Links to the best in Web 2.0

Following the advice of one of the greatest bloggers around, I'm going to "link to the best" in this post. Because, let's face it, with so much great stuff to read sometimes you feel you have nothing to add. At the very least you recognise that the time it would take you to read or research enough to add something worthwhile would be better spent just nodding, absorbing and passing on the information.

Instead I'll just preface this post with a brief illustration of what I mean. Last night I went to see the Blue Man Group, an inimitable blend of comedy, theatre, musical and multimedia experience, fluidly passing between intimacy and bombast, participation and presentation. One of the main features of the show (reading beneath the sheer enjoyment value) is its humorous but still serious critique of advertising in our society and the way it makes us feel incapacitated by noise, indecisive with choice and incapable of commitment. The solution that is hinted at by the whole show to this dilemma of excessive exposure to media is to get involved. Don't just sit back and listen: you'll get washed away with the chatter. Don't just do what you're told: do what you feel like. Don't let someone else entertain you: entertain yourself.

So, in that spirit, inspired by a night of Gregorian chanting, luminous ticker-tape shaking and spontaneous rocking out, here's my run down of links you can't miss.

First off, because it never fails to inspire me, I loved reading Stowe Boyd's analysis of Social Media. Just a small quote (itself copied off Karl Long) to show what he's talking about.

As an additional billion or two of the world's population finds its way onto the web, our only hope may be that the web finds its way into the world: that the principles of openness, transparency, diversity, and egalitarianism that engender web culture remake the world, one conversation at a time. Political parties, multinationals, the corner dress shop, your county government -- everything will be influenced by the infectious openness of the web, because the edglings will simply not settle for less.

It's great to see how people are grappling with this term (you can see my own attempt to do so here) and I don't think it's just semantic wrangling. It's gets right to the heart of how our society is attempting to adapt itself into what Stephen Covey calls "the Information Age", a new era when everyone is trying to find their own, unique voice and consequently help others find theirs.

In the same vein, Jeff Jarvis has linked to a great blog-thread that links to the ways media is changing in our modern age and how this adaptation is affecting us as consumers, how much we have changed already and how it will in the future.

On a different note, there have been two great articles, which are examining the models for internet TV in the future. One discusses the models via the analysis of a variety of start-ups the other takes a more across-the-board perspective of the effectiveness of different ad models for online video. They are both very much in line with my own thinking about how advertising will look and I'm particularly impressed by Joost's predicted ad-offering:

Ads on Joost will come in a variety of packages: They can appear as five-second preshow banners called "blipverts," as 10- to 30-second video "midrolls" that appear during a break in the show, and as opt-in icons that, when clicked, pull down a small marketing website inside the viewer's window.

Clark is also experimenting with features he calls "ad bugs," clickable brand icons that appear in the corner of the screen for a few seconds at opportune moments, and with drop-down windows containing ad links for products that appear in a particular episode.

And only 1 advertiser per show! Thank the lord!

Tara Hunt (one of the more recent additions to my weekly growing netvibes list) also impressed me with her views of presentation as "information brokering". Particularly, her focus on the fact that presentations or talks should empower the listeners rather tha nimpress upon them their ignorance or, as is more often the case, the superior knowlede of the speaker. I love her equation that empowerment=inspiration=ideas=flow=feeling awesome and I've had the same thought about how advertising should ideally work. It's not always necessary to get participation but it is necessary to make people feel good or help them feel better.

When learning is fun instead of work, people will remember the information, be able to use it to sound smart themselves. That will lead them to feeling great, which they will then associate with you and your work.

Finally, but most importantly, it bears remembering that, ultimately, social media may NOT be the ideal platform to advertise through. At the end of the day, improved metrics may render the trusty outdoor billboard together with increased mobile capability a far more inviting environment for advertisers. Reading Rick's posts about the potential of mobile, just like my colleague Jan's, is always a mixture of rapturous excitement at the possibilities together with a feeling that it's a long way off still. This is where we'll be in 5 years guys, mark my words...

And the winner is....Dove's CGA. But is it any different?

The votes are in, the show's over and somewhere amidst the winners of last night's Oscar ceremony there was an ad that was made by someone in their own bathroom for next to nothing which Dove paid around $1.6 million to have screened during the awards. Out of more than 1200 entries, GoddessLAM posted a video sometime early this year that was eventually chosen by Dove to represent their brand during one of the major live TV events of the year. In a year of very few surprises (Scorcese finally wins an honorary Oscar for a film that is less than his best, Helen Mirren wins an Oscar for the Queen), this move by Dove should have been a surprise. Instead, the ad was a curiously flat, unremarkable one. The brand message is spelt out, a non-professional model and a slightly cute, personal message is used but overall, you couldn't tell this ad from the usual agency product.



