Awakened Voice

Useful But Doomed Web Services

Rob Safuto — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:13:37 +0000

There are a number of web based services that I use on a daily basis that I find to be very useful. I use FriendFeed to keep track of the postings from people who I find interesting. I’ve been using Seesmic Desktop recently to keep track of activity on Facebook and Twitter. I also use Google Reader to keep track of news and blog posts via their RSS feeds.

All of these services have a certain level of importance to me but I know that eventually some of them will be gone. The short answer as to why they will be gone is “money.” None of these services has any appreciable revenue streams relative to the costs to run them. As far as I know only Facebook (via advertising) and Twitter (via a small amount of advertising) have any sources of revenue. Seesmic Desktop, FriendFeed and Google Reader seem to exist on the power of previous investments alone.

The ability to earn revenue from customers is only one factor in the survival equation. Access to capital is another factor. As a part of Google, Google Reader has no capital worries. You could even argue that Google Reader does have a revenue stream because it allows the presentation of Adsense in RSS feeds which Google earns revenue from. Facebook also has access to substantial capital due to the sheer size and growth potential of their service. Even so I think that there’s about a 10% chance that Facebook fails at some time during the next five years. Even as the growth of Facebook makes the service more valuable the cost of running the service grows as well.

Twitter, FriendFeed and Seesmic are in a much less enviable position. Much has been made of Twitter’s growth in recent months. It’s true that Twitter’s traffic numbers have exploded but who really knows what traffic and registered users are worth these days? Traffic and users are certainly not worth what they were two years ago when cash was flowing freely into the Web 2.0 space. Given the buzz around Twitter I think that they could be able to raise more capital if they needed to. Then again, each time Twitter (and Facebook for that matter) raises capital they dilute earlier investors and shareholders. That can’t sit well with employees who are banking on a big payday at the end of the rainbow. Heavy users of the service are the ones who need to be concerned though. A lot of social marketing campaigns and 3rd party application developers are counting on the success of Twitter. Twitters lack of revenue after two plus years in the marketplace should worry these folks. I think there’s a 25% chance that Twitter fails during the next five years.

FriendFeed and Seesmic are in the most trouble. FriendFeed is a service that is useful for heavy web publishers and the people who follow them. But how many people are heavy web publishers? It’s a very small slice of the web publishing market. For every Scobleizer there are thousands of casual publishers who can make do with the functionality offered by Facebook. I also think that followers on FriendFeed are more likely to be “friends” in that special web 2.0 category as opposed to real friends and family that people are connected to on Facebook. So while FriendFeed has value that value exists in a deep niche of web users. I don’t think advertising will work well with the users on FriendFeed. So FriendFeed will either have to start charging for something (an iPhone app maybe?) or be sold to someone with deeper pockets in order to make the service work in the long run. As such I feel that there’s at least a 50% chance that FriendFeed fails within the next two years.

Seesmic has the toughest road ahead. The core Seesmic video conversation service had a lot of early buzz but that buzz has since died down. The fact is that most people are not prolific publishers with video. And it’s also a fact that video is expensive to store and stream. So at some point you either have to charge for the video service or you need to integrate large amounts of advertising. Seesmic has done neither. Seesmic is also the only startup service in this list that has done layoffs. The Seesmic Desktop application has increased interest in the company. How does Seesmic capitalize on a free desktop application? The only two methods are advertisements and charging for the software. It’s hard to charge when competitors (such as TweetDeck) exist and would probably continue to offer their application for free. There’s no loyalty in Web 2.0 land. Most people would defect to a new tool rather than pay. Advertising might bring in some revenue but would probably cause people to switch services if the other comparable service is not inserting ads into the stream. It’s a tough situation. So unless Seesmic gets bought out I think there’s a 75% chance that they fail within the next two years.

The possibility of the failure of a web service where I publish or store information is something that I consider when determining how much time to invest on that service. Of all the services on this list the one that poses the most risk to myself is Facebook. FriendFeed is mostly an aggregator of things I publish elsewhere. Twitter is a place where I publish links and short messages but I don’t consider the content I post there to be particularly important. Seesmic desktop is a tool that helps me watch activity and can be easily replaced. I use Google Reader to share and comment on news and blog posts but I also think that there’s no chance that Reader is going away anytime soon.

I take steps to mitigate my personal risk by not putting too much effort into any one service. I have the most exposure to a Facebook failure but I also limit the amount of things that I publish there. I don’t rely on any single service to promote the myself, build my network or socialize. I’ve got my own domains running my own versions of web applications that act as the cornerstone of my presence on the internet. I see many people (and even businesses now) that increasingly rely on some of the services mentioned in this post (and others with similar risks) to build and maintain their presence on the internet. To them I say beware. Some of these services are doomed and if you rely on them too much you stand to lose a lot when they fail.

Web 2.0 Needs A Real Economy

Rob Safuto — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:38:50 +0000

Do you remember that old Toys R’ Us jingle? “I don’t wanna grow up. I’m a Toys R’ Us kid…” Lately I’ve been hearing that in my head but with slightly different lyrics. “I don’t wanna grow up. I’m a Web 2.0 kid…” It’s time to grow up Web 2.0 kids. It’s time to go out an actually earn some revenue from paying customers. It’s a big step I know but failing to take this step means you’ll be living in your parents house forever, with mom doing the laundry and dad giving you dirty looks each time you head to the pub for a pint.

I know that the Web 2.0 hipsters don’t actually live with mom and dad. Well maybe some do. Most are living in lofts in Williamsburgh or cramped apartments in whatever hip sections (the Mission District?) there are in the San Francisco area. And instead of mom and dad you’re being scrutinized by your venture capitalist investors or (even worse) the friends and family who emptied their bank accounts hoping for a shot a internet millions. Stop the insanity and start generating a return on their investments now.

Who Funds Web Based Services?

I think that the general understanding of the economics of doing business via the web has been distorted over the past few years. When the dot com bubble burst back in 2000, earning revenue via web based services seemed like the sensible thing to do. The door to public investment dollars closed tight. After a few years private investments began to flow back in to the internet space. All it took was a couple of high profile acquisitions of web companies (like Google’s acquisition of Blogger in 2003) to start a new gold rush.

The dot com bust had dashed the dreams of many a big thinker who hoped to take an idea with little prospect of revenue and turn it into a windfall. Now the prospect of initial private investment and a later acquisition emboldened them once again. Ditto with the VCs. Once again a genuine path to a profitable exit existed.

To a large extent the current Web 2.0 phase has been funded by tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo! These companies are like the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of the internet industry. They sat there waiting to buy or heavily invest in fledgling companies (like Flickr, Delicious, Jaiku, YouTube, Facebook, Audible and more) to add to their portfolios. The problem is that these internet giants don’t have the same appetite for acquisitions anymore. So even though venture capitalists have been funding internet companies they have been emboldened by the expectation that the bigger fish will come along and swallow them up.

Another phenomenon certainly added to the pool of capital available to intrepid internet entrepreneurs. Former Google employees whose bank accounts were bursting due to Google’s fantastic stock price gains left the company to become venture capitalists or start internet companies (like FriendFeed, Twitter and Howcast) of their own.

So venture investments lead to companies being acquired which then creates more investors who either create their own web services or invest in others, which increases the demand for more internet services which provides generous incentive for would be internet gazillionaires who want their piece the pie. Got it?

Who Gains From This Economy?

It works much like a good ole pyramid scheme. Those who get in early have the highest chances of cashing out big. The venture capital deals are structured so that the investors are very protected and have the first crack at any capital generated by an acquistion. So the VCs certainly have gained over the last few years.

Companies that offer services to these fledgling web companies also gain as well. It seems like every web company that has popped up over the last couple of years has relied on Amazon Web Services to power their infrastructure. And Google Adsense has become the default revenue source for many Web 2.0 services.

The rush of new web services has also given way to a monetized tech blog phenomenon as people seek to find a guide to the shiny new services and inside information on the deals that may or may not occur. Sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, Engadget, Alley Insider and many others have grown from the blog category into revenue generating digital publications, read by hundreds of thousands, and supported by fledgling web services who either pay for advertising or supply juicy information. It’s a real circle of life folks.

What’s Changing?

