Yes, exactly…it is the feed!

This is a  fun guy to follow  when it comes to Web 2.0 and evolving web- related schemes. The larger point in that post may be that Feedburner, a Co. he’s helped to finance, is going places.

He’s making an argument we made, indirectly, for the longest time about where the valuable advertising was going to be. With MyInfoPage.com  we focused on the value of making local promotional content available - direct - to loyal customers and constituents. That was a direct promotional scheme, but he’s suggesting advertisers should concern themselves more with the Blog feed than the actual Blog, which I believe is similar in point. “The value is in going direct.”

He says, “…But here’s the problem with focusing on the blog page. Less than half of all my impressions last month happened on my site. I delivered about 300,000 ad impressions in September. Over 60% of them were in my feed. That’s right, sixty percent….If you want to reach them, you have to be in the feed. “

I said “….Simply put, the complete customization of incoming information for all people is now possible. To traditional media, readership is at stake: once informed of the choices the readers may no longer want the entire newspaper, opting instead for a customizable news reader. For the enterprise, it’s a different opportunity for getting the promotional message out….”

Direct via feed is going to become more and more important and Feedburner may very well get the high CPMs.

Notable progress for Directory Xpress, Inc. / MyInfoPage

Steve and Paul are doing a great job of building ‘virtual community’ in the school systems, having brought one PA & two FL schools online.

…Two schools in Jacksonville, Fla., Holy Family Catholic School and Hendricks Avenue Elementary School, debuted the technology at the start of the current school year. Ancillae-Assumpta Academy in Philadelphia, and several more schools will launch in the coming months. Parents have adapted quickly with more than 50 percent of parents at Holy Family using the school’s system within two weeks of its implementation…

For complete story see release  http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=165863

Or NewsGators explanation http://blogs.newsgator.com/daily/2006/09/improving_paren.html

Content relevance and a great virtual land grab opportunity!

On the web, a businesses’ relevance to a search (E.G. “Real Estate in Westfield, NJ”, “for sale homes scarsdale, new york”, etc.) or their organic search engine optimization is directly related to how a no. of search engine heuristics, weighted into search engine crawler algorithms, identify and index its content. 

In the midst of a proliferation of sophisticated ’linking cheat schemes’ by various pornographers, pharmaceutical resellers, automobile dealerships and even politicians, the weighting of those proprietary heuristics are periodically adjusted making linking less and great content more the logical anchor to relevance. In terms of keeping search engine indexing of content and/or search results highly relevant this is, ultimately, a longstanding battle waged by the Googles, Yahoos, MSNs, etc. in order to assure their search users’ satisfaction and their own means for generating revenue.

As a business, if you’re a believer in Google’s ability to index content including at the most specific levels (E.G. The Long Tail of Search) and if relevance to many different search inquiries is your goal, it’s incredibly important to understand that crawlers don’t necessarily focus their attention on websites so much as they do specific content. The consistent creation & presentation of great content is your opportunity! If all of your very specific content is presented in a way that cooperates with crawler algorithms, it is much more likely you will succeed in becoming one of, if not, the most relevant ‘answer providers’ to lots of particular search inquiries. The end game being, direct connections to interested parties, qualified leads and potential buyers.

Liken this to a great virtual land grab opportunity where, when your content is presented to crawlers correctly & consistently, there is a harnessing of search engine indexing power (E.G. your content reaching those who want it,  when they want it) in your favor.  

Disintermediation (written awhile back affiliating it to MyInfoPage’s ‘enterprise in the community’ purposes), it’s happening fast!

August 02, 2005

RSS/ Content Syndication: ‘The Killer App’ 

‘The Killer App’ is not the Blog so much as it is the rapid develop and deploy capabilities of it and any content (personal journals, news, promotions, calendars of events and more) created by anyone in a syndicating format such as RSS.

The story here is how, because of RSS, traditional sources of content could easily become disintermediated. Coverage has focused on the Blogging phenomena mostly because there are so many Bloggers on the web, but there’s a deeper evolving story here and it is the content itself.

It’s about the freedom of content and how syndicating content formats (RSS, Atom, etc.) offer the individual consumer customization and/ or choice of information. Direct. With the average ‘newsreader’ or ‘feed aggregator’ application a person can actually identify and connect direct to any source of content created in a syndicating format. They can develop their own direct & continuous flow of timely, personally relevant & secure information from the sources they value. They can eliminate the noise!

Simply put, the complete customization of incoming information for all people is now possible. To traditional media, readership is at stake: once informed of the choices the readers may no longer want the entire newspaper, opting instead for a customizable ‘newsreader.’ To the average journalist or thought leader it’s the chance to go direct to her audience. For the enterprise, it’s a different opportunity for getting the promotional message out, but one that requires careful consideration. It means there’s a 2nd chance to reach the people actually interested in their products, services & expertise.

