No Shit Sherlock headlines of the day

Courtesy of the IAB:

ESPN research shows consumers looking for convenience

Chicago agency can test multiple versions of banner ads at once

Thoughts & Reflections on Summer Vacation Part 1 – The Internet is a waste of time

I love summer vacation trips – getting away from work, getting together with the family, introducing our kids to new places and experiences. I also use these trips to understand how technology and the Interweb affect our lives. Extended separation from your home wifi really defines how much all this interactive-emerging-media-streaming-video-status-posting impacts our daily lives. [read last year’s posts: 1, 2]

Or doesn’t impact it, as I have discovered during our annual treks to Vacationland, a group of lake cabins in the Michigan Upper Peninsula (the “UP” for those of you from the Midwest, “Northwoods” for those who grew up eating fried cheese curds for breakfast).

It’s a place secluded enough that there is only one phone for all the cabins. No modem plug, as if I’d even remember how to logon using a modem. No wifi.

Best of all there is no cell phone coverage. So a whole week without SMS texts, mobile Facebook access, iPhone web browsing. Might sound terrifying to you, but over the years I have found there is nothing more refreshing than watching the cell phone signal strength drop from 3 bars to 2 bars, from 1 bar to NO SIGNAL. Digital solitary confinement at its best.

It reminds me how we coped with our lives pre-24/7 information. Need to know what the weather will be like today? Stick your head out the front door and look up. Wondering about the most recent big world event? Funny how a morning newspaper provides enough information to get through your day. Need to catch up on what your friends have been doing over last 2 hours? Well, actually, no you don’t.

Every year I reflect on “What we missed without the Internet for a week.” This year it just happened to be Michael Jackson’s death. Or, to be more exact, all the confusion around the possible death of Michael Jackson. Combing through two days of Interweb content, it was apparent we missed quite an event. Ongoing news reports with up-to-the-minute details about how no one was sure exactly what was going on. Steady streams of Fbook posts and Twitter tweets confirming the same fuzzy confusion.

It seems a total failure of the whole crowdsource/groupthink promise: That a collaborative Interweb is a more efficient and productive Interweb. It can also exponentially contribute to a lack of information. I imagine the massive amounts of collective MBs and human minutes expended searching, contributing, reading, and responding to the big question mark around Jackson’s demise. Without any satisfactory results. This Pursuit Of The Truth became an augmented reality game of its own. The ultimate race-the-clock online scavenger hunt to find the answer first, but with no clear winner.

Watching big events unfold in real time is obviously part of our culture now. Online provides easy access to these events, plus a way for the average person to take part and contribute. For everyone caught up in the hype, it probably ranks as one of the biggest online events ever. For someone who spent the week fishing, swimming with his kids, and watching bald eagles; it seemed like a colossal waste of time.

Damn, I Got Dotcom Bubble All Over My Shirt Again

Ahh yes. My Dotcom Bubble Burst itch just started flaring up. That minor buzz in the back of my head, hinting that we just might be glimpsing the end of the Web 2.0 ride. It may not be the massive implosion that rocked us in 2001, but at least the start of a Long Tail Slide back to status Interweb quo.

What causeth such visions? Nevermind the recession, here's my Dotcom 1.0 crash signs that the slowdown is nigh:

Dotcom companies are reorganizing, refocusing, and reducing. Poor Joost, once the emerging video on demand darlings, now reduced to B2B technology services. MySpace, the social media juggernaut, just laid off 30% of their staff and is shutting down whole countries.

Acquired dotcom companies are discarded like an expensive sweater that can't be resold on eBay. Yahoo has been quietly phasing out all kinds of acquisitions recently. eBay and AOL are setting up fire garage sales. Microsoft is looking to sell Razorfish.

There aren't any new dotcoms taking their place. The VC Guys have put away their wallets.

But hey, at least Viral Advertising is a full time position. Although leveraging Twitter for business purposes can also get you fired (sleep well, old marketer, your stagnant corporate methods are not yet dethroned by young punks!)

