glitch," and when that vagueness only fomented the outrage, it released a second clipped statement blaming a "cataloging error."
But Twitter abhors a vacuum, and commenters rapidly filled Amazon's silence with boycott threats, petitions and caustic accusations -- an outcome that suggests that the growth of social media may be driving up the cost of inaction.
[read more : http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-twitter20-2009apr20,0,2701874.story]
Domino's Pizza Inc. was late but eventually delivered.
When the three major brands engaged with their Web-savvy fans and critics in separate incidents last week, their responses demonstrated how corporations are still learning how to control their messages -- and reputations -- in a fast-twitch online world.
The mixed track record so far shows that fluency in the evolving language of digital public relations comes easier to some companies than others.
First, CNN: As Ashton Kutcher edged out the cable TV network last week to become the first to attract 1 million followers to his Twitter account, an odd quirk of the much-hyped race was overshadowed: CNN hadn't actually owned its account until a few days earlier.
For more than two years, the CNNBrk account (for breaking news) had been created, maintained and run by a 25-year-old British Web developer who just wanted a way to beam short news alerts to his cellphone.
But when CNN found out that James Cox had appropriated its name and content, it took a direction that might seem a bit surprising for a major media company. Instead of suing Cox or trying to shut down the account, CNN quietly hired him to run it -- and then acquired it last week when Cox was visiting the company's Atlanta headquarters.
"We've been managing the feed through him," said KC Estenson, the head of CNN's online operation, noting the huge increase in the number of Twitter followers since the November election. "As Twitter took off and became more prominent, we decided it was time to take our engagement and make it a marriage."
Other companies may find that unexpected uses of their brand have a less than fairy-tale quality.
Last week, Domino's was handed a PR nightmare when a video showed up online showing two employees laughing as they prepared food in a deliberately unsanitary way.
The video quickly garnered hundreds of thousands of views.
Domino's initial instinct was to try to dispose of the situation quietly by responding only to concerned consumers who had already seen the video, rather than risk broadening its exposure by making a public statement.
But chatter about the problem spilled over into Twitter, whose expansive micro-messaging network is becoming an online circulatory system for news, pumping information between media organs, consumers and businesses themselves.
The Ann Arbor, Mich., company posted a YouTube response of its own and even established a Twitter account to answer direct questions from customers.
"What we've learned is if something happens in this medium, it's going to automatically jump to the next," Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre said. "So we might as well talk to everybody at the same time."
When Amazon was faced with its own consumer outcry last week, it decided to forgo the social media route.
Without warning, many gay- and lesbian-themed books began disappearing from the site's search results and sales rankings. The Twittersphere instantly saw red, accusing the Seattle company of discrimination and censorship and demanding a response.
But Amazon stayed mostly mum. It waited most of a day only to cite an unspecified "glitch," and when that vagueness only fomented the outrage, it released a second clipped statement blaming a "cataloging error."
But Twitter abhors a vacuum, and commenters rapidly filled Amazon's silence with boycott threats, petitions and caustic accusations -- an outcome that suggests that the growth of social media may be driving up the cost of inaction.
[read more : http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-twitter20-2009apr20,0,2701874.story]
R/GA Creative Director Runs Twitter, RFID Experiment
Interactive digital agency R/GA's Richard Ting has been experimenting with a cutting-edge technology on Twitter. The platform, dubbed touchatag, allows his 20-month-old daughter to trigger tweets by swiping tags affixed to books and toys near a reader that resembles a bar code scanner.
The platform relies on a form of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology known as near field communications (NFC), as well as QR bar codes that when read by a camera cell phone can launch a browser and connect with a Web page.
Users set up the Twitter application through the Web-based dashboard. Tweets are preset; a fixed message is tied to a physical object. The platform comes with software, one reader and 10 Mifare Ultralight tags from NXP Semiconductors, a Philips Semiconductors spinoff. Each time a reader identifies the tag it sends the signal to the Web platform and triggers the Tweet. The starter kit is available through Alcatel-Lucent or Amazon.com.
