links for 2006-09-20
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Check out the embedded links in my post... they can make my avatar speak. :)
Custom and Creative versus Canned and Scaleable
AdSense is easy. It takes minutes to create a text link and then you can blow out as much advertising as your bank account can take. That's scaleable.
Banners are a little harder. Someone has to draw it. It might take an hour or two, but once its done, you can repurpose.
When you do something a little more creative, it's harder. Things you can only use once don't scale as well, but they can be a lot more entertaining. Plus, its much more appealing to the consumer.
Rich media is a great example. When TV commercials get reporposed for internet video, its mindlessly easy to setup. However, the level of ease is only matched by the level of hatred people have for TV commercials following them onto the web. Easy to setup, easy to fail, to alienate... easy to never click a video again. When I hear the talk about YouTube monetization, I'm hoping we'll see some really creative advertising appear within this unique community, but I also recognize that it might be difficult to make happen.
Or, on the other hand, aren't brands looking for unique? Don't they want different? Certainly the agencies should be pushing this, no? For them to come up with unique applications for all of these web communities, it would be more revenue and more work... but hopefully better results as well.
So how do you create a tradeoff? Are creative campaigns destined to become more niche and more specialized, making them more appealing, but also less profitable and more people-heavy. Are there even enough talented creative types around to think of these creative brand interactions? How does creative and unique scale?
Salesforce... Maybe its me?
I've been meaning to write this for a while.
When I joined, I was really excited to get a chance to use Salesforce for the first time. I had held up Salesforce as a great example of the death of enterprise software and why apps were best delivered over the web.
Now, after having access to it for two months, I have to say, its pretty underwhelming... or maybe I just don't get it.
It seems to me that a great organizational help should help you establish a routine... should provide shortcuts for you and help bring order to chaos... in a lightweight "companion" sort of way. It should slip seemlessly into my lack of routine and help maximize my productivity.
So, when I started using Salesforce and its Outlook plugin, I was surprised at how much database setup needed to be done on simple little items.
For example, I started talking to someone from a new company that Oddcast had never spoken to. I wanted to add that quickly to Salesforce, but you can't add a new contact company on the fly. You have to set it up in the system first. That was sort of a pain. Plus, there's nothing automatic about its e-mail intelligence. Its like an empty database. You have to tell it the meaning of an e-mail and who it belongs with... there aren't algorythms to detect when someone e-mailed me and I didn't e-mail them back. LinkedIn does that with its new Outlook dashboard.
I'd love to see a little floating hotlist of recent contacts, and people I'd like to elevate to a "watchlist". E-mails from watchlist people would get automatically sucked into the database and reminders would pop up if I haven't returned their e-mails. I don't need this whole backend monster... I just need a little ping to remind me to follow up with someone I talked about something with last week. Salesforce, in spite of its webification, still seems very heavy to me and very difficult to use for people who aren't good about the routine of updating contacts, etc. I want "automatic for the people."
The End of the Beginning: The Mets Clinch the NL East
Wow... was that Steve Trachsel on the mound last night? Where ya been all season? (Aside from the 14 other wins...)
And how great a pickup was Jose Valentin? To think that Kaz Matsui was going to be the secondbaseman this year. Ugh.
Once he left with a lead, you knew it was over. I got to watch the game at Blondies on 79th with my softball team over unlimited wings.
Many wings were eaten. Many pitches were cheered on. Much high fiving occurred at the end. Bring on the Playoffs!
And we'll do it again...
Thank God that none of the playoff teams have two good lefties, because its obvious the Mets just can't hit the southpaws. Oh well, hopefully they'll do it tonight against the Fish, and Trachsel will get win number 15 by giving up 5 runs in 5 innings and letting the pen take care of the rest.
No, not my cookies!!
The other day, one of the IT folks here was helping me with a browser issue and accidently deleted my cookies instead of my cache.
I was really upset about it, actually. I started thinking about all the things I'd have to sign into again... how this would affect MyBlogLog, which I'm really getting hooked on, and whether or not all my behavioral ads would become irrelevent.
How things have changed!
So, now I'm getting really weird behavior that I think is tied to my Google Browser sync. I think it keeps syncing the fact that I don't have any cookies over and over again, so I feel like I'm always signing into things twice or three times.
Wish I had those cookies back.
I'm not sure I want to know what this is....
Seriously... what's going on here?
"Joe, did you wetvac the water off the scaffolding yet?"
"I got a bucket parked under it and a hose... its takin' care of itself... its a beautiful thing, you gotta see it..."
"Joe, what happens when the bucket gets full?"
"Full? Whaddya mean?"
Sprint EVDO through PPC-6700 finally working
First off, Sprint tech support sucks.