For those of you at the remaining Dotcom institutions; here's a couple signs that things may not be as good as they seem:

1. Freelancers stop getting paid on time
2. Delivery guy stops refilling the soda machine
3. Empty moving boxes pile up in the mailroom/delivery bays
4. Frequent messages from IT encouraging you to back up your files
5. Senior management starts going to all day meetings and avoiding public gathering spots in the office (kitchens, cafeterias, any open areas lacking 3 immediate points of exit)
6. Techcrunch just added you to their deadpool

Good luck and hopefully I'm wrong. But usually I'm not.

I Can't Believe The Username "Assman" Is Already Taken

Late Friday night was Facebook's Username Landgrab kickoff. According to Facebook, within 15 minutes over half a million usernames had been registered. 3 million had reserved names within 12 hours (1.5% of their user base). Which means you probably missed your chance to reserve your actual name as your Fbook name.

The first question is Do you plan to register? I still believe it is not that important unless you are marketing a brand page (or yourself).

The next question is What name do you register? What is the next best thing to your actual name? Childhood pet? Street you grew up on? Fraternity nickname?

It is slightly amusing to random URL dive into Fbook and see what comes up.

Holiday icons [1, 2]

Obscure music references [1, 2, 3, 4]

Personal protest [1, 2, 3, 4]

Names only a techgeek can love [1, 2, 3]

The most expensive search term on Google - reserved by a lawyer, of course

And yes, the ones you picked drunk Friday night when you didn't realize it was permanent [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Just wait for the HR recruiter to stumble on those. Perhaps Fbook has a viable revenue stream charging users to reset their accounts.

You know there is a freelance journalist scouring Urban Dictionary looking for the most outrageous ones that slipped past Fbook's watchful eye. Enough at least to fill a blog post or two and get crosslinked from CNN.com.

And mine? Well of course my real name was already taken. Me and the other 78 Stephen Strongs are out of luck. But watch out first-in-line StephenStrong. I'm doppleganging on you.

The Fbook Quarterly F*ck Up Is Here!

I was just thinking it had been awhile since Facebook screwed up a Big Site Improvement launch. Well, wait no more! The custom username URLs are coming!

That's right. Starting late Friday night, you can bum rush the site (assuming it handles the stampede) and try to submit your request first for a custom profile URL. Facebook's blog announced it today:

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you'll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You'll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it's been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it.

So let's assume I'm not the first of the 80 Stephen Strongs on Fbook to reserve our name. What do I get next: stephenstrong276? or maybe theotherstephenstrong? Not since the bygone days of AOL username picking has my self-identification stress level been sooo high.

But wait a second, why do I need a custom URL? Don't my friends already know how to find me? Shouldn't anyone wanting to be my "friend" get connected via one of my linked-friend's pages? Fbook has been successful because it is a closed-loop network. Not the freewheeling "everyone be my friend" chaos that doomed MySpace.

Hmmm. Not even sure if I should care. At least not about my personal URL. But I represent over 10 brands for my company online. None of which have an Fbook fan page now. Some might justify it in the near future. Some won't. But I definitely don't want a cybersquatter claiming the names for their URL.

C'mon Fbook! I know you're thinking about all the potential advertising revenue and a way to protect the 95% of brands who aren't on you yet.

Oh crap. Really?

So that's it? A basic Contact Us form? As an added bonus, you can only submit one brand name at a time. So the process is this:

1. Fill out form
2. Submit
3. Back button
4. Re-enter personal info
5. Submit
6. Back button
7. Re-enter personal info
8. Submit
9. Repeat 10 times

And don't get me started that there is no explanation for the Registration # section. What the hell do you type in there? If you entered 123 for every entry like I did, then there's going to be some mass confusion in the old Fbook Customer Service cube tomorrow morning. [Update: it is for entering your brand trademark registration number. Good luck tracking that down in less than 3 days.]

But seriously, did they really have to announce this spontaneously only 4 days in advance? Can someone over there apply some common sense to these launches? They obviously haven't learned a damn thing from all their other Big Site Improvements. Most of which did not go over so well.

It's one thing to annoy and disappoint your average user. But marketers (the ones who could actually contribute to a revenue stream) don't have the patience for this type of thing. We're needy, pouty, and always expect to get our way when we bring the checkbook.

