Buzz Marketing for Technology: January 2007

Will Wikipedia Overtake Google?

I’m sure you’ve noticed how Wikipedia entries have risen in Google's page-ranking system. The results of many searches now include a Wikipedia page in the first few hits.

There are several reasons for this. One is the sheer size and comprehensiveness of the online encyclopedia (1.6 million articles!). Second is the trend by bloggers, when mentioning a person, place or product, to link to the relevant page in Wikipedia to avoid digressing from their discourse. In other words, they use Wikipedia links as footnotes. A third reason is that fact that if you add the work “wiki” to any Google search, you will be given the URL of an apparently relevant page from Wikipedia.

Recently, however, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales decreed that henceforth all outbound links on the site would be given a special “No Follow” HTML tag, which means that the links will become invisible to search engines. Google searches will still lead users to Wikipedia pages, but will not bring up links from those pages.

This is a huge bummer for content publishers and bloggers. Why? Say you discover a cool feature hidden in your iPod and blog about it. Tomorrow, the Wikipedia contributors will append the details of your iPod discovery to the Wikipedia page on iPods. They will attribute the information to your blog, but search engines will never see that attribution (or read your blog via Wikipedia) because of the No Follow tag.

Not only that, because Wikipedia enjoys such high credibility and trust, search algorithms will rank the Wikipedia iPod page higher than your blog for queries on iPods. The search engines are not aware that Wikipedia's content is actually based on your blog page, so your site will appear AFTER Wikipedia in the iPod search results. Wikipedia enjoys all the fruits of your labor, while you get low or no traffic to your blog.

Where’s the Buzz in that? Buzz Marketers know about the value of strategic linking – it works and it works well! But the opposite issue of “link spam” is real and growing, so it's reasonable for Wikipedia to protect itself. But has Wikipedia become so dominant that search engines should henceforth ignore links to the original information sources?

Labels: Blogging

Will You Need Blogging Insurance??

U of Maryland journalism dean Thomas Kunkel recently offered a great description of the Internet that applies even better to blogs. Said Kunkel, "The Internet today is like the American West in the 1880s. It's wild, it's crazy and everybody's got a gun,"

Blogging IS the Wild West. There really are no rules yet!

Bloggers bypass common journalistic practices such as verifying facts, seeking both sides of a story and subjecting an article to the scrutiny of editors. One result: Blogs are hard to beat for delivering information fast.

But can that work against you? According to the Media Law Resource Center, 69 lawsuits have been brought against bloggers nationwide, including a $1 million suit filed last year against a blogger who accused his state tourism department of wasting taxpayer money on advertising.

While most cases against bloggers have yet to go to trial, a question hangs large for marketers. Will you need blogging liability insurance?

Where’s the Buzz? - Blogs open a can of worms when it comes to intellectual property and patent rights. What happens if one of your employees gets a little too enthusiastic and inadvertently discloses a company trade secret on his or her blog? Well, your company loses its rights to the IP forever. Any competitor can now legally use your former secret. So be careful out there!

Labels: Blogging

The future of online advertising: check out the UK

Wanna see the future of mobile phones, check out Japan; wanna see the impact of broadband internet connections, check out South Korea, wanna see the future of online advertising, check out Britain.

Why Britain? In the British online-advertising market the internet accounts for 14% of a companies' total spend on advertising in Britain, compared with just 5% worldwide.

Expenditure on internet advertising in America is similar to that in Britain, but Britain's growth rates are just slightly higher. In the first half of this year online advertising increased by 40% in Britain and 37% in America compared with the same period last year, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

Where is the Buzz? Eventually, the internet will grow to account for 20% of worldwide advertising spending, at the expense of traditional media (broadcast and cable TV, print, radio and outdoor advertising). But Britain will reach this point by 2009, predicts ZenithOptimedia, a market-research firm, at which point internet advertising will be worth almost as much as television advertising. Looks like Britain has, got a head start over other countries as advertising spending shifts from old to new media.

Labels: Online Advertising

EXCLUSIVE: Jack Welch Discussing Web 2.0

Jack Welch is arguably the most talked about and widely emulated manager in business history. He's used his uncanny instincts and unique leadership strategies to run GE, the most complex organization in the world, increasing its market value by more than $400 billion over two decades.

I had the chance to interview Jack Welch at a recent HSM Group conference, and I asked him about his view of Web 2.0 technologies:

Buzz Marketing: So Jack, what do you think about CEOs like Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems writing their own blogs?

Jack: CEOs have to be candid with their people; it’s a lot easier to be candid when you’re the guy at the top than when you are trying to move up the organization. But lack of candor is the biggest problem in companies today.

Buzz Marketing: So what is your advice for companies adopting new Web 2.0 technologies like RSS, social networking, podcasting and videocasting?

Jack: Just be authentic. Be clear in your vision, and have one message and one view that are authentic. I worked somewhere once where they had different messages for employees, analysts and the press. There should be only one message for everyone, and fight like hell to get that message across everywhere you go.

So where is the Buzz? Jack Welch did many memorable things during his time with GE. He is said to have made GE an Internet-based company, making him an early adopter of the technology. Walking away from our conversation, I felt that he saw value in using Web 2.0 technologies internally to create an Enterprise 2.0, rather than for their marketing potential. I hope he starts reading this blog regularly.

Have you heard about Domain Tasting?

I have heard of Wine Tasting but Domain Tasting?? Ask Verizon’s legal team who found hundreds of new sites that use variations of Verizon's name. A simple Google search uncovers domain names such as verizonpicture.com, vorizonringtone.com, and varizoncellularphone.com. But none of the sites has anything to do with Verizon!! They're registered by small independent companies in China, and the Bahamas.

Blame it on a little-known but rapidly growing activity called "domain tasting." The practice, perfectly legal, lets registrars profit from the complex money trail of pay-per-click advertising. Exploiting a regulatory loophole, "tasters" snatch up Internet domains for five days at no cost and jam them full of Pay Per Click (CPC) advertisements from popular search engines like Google and Yahoo!.

That means the taster vorizonringtone.com gets cash every time a visitor clicks on an ad. With zero risk and 100% profit margins, bulk registrants are now registering mass quantities of domain names every day—some of them over and over again.

The explosion in domain tasting can be traced back to the practices and policies of the organization responsible for regulating Web names, ICANN who established the "create grace period," a five-day stretch when a company or person can claim a domain name and then return it for a full refund of the $6 registry fee. That was to allow someone who mistyped a domain to return it without cost.

Where’s the Buzz?? Actually it is more like a Buzz Kill, depending on