In vain I searched through the Dove list for a slightly quirkier, idiosyncratic message but almost all the entries appear to be very tame. What is most striking about this user-generated ad campaign is the singularly unstriking, unoriginal nature of the submissions. The biggest influence for these wannabe admen and women seems to be...other adverts. I'm not sure whether this is because Dove has screened out all the juicy clips (Nalts suggests this might be the case) or whether a soap is simply not an inspirational subject to make videos about but, if anything, this campaign should indicate to brands that user-generated ads don't have to be a scary proposition. In fact, this ad blends in nicely with the other ads with the Campaign for Real Beauty and seems to aim to do this deliberately. From a non-creative perspective, the congruence between these user-generated ads and the professionally-produced ads we've all seen suggests that Dove have got it right in reading their audience. They know what their customers want and seem to deliver it. In that respect, this campaign has succeeded in proving one thing: The value of CGA is not in creative material from consumers but in benchmarking consumer perception of your brand. Would you agree?

The real potential of internet video

Internet video has been a hot subject for a while now and analysts have been quite happy throwing predictions around in an attempt to make billion dollar estimates a self-fulfilling prophecy. eMarketer estimates that by 2009 $1.5 billion will be spent on internet video advertising, this being based on the 149 million people who will watching online video in either streamed or downloaded versions by that time. I've just received a Financial Times article based on a report by Adams Media Research that claims that ad-supported online video will net $1.7 billion by 2009. Inexplicably, this same report suggests that most of the online video revenue will come from pay-per-download charges which seems, frankly, incredible given the "move to free" we are still seeing.But I digress...

None of these estimates are unreasonable but they are useless unless certain persistent problems keeping advertisers at bay are solved and unless traditional models of advertising are re-evaluated.

What advertisers think the problem is

AdAge ran an interesting article recently that described the problems facing advertisers and online video services looking to monetise their content in terms of 4 fundamental issues:
*Fragmented audience
*Limited (appealing) online inventory for advertisers
*Lack of video formatted for the web
*Unclear model for ad-buying

The real reasons for the lack of advertising spend on internet video

These are all valid points from the advertisers' perspective but none of these pick up on the fundamental reason why some consumers are moving online in the first place or the consumer habits that have changed with the onset of online video. Among these reasons are:
*Increased choice of content
*Improved access to content at the right time
*Increased ability to interact with video content online
*Avoidance of advertising that interrupts traditional TV programs
*Ability to flit between active and passive consumption models for watching video
*Free video
*Short entertaining video sequences that eliminates the need for fruitless "channel hopping" that characterises many people's TV viewing

What does this mean? The things that advertisers see as "problems", consumers see as "opportunities". Advertisers are losing their passive audience sat in front of the TV who may or may not be paying attention to their ad messages and they're worried about losing "eyeballs". Why aren't they thinking of new ways to advertise to this active consumer base, rather than figuring out ways to fight the consumer habits with DRM, repurposing offline content for online by wrapping it in ads, the pre-roll? All of these are reasons that some consumers escaped to begin with.

The "threat" of Ad-avoidance

Nielsen Media Research released a report recently that attempted to assuage advertisers' fears about the ad-shy habits of DVR owners, in which it claimed 1/4 of ads recorded on DVRs still get watched. 1/4? 25%? Is this a heartening figure? The report also points towards very specific kinds of shows that are generally watched uninterrrupted, including local TV shows, shopping channels and soaps. Again, these are unlikely to be comforting figures for many, as the profile for viewers is very specific. The eMarketer press release also points out that DVR/PVR owners are highly desirable customers: young, better educated, higher income individuals. So how do you reach them?

A solution: Make content not filler

I understand that, in some sense, advertising will still follow popular content and that the internet is likely to make in-stream advertising more targeted and effective in terms of click-through rates or valuable lead generation. On the other hand, advertising can look to become attractive in its own right. What consumers are looking for almost fits the ad-model exactly - with one important exception: stand-alone ad content cannot sell overtly. Don't broadcast messages, get them to talk to you.

Maybe it's not about reaching them anymore. Sure, you can still do it and a lot of people still choose to consume media passively through different devices. In fact this is still the majority (something worth bearing in mind). However, there are also those that are now extremely active in discovering media of any kind. They will want to find you. Give them the gift of discovery. This may sound incredible to an advertiser who must, after all, sell a certain amount of his product via the advertising effort. But this is about creating passionate customers
, customers who may recommend your video or ad campaign to others. There's already a store of great ads online at places like lovefilm and sites like The Viral Video Chart, The Viral Chart and The Daily Reel.