Alcatel-Lucent has an investment group and incubator for emerging technologies inside Bell Laboratories that supports fledgling companies. The venture group supports about six ventures. Touchatag is one of two the company has made public.
Ting, VP and executive creative director of mobile and emerging platforms at R/GA, bought the kit with the thought that the tags could make physical objects smart by connecting information about them to the Internet. "The RFID tag allows the object to become smart," Ting said. "This would let you tie in customer service, ratings and recommendations. It also lets me listen in to the talk across the overall community."
Once tags are connected, information transmits from readers to PC software clients and onto the Internet. There are many applications that marketers can use. For example, consumers in a shoe store buying sneakers with an embedded RFID chip could transmit a message to download branded content to their cell phone or tweet a message on Twitter. It could provide marketers with a forum to gather ratings and recommendations and share information.
For Ting, the touchatag turned into a communication experiment to examine cross-generation communication -- how senior citizens might communicate with younger generations. While the older generations would rely on land-line telephones and physical letters, kids would use Twitter and Facebook.
[read more : http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104106]
The platform relies on a form of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology known as near field communications (NFC), as well as QR bar codes that when read by a camera cell phone can launch a browser and connect with a Web page.
Users set up the Twitter application through the Web-based dashboard. Tweets are preset; a fixed message is tied to a physical object. The platform comes with software, one reader and 10 Mifare Ultralight tags from NXP Semiconductors, a Philips Semiconductors spinoff. Each time a reader identifies the tag it sends the signal to the Web platform and triggers the Tweet. The starter kit is available through Alcatel-Lucent or Amazon.com.
Alcatel-Lucent has an investment group and incubator for emerging technologies inside Bell Laboratories that supports fledgling companies. The venture group supports about six ventures. Touchatag is one of two the company has made public.
Ting, VP and executive creative director of mobile and emerging platforms at R/GA, bought the kit with the thought that the tags could make physical objects smart by connecting information about them to the Internet. "The RFID tag allows the object to become smart," Ting said. "This would let you tie in customer service, ratings and recommendations. It also lets me listen in to the talk across the overall community."
Once tags are connected, information transmits from readers to PC software clients and onto the Internet. There are many applications that marketers can use. For example, consumers in a shoe store buying sneakers with an embedded RFID chip could transmit a message to download branded content to their cell phone or tweet a message on Twitter. It could provide marketers with a forum to gather ratings and recommendations and share information.
For Ting, the touchatag turned into a communication experiment to examine cross-generation communication -- how senior citizens might communicate with younger generations. While the older generations would rely on land-line telephones and physical letters, kids would use Twitter and Facebook.
[read more : http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=104106]
Microsoft: The Internet Needs More Trust for growth
The Internet needs to be more trustworthy if it wants to grow, according to Microsoft's senior security executive, Scott Charney.
In a video posted to Microsoft's Web site ahead of Charney's keynote at next week's RSA security conference, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Trustworthy Computing described how anonymity on the Internet is increasingly being exploited by cyber criminals. "We need to push back on anonymity and lack of traceability," he said.
"Because the Internet can be anonymous and untraceable, criminals flock to the Internet," Charney explained. "Today too many people do not know what software is running on their machine and often they have malware. They often don't know who they're communicating with, whether an e-mail they've received is spoofed or from some unknown sender even when it appears to come from someone they know. When they visit Web sites, they don't know if that Web site is to be trusted or not."
"For all of these reasons we need End-to-End Trust," Charney said.
End-to-End Trust is a security marketing initiative introduced by Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie at last year's RSA conference. Keynoting next Tuesday, Charney is expected to give an update on the initiative, which the company has thusfar billed as an effort to engage industry, consumers and policy makers in a serious discussion of online security problems. His video was posted this week on a revamped version of Microsoft's End-to-End Trust Web site.
As the world's dominant supplier of software, Microsoft is constantly in the crosshairs of attackers. Even as the company has taken steps to lock down its flagship Windows operating system, hackers have exploited countless flaws in the programs that run on top of it, such as Office and Internet Explorer.