A lot is changing. You see, the financial world has it’s own circle of life. And no matter where you touch the circle you see changes. For example, I’m sure that their are lots of people in Silicon Valley whose wealth was derived in part from real estate. Some took home equity loans in order to invest in venture funds. Some sold homes for outrageous gains and that provided capital to invest in (or start) web companies. Now that the real estate markets have collapsed those folks are hurting bad right now if their investments haven’t already cashed out. In the past these people could go to the banks to get money to tide them over but the banks have crashed too. Because of this situation the traditional tech fund investors are much less likely to invest. That’s dead end number one.

Because people have been hurt in real estate and don’t have the stomach for investing many stocks have fallen sharply over the past year. And the fall in stock price has caused all manner of debt tied to company valuations to come due. So most big internet players have to focus on cutting back to shore up their balance sheets. That means no paying $800 million for the hot social network of the week. The big internet players have put the brakes on acquisitions. That’s dead end number two.

The people who worked for big internet companies, especially Google, could count on big bonuses and payoffs when stock options mature. They could also count on being wooed by venture capitialists to run companies who need people with some sort of a big interent history. Since many of the early people have left these companies, those people left behind have less professional cache and less financial incentive to depart and invest in a risky venture. Strike three, you’re out.

Moving To A Real Web Economy

It seems to me that all signals point to the need for existing and future internet companies to rely on something other than investment or a big name executive to help create a sustaining business. The name of the game is now revenue. Web companies that have sources of revenue other than advertising will be attractive investments in a world where investment dollars are limited. Likewise revenue generating web companies will be more attractive to the big internet companies who are seeking to add to the bottom line.

A real and sustaining web economy can be created when web services routinely sell something of value to customers who are willing to paying for the products and services delivered. Such an economy requires that investors and entrepreneurs develop a long-term attitude towards web businesses. Those who attempt to flip companies that rely on a free or advertising based business model will often find themselves on the losing end of the proposition, running out of capital with no additional sources of funding available.

Don’t Fight What’s Necessary

Companies are already starting to make the move. Sprout Builder announced this week that they would be charging a fee for their previously free widget creation and delivery services. Tech bloggers began to cry and complain about the change calling the news “sad” and a “tragedy” that threatens the “democratization” of media. To the bellyachers I say this. The current model doesn’t work. If an educational institution or non-profit organization doesn’t have the budget to pay $15 per month then there are larger issues at play.

Sprout Builder is certainly not alone in their desire to get involved in the new web economy. Brian Gardner announced that he would be moving all of his Revolution 2 WordPress themes to a paid model. Many others will follow the lead of Sprout and Revolution 2 in 2009. Those who attempt to sustain the free model will falter.

In order for a true, sustainable web economy to exist people must learn to pay for services and web companies need to get in the habit of creating quality services that people are willing to pay for. If that doesn’t happen then we should all learn to live with an endless stream of mildly useful services that move into and out of existence at an ever quickening pace. That’s not a future that I would like to see.

The Jingle

Let’s Kill The Word Startup In 2009

Rob Safuto — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:27:04 +0000

Might be nice to start the new year with a rant on one of my pet peeves. You may or may not think so but here goes. I’m really done with people using the word “startup” to describe small businesses that are involved in the tech space. Social media is chock full of startups. I think the idea of calling something a startup instead of calling it what it really is, which is a small business or maybe a fledgling venture, is based in some kind of elitist mentality. I also think that it helps to breed a culture that inherently leads many of these ventures to fail.

Setting A Low Bar

The concept of the startup has set a really low bar for businesses. Anyone who throws up a web page feels like they have the right to call themselves a startup and thereby receive adoration as the founder (or even worse, CEO) of a startup. Okay, so you started a website. That’s not a business, that’s a website. Try again please. Take it further. Offer a service that people just might be willing to pay for. The low bar that has been set in the world of the web for what constitutes a real business serves only to marginalize those web based services that are actually transacting business or in the words of a person with common sense, making money.

Spending Too Much Money

Startups are notorious for their free spending ways. Big launch parties and big booths (and sometimes big parties) at trade conferences are standard fare in the world of the startup. It’s time that these small business owners learned about fiscal responsibility. In the mind of the person with common sense you start with a small amount of money and see if you can build and find an customer base for something of value. You then strategically expend capital as you earn revenue. In the startup world you spend money to make an impression so that you can look bigger and more successful than you are. People also spend money to feed their egos. Definitely plenty of those in startup land. Some people want to say, “Hey look, we’re hosting the Frog-haus at such and such show.” Well that worked out well in the end.

Spinning Rather Than Serving

It seems to me that many startups spend a disproportionate amount of their time spinning tales about how great they are (via overpaid PR people, blogs and social networks) and what great things they’re launching. They don’t realize that they exist to provide a service that offers something of value to people. Or maybe they do realize it and just can’t deliver on the solutions that they claim to be offering people. Either way, there’s a lot of talk and very little action. Common sense dictates that you will be much better off if you spend ninety percent of the time building something exceptional and ten percent of the time talking about what you’ve built. Unfortunately in startup land the percentages are typically reversed.

Refusing To Sell A Product

Typical startups hold up a lack of revenue as a badge of honor. The excuse is that they want to focus on traffic growth. That’s just an excuse though. The real reason they’re not selling anything is that they know they’re not offering anything that people are willing to pay for. Hence their startup constitutes a hobby and not a business. I think that there’s also a fear of failure that indicates a lack of confidence in what they’re doing. They’re paralyzed by the prospect of a product that doesn’t sell well enough. After all, they’re so cool right now they don’t want to take the chance of being considered less cool. The ultimate hope is that they will be purchased. This strategy rarely works. Common sense dictates that businesses are started based on something that you sell to a customer. So if no one is paying then you’re not really a business.

B.S. Titles

Every swinging John or Jane who hires a coder and launches a website feels like they have the right to call themselves a CEO. Their best friends become the CMO and some guy who gave them $5k to hire an offshore developer becomes CFO or COO. Allowing people to occupy these titles creates an inflated sense of worth and most definitely quite a bit of ego in web ventures. I don’t know exactly what draws the line between being able to be called a C-level officer or not. I do know that there’s no such thing as a CEO in a business with no revenue. I also know that real C-level officers have built (or inherited) a substantial organization. So the marketing flack of a five person web service can choose to call themselves a CMO but they’re just deluding themselves and insulting everyone they meet by doing so. C-level corporate titles should be properly earned. The idea that you can take a shortcut to knowledge, wisdom and business prowess by granting yourself one of those titles is silly. Real entrepreneurs know that skill and confidence is developed via real experiences (including failures) and accomplishment,not b.s. titles.

Time For A Shift

In 2008 many small companies saw difficult economic times and I’d like to see people doing better in 2009. I would also like to see the quality of services on the web improve. I think that the thing that will help people in the world of startups the most in 2009 is to leave that world behind. In leaving the fantasy world of venti lattes and VCs behind these individuals can join the world of people who are genuine entrepreneurs seeking to build long-term businesses instead of creating something that they can flip in six months to one of the big internet or media companies. It wouldn’t hurt to add a bit of humility to the equation either.

Final Thought

The boom is over folks. It’s time to change for the better and come back to reality.

Podango Fails But Podcasting Is Strong

Rob Safuto — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:41:29 +0000

It looks as though podcast hosting service and directory Podango will soon go the way of the dinosaurs. Early this morning after I read Michael Geoghegan’s post that mentioned a possible failure. Perhaps these two items foretold the impending disaster. They have probably been bleeding capital since the very beginning.

Podango joins an ever growing list of companies failing to build sustainable businesses around podcasting. Audible tried premium DRM infused hosting via their Wordcast service and failed. Yahoo! tried the directory format with Yahoo! Podcasts and failed. PodTech tried to build a network of advertising supported content and failed. Evan Williams of Blogger.com fame failed to gain traction with a free podcast hosting service and directory call Odeo. Podcasting Godfather Adam Curry has struggled to build a sustainable business with the free podcast host and social network formerly known as Podshow.

Damn! Podcasting is a tough business. Not really. Business is a tough business. Podcasting is a technology to some. It’s a genre of media to others. I like to think of the combination of the technology and the genre of media combined as an independent production movement that is changing media. So while individual businesses may fail podcasting as a technology, genre and movement is very very strong.