Advertising on YouTube

Getting away from advertising as content, it's understandable that no-one is really that excited about advertising via YouTube. YouTube is a great marketing channel but not a reliable contextual advertising platform (ditto MySpace). This may be one of the reasons that Viacom has eventually settled for Joost as its chosen online streaming partner. Joost is appealing as it promises higher quality picture, moderated uploaded material and social media tools that are neat,tidy and simple in their usability.

Joost, which I'm currently experiencing on beta, has grown on me over the past month. The lack of content makes it difficult to know its true potential but it certainly looks impressive. Other question marks surround whether it will really allow user-generated content, whether it can once again pull off a huge viral marketing stunt to get people excited enough to download their application (which, unlike YouTube, is desktop-based and P2P). Does it need user-generated content if it breaks deals with the major content producers? Will people be lured away from the home-grown videos of YouTube back to the TV content we know and (sometimes) love? I see YouTube remaining a training ground for aspiring film-makers, while Joost is likely to become the place to visit the established talent base. Despite all the interactivity, it doesn't look like you can embed Joost videos (reducing their blog-appeal) or that it readily allows for the message board approach that often adds to the entertainment of short videos on YouTube.

Unfortunately for Google and YouTube, this may well mean they will lose out on the rights deals they must have been hoping for with the larger networks. The advertising is likely to follow the production value (stick to what they know rather than risk an inapproriate placement next to a belching contest etc.), so how will YouTube win over their potential revenue source? YouTube has aimed for community, that's what it has become. The community likes a nice mixture of professional and user-generated content. Advertisers? Not so much.

Ultimately, those early-movers who are already enjoying online video, will want to include plenty of this new media they have learnt to enjoy. The real difference is going to be in user-generated TV channels (rather than making the content, they will decide the order) and unbound viewing (TV, internet, mobile), with a shift in media consumption towards more active engagement with media. It's clear that most consumers are now multi-tasking around content, so give them something to play with while they watch. "Consumers who go online via broadband are five times more likely than dial-up users to access more than one type of media simultaneously". If this isn't an opportunity for advertisers, then I'm not sure what is. It proves that you don't need the viewer's full attention to effectively reach them. Why interrupt when you can enhance, why pop-up when you can run alongside, why obscure the content when you can become part of the media experience?

This is the 2210th blog to link to this video...

That's right, according to The Viral Video Chart, I'm one of thousands to link to this video in a blog. This is rare indeed and I've been following this video since the day of its release (just forgot to blog about it back then). On the other hand it's completely deserved and a testament to the motivating force of participation. The video-makers actively requested feedback both in comments and via Mojiti, a video service that allows in-video comments (it's the eqivalent to getting the "annotated edition" of a book). The video is not only an incredibly intricate and well-structured digest of social media but it's very existence on the internet is testament to the effect of what it discusses.

Social Media has made this video important (can you imagine a similar video ever gaining as much attention on TV?), it has changed it from its original version according to viewer comments (Michael Welsh, the "author" calls this the "second draft", with a final one in the making - Wiki-filmmaking?). The form, the presentation, its means of production have all contributed to the effect and experience of interpreting this video. In many ways, these conversations remind me of the faked annotations, reader reviews and all-round post-modern ramblings surrounding Jonathan Swift's Tale of a Tub back in the 18th Century. Swift was disgusted and excited by the general move towards self-publication and promotion; while railing against modernity he became its foremost innovator. What he would have thought of this, I can only guess! Well, I suppose we all became a little Yahoo...

iHollywood Forum: Mobile TV or Video-on-demand?

While at the 3GSM Conference last week, I managed to take some time out to attend the iHollywood Forum. iHollywood presented a mouth-watering roster of speakers but it was also obvious that many couldn't find the time to come visit Barcelona Football Stadium when schedules are rammed full of meetings with important clients. This was a pity as there were a lot of great ideas about mobile TV and video that could be taken away, some of which I'll outline below.

Cater for passive and active viewers
With all the talk about participation, engagment and the "lean-forward" consumption of media we have started to see with new media and mobile, it was refreshing to hear Jason Wells (SVP, Mobile Entertainment, Sony Pictures Television International) remind us that consumers come with different expectations of engagement. Although it's the active media consumers that are giving ad execs sleepless nights, there's still a healthy amount of ol'-fashioned TV watching going on and no-one expects this to change radically overnight. It will change though and neither should we forget that it's the active media consumers who are often the key targets for advertisers as they also often tend to be the most influential in their purchasing decisions. Although this bit of Gladwellian wisdom has recently been challenged, it still holds that even 1% matters more than you think.