Microsoft would like to give its users a better idea of whether a Web site or e-mail attachment is trustworthy. But how you identify people on the Internet without raising serious privacy concerns? It's a problem that Microsoft hopes to solve first by engaging in discussion.
"We've been talking about this since last year, spending a lot of time with the policy makers," said Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group, in an interview. "This is an agenda we're trying to advance with the reset of the industry and with policy makers and lawmakers and law enforcement as a proposal of a solution to tackle a very significant problem."
Last September, for example, Microsoft made a submission to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group looking at ways to improve online safety for children. Microsoft's paper (pdf) advocated the replacement of Web user names and passwords with Information Card systems, such as Microsoft's own CardSpace technology, and calling on a collaboration between government, industry and child development experts to solve the problem.
Microsoft has been working with a number of countries, including Singapore, Belgium, the U.K. and France to develop government-issued digital credentials, Leland said.
In his video, Charney called for a "model where people get in-person proof and then can pass digital identities on the Internet. So, for example, if you got a drivers license or a passport and it also had a digital certificate on it, you could later pass your identity to a site along with your credit card number for example and they would know you are who you claim to be."
But Microsoft doesn't think these digital IDs should be mandatory.
In December, Charney sent a letter to the Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina arguing that any move toward mandatory digital IDs "would not only compromise privacy but would have a chilling effect on other important social values such as freedom of expression."
Instead of centralized digital IDs, Microsoft is pushing a concept known as federated identity, where different organizations develop ways to share and trust identity information about their users. With CardSpace, Microsoft has been careful to give users the ability to decide what information they want to share.
"The way in which Microsoft has been thinking about it has been very constructive," said John Palfrey, a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center, which published the Internet Safety Task Force report. "They would leave all or virtually all of the decision making in the hand of the users."
Charney's RSA keynote, entitled "End to End Trust: A Collaborative Effort" is set to be delivered Tuesday morning. RSA runs at San Francisco's Moscone Center from Monday to Friday next week.
[read more : http://www.pcworld.com/article/163311/microsoft_the_internet_needs_more_trust_to_grow.html?tk=rss_news]
In a video posted to Microsoft's Web site ahead of Charney's keynote at next week's RSA security conference, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Trustworthy Computing described how anonymity on the Internet is increasingly being exploited by cyber criminals. "We need to push back on anonymity and lack of traceability," he said.
"Because the Internet can be anonymous and untraceable, criminals flock to the Internet," Charney explained. "Today too many people do not know what software is running on their machine and often they have malware. They often don't know who they're communicating with, whether an e-mail they've received is spoofed or from some unknown sender even when it appears to come from someone they know. When they visit Web sites, they don't know if that Web site is to be trusted or not."
"For all of these reasons we need End-to-End Trust," Charney said.
End-to-End Trust is a security marketing initiative introduced by Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie at last year's RSA conference. Keynoting next Tuesday, Charney is expected to give an update on the initiative, which the company has thusfar billed as an effort to engage industry, consumers and policy makers in a serious discussion of online security problems. His video was posted this week on a revamped version of Microsoft's End-to-End Trust Web site.
As the world's dominant supplier of software, Microsoft is constantly in the crosshairs of attackers. Even as the company has taken steps to lock down its flagship Windows operating system, hackers have exploited countless flaws in the programs that run on top of it, such as Office and Internet Explorer.
Microsoft would like to give its users a better idea of whether a Web site or e-mail attachment is trustworthy. But how you identify people on the Internet without raising serious privacy concerns? It's a problem that Microsoft hopes to solve first by engaging in discussion.
"We've been talking about this since last year, spending a lot of time with the policy makers," said Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group, in an interview. "This is an agenda we're trying to advance with the reset of the industry and with policy makers and lawmakers and law enforcement as a proposal of a solution to tackle a very significant problem."