I spent two hours over various parts of the last week trying to get my phone to work as a broadband wireless modem, and... nothing. It took four days before the phone's internet was working just as a standalone. Using it with the laptop was another story.
Turns out I just didn't have the driver. It seemed like I didn't, but Sprint assured me that, by downloading their connection manager, that I had the driver. Not so much.
Seems I'm not the only one that was looking for the driver either.
So, if you need a USB wireless modem driver for a PPC-6700, or supposedly any Win Mobile phone, its right here.
I finally got going, and while the connection speed isn't overwhelming (currently in my office, with only two bars on the phone, its 230Kbps...a little slower than DSL), its definitely useable, and much better than searching for hotspots or paying T-Mobile at Starbucks.
So, until NYC goes WiFi, I'm mobile and Sprint gets an incremental $25 a month from me and my firstborn.
Graphic Design Opening at Oddcast
We're looking for someone... click the play arrow on the TV to hear about the job and then post a link to yourself, your work, etc. in the comments.
Postrolls done right
Totally agree with Fred here... Postrolls are are really an untapped opportunity. After you watch a funny baseball clip, a link to buy tickets or sports jerseys makes total sense. Even better would be if you let users pick the link.
Feedburner lets me approve or bag the ads that appear in my feed and on my site, and I've turned down a few penny stock links here and there... and I think that improves the overall quality of the experience and content on the site. YouTube should work the same way, letting me turn down advertisers I don't believe in.
MySpaceSoft
In a lot of ways, MySpace is sort of like the Microsoft of Web 2.0.
Its the platform that a lot of portable applications are going to get built on...or at least built to. Not every app will live in MySpace, but there has and will continue to be an explosion in the number of applications that are MySpace compatable, even if they'll wind up living on my blog.
And now, they're making overtures about going into the application development space, just as Microsoft did when it saw opportunities to build compelling apps that worked well together. There are a lot of key differences, though, that will make this roadmap a more difficult one for MySpace.
One, most obviously, not everyone needs or wants MySpace as it is defined as a brand. It trends younger because of the content that drives its network....the bands, blinking layouts, autoplay videos, etc. However, as a place to live on the web that is flexible and easy to manage, its pretty good. I think you have to wonder if there isn't some value in pushing the architecture into other demographics with some more "serious" content...like an "open" LinkedIn.
An operating system, on the other hand, was a necessary evil, and so the target market for Windows was much larger.
Another thing that MySpace lacks is a developers network...or at least an established/codified developer spec that someone who is looking to create MySpace apps could reference. This kills me. MySpace may see this as having the upperhand, knowing that all of the third party apps could be shut off tomorrow, but the reality is that will just stifle development over the long term. Venture backed startups don't mind taking a shot at building in MySpace the way YouTube did and risking getting shut off, but if it ever does happen, development will slow to a trickle. That was the beauty of Microsoft. They couldn't turn you off, but they owned the distribution channel, so they could make it pretty difficult for you to survive. At least it appeared as if you had a fighting chance, though, which was nice.
Still, a true developers network and access to more data (like the way Facebook opens up a person's movie and music interests to behaviorally targeted ads) would encourage more development and make the underlying platform more valuable. They should position themselves as very developer friendly. Statements like Web 2.0 was built on our backs create a very uneasy relationship with the people who are making your platform rich in content and applications at no cost to you. Fox execs should be wearing tshirts to work that say "We love Web 2.0. Come build here." Microsoft certainly seems interested in encouraging development, instead of saying developers are building "on our backs".
Interoperability of web services through APIs, RSS, etc also make this a different game than it was 15 years ago. Windows wasn't just a place to park your apps...it was a place to make them work together. Pasting an Excel sheet in a Word doc so easily made both programs more valuable and more sticky, not to mention the proprietary data formats they had. WordPerfect couldn't open a Word doc, so switching became really difficult. Data is more standardized now. We can take our blog feeds, tags, and our friends (conceptually, anyway) and port them wherever we want, and still benefit from integrating services.
The other big difference for MySpace today is that just being a platform is not a business model. Users don't pay for MySpace the way they pay for Windows. What they should do is to open the door to any and all ad supported or premium products and take a 10% cut across the top, sort of like the way NTT Docomo does in Asia, instead of the way the Carrier Mafia here takes your first born son for every piece of digital content sold. Carriers... there's another group of platform providers that do as much as they can to strangle innovation and be as unfriendly to developers as possible.
I'm not friends with Tom anymore, but as the Director of Consumer Products for a product that will hopefully find its away onto my MySpace profile, I'd love to be friends with MySpace...and not feel like I'm waiting for MySpace to drop the hammer on me.