Both streaming and video-on-demand are accomodated on mobile
Anders Wannfors from iMobile rolled out the Mobile TV demo they had carried out for Sweden and pointed towards the fact that 54% of consumers used the broadcast asect of Mobile TV (where the content is streamed from the broadcaster and the consumer merely tunes in) and 46% made use of the video-on-demand options presented to them. The survey was carried out over 6 months, the last 3 of which were paid by the consumer (to avoid the "I'll say anything cos it's free" dilemma that some surveys present) The survey suggests that consumers will quite happily watch broadcast for things that are really live (this still fits in with the immediacy that they are used to and is, essentially, on-demand) but in most cases they like to use their phones to engage in "continuous viewing". You carry the program you were watching at home with you on your mobile. You contune watching your internet video on your TV etc. Video-on-demand was in many people's minds (including mine) the only way that mobile audio-visual content could be presented but that only presented further issues: how do consumers choose? how long will they watch for? what content will they want to see on mobile?


"Tricklecasting"; media sharing across platforms; the "YouTube" model
Out of the 3 ways I can see mobile video progressing, these three methods tend to look the most promising in the long-term. "Tricklecasting" was a new word for me at 3GSM (not on Wikipedia yet!) but is a great way for active consumers to find their media. It refers to the broadcasting of video content over time for viewing later. Given the difficulties of allowing for high quality on-demand video to be streamed on-demand this is an ideal solution. The most impressive example I've seen of this is ShoZu's ZuCast system which nicely integrates consumer web channel creation with mobile video-viewing. It requires the consumer to select their own "ZuCast" which is a collection of different podcast, video-blog, audio channels all queued on the website. This material is then broadcast to the phone which stores the material to be viewed at a later time, effectively allowing on-demand video viewing as far as the consumer is concerned. I love the way that this rethinks the idea of having to provide real "on-demand" content. Yes we want it when we want it, but we often know ahead of time what it's going to be, so let's queue it up ready to go rather than clogging up data channels We want to browse for content in peace and probably online but we want to watch it wherever we happen to be.

The major drawback with ShoZu is that it requires the consumer to be very proactive in setting up their ZuCast (effectively YOU are your own television programmer) but I see no reason for this to hold back business. Lovefilm.com and other online video rental stores have seen considerable success with this "queueing" system and the benefit is that it allows for choice within broadcast, the best of both worlds.

Media sharing systems like OrbTV or Sling Media, are another proven way to synchronise consumers' content to allow continuous viewing. The ideal is not exclusive mobile content but exclusive . Your online and computer media libraries are simply broadcast across to your mobile, simply allowing for device-agnostic media consumption. The beauty of both of these systems is that they allow for a seamless consumer experience (the real benefit of mobility). Have to head off to a party but got a long train journey? Just send the recorded material from TV to mobile.

Finally, YouTube models, such as exist on the internet, where video is truly on-demand and unbound are also an interesting addition to the mobile video mix. In truth, I don't know if consumers like their media to be fully unbound - they just like to be involved in how it's bound up. YouTube with its fragmented, often difficult-to-navigate and patchy content is unlkely to be popular in the long-term on mobile. The benefit of these video services is in their ability to allow user-uploaded content (something ShoZu also allows) and share new material with friends as and when it happens. Again, this is about continuous media experience. you don't have to wait to show others your photos, music or video. You can share it online straight away.

The primary lesson to learn is that consumers want to have free choice (hence fragmented media) but they want it whenever they feel like it (convergent technologies). For more on these ideas you can check out podcasts by Alain Fernando-Santana, Roger Wood or even the latest NPR podcast with a massive social media line-up as advertised on Buzzmachine (this is a long one but full of the latest social media wisdom).

3GSM Podcasts over at The Friday Feed

I just got back from the brilliant madness of 3GSM where we carried out podcasts with a number of different industry players. If you'd like to hear them all, please head on over to The Friday Feed and yes, I know it's only Tuesday...

I'll be covering my thoughts on the event in the next couple of blog posts but these podcasts give a pretty good flavour of what some of the key issues were last week.

Money, Money, Money: How social networks can get some of the action

It turns out I'm one of the few people who doesn't actively use Facebook in my circle of friends. Yes, believe it or not, I haven't really joined up (though I know all about it). Why? Although I saw it's potential usefulness and that others were using it, it wasn't an essential social tool to master...until now. Friends are no longer responding to e-mails as promptly as they used to(inboxes are swamped) but they check their Facebook page several times a day (often cited as a "great waster of time"). Parties are organised and invitations spread from one social network to another, potentially increasing the number of invitations (if open) you could actually send out yourself. Mini-online groups are forming to share interests both random and serious, funny and bizarre. Pictures are being shared and commented on. Personal details are being uploaded for accepted members of social groups to view, effectively providing an online address book (sthg I've been too lazy to create for myself over the years). It's got to the stage when the value of the social network has exceeded the point where I can reasonably delay entering it. Metcalfe's Law tells us the value of a network is proportional to the number of people using it so that its expansion is often truly exponential (beginning with small numbers but increasing at a greater rate as more people join, rather than declining as with most trends).