Please go take a look at the iTunes podcast directory that is home to over 100 thousand podcast channels. In there you’ll find channels from independent producers like me alongside just about every major media outlet and entertainment company. Headover to Google and type in “anything podcast” and see what comes up. More often than not you’re find something that’s right up your alley. So I hate to disappoint the naysayers but podcasting is very strong.

Begin rant. Many of the businesses built around podcasting have failed to gain traction because they failed to understand the market or follow basic fundamentals of business. I think it’s always a good idea to start small, with little funding and build a business organically. The ventures mentioned in this post all did the opposite. They started with funding and then tried to build a business from there. The “build from the top down” approach practiced by many “start up” type companies, especially ones from Silicon (or Silly Con) Valley is a very risky one. It’s certainly a sexy approach. People get to call themselves CEOs, CFOs and CMOs. They attend the latest conferences and throw big parties. Enjoy it while it lasts because it never does. End rant.

There are many companies that continue to survive while providing services that podcasters will want to utilize to publish or enhance their shows.

Blip.tv is a high quality video hosting site that has supported iTunes feeds and podcast downloads since their early days. Blip relies on a combination of “pro” account fees and advertising revenue to pay the bills.
Blubrry (run by RawVoice) is a podcast directory/hosting site that also offers media statistics. They generate revenue via hosting and premium statistics products as well as advertising arrangements.
Podbean is a podcast directory that also offers publishing and hosting of media. Podbean generates revenue from paid hosting services.
Libsyn is a podcast publishing and hosting service that has been around since the early days of podcasting. Libsyn generates revenue from paid

The common denominator of all the services mentioned above is that they offer paid services that add value to the podcasting (or media publishing if you like) experience. They may not all survive but for now they have outlasted much bigger players in the space. Perhaps they’re also creative with their budgeting, spending like a small business instead of a Fortune 500 company. Meanwhile the common denominator of the companies that have struggled seems to be insisting on having advertising as the main (and sometimes sole) source of revenue.

Earlier this year I offered some advice to podcasting companies. Take a look at it (particularly item #4) and see if it doesn’t make sense today.

In Michael’s post he asks a very imporant question. Who’s next? I think that anyone who relies on a solely advertising based revenue model could be next. Especially those companies that offer free media hosting and attempt to recover the cost (and maybe make a profit?) via ad revenue. Mevio (formerly PodShow), TalkShoe and BlogTalkRadio come to mind as companies in the space who fit that profile. I hope they all can find a way to succeed but I think it’s likely that one or more of these companies will fail in 2009.

The Web Identity Wars Are Heating Up

Rob Safuto — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:36:28 +0000

Lots of buzz happening this week with both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect going live. Lots of bloggers have been writing about these launches and looking at it as if this is merely a battle between Facebook and Google. There’s definitely an element of Facebook vs. Google happening but there are many other smaller players involved in this tussle as well.

From where I’m sitting I see a larger battle between services that need to get their functionality onto blogs in order to either survive or at least continue growing their user base at a very healthy rate. Facebook and Google obviously fall into the latter category. Many other smaller “identity” type services have been available to web publishers long before Google and Facebook lumbered onto the scene with their offerings this week.

A Slew Of Players

Services like Disqus, Intense Debate and CoComment want to help web publishers enhance site conversations and build community via enhanced commenting features that include the ability for users to create profiles. Seesmic provides enhancements to comments by allowing video discussions. Gravatar offers simpler functionality by providing a traveling profile picture (also known as an avatar) that pops up on sites that have their plugin installed.

MyBlogLog has been on the scene for awhile as well. You’ve probably seen their sidebar widget (pictured at left below) on a few blogs. The widget allows site publishers to create something of a community by allowing visitors to “join” sites and have a discoverable profile and avatar. Yahoo! purchased MyBlogLog for $10 million almost two years ago. So Yahoo is in the game too.

Coincidentally (or likely not) the new Google Friend Connect features a “member” widget (pictured at right below) that looks very similar to the MyBlogLog widget. Wait a minute. Maybe it’s really Google vs. Yahoo. The again you can sign in to the Friend Connect service with a Yahoo ID so they seem to be playing nice with one another.

Given Google’s recent cozying up to Yahoo it seems to be Facebook against everyone else. But Microsoft has an investment in Facebook of a couple of hundred million dollars. So perhaps this is really Google/Yahoo vs. Facebook/Microsoft. But what are they all fighting for? They’re fighting for users.

The End Game

The players in this game know that they will have a much easier time capturing large numbers of users if they can get publishers to buy into their identity (or profile) based services instead of adopting the identity services offered by their competitors. Both Facebook and Google want their services to be the center of a user’s world so that user will continue to bring their friends, family and website visitors into the fold.

There’s still a strong Google vs. Facebook element to this whole scenario. Facebook started out as a social network that now wants its users to utilize their service as a primary means of communication. Google started out as an email service that now wants users to utilize their service like a social network. So we have to services moving in opposite directions and colliding in the middle. But don’t forget Yahoo, Microsoft and MySpace either.

What about the small players I mentioned earlier? I recently heard someone say something like, “When elephants fight the grass gets trampled.” Most of the small players that want to find their way onto publisher websites will get trampled. Maybe one or two will get acquired by the large players.

What’s The Difference?

Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect seem to have the same goal of providing an identity service to publishers but are quite different in how they go about it. Google allows publishers to embed a series of widgets (Google calls them gadgets) that can be embedded into a website. Google’s member widgets currently offer basic membership and profile functionality to sites. Google Friend Connect also has a widget for ratings and a widget for comments.

Facebook Connect (pictured at left) integrates with the existing comment system of a site so that people can comment with their Facebook identity and also share their comments on their Facebook news feed. So while Google tries to add features plus identity Facebook really just adds identity.

Both services offer sharing options, Facebook via their newsfeed sharing and Google via an “invite” link on their members widget. Come to think of it, Google’s service also takes a whack at universal sharing services such as Add This and Share This too. JS-Kit should keep their eye on Google as well.

Friend Connect In Action

Friend Connect piqued my curiosity so I recorded a video screencast earlier today showing how to implement the members widget on a WordPress blog. You can see the full size version at the Awakened Voice Learning Center.

What Do Users Do?

Publishers will have to make a decision about the tools that they decide to integrate with their sites. Some will take an all (or most) of the above approach and cram the different services into their sites. There are some risks to that approach though. Use of multiple identity services can confuse and possibly drive away new users. And too many widgets on a site are risky in terms of the performance impact. If one of the services get slow (or goes down) it is likely to affect every publisher unless the widgets somehow degrade gracefully.

Some publishers are likely to draw a line and pick a favorite service and run with it. If they choose the wrong side those publishers could miss an opportunity to gain the users of the more popular service. Some publishers will keep doing what they’ve been doing which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Everyone else needs to decide whether or not they buy in to the profile services offered by these many vendors. I happen to have a Gravatar, a Google Profile and a Facebook profile. I don’t know how much I will use my Google profile or Facebook profile when I interact with the sites that support their respective services. I’ll write more about it later to let you know how I think it’s all turning out.

Don’t Get Fooled Again

Rob Safuto — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:58:05 +0000

A couple of weeks ago a good friend of mine asked me the question, “What’s going on with podcasting?” My reply was something like, “How the hell do I know?” He was a bit surprised because he knows that I’ve been deep into the podcasting game since early in 2005. Truth be told I still keep an eye on things in the space but i’m not the oracle of podcasting information that I once was.

I decided that my friend’s question was worth answering but didn’t give myself any time frame for looking around and posting. I’ve got lots of other stuff going on including helping my wife out with our second child and my first semester of graduate school which has taken more of my leisure time than I expected it would. In any case I was doing some research and saw a tidbit today that really got my Irish (well Italian actually) up.

I cruised over to the Blogger and Podcaster Magazine website to see if they were still alive and I was greeted with the following banner image.

My first reaction was something akin to, “Oh jeez, what’s this?” It’s unfortunate that I become accustomed to dealing with snake oil salesmen when it comes to new media but sorry there are a lot of them out there. Here I see a graphic that in a couple of thousand pixels promises full-time income, health care and company stock. It looked fishy to me so I delved in further to see what the deal is.

