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

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.