I'd hate to be the media sales rep trying to sell Big Industry on establishing an Fbook presence next month. Especially as he tries to explain why theothercompanythatsellsfriedchicken isn't such a bad URL to have. Much better than theothercompanythatsellsfriedchicken276.

Let the Backlash Countdown begin!

Do You Need a Bing Today?

TechCrunch provides a Google Trends analysis of the recent search engine launches for Wolfram Alpha and Microsoft's Bing. Wolfram Alpha is fairly unknown outside the ubergeek circles. Bing will soon be unavoidable due to their massive brand campaign that just launched.



I saw my first Bing TV commercial last night. Primarily a manifesto video, it at least prompted my wife to ask "What is that about?"

Me: "It's Microsoft's new search engine."

Wife: "Why?"

Me: "Um, I dunno."

Wife: "What was wrong with their old one?"

Me: "Um, not many people were using it."

Wife: "Why not?"

Me: "Um, I dunno. Google?"

Wife: "That's dumb."

My wife assumes that somehow I am partly responsible for everything that occurs online: page takeover ads, Twitter, broken shopping carts, the sudden speed dip in our home's broadband connection.

This often puts me in the position of explaining (and defending) many things that I actually don't really understand myself. But I -- like any good marketer -- make it sound rationale. My wife -- like any good consumer -- calls bullshit on most of it.

So why does Microsoft need a new search engine? There's lots of opinions out there: rejuvenate their online advertising revenue, defend their technology street cred, rub just one more thing in Yahoo's face before buying them.

Whatever the case, my wife posed the obvious question: Do we really need another search engine?

I just completed 3 days of consumer focus groups, asking the average Internet user to visit a variety of brand websites. Literally 90% of the consumers started their online tasks at Google. Even when we gave them a brand name with a very-easy-to-guess URL. Even if they thought they knew the URL. A few even typed "brandname.com" into Google.

The other 2 people had to start at their My Yahoo page. Otherwise they were clueless about beginning their online tasks.

Which clarifies an important point: It isn't necessarily about needing another search engine. It's about needing another starting point. If you don't start at Google or My Yahoo, then you are probably launching Facebook and jumping from there. 90% of the interviews listed that as their favorite website.

Which is your starting spot: Search Engine, Content Aggregator, or Social Network?

Is there really room for one more? Especially one that duplicates the offerings of these top 3 home bases?

The only time Bing came up was when the interviewee started their search with the browser toolbar. IE redirected them to Bing.com search results, which resulted in the same conversation every time:

Consumer: "What is that?"

Moderator: "It's Microsoft's new search engine."

Consumer: "Why?"

Moderator: "Um, I dunno."

Consumer: "Can I go to Google?"

IFoundItFirst

So you think writing semi-complete sentences in 140 characters or less is too time consuming? Welcome the next Damn I should have thought of that slacker trend:

Nanoblogging

One word status posts courtesy of Adocu.com

No need for pesky clutter like adjectives or punctuation. No room for adding mystery teaser short URLs. Forget out-of-context retweets. Just one word expressions of your current state of mind. Which for most Internet users is really all it takes.

Sure you could just post one word tweets on Twitter. But where's the competition in that? You'd just get a bunch of retweets from followers using up the other 130 characters available.

Parody 2.0 or Next Big Thing? Sometimes the silly ideas are the ones that actually survive.

Future Buzzwords Today = Macromicrobroadcaster

Twitter reached that coming-of-age state where the marketing industry can't quite decide what to do with this unruly techno-teenager. Its popularity continues to rise at the same time the only social network with a revenue model is starting to fall.

While getting kicked out of China is always a good sign you're doing something right, discovering that only 1/5 of the popular crowd wants to hang with you doesn't help your street cred. Especially since you repeatedly run out of beer when they do show up.

Then comes the report that 10% of its users generate 90% of its content. Hmmmm, peer-to-peer communication platform or the next microbroadcast model? And what happens when the microbroadcaster goes macro? If the macromicrobroadcasters threaten to revolt, then you definitely hit a nerve.