Last September, for example, Microsoft made a submission to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group looking at ways to improve online safety for children. Microsoft's paper (pdf) advocated the replacement of Web user names and passwords with Information Card systems, such as Microsoft's own CardSpace technology, and calling on a collaboration between government, industry and child development experts to solve the problem.
Microsoft has been working with a number of countries, including Singapore, Belgium, the U.K. and France to develop government-issued digital credentials, Leland said.
In his video, Charney called for a "model where people get in-person proof and then can pass digital identities on the Internet. So, for example, if you got a drivers license or a passport and it also had a digital certificate on it, you could later pass your identity to a site along with your credit card number for example and they would know you are who you claim to be."
But Microsoft doesn't think these digital IDs should be mandatory.
In December, Charney sent a letter to the Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina arguing that any move toward mandatory digital IDs "would not only compromise privacy but would have a chilling effect on other important social values such as freedom of expression."
Instead of centralized digital IDs, Microsoft is pushing a concept known as federated identity, where different organizations develop ways to share and trust identity information about their users. With CardSpace, Microsoft has been careful to give users the ability to decide what information they want to share.
"The way in which Microsoft has been thinking about it has been very constructive," said John Palfrey, a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center, which published the Internet Safety Task Force report. "They would leave all or virtually all of the decision making in the hand of the users."
Charney's RSA keynote, entitled "End to End Trust: A Collaborative Effort" is set to be delivered Tuesday morning. RSA runs at San Francisco's Moscone Center from Monday to Friday next week.
[read more : http://www.pcworld.com/article/163311/microsoft_the_internet_needs_more_trust_to_grow.html?tk=rss_news]
Pirate Bay founders Get Jail in Copyright Case
The Pirate Bay’s four Swedish founders were sentenced to jail for helping consumers illegally download online music and films, handing the entertainment industry a victory in the battle to protect copyrighted material.Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi and Carl Lundstroem were given jail sentences of one year each by a Stockholm district court today. The court ordered the defendants to pay compensation and damages of 30 million kronor ($3.6 million), below the more than 100 million kronor claimed by prosecutors. The defendants said they plan to appeal.
The ruling is the industry’s biggest triumph since successful lawsuits against music-swapping sites Napster Inc., Kazaa and Grokster Ltd. The International Federation of Phonographic Industry estimates 95 percent of all downloaded music is pirated, as consumers can get access to files free of charge within minutes, often before commercial release dates.
“It is a serious offense, marked by serious sentences, and I think it will surprise many in the file-sharing community as many of them don’t deem it to be a crime at all,” Mark Young, an associate at Covington & Burling LLP in London, said by telephone. “It is likely to cause a ripple among the file- sharing community, but it is a penalty that is possibly appropriate for the charges that were being considered.”
Property Laws
Pirate Bay is the largest file-sharing site using BitTorrent software, which allows users to download and share files in 34 languages for free, according to IFPI. Pirate Bay has said the site is a network where users put up content to share with other users and that there is no copyrighted material on the site. Pirate Bay had 22 million simultaneous users in February.
“This may be the verdict of a Swedish court, but it is a great outcome for British music,” Geoff Taylor, chief executive officer of the British Phonographic Industry, said in a statement. “Criminal sites like Pirate Bay seriously undermine investment in music and in legal online services and do nothing to reward artists or creators.”
Content owners have successfully sued to stop file-sharing services such as Napster and Grokster from allowing consumers to download copyrighted material without permission. Napster began in 1999 as a free music-swapping Web site. Roxio Inc. purchased the company out of bankruptcy to start a paid download service and adopted its name in 2004.
Sharman Networks Ltd., the owner of the Kazaa file-sharing network, agreed to pay more than $100 million to settle music- industry lawsuits over the illegal downloading of songs in July 2006. In November 2005, Grokster shut down its file-sharing service and agreed to pay $50 million to settle a music-industry case in Los Angeles.