Blogger & Podcaster have teamed up with three (or maybe two) other social media type websites to offer what I mentioned above plus promotion plus “discounts and freebies.” I look at the companies involved and not one strikes me as very successful at what they are doing. Podcast Pickle has been around a long time as a directory and forum but has not seen any appreciable growth. Fuel My Blog pitches itself as a “spam free community exclusive to bloggers.” I had never heard of it myself by their blog has 333 Feedburner readers so who am I to judge?

Then there’s Social Rank. I hope you have better luck with their site link than I did because it went to an error page for me. I tried the Social Rank blog too. No luck there either since the blog has been deleted. That could be a problem since the Social Rank “search engine” is supposed to help serve up promotion “to millions each month.” That’s not the worst of it. Judging by the Google Trends numbers at left this band of merry bloggers and podcasters can’t even draw tens of thousands of people each month to their sites. Perhaps they should ask Podcast Alley, which has more traffic than the other sites but is not part of the team.

The thing begins to smell more fishy that the old Fulton Fish Market at 4AM. I decided to Google the B&P Media Network’s “BPMN’s First Member - Self-Made Billionaire Bill Bartmann.” According to Fortune Magazine Bill Bartmann was a billionaire on paper, which means he wasn’t a billionaire. He’s really a guy who’s a good salesman that seems to excel at building paper assets and then losing them all. Now he’s a motivational speaker type looking to piece a career back together.

Evidently Bill is going to lead the new media revolution and help all of us little bloggers and podcasters rise up to earn a six-figure income, have health care and even a shot at being a billionaire ourselves. In fact BPMN’s pitch for their venture promises to solve all of the problems for the little guys and gals in new media. They’ll help you build an audience. They’ll help you make money. They’ll help you get health care. They’ll get you equity. They’ll get you access to mainstream media. The list of promises goes on and on.

I’ve said it to people in the podcasting and new media space many times before and I’ll say it again. Stay the heck away from things like this. Joining “networks” does nothing for you. The multi-level-marketing hucksters are simply making another run at the new media space. They want you to go to work for them, bring them your audience and help their failing websites and publications to survive. They’re not going to get you health care, they’re not going to make you rich via stock in a company worth nothing. You can do those things for yourself. Whether or not you can do it with blogging and podcasting remains to be seen.

What these folks will do is distract you from building something by yourself and for yourself. I’ve seen all the promises before. Remember Quit Your Day Job from Podshow? Life and business does not work the way these people say it does. You work hard for yourself. You take the time to learn. You try to do better. It’s hard. Nothing’s guaranteed. These people trying to sell “success” as a secret system with a code just waiting to be cracked are full of it. And that’s that.

Take Note Of This Video Player

Rob Safuto — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:46:20 +0000

Earlier this year I posted about flash players worth checking out for including streaming media on your website. On of the players I mentioned was the JW FLV Media Player which I happen to use extensively myself. In the interim months since that post there have been several updates to the JW player that are worth noting, especially for those who publish video on the net and want a flexible, configurable video player that can also reflect the brand of a show.

Support For H.264 Video

This is a big deal because it means the player now supports streaming iPod and iPhone compatible videos that have the .M4V file extension. So video podcasters can use the player to link directly to their source file and deliver the same video quality via the web that they do when the file is downloaded.

Support For YouTube Videos

The player can now play YouTube videos and also playlists using the YouTube API.

Support For WMV Video and WMA Audio

The JW WMV Media Player is a separate player that leverages Silverlight technology from Microsoft. I know that WMV is rarely the format of choice for online video publishing but there may be some situations where the Windows format is necessary. In that case check the WMV version of the player out.

Plugins and Themes

This is a big deal. Jeroen’s company LongTail Video has created an AddOn gallery that contains a variety of player themes and add-on functionality. I haven’t done anything with the themes (or skins) yet but I have checked out some of the plugins and they are very useful including Viral, Rate It, Tip Jar and Google Analytics.

Some of the features enabled by the plugins (like Viral) are available if you use a third party video hosting service like YouTube or Blip.tv but some (like Tip Jar) aren’t. And the JW player has the added benefit of being a non-branded “white label” solution. In fact the JW Player makes it pretty easy to stamp your own brand on the player including adding logos and changing the player colors. See the JW Configuration Wizard for some examples.

Since anyone can build add-ons for the player I think it’s very likely that we’ll see the list of choices expand, making the JW FLV Media Player and even more valuable resource to web video producers as time goes on.

CMS Integration

In addition to the plugins and themes LongTail Video is offering up a list of “modules” that provide integration with various Content Management Systems including Wordpress, Drupal and Joomla. These modules are worth checking out if you plan to build a white label video site on one of these platforms.

Player Example

To give you an idea of how the player looks if you don’t know already I’ve embedded one of my videos from another site. This particular player is using H.264 streaming, the Viral plugin along with a custom background image. You’ll also notice that I’ve taken advantage of a flash variable that adds a link icon on the player that links back to the original video site.

Web Companies Need To Embrace Business Fundamentals

Rob Safuto — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 16:56:22 +0000

Everyone needs to grow up some time. And it’s high time that some web companies grow up and begin to embrace the fundamentals of business. If they don’t they will be gone. Their many URLs will find their way to the junkyard along with the thousands that visited the old 404 in the sky after the first dot-com (or was that dot-bomb?) bust.

The first step to getting help is to admit that a problem exists. Listen to CEOs and venture capitalists today and you’ll hear the same stubborn tones that you heard in the pre-collapse days of web 1.0 busts like WebVan and Kozmo.com.

Fred Wilson dishes spin about Twitter, ““It’s like the stupidest question in the world: How’s Twitter going to make money?,” said Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, another investor. “It’s like ‘How was Google going to make money?’” Comparing Twitter to Google, even early days Google, may be the stupidest statement in the world.

Jason Calacanis professes on his mailing list, “”We can now operate past 2012 even if we never make any advertising revenue, and truth be told, building advertising-based companies is my specialty…” All of a sudden past performance is a guarantee of future results?

The CEO of Break.com walks the tightrope when he tells CNET, “”Essentially, we are profitable…” after announcing layoffs. Not to web company CEOs everywhere. There’s no “essentially” in the profitable equation. You either generate more revenue than you spend or you don’t.

It’s time for a reality check folks. Web businesses need to find other ways to earn revenue besides advertising, loans and venture capital. Over the past several years many companies heralded their traffic as evidence of success. Traffic to a site may be worth something to advertisers but as times get tougher display ads are worth less and less every day. These days advertisers will value converted customers much higher than they will clicks from a particular site. So in order for a web business to have a successful advertising based business model they need to have tons of traffic and very low overhead. Rarely do revenue poor web startups meet both of those criteria.

I don’t know that the established web properties who’ve already spent millions in venture capital money can be saved. People at these companies get accustomed to having plenty of money available and when they start cutting staff and other budget items those who are left end up pretty demoralized. That demoralization usually ends up affecting the business in a way that dooms prospects for the future.

A new generation of web startups needs to embrace the following fundamentals if they want to have a chance at success during any market conditions.

Start very small. Most web based business ideas can benefit from a pilot period where the business is rolled out quietly and with limited features. Such an approach provides runway for a company to assess the reaction of the marketplace and make adjustments before building a much larger product.
Spend very little money to start. There’s an inverse relationship between the amount of capital available and the amount of creativity in just about any business. If you start with $5,000 or less you will challenge yourself to find creative solutions that you would otherwise pay big money to discover.
Grow the business organically. Start by reaching out to friends and family. Then reach out to personal contacts that you’ve made online. Use blogs, podcasts, social networks, Flickr and YouTube to build a legion of loyal followers. Your other option is to pay a public relations company to help get you attention in the press and the mainstream blogosphere. The fact is that if your idea is a good one that’s well executed you can probably get the same kind of attention doing it for yourself.
Give the business time to grow. Patience is a virtue even in web startups. If you don’t have patience then perhaps you should join a company that’s already doing well. Of course, the rewards will be much less gratifying and you’ll have less control over your own destiny.
Have something to sell on day one. I’m all for free versions of a service. Giving away free samples is a technique as old as the idea of selling. Your business will be much more attractive to potential investors if you have something you can charge money for. Your ability to sell whatever that something is will tell you much about either the value of the product or your selling abilities.
Profit is a good thing. A million web companies have tried the approach of taking a loss on every sale while trying to make it up via volume. Hint: When you take a loss on every sale a larger volume of sales pushes the company closer to extinction.