Relationship customers & constituents no longer need to search repetitively in order to be informed, to concern themselves with ‘artificial personalization’ deployed by intrusive cookies & spy ware and they will no longer accept abusive email practices. It means that if the enterprise can offer useful content information, can respect a person’s right to privacy and can respect a person’s right to control the exchange, they can build direct, loyal & informed relationships.

Transparency

I think he’s a must read because he wants to share his opinions honestly, he seems to be accountable to them and he’s undoubtedly been out on the front edge of an evolving web.

Not suggesting one should always agree with everything there, but it’s why open or user generated media is so useful. He demonstrates why, by being so transparent. Essentially he invites open & honest debate on virtually anything he puts out there. This guy puts his money where his mouth is: he lives in the glass house.

No surprise, he’s from Brooklyn

http://www.calacanis.com/2006/07/06/keeping-talent-happy-a-primer/

http://www.calacanis.com/2006/06/28/the-new-publishing-model-or-on-rafat-om-federated-media-ad/

Note to JC: So much as I can see, you’re no Elitist. Elitism & transparency don’t mix so well. Careful what you wish for.

Fascinating…….Wow!

http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

For Bloggers, are there reliable methods for ‘Blog Feed Subscription Tracking’?

Bill French, MyST Technology Partners, is an insightful guy with a rare combination of business acumen, 'top of the heap' Information Architecture skill & programming experience. He’s a thought leader on how Web 2.0, Blogs, RSS and syndicating' content formats will and do apply to the Enterprise. It's relevant to mention, MyST provides Intel, Verisign, Borland and many other brand name Technology Cos. with their Web 2.0 Architecture. I believe there are Cos. stepping forward with some reliable 'Blog Feed Subscription Tracking' solutions and I had a discussion with Bill on the subject, as follows:

Q: "Correct me if I’m wrong, but it may be awhile before Blog Feed Subscription tracking can be perfected for the Blogger or Enterprise Blogger?"

BF: "The web (really, the HTTP protocol) was never designed to be measured. Web 2.0 tosses a new curve ball to that reality. It may be a very long while. "

Q: "I was speaking with a prominent Web 2.0 Executive and he expressed pride in their world class caching* techniques. It wasn’t relevant to the conversation at hand, but I thought to myself, 'it’s where accurate feed tracking breaks down.' If the Feed or Newsreader Co. caches, they’re undermining the Content Management Software or Blog Software Cos. ability to track Blog Feed Subscriptions accurately for their Bloggers."

BF: "Caching*-forward content has been around along time – Akamai perfected the model in the late 90’s, and it now happens in almost every application. It’s necessary for many reasons (performance is a big one), and it will not likely end."

Q: "So if they grab & cache a Blog Post or Feed once and then redistribute to many, can there be an accurate tracking path between Blog & individual?"

BF: "Bloglines, MyYahoo, and pretty much everyone does this. Everything about syndication undermines tracking. If you have 300 unique IP addresses requesting a feed, that doesn’t mean you have 300 subscribers. One IP address could represent a proxy server for 70,000 people inside a firewall. Or One IP address could be a NewsGator server with 3500 subscribers behind it. Furthermore, One subscriber might have 30 different IP addresses in a single day. So all measures (that we’ve come to know for Web 1.0) are pretty much useless."

Q: "That said, is it sensible for the Blogger to offer a ‘summary only’ feed whereby, at least, they can track the page views of those that click into their Blog website in order to review the entire post?"

BF: "This is an often-debated point, and (in my view) it should be decided based on the content consumer’s requirements, not the producer’s requirements."

Q: "Tracking of ‘subscriber to Blog’ connections and therefore 'Return on Investment' metrics for a sponsor may not ever be a completely accurate science."

BF: "Correct."

* Cache- In computer science, a cache (pronounced kăsh) is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive (usually in terms of access time) to fetch or compute relative to reading the cache. Once the data is stored in the cache, future use can be made by accessing the cached copy rather than refetching or recomputing the original data, so that the average access time is lower.

“help them help you”

In theory, the companies that do things well for you get your business. Right?

A huge thing about the evolving web is it’s actually super productive to Blog ones own opinion about products and brands because the smart Cos. and their marketing people are listening!

These days, because anyone can publish an opinion, potentially exposing any marketer misinformation or product defect, they had better listen… or expect to face the consequences of lots of unhappy consumers creating & rapidly sharing their negative opinion content. Companies no longer control distribution of their message and the smart marketers know that because content is created so rapidly by and shared amongst the consumer critical masses (IE I hate my Dish Network service because its always reloading. ), they ought to be listening.