This all leads to ongoing conflict for marketers. Should we care about it or not? Consumer revolution or marketing devolution?

iMedia recently published their analysis of Twitter marketing Winners & Losers. Ford vs Nissan! Dunkin' Donuts vs Starbucks! My fave analysis is Dell vs Apple:

Apple, on the other hand, appears to be missing in action. As one of the world's premier brands -- a technology brand, nonetheless -- its absence on Twitter is puzzling to me and many others.

Fortunately Apple's stock price hasn't been affected... A chart displaying the number of followers per brand would end the whole conversation very quickly.

The report eerily reflects the days when Second Life received the same scrutiny over its early marketing adopters. Then the hype broke and these marketers -- recently lauded as being soooo cutting edge -- were chastised for being duped into spending real world dollars on virtual branding.

6 months from now will not having a Twitter presence catapult you to the top of 2009's Smartest Marketers? Will the first Twitter TV show sponsor be rewarded for their savviness, or laughed off the trade show expert panel? Will you be collecting accolades, spinning excuses, or just waiting with 95% of the other marketers to see what happens?

Simple = Fun = More Fun = Fun You Will Share

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

I love this. It's simple. Takes 15 seconds and zero instructions to learn to use. You can play with it for at least 5 minutes without getting bored. 15 minutes before you realize that you were supposed to be doing something else.

Too often we abuse technology to make our consumer experiences cool or cutting edge. Complexity kills you on the Internet. Too many added features and users just won't use them.

So strip down your rich media banners, your widgets, your embeddable tools, your viral streaming microsites. Instead provide what consumers have always wanted = simplicity.

(first person to turn this into an audio Tetris-style casual game wins)

Dear Social Media, It's KPI Time Or Else RIP

So the IAB just launched their first POV on measuring social media effectiveness (PDF version here). The hope is to pull our industry kicking and screaming out of CTRs and CPMs into more robust measurement criteria.

As MediaPost notes, it's the Holy Grail for social marketers:

In other words, compared to old-time metrics like reach, frequency and the click-through, these metrics are deep, not only measuring whether people are engaged, but how they are engaging. It's like being able to measure the temperature with a thermometer rather than opening the front door and declaring it either hot or cold.

Imagine that you're an advertiser who sorely needs to understand social media. Then imagine yourself suddenly finding that you can not only monitor discussion around a certain topic near and dear to your brand but that you can also mention the number of people talking about it and their level of passion. Suddenly, social media goes from a huge, indefinable blob of conversations into something that has contours around which you can engage, plan and buy. That's huge.

Trying to measure a fuzzy nebulous environment such as social media is a daunting task. Here's a summary of just a few measurement recommendations:

• Application and video installs.
• The number of relevant actions, including newsfeed items posted, comments posted, uploads, poll votes, and so forth.
• Conversation size, which measures the number of content relevant sites and content relevant links, and the monthly uniques spread across those conversations.
• Site relevance, which measures the density with which phrases specific to a client concern are brought up among relevant sites.
• Author credibility, such as how relevant the author's content is and how often it is linked to.
• Content freshness and relevance, which defines how frequently an author posts.
• The average number of friends among users of a specific application.
• Number of people currently using an application.

And you thought explaining rich media banner engagement metrics was tough?

Marketers are continually screaming for simplicity when it comes to online metrics. The reason CPMs and CTRs still dominate is because they are easy to understand and measure. Hence the latest Key Performance Indicators (KPI) trend.

Yet they also find comfort in knowing that every online effort can be measured 1000 different ways. Just please put those charts in the Appendix so we don't have to go through them.

Who will provide the benchmark for Content Relevance/Posting Frequency (your CR:PF ratio)? Does a Conversation Size include paid media impressions, or is it only the "free" ones? Can you track those conversations back to a paid media stimulus, thus defining a Cost Per Conversation (CPC) efficiency? Did it increase purchase intent?

We repeatedly drive new online trends to the brink of complexity before pulling back to more attainable measurement criteria. Perhaps this is due to constantly justifying the existence of any new online marketing opportunity. Beat it to death with an avalanche of metrics, just to prove we can. Then once everyone is comfortable restrain it back to the two or three that really matter.