There are more points to make but I think that the ones above are a good start. I know that the approach offered in this post is not sexy or exciting. But the truth is that any good business owner knows that it is better to have a strong, profitable and boring business than a sexy, debt-ridden and cash poor business. You just have to ask yourself which type of business you think will really grow and prosper in the long run.

Pros And Cons Of Google Chrome

Rob Safuto — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:12:14 +0000

I’ve been using the Google Chrome web browser as my primary browser at home since shortly after it was released. I had previously been using Firefox as my primary browser but I wanted to see what the new browser from Google had to offer.

Having given it a bit of time I wanted to list some pros and cons for the benefit of others who may have considered making the switch.

Pros

Quick performance with a very clean interface
Nice thumbnail view of frequently visited sites when opening a tab
Intelligent address bar that can find parts of a web address just by typing in a word
Fast Google search within address bar
A crash within a tab doesn’t crash the browser

Cons

No RSS autodiscovery
No add-ons to extend functionality
Display of some website elements not consistent with what I’ve seen in Firefox
Doesn’t integrate with Google Bookmarks

Chrome vs. Firefox

Firefox is still the much better browser. The rich suite of Firefox add-ons is what makes the difference.I’ve become so accustomed to the add-ons in Firefox that I feel web disabled when working in a browser that doesn’t have similar functionality. It’s also very surprising that Chrome does not allow you to utilize Google Bookmarks as the bookmarking manager out of the box. Firefox does allow this via the GMarks add-on.

I like the address bar in Google Chrome but there’s also very similar functionality in Firefox via the Smart Location (or “Awesome”) bar. After making the comparison I think that the Chrome’s biggest advantage lies in the fact that each tab is isolated from the entire application which means that the crash of a single tab doesn’t crash all of the tabs.

Making Chrome Better

I don’t know if Google is going to try and open up the development of Chrome to allow developer add-ons ala Firefox. I think that would help to improve the overall utility of the browser. Would developers show up? One thing that Google can do is to improve integration with Google products like Gmail, Bookmarks, Reader and Talk. These products have an ever expanding user base and many people would likely be pleased with a browser that offers a “one stop shop” for using the most popular Google services.

Goodbye Netflix Hello Redbox

Rob Safuto — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:59:10 +0000

It’s never easy to end a relationship that lasts almost nine years but sometimes the move is a necessary one. I joined Netflix back in December 1999 when the service was still very young. I spent a lot of time traveling then and my newest laptop had a DVD player built into it. I was watching lots of movies as I flew all over North America to visit my clients in the energy industry.

I really loved the convenience and flexibility that Netflix afforded, which was a stark contrast to other movie rental options at the time. I paid my flat monthly fee and could return movies when I liked. I didn’t want to deal with going to a video store either. It was a perfect match…for awhile.

Times change and so do people’s habits. The first major change for me came when daughter #1 arrived in June of 2005. Since then I’ve spent less time watching the DVDs I rented from Netflix. I found myself holding movies for weeks at a time. Sometimes I would return a movie without ever watching it. Still, I kept paying the $18 a month for my account.

My second daughter arrived in June of this year just before we were planning to move. I decided to take stock of everything including our family budget. I looked at Netflix and decided that $18 a month isn’t much but when combined with some other non-necessities cancelling Netflix could help push my new budget savings to over $200 a month. So I said goodbye to Netflix and cancelled my account.

Thankfully the process of cancelling my Netflix account was a simple one. No AOL style BS. You can cancel online with the requirement that you return all the movies you have out right away.

My original plan for watching DVD movie releases at home relied on the digital versions via Time Warner Cable. Standard definition new releases rent for $2.99 for a 24 hour period and high definition new releases go for $4.99. I hadn’t purchased any digital rentals when I was told of Redbox.

I mentioned my digital rental plan to a co-worker who immediately suggested Redbox. Redbox places DVD rental machines at strategic locations like McDonalds or at supermarkets. I did a local search on the Redbox website and found nine boxes located within five miles of my house. The closest box is half a mile away.

I’ve made two rentals so far and here’s what I like about the service.

No membership fees. You only pay for what you rent.
Movies are reserved online.
Movies have to be picked up at the box where they are available but can be returned to another box if it’s more convenient.
Rentals are $1 per night and I have until 9PM the next day to return a movie I rented today.
Receipts for movie reservations are emailed as well as confirmations that the disc was returned.
Many of the boxes are outside so pickups and returns can happen almost anytime.

As you can see there are a lot of positives. There are a few negatives. If you forget to return a DVD you get charged $1 per day until you return it with charges capped at $25. At least they let you keep the movie if that happens. Selection is limited to the most popular films. And if a film is in the Redbox catalog you may have to get it at a location that is further away from the one you usually go to.

There are a couple of interesting things about the Redbox business model and how I found the service. Their model relies on a unique hybrid approach that leverages the web but also provides a point of purchase. You give up a little bit of the convenience and selection of Netflix in return for a low-cost pay as you go business model.

The other interesting point is that I didn’t hear anything about Redbox on the web prior to joining. I had seen the boxes before but rarely gave them a second look. This was a true word of mouth find. It’s an instructive point for social media startups who put all their eggs in one basket trying to gain the favor of leading tech bloggers. There’s people out there folks. Try to connect with them directly!

I can’t say that Redbox will ever be as large and successful as Netflix. The current traffic for Redbox.com is modest but growing nicely. What I do know is that people’s lifestyles and priorities change. Perhaps Netflix and other web based services can learn from that fact and start appealing to customer 2.0 instead of web 2.0.

Great Tool For Independent Musicians

Rob Safuto — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:28:17 +0000

A new piece of web software called Opentape looks to be a great tool for independent musicians who want to showcase and sell their music. Opentape provides a very simple mechanism for a musician to provide streaming or downloadable samples of their music on the web.A demo of a site built using Opentape can be found at http://opentape.fm/mixtape/.

Warning! Although the instructions for setting up Opentape are very simple you need to be just a bit web savvy to implement the software on your site. If I have time this coming weekend I’ll do a short screencast that shows what looks to be a very simple setup process.

When you check out the demo you will see that the resulting site is very basic since the current version of this software allows for minimal branding. You can change the color of the header and customize the text at the top of the page. If you’re looking for something more have no fear. A few intrepid souls have already jumped in to assist with hacks and add-ons to extend the system.

Brandon Partridge has created an add on (image at left) that allows users to add links to music stores, videos, events and lyrics. More add ons, enhancements and hacks can be discovered on the Opentape forum.

Many people seem to be using Opentape to host mixes with music from major label, or otherwise famous, recording artists. I think the independent and unknown musicians are the ones who can really benefit from software like this.

If you are a musician and this sort of thing interests you, also check out the Brad Sucks digital download store (BSDDS). BSDDS is free software that allows you to create a digital download store with storage on Amazon S3 and payments via PayPal.

Update: I’ve set up a sample track mix with songs from pal Brother Love’s latest cd at http://mix.musicbuggy.com/brotherlove.

Mad About Widgets

Rob Safuto — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:36:13 +0000

Over the past week I’ve gotten into widget development in a big way. For those of you not as geeky as me, widgets are mini-applications that you can copy and past into web pages. Widgets make all sorts of content and information portable. If this sort of thing interests you I recommend that you head over to Widgetbox and browse their gallery of widgets.

I produce a podcast about the New York Mets and also manage a companion social network. I’ve been thinking of different ways to make the content more portable and more social so I can continue to build my audience and community. I remembered Widgetbox from earlier adventures and decided to see what I could do with the platform. The short answer is this. You can do a lot with the Widgetbox platform.

Creating a customizable, embeddable widget from a blog is as simple as entering an RSS feed and filling out a few simple fields to indicate the title, description, sizing and colors. The widget below took me five minutes to create. Click here to see it if you’re reading in an RSS reader.