For me Facebook has reached critical value due to the number of people who have joined it and the change in habits that this has led to. I find it fascinating but now I plan to enter it wholeheartedly and, presumably, begin my own game of social dominos bringing in those who aren't yet part of it. I have a lot of respect for Mark Zuckerberg, (Facebook founder) who is by all accounts a bit of an entrepreneur wild-child, for creating a service that has come to be so valuable to its members. If your unconvinced by the power of networking in my particular example, he told a great story of the additional value social networking can bring at the Davos convention last week.

So there's now just one question facing these sites and it's not their popularity or usefulness any more.

Can social networking sites make money?

They've found the audience and, in the case of MySpace and YouTube, they've found heaps of cash in the form of buy-outs. But how will they now actually draw revenue and begin turning a profit as businesses, the true test of their longevity. The general wisdom says advertising, a model that Facebook has employed successfully. But who wants to advertise on kids' Myspace pages or on personal pages? Advertisers still demand a viable, reasonably controlled/understood context for their ad and MySpace is too hit-and-miss in terms of inappropriate content. Inspired by and developed upon GigaOM's list of how he sees the future monetisation of social networking sites, these are my thoughts on the matter.

Branded advertising.
Contextual ads (like those from Google Adsense)have a uselessly low click-through rate and have a correspondingly low CPM value (about $0.50). This is obvious even though MySpace is a kind of social recommendation search engine for the rest of the web: why listen to a self-interested advertiser who doesn't know you when your friend is recommending stuff already?

Branding can be an effective way to get a message across and conforms to the wallpaper-style branding MySpace users have already. Branding in this context will work best if MySpace users have a choice of who their sponsors should be (will they get paid if they prove sufficient traffic?) or, at least, the branded banners are consistent over a certain time period. Emotional attachment with the brand and the personal website should be established over time to gain the maximum value for both parties. This is still advertising at consumers rather than with them but if it's targeted it will build cumulative awareness and brand association with the experience. More immersive advertising experiences are needed to cement brand awareness in reality but banners will effectively brand the experience until then.

Consumer involvement in the advertising process in the form of sponsored widgets
MySpace users already choose to embed widgets in their page and add "friends" that are largely unknown bands or brands. Why not encourage them to embed larger adverts or "sticker-sized" ad-snacks. If the advert is cool or funny enough, there's no reason MySpace users wouldn't be tempted to show the world their interests. Rather than consumer-generated advertising, this will be consumer-chosen advertising. Social advertising or broadcasting, if you will. The New York Times Quotes celebrity blogger and marketing consultant Guy Kawasaki calling it "bling for your blog".

This already happens with added friends but brands must aim to more effectively leverage the power of MySpacers in order to maximise their exposure. Widgets or stickers that work best will involve an interactive element that each visitor who visits the site can participate in or put on their own blog. We'll see the potential for viral widgets in the upcoming year. The most common embedded item will be videos, just as it's already common to have music players with your favourite songs. The extent of this habit happening already is evident in the fact that YouTube receives 18.5% of its traffic from MySpace, where plenty of its videos are embedded.

The business model for these widgets still needs to be arranged but I would assume advertisers would revenue share each download with MySpace (or any other social netowkign site), the user and the widget creator/publisher. The widgets themselves could be sponsored (including existing popular widgets). These widgets are rarely sponsored right now but the viral potential should alert marketers to their value. Having friends play with and embed their own little Coke game or Dove-sponsored polling widget would surely an ideal to integrated your brand with social networking.

Advertisers interested in this space and wanting to create their own, should take notice of the three kinds of value to the consumer that Ivan Pope identifies: Direct value (such as Adsense which pays you), Indirect value (that drives traffic to your site or increases participation with your page and conversation etc.) and Emotional/Social (conversation point, gets you recognition and ideally praise etc.). The value to advertisers is increased traffic and greater brand value right now but the revenue-split idea would be something most widget-publishers would love to explore further with backing from brands.


Popular Widgets according to Widgetbox now include: Imageshack, Slide, Rock Show, Pollbox, Games (Pacman, WOW mini-game)

For other Widget sites go to Rate-it-all, SpringWidgets