CGM or ‘Consumer (IE you, me, anyone) Generated Media’ via use of Blogs, Message Boards and other web- based forums offer those marketers, keen enough to recognize the value of listening, a no- brainer opportunity. Just as easily as consumer product opinion content is created (IE I love Verizon EVDO because of its portability and becaue its reliable. It’s so good I may do away with my T- Mobile WiFi subscription & my home based Comcast wireline services. ), it can be searched, viewed, aggregated and data- mined for invaluable marketer strategic insight. Listening tools are readily available via free (manual search tools via a Technorati or Icerocket.com  ) and paid (includes extensive data- mining like Umbria) services.

So folks, use the power instilled in all of us consumers. Get a blog, publish your opinion and (assuming the Co. and its marketers concern themselves with your business) ‘help them help you!’

The intention for MyInfoPage.com, Part IV / Trying to understand Local, Small to Medium- sized Enterprise Requirements, originally posted 092205

To clarify a distinction in the area of Community & Blogs, a great new age media Co. like Weblogs Inc. is interested in providing a network or portal environment for its readers based upon niche industry ‘participatory journalism’ or Blogs. They establish Community around their niche industry Blogs and, in doing so, also develop a distinctly ‘targeted advertising value proposition’ for marketers. Not to mention, WebLogs successfully reaches the elusive early adopter crowd that show up because they understand & value the honest nature of this form of media.

Understanding that Weblogs Inc. provides great content to serve entire industries, MyInfoPage’s approach to Community & Blogs was more about the creation of local, timely & useful promotional content by Enterprises (using Blogs) in a geographic area or Community. We created portal environments to feature and syndicate the latest events, drink specials, sales and local expertise from individual enterprises in these Communities. Because the local, small to medium sized enterprises we pursued were the promotional advertiser (e.g. the Advertorial Blogger), the Business Requirements, as targeted marketers, were more about being present when qualified traffic interested in the community they do business in arrived.

At that stage in the evolution of ‘the live web’ and in this arena, our research showed Business Requirements for the local restaurant were pretty straight forward and didn’t necessarily require thought leadership nor the leading edge Content Management System (we’re most certainly not.) Certainly, these enterprises have much smaller & less competitive markets than a Cisco targeting the VOIP crowd or Toyota the Auto enthusiasts. What’s important is they have the simple tools that enable their timely promotional message to find a qualified audience when that audience needs or is looking around for good information………in the Community.

Summarized, the Business Requirements for local, small to medium- sized enterprises we developed included:
1.      Advertising Value/ traffic to the community portal
2.      Affiliation with a ‘business discipline’ in the community or a taxonomy
3.      Controlled forum for comments, if at all
4.      Simplicity/ ease of content creation, user tracking, etc.
5.      Linking or integration with an existing HTML website
6.      Automated Blog- post reminders, promote yourself often
7.      Usage tracking
8.      Data model supporting the multi- location Enterprise

Challenges for MyInfoPage continued to include the development of certain financial resources, a website redesign, the strategic integration of leading Search Engine Optimization technology, an RSS 2.0 Standards Architecture upgrade and the decision to either integrate open search & feed subscription technology into the Aggregator offering………or simply to continue to recommend them all.

I’ve since moved on, but Directory Xpress and MyInfoPage lives on with a current focus on serving schools in the community. Best of luck guys!

The intention for MyInfoPage.com, Part III / Conclusion: move from application to web- based service, originally posted 091905

Committed to proving our plan, the course chosen was to develop a live beta site and focus market. Short resources we chose Eagle County, CO (Vail/ Beaver Creek) as our 1st community portal, partly because it afforded an ideal small community environment & learning opportunity, but mostly because we had national media expat experience present  Its status as a world class destination resort area couldn’t hurt. 

First step, interview and compile local consumer data which would not only expose the most popular local enterprises but also how folks felt about direct, relevant & timely information from those (business & non profit) enterprises they valued in the community. Fifty interviews later, we had our data…… carefully managing the expectations of those we’d be back to ask for a registration. 

Second, convince business owners (a lot of them!) to meet, to learn, to try an evolving web- based promotional advertising tool (Advertorial Blog featured in a Community Portal Environment) and, eventually, to enjoy the benefits of being first. No easy task as small to medium sized business owners tend to be of a smart, pragmatic nature for whom ‘techno- learning curves’ & ‘future advertising value’ present luxuries they don’t necessarily have time for. In spite of it all, our goal of 50+ participating enterprises was met. 

Third, (request our interviewees register & make connections to their valued enterprises) begin to carefully engage these core individuals & enterprises about their experience(s) with the system. ’Give it to us straight’, being the proper engagement in order to influence our development of a best case set for ’small business requirements’. 

More coming soon.