Cross site compatibility is one of the great features of the platform. When someone clicks that Get Widget button they can choose from embed codes that will work on Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Netvibes, iGoogle, Ning and many other popular websites. This is in addition to being able to paste into any site that will accept javascript or flash codes.

With Widgetbox you can go beyond just adding a blog RSS feed. I host my own flash audio player for my Mets podcast and have wanted to make it available for embedding everywhere. Widgetbox lets you do that. You can pass their interface flash embed codes, html or javascript, a web page or iGoogle gadget urls to make them into widgets.

In my case I passed in the embed code for my Amazin Moments Podcast Player. The interface then allowed me to adjust a few settings and make the player available as a flash or javascript embed. See the player below or click here.

Widgetbox also offers the option to help you turn your widget into a Facebook application. I decided to take them up on the offer and try it out. Their Facebook application wizard walks you through the process step-by-step, presenting the Facebook developer pages in an iFrame on the Widgetbox website. The process requires a bit of concentration but is definitely doable if you follow directions closely.

It took me about twenty minutes to complete my Amazin Moments Podcast Player on Facebook. Now anyone on Facebook can easily add my player to one of their pages. Facebook is a new promotion platform for me and it makes it much easier to be able to have the application as a tool for that promotion. It’s also important to note that no coding was required in order to create the application.

I’ve become a fast fan of this platform and am already plotting my next few widgets. You can go here to see the widgets I’ve created so far. I think the best way to get a feel for the system is to create an account and try making a few widgets yourself. It’s easy and it’s fun. If you try it out come on back and leave a comment about your thoughts on the Widgetbox platform.

Podcasting Guide Update

Rob Safuto — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:23:20 +0000

I recently updated the Beginner’s Guide To Podcasting that I’ve been maintaining for a couple of years now. Updates are a necessity for a document like this since the tools, services and communities related to podcasting are constantly changing.

This document is meant to help beginning podcast publishers. Feedback and suggestions on adding content are welcome from podcasting veterans. View on Scribd or download the pdf.

Beginners Guide To Podcasting - Upload a Document to Scribd

Nice Job WordPress

Rob Safuto — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:45:18 +0000

The folks behind the WordPress iPhone app deserve to be commended. They have created a simple and elegant tool that allows for posting to WordPress.com or standalone blogs. I used the app to write this post.

The ability to include links without HTML would be a welcome addition. You can include photos from your library though.

You can see a demo of this brand new app at iphone.wordpress.org.

What I Require From Readers Of My Content

Rob Safuto — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:17:39 +0000

Nothing. You are required to do nothing special when you read content I’ve published or shared. You don’t have to comment but you are welcome to comment if you feel moved to do so. You don’t have to share it, although I encourage you to share if you find the content to be interesting. If someone has shared my content on another site you are welcome to comment, “like” or otherwise express your opinion if that alternate site provides the tools to do so. I may not see any of that activity on another site. That’s fine with me if it’s fine with you.

I felt compelled to state my preferences after engaging in a discussion over on FriendFeed about the etiquette of ‘liking’ items shared on that site. I understand the need for people to desire that all feedback on their content remains centralized as much as possible. Mark Krynsky, the person who originated the discussion, is using the very nice FriendFeed Comments plugin for WordPress (as I am) and would like kudos, comments, etc from FriendFeed captured back to his original post. Hence Mark’s request, which you can view on FriendFeed.

I don’t mind Mark making the request. What rubs me a bit wrong is the suggestion that the technique Mark suggests for his content is a matter of proper etiquette when using FriendFeed. That’s where we disagree. The technique for finding and clicking the appropriate link may be a simple one, but it could also be inconvenient for the reader to take the extra time to do it. So I’m not going to place any type of onus on the reader to take such an action. I’m just glad that anyone would share/like/comment on my content anywhere. It just doesn’t matter to me whether or not other people can see that information when they come to my blog.

Where, when and how the discussion around web content occurs is in the control of the community. I’m fine with that.

Three Questions Your Site Should Answer

Rob Safuto — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:59:36 +0000

There are three questions that I ask when visiting the site of a new web-based service.

What service do you provide?
How does the service work?
What is going on?

How and if those questions are answered tells me a lot about the service.

The answer to question #1 should include a brief description of what problem the service solves or what makes the service unique. I prefer to be shown the answer to question #2 with either screenshots, a presentation or a video. In this day and age simply telling people what your service does is a real waste of time.

With respect to question #3, the presence and actual use of a blog tells me what kind of activity is occuring. If you’re looking for adoption and any level of trust I need to know that things are happening. Some services, like Mevio for instance, use blog technology to display press releases. That approach is a big fail. Be FUNI on your blog. Tell me what’s Fun, Unique, New or Interesting.

My Definition Of Social Media

Rob Safuto — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 13:46:53 +0000

The term social media is a ubiquitous one these days. But at the same time there are still many people who know the phrase but don’t really understand the meaning. A proper definition of social media does exist on Wikipedia. I find the definition that’s located on Wikipedia to be quite convoluted. My definition of social media is uncomplicated and based on common sense. My hope is that by sharing my definition of social media I can help clear up any misconceptions about the phrase.

Social Media is:

Media (audio, video, text, image) that is delivered via the web;
Media that is easily shareable;
Media that allows for feedback;
Media that allows for discussion.

Web Based

The media should have its own unique link (also known as a permalink) that points to a specific item of content. All major blogging systems (like Blogger, Typepad and Wordpress) and media sharing sites (like YouTube and Archive.org) offer permalinks as part of their standard functionality.

Shareable

The media should be easily shareable with links ( to sites like Digg, Del.icio.us or sending via email) that are prominently displayed to facilitate such sharing. Services like Add This and Share This make adding these options very simple. A link to an RSS feed to facilitate subscription is a key component of sharing as well.

Feedback

The media may have some sort of a basic feedback mechanism that allows the visitor the opportunity to indicate whether or not (or how much) they enjoy the content. This could be a star rating system or thumbs up/thumbs down feature. A service called JS-Kit makes it very easy to add ratings to your content. While feedback is a nice to have feature, its presence is not critical in defining media as social.

Discussion

The ability for visitors to add comments is a crucial element of any media you want to call social. Many publishers include a comment area directly beneath the content. In some cases the publisher may link each post to a separate forum area where the discussion takes place. All blog publishing systems offer the ability to include discussion. Some web services like Disqus, coComment and IntenseDebate aim to enhance the discussion functions associated with your content.

The Value Of The Social Media Herd

Rob Safuto — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:53:28 +0000

In my previous post in this series I attempted to define the social media herd. In this post I’ll share my thoughts on the true value of the herd to web based services. I think it makes sense to assess the situation from the perspective of where certain services sit on the food chain. A simple hierarchy of web based services looks like this to me.

Royalty - These sites have made it to the big time. They’ve been purchased for huge sums of money and enjoy tens of millions of users;
- Superstars - These sites are established, well capitalized (double digit millions or more) and enjoy a million or more users. They aspire to either go public or be purchased for hundreds of millions of dollars.
  - Upstarts - These sites are relatively new, have comparatively little funding (like single digit millions or less) and have user numbers that are anywhere from double digit thousands into six figures. They aspire to a steady increase in user base and additional rounds of funding.

How has the social media herd helped the companies that fit into each of these categories?

Royalty

MySpace - Not helped by the herd. MySpace got big and was purchased by News Corp. for $500 million dollars at a time when the herd’s leaders were completely focused on their own blogs.

YouTube - Not helped by the herd. Most only began to use YouTube in earnest after the billion dollar acquisition by Google in late 2006. Web movers and shakers still tend to prefer publishing on niche sites like Blip.tv, Viddler and Vimeo.

Flickr - Positive effect on the back end. The Flickr acquistion by Yahoo in 2005 occured before the herd had much effect anywhere. In the years since Flickr has remained the photo sharing service of choice by hardcore web enthusiasts. This loyalty has almost certainly kept wannabes like Zooomr and Google’s Picasa on the fringes of the space.

Superstars

Facebook - Not helped by the herd. Facebook would be considered royalty if the company wasn’t so incredibly leveraged. The herd moved to Facebook in earnest in early 2007 at a time when they already had millions of users. The myriad of discussion about Facebook certainly doesn’t hurt, but the distractions of newer services serve to mute the herd’s effectiveness when it comes to this social networking giant.