Unfortunately those two or three KPIs could be different for every program. Without a doubt they will change every three months as the social media space evolves. Which means all the ad networks and rich media vendors are safe for little bit longer...

The Local Pub Just Got Robbed & Its Burgers Really Suck

Chicago NPR had an interesting interview with the founder of EveryBlock.com -- a micronews aggregation service that provides newsfeeds for events occurring in your neighborhood. Here is a description via the radio transcript:

"There’s a bunch of crimes that happened here. Wow there’s an armed robbery right on Briar. Someone reviewed the new cupcake place that just opened. What else is interesting – I can filter to foreclosures."

On the screen I can see there were six foreclosures filed on one day in April – a little glimpse into how the housing crisis is hitting this area. Tracking foreclosures may sound tedious, but it’s precisely by sifting and sorting small pieces of data that EveryBlock is creating such excitement. The site locates that data, on a given block, within the limits of a particular city, as fast as it becomes available. To Holovaty, any new information in the public realm - not just news stories but internet reviews, public records like crime stats and building per, or personal photographs - is news.

One-stop access to localized content/news isn't a new trend. Microsoft started up Sidewalk.com 10 years ago. AOL's Digital Cities was even earlier. But those sites were directly reliant on paying people to provide the local content; usually via newspaper content feeds or freelance writers. Those sites were only as good as those creating the content.

Now there is a flood of both professional and user-generated localized content online, the search technology to find and compile it, and the personal devices to deliver it 24 hours a day.

But what happens when the Always On Generation -- raised on a steady stream of Facebook updates and Twitter tweets -- applies the same voracious appetite for real-time content to news about their neighborhood? Will we become digital versions of those guys glued to their police scanners, waiting for a convenience store robbery car chase? Does having your iPhone beep when you pass a neighbor's house in foreclosure really make you a better local citizen?

And what about the declaration that anything is news? Does a cupcake restaurant review demand the same priority as a mugging down the block? Should video of a three alarm fire compete with video from your block party? The melting pot of public vs personal news will be very interesting to watch.

The latest trends in real-time social media have taught us the difficulty in turning off the information firehouse once it starts. Opening up the corner fire hydrants on a hot day may be fun for awhile, at least until your basement starts flooding. The real challenge is not drowning in your own front yard.

You Should Hear the Casey Kasem Podcast Version

Is it just me, or does Ad Age eventually cram everything Dotcom into a broadcast model to comprehend it? Even though Viral Videos are soooooo 2007, they launched their weekly Viral Video Top 10 Chart for tracking online video popularity.

This allows agency Creatives to keep track of which clients allow their agencies to produce video beyond standard TV spots. Let's be honest, the main reason creatives enjoy creating online videos (with the intent to go viral) is because they are allowed to actually be creative. No 30 second limitations. No procurement battles over Director costs. No 6+ months of animatic testing to wring every last drop of brand effectiveness out to them.

This newfound Viral Video Freedom is quickly being pulled back into the traditional mindset. Used to be that viral videos = cheap production. Which in term = low risk. Which in term = minimal expectations for performance.

Got a viral video on Youtube with only 30,000 views? No worries, look how funny it is! And how cheap compared to broadcast! Plus it finally gave the client marketing team a reason for IT to unblock FunnyOrDie.com.

But now viral video production values are growing. The guerrilla-style hand camera video -- shot by a couple Art Directors -- is now more polished and has a soundtrack (and more often an actual Director). What used to cost $30,000 to produce now costs $300,000.

Measurement like Ad Age's charts give marketers the data to start comparing the total views with these rising costs. It won't be long before a Media agency starts assigning TRPs to them, jargon which brand managers actually understand. At which point the game is over. Because TRPs and CPMs quickly lead to direct comparisons with 30 second prime time slots. Which leads to marketers needing to justify viral video effectiveness. Which leads to consumer testing and guaranteed online impressions. At which point you've completely lost track of the initial purpose for the Wild Wild West known as Viral.

This doesn't mean that long-form online video is dead. I'm sure the Creatives will find another reason for an extended stay at Shutters on the Beach. Although after the 3rd round of viral video animatics, they may be pining for the days when 30 second spots were king.