The intention for MyInfoPage.com, Part II / Yellow Pages Directory, Blog- enhanced Listings, originally posted 091305

Committed to ‘the journey’, MyInfoPage.com’s earliest goal was to develop a subscription- based (pull, not push) model to help people gather community- oriented information from the enterprises they valued.

Didn’t know much about the term Blog nor formats like RSS or Atom back then, but people were unquestionably tired of unsolicited spam & advertising. Bad information, to a large degree, had ruined it for the good so there was an indisputable need for relational’ subscription- based marketing, advertising & communication solutions. We wanted to make it user- friendly at the local level.

Enter the Yellow Pages Industry, which has a complete listings database for consumer connection choices (if programmed as Blogs) and local sales forces. Again, a unique feature we designed for our users was an ability to search for and connect, regardless of active or inactive status, to the Blog- enhanced Listings of their choice. The feature supporting 1) a users immediate & complete choice of enterprises set, 2) the enterprises ability to see some pre- connection data & to trust the concept of direct to customer feeds and 3), as such, offered us the chance to qualify our selling channel.

We felt, as YP directory usage moved to the web, the players would inevitably face deterioration in their user base and look for innovative solutions. Prototype in development, MyInfoPage.com (of Directory Xpress, Inc.) went about presenting our Blog- enhanced Listing, Usage Tracking and Interface solutions to the majority of the YP players…… and several of the Engines, Portals & some leading VC too. Albeit brief, was honored to speak with folks like Robert Lessin, Esther Dyson, Brad Feld and even Google. Proudly display a signed NDA from Google on my office wall

Admittedly, it wasn’t a successful tour and the mixed bag of “don’t get it”, “maybe, but..” and “prove it” forced us to adapt. Conclusion: move from application to web- based service. The relentless cold calling, follow through, presentations and trade shows weren’t a total loss as one YP player showed enough interest to grant us access to their complete listings database, which was crucial as the costs for national yellow page listings would have undermined progress.

More soon.

The intention for MyInfoPage.com, Part I (A few posts I had written to document some of what my Co., which I’ve since left for a different Web 2.0 opportunity, was attempting to do in the community. They were meant to describe the goals, struggles & successes of MyInfoPage.com, an early stage Interactive Media Co. with some unique/ some not so unique ideas on how to leverage Blogs & RSS.), originally posted 09/05/05

MyInfoPage.com of Directory Xpress, Inc. was conceived in September of 2002 to promote 1) the discovery of and 2) subscription too (via RSS feed) ‘useful promotional information’ from enterprises by people in their communities. 

It intended to leverage a complete Yellow Pages Directory, proprietary Blog- enhanced Listings, a promotional Community Portal Platform and leading Search Engine Optimization technology to achieve its goals. Based upon realistic (Focus Group driven) business requirements, we felt relationships between local enterprises and their valued customers & constituents could be served using Web 2.0 content creation & feed subscription technology. 

The Community Portal Platform was constructed to attract traffic interested in the community, drawing on some news but mostly ‘timely sales & event promotional advertising’ from local enterprises that Blog: the voice of enterprises in a community environment! A unique feature was the users ability to search (a complete YP directory) and connect, regardless of active or inactive status, to the Blog- enhanced Listings of their choice ……using a News Aggregator of their choice.

Because Blog/ RSS adoption was just getting its legs, data generated by initial user connections helped to show the local enterprise an indisputable direct to the customer promotional advertising value. By Browser, by Search Engine and now by ‘Feed Subscription’, relationships in communities could, in theory, flourish! 

Challenges included the development of certain financial resources, a website redesign, the strategic integration of leading Search Engine Optimization technology, an RSS 2.0 Standards Architecture upgrade and the decision to either integrate open search & feed subscription technology into our Aggregator offering………or simply continue to recommend them all. More coming soon.

the ‘we media’ deal

further on why the evolving web or ‘the blogosphere’ (i.e. ‘Web 2.0′, the ‘Live Web’) is meaningful to us all: 

http://onlyonce.blogs.com/onlyonce/2006/01/new_media_deal_.html

 

‘the blogosphere, the live web and/ or web 2.0′ explained

A thought for why ‘the blogosphere’ actually happened and why it’s meaningful:

A blog is a content management system (it is a website), but potentially more useful to individuals and businesses than those we had become accustomed too.

A blog makes it easy for

1) anyone to create new content (HTML requires coding),

2) anyone to create links (rapid pointing at this, that and the other thing creates a networked effect),

3) anyone to subscribe to the content of their choosing (no longer spend time revisiting sites, rather site updates can visit you),

4) anyone to participate in content (the ability to add comments right there or, via links, from ones own blog makes content participatory and open) and most importantly

5) for machines, or algorithms deployed by machines,

a) to understand,

b) to index,

c) to organize,

d) to data- mine and

e) to offer humans lots of ‘management of information solutions’ including, eventually, complete customization of their chosen information.