Digg - A very positive initial effect. The early adopter social media crowd (aka The Herd) jumped on board early, quickly turning the word Digg from a noun into a verb. The early support and enthusiasm helped Digg get the funding required to expand to appeal to a mass audience.

Twitter - A very positive effect. The herd lives and breathes Twitter. And although their level of funding (compared to Facebook) and user base (compared to both Digg and Facebook) is small, Twitter has benefitted (as indicated by healthy funding) from a tornado of conversation around their service. It appears that users of Twitter are much more active then users of similar services like Jaiku and Pownce. Twitter is a bottom rung superstar and their is no doubt that they would fall if they lost the loyalty of the herd.

Upstarts

The herd’s true effect on all of the upstarts is to be determined.

FriendFeed - The core herd has noticed FriendFeed and appears to be staying for awhile. Whether or not masses will follow remains to be seen. Their user numbers are well below Twitter. And their funding is only in the single digit millions. This is a real test to see if the herd can help deliver a big payday for a service they are passionate about.

Seesmic - A handful of leaders, Mike Arrington and Loic LeMeur (also the founder) among them, have waxed enthusiastically about this video “conversation” service. The user base is in the double digit thousands, reflecting the portion of the herd with a passion for video, but they’ve also attracted funding in the double digit millions. This company will test the ability of the herd’s leaders to effect the adoption of their favorite services on the core group.

Disqus - Dave Winer uses it. Fred Wilson invested in it. And Louis Gray thinks Disqus is winning. This blog comment service continues to grow its user base via support from some of the more well known movers and shakers in social media. The herd proper hasn’t arrived yet, but the leaders are certainly crowing about and raising the profile of this service.

The Verdict

My experience and analysis tells me that the herd provides three types of benefits to web services.

Conversation - If they like a service then they will talk about that service. Such talk may attract the attention of journalists (which can lead to wider exposure) and potential investors.
Feedback - The herd is not shy about telling a service what they want. And they always want something. This is a double edge sword. Placating Scoble, Winer or Arrington will gain a service their affection. But features that hardcore enthusiasts want may not help a service achieve mass appeal.
Funding - While a funded service may not attract the herd, the herd can help a service attract funding. I liken it to a beauty contest. Investors are overwhelmed with web services that can use their help. But the ones that the enthusiasts are using and talking about are likely to attract the eyes of the judges.

Conversation, feedback and funding are not the only ingredients of a successful online venture. Mass adoption is necessary for web based services to reach a secure level of maturity and attain royalty status. Many try but very few succeed. And if there was a formula then everyone would certainly use it.

Catering to social media enthusiasts is one way to develop a niche which can help get a web startup off the ground. This approach provides very little in the way of a guarantee for success. The chance for long term success can be just as good if the service adopts a strategy that helps it to cater to the average web user.

iPhone App Store Presents A Rewarding Opportunity

Rob Safuto — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:51:26 +0000

Apple has just tossed a huge bone to high traffic social media sites. But will they pick it up?

Sites like Twitter, FriendFeed and yes even the mighty Facebook are grappling with the issue of exactly how they can earn enough revenue to continue to support their services without the need for future rounds of funding. They should look no further than the iPhone App Store for their first big opportunity.

Take a lesson from Apple folks. If you make something really good then people will pay for it. The iPhone App Store offers social web services the opportunity to make applications that work really well on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Any web service that desires greater traffic and greater revenue should consider creating their own “for pay” application.

Take the MLB iPhone App as an example if you will. This thing looks great. It even includes the ability to stream in-game video updates. This application will have features that the user won’t be able to get anywhere else. And I know that MLB will have no problem with charging a fee for this application.

Social web services should consider adopting a mindset similar to that of Major League Baseball by charging for enhanced services. A sweet iPhone app could (and should) easily be the first enhanced offering that all social web services introduce to their user base.

I know that some people are thinking, “No dude! Make it free and support it with advertising!” Forget that model when it comes to the iPhone. Do you really want to put advertisements on a screen that small? I say, “No.” Ads will ruin the experience and make people less enamored of your application.

The bone is out there on the ground. From July 11th on we’ll see how many social web services pick it up and run.

Defining The Social Media Herd

Rob Safuto — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 18:01:09 +0000

I’ve been thinking. To some those are some pretty scary words but not necessarily as scary as me deciding to tell you what I think. In this case I’ve been thinking about what I call the social media herd.

The social media herd is a group of people who move in concert from web application to web application, vehemently discussing the merits of each while generally exaggerating the level of each service’s importance along the way.

The exact size of the herd is difficult to determine but I’ll estimate the size of the core group to be about ten thousand people who are mostly from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. There are people scattered within the group that are from all points on the globe though.

The dynamics of the social media herd are not unlike those of any other social group. The herd has three distinct sub-groups.

Leaders who set the trends and topics of discussion. Where they go, the herd follows. What they love, the herd loves.
The Pack follow and are fiercely loyal to the leaders. Their ideas most often mimic the ideas of the leaders. They go where the leaders go. Some aspire to be leaders and mark their turf accordingly.
Outsiders exist on the fringe of the herd. They actively observe the herd. Some are simply studying the behavior of the herd. Others are trying to figure out how to get inside.

In addition the the three core sub-groups the herd has a long tail of followers that possibly reaches into the low hundreds of thousands. These are people who are somehow affiliated with members of the herd but are not well defined as a group. They are aware of what is going on but aren’t studying the group closely and have no aspirations to join. The long tail moves at their own pace and sometimes arrives at a service about the time the core group is moving on.

The social media herd is very bottom heavy. There are a couple of dozen people who are recognized as the leaders. Everyone else is following them either in the pack, on the fringes or the tail. In their own way the leaders of the herd have great power over the herd and are considered valuable individuals to be aligned with. If the leaders make a move it is expected that the pack and the outsiders who follow the pack will go along for the ride.

The herd is probably about 90% male. The age of the herd ranges from early twenties to mid-fifties. The majority of the social media herd is likely between thirty and forty years of age.

In many ways the social media herd is like the cliques you knew in high school. The leaders of the herd know their position and typically flaunt their power. The pack is proud to be in the herd and suspicious of anyone new to the scene. For the most part the pack decides who enters the herd although sometimes a leader will fast track a person who they think deserves to be recognized. Fringe members who gain entry and acceptance to the herd like to shut the door behind them because it is generally perceived that increasing the size of the herd reduces the value of being a member.

The herd moves at varying rates of speed. Sometimes they linger in a place or on a topic of discussion for months at a time. At other times they make a quick stop off and keep moving. Wherever the herd treads you can bet that lots of discussion of wildly varying quality will occur and lots of bandwidth will get utilized.

The social media herd does not know loyalty. They move from service to service at the whims of the leaders. Those in the pack who fail to conform to the ideas and opinions of the leaders or the majority of the pack members face marginalization and even ejection from the group.

The social media herd is a highly sought after group of people by those who need attention on the web for their products or services. The most capitalized attention seekers woo the leaders of the herd with all sorts of goodies, including good, old-fashioned butt kissing. Those with fewer resources must stoop to vying for the attention of the members of the pack who they hope will then alert the leaders of their presence. Gaining the attention of the wider pack (and eventually the long tail) is object of the game for those seeking attention.

Attention seekers seem to spend a lot of time and effort hoping to get noticed. And that leads me to an important question. Is it worth it? Does the time and effort that is required to attract the social media herd pay off in any tangible way? Are the effects of attracting the attention of the herd generally lasting or merely short term? Is there a correlation between the amount of attention from the social media herd and the long-term success of a web property?

Stay tuned. I plan to analyze the questions above in my next post.

A PlaceTo Learn Drupal

Rob Safuto — Fri, 30 May 2008 01:27:21 +0000

My obsession with the Drupal platform has expanded from the occasional screencast to a Drupal guide for beginners and now a new website. I’ve been working on Learn By The Drop for a few weeks now. It’s a place to learn Drupal. I’m posting tidbits of information (which I’m calling drops) to help the average Drupal user get more out of the platform.