Still Running
The Swedish ruling won’t shut the Pirate Bay Web site, whose most popular downloads include television series “Lost” and Academy Award-winning movies such as “Slumdog Millionaire.” Other products include Apple Inc. software, computer games and millions of songs from bands such as AC/DC and EMI Music’s Coldplay.
Entertainment companies including Vivendi SA and EMI spent years fighting Pirate Bay and similar sites. The ruling threatens the existence of The Pirate Bay, which was founded in 2004. The site has developed a following that includes its own political party that aims to change intellectual-property laws.
“The court has found that by using Pirate Bay’s services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case,” the district court said. “This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances.”
‘So Bizarre’
Music companies in the case, including EMI and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group, are seeking compensation of 2.2 million euros ($2.9 million) for a sample of music tracks selected as a basis for the case, IFPI said. The film industry, which under Swedish law must limit its case to the piracy of four films and one television series, is seeking 10.9 million euros in damages.
The people who have shared files on Pirate Bay have broken copyright laws, the court said. By providing a Web site enabling users to share files, The Pirate Bay founders have facilitated crimes committed by site users and are therefore guilty of contributing to a crime, it said. The men were also aware that copyrighted material was shared, the court said.
“It’s so bizarre that we got convicted at all, we have to laugh about it,” Pirate Bay member Sunde said. “They could have fined us 1 billion dollars. It doesn’t matter because we can’t pay and we wouldn’t pay.”
[credit : http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a.zK8PzD3jaA&refer=home]
Friday, April 17, 2009
Top Social Media - Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook
An overwhelming majority (88%) of marketers say they are using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less, according to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009.
The study found that Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook - in that order - are the top four social media tools used by marketers, writes Marketing Charts.
The research also included an analysis of nearly 700 open-ended responses, which revealed the top-three questions marketers are asking about social media:
What are the best tactics to use?
How to do I measure the effectiveness of social media?
Where do I start?
When asked if they used social media for marketing purposes, 88% said they are employing some form of it. Business owners are more likely to use social media marketing (90+%) than employees working for a company that is not their own (81%), and respondents ages 30-39 are most likely to use social media marketing (92.8%), the study found. 72% say they have either just started or have been using social media for a few months.
The survey found that there is a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment. For people just beginning, the median weekly time commitment is two hours per week. For those who have been at it for months, the median jumps to 10 hours per week. For those who report social media marketing use for years, the median is 20+ hours each week.
Respondents report that the #1 benefit of social media marketing is gaining attention for the business, and 81% say their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses.
Improving traffic and growing marketing lists is the second major benefit, followed by building new partnerships. At least two in three participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours a week invested, while those who have been doing this for years reported better results. Owners of small businesses (2 - 100 employees) are more likely than others to report benefits.
[read more : http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2009/04/15/top-social-media-for-marketers-twitter-blogs-linkedin-facebook]
The study found that Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook - in that order - are the top four social media tools used by marketers, writes Marketing Charts.
The research also included an analysis of nearly 700 open-ended responses, which revealed the top-three questions marketers are asking about social media:
What are the best tactics to use?
How to do I measure the effectiveness of social media?
Where do I start?
When asked if they used social media for marketing purposes, 88% said they are employing some form of it. Business owners are more likely to use social media marketing (90+%) than employees working for a company that is not their own (81%), and respondents ages 30-39 are most likely to use social media marketing (92.8%), the study found. 72% say they have either just started or have been using social media for a few months.
The survey found that there is a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment. For people just beginning, the median weekly time commitment is two hours per week. For those who have been at it for months, the median jumps to 10 hours per week. For those who report social media marketing use for years, the median is 20+ hours each week.
Respondents report that the #1 benefit of social media marketing is gaining attention for the business, and 81% say their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses.
Improving traffic and growing marketing lists is the second major benefit, followed by building new partnerships. At least two in three participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours a week invested, while those who have been doing this for years reported better results. Owners of small businesses (2 - 100 employees) are more likely than others to report benefits.
[read more : http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2009/04/15/top-social-media-for-marketers-twitter-blogs-linkedin-facebook]
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