If you head over to Learn By The Drop you’ll find audio, video, images and plain old blog posts that will hopefully help to transfer my (limited to tell the truth) knowledge of Drupal to you. Hey if I can make Drupal work then so can you. That’s the point I guess. Enjoy!

Going Private With DreamHost

Rob Safuto — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:48:43 +0000

I’ve been a DreamHost customer for a while now and although they have problems with servers failing from time to time I have generally been happy with the combination of prices, tools and performance.

The weakest point of the hosting experience with DreamHost has been the performance as major outages seems to happen a couple of days per year. Then again, some major web services (like Twitter for instance) go down more than that and seem to be growing nicely. Another consideration is the fact that I’ve never been with a host (and I’ve been with several over the last decade) who hasn’t had a few outages a year. Hence, my happiness with the DreamHost experience.

Another gripe I’ve had from time to time is the fact that my sites seem to load pretty slow at times even though there were no major issues with the DreamHost system. As the traffic on my sites grows I want a good experience for users and quick load times are a part of that equation. That said I know that there is a certain reality to understand when you’re on a shared hosting account. My sites are sitting on a server with hundreds of other sites using god knows what kind of resources. So there are always going to be performance limitations when you have a shared hosting account.

A few months back DreamHost began to offer what they call Dreamhost P.S. P.S. is short for private servers. According to the DreamHost P.S. website, “DreamHost PS uses Linux-VServer to give you your own “virtual machine”, thereby protecting your CPU and RAM from all other users on your physical machine.” It sounded like the ticket for me in wanting to improve the loading time on my sites. So a few weeks ago I got on the waiting list for my own virtual private server.

A few days ago I received a notice telling me that the service had been activated. I went to check out my sites first and noticed that the first one I went to was down. The email I received did mention that the site could be down if my level of memory and cpu on the private server was set too low. So I went to the private server control panel and adjusted the convenient slider to up the levels a little bit. Within a couple of minutes the changes took effect and I visited my sites. The performance increase was noticeable. There’s no doubt in my mind that the sites load faster now.

At the current setting level my hosting bill is going to increase by $30.00 per month. That’s a considerable bump up from $10 a month. But that increase is worth it if I continue to see improved performance. And it’s a lot cheaper and simpler than moving to a dedicated server. Another plus of the DreamHost P.S. service is the fact that the control panel includes a graph that shows resource usage over time. If usage is below the peak settings then I can use the slider to adjust my resources in real time and the billing will be adjusted accordingly.

If you’re happy with your current host then I don’t think that this service is a reason to defect to DreamHost. If you are on DreamHost and have high traffic sites that are currently on a shared plan then you might want to consider adding the private server option. Doing so will cost you more money. That money would be well spent if it means a better experience for your users.

Commenting With A Blog Post

Rob Safuto — Sat, 17 May 2008 19:31:36 +0000

Let’s continue with the subject of building brands and keeping control of your content. There’s this issue with comments. A growing number of people who write their own blogs want better control of all the comments that they leave on other sites. Comments represent ideas and opinions that can add to the value of your brand.

Services like Disqus, Intense Debate and coComment try to solve the problem by centralizing all of a user’s comments but only on sites where those services are supported. You can solve this problem yourself by adhering to a very simple comment doctrine.

Any time you find a comment extending past a couple of sentences you should stop yourself and write the comment as a blog post. When you write the blog post make sure that you link directly to the post you are commenting on. If the original blogger has trackbacks enabled then the link to your post should show up in the comment section of the post you’re commenting on. Since not all blogs support trackbacks you can’t necessarily count on that, but you still retain the value of your opinion.

Everything you do online amounts to some kind of a trade off. In this case you draw a line. Short thoughts are deposited as comments. More complex thoughts get served up to your readers with a tip of the hat to the original author.

This is a situation where a common sense approach removes the need for complex technology solutions. And I believe that everyone gets what they need in this scenario. The original author either gets a comment or a link. And the would be commenter gets to choose an entry point to the discussion that meets their needs.

This approach won’t fly for some people. I know there are some people out there who would rather be represented in the comments on a hot post because they want the benefit of the visibility in a post they know will get traffic. In that case you should consider your comment a gift a be glad that you had the opportunity to have your say.

Your Content Is Your Currency

Rob Safuto — Sat, 17 May 2008 14:00:17 +0000

We are living in a world of dilution. Lots of people are creating lots of content. There are many companies that want to get a hold of that content so they can use it for their own purposes. And those companies won’t pay the original publishers a dime. That’s not a good thing.

One of my favorite books teaches some great lessons that surely apply to publishing content online. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People instructs us to begin with the end in mind. If we follow Stephen Covey’s logic then it is a very good idea to think about how and where we are publishing our content.

Your content is your currency. The content you publish will create your value in the long run. If you give up too much control of your content, spread out your primary publishing locations, then a dilution of your value is taking place. Think about this when you start publishing on the web.

This idea won’t really matter to people who are casual users of the web. And by casual I mean people who aren’t publishing content on a regular basis or aren’t publishing for business purposes. If you have a presence on a social network or two in order to connect with your friends or you upload occasional photos and videos to sites like YouTube or Flickr you are probably receiving good value in exchange for your efforts. If you publish on a regular basis this idea should mean something to you.

Sites like MySpace and Facebook have managed to command huge valuations due to the efforts of their users. The same goes for iTunes, YouTube and Flickr among others. The valuations for these properties are based on the presence and the published content of the site’s users. It can be argued that the sites I’ve mentioned here have provided value to each user in excess of the effort put forth by the user to add their content to the site. These sites have achieved critical mass and thus provide access to very large audiences. These top tier publishing sites also provide tools that simplify online publishing which have helped to create access to the masses. For the serious publisher there is definitely value in having access to a mass audience.

There are many other services that want access to your content. They want you to publish there. They want you to bring your audience to them. Some of these services include Twitter, Disqus and Seesmic about whom there has been much talk in recent months. If you invest your time in these services what will you get out of it? What will they get out of the deal as a result of your efforts there? Are the tools they offer unique? Do they provide access to a mass (and I mean in the millions) audience? These are important issues to consider.

Lately I’ve begun to recognize the importance of not only owning my content and discussions but also the ability to control my content and discussions. The important part of the control factor is the ability to shape my brand around the content I publish as well as having access to monetization options of my choosing. So nowadays when I consider how much (or even if) I should use a service I think about those things. Many of the newer services that the members of the herd are enamored with don’t meet my requirements. So I’m becoming less active on those sites and more active on my own domains.

Begin with the end in mind. Think about how and where you publish your content affects your value and your brand. Weigh the long-term costs and benefits of using third-party services. And as you weigh these issues ask yourself a question. Do you want to be in the business of building value for someone else or for yourself?

Maintain Control Of Your Comments

Rob Safuto — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:02:42 +0000

Take this word of friendly advice from someone who hasn’t invested money in a third-party commenting service. Maintain control of the comments on your site. Third-party commenting services like Disqus, coComment and Intense Debate always state that you retain ownership of your comments. That’s great but you really don’t retain control.

When you utilize a comment service the comments serve to build the Google juice of the sites whose services you are using. Those sites then encourage your commenters to join their services in order to get the most out of commenting. That’s annoying. You get functionality that provides a varying amount of added value depending on the blog platform you are using to publish.

The biggest value add that comment services purport to provide is threaded comments. That’s no big deal. The top three blogging platforms, WordPress, Movable Type and Drupal, all support threaded commenting either natively or via add-on modules. So you can have threaded comments without passing your comments to a third-party service.

The other big argument for using a comment service involves people’s ability to find your discussions. They argue that their sites will get a lot of traffic, people will find discussions about your blog posts and those people will then find your blog. This may be true to a certain extent. I also think it’s true that you will always get more traffic from Google searches (both native and blog specific ones) if you keep all the content on your blog as part of your site.

Certain very high traffic sites may benefit from the ability to have the server load and spam protection features transferred to the service rather than their own blog server. If that’s the case then why not just use WordPress.com, which provides both bandwidth and spam protection while allowing you to utilize your own domain?

These days I think that web publishers are way to flippant about scattering their content all over the web. Discussion about the things you are publishing is a very important part of the publishing and community building process. Off loading your blog’s comment system increases fragmentation and dilutes that value of the domains that you’ve been working so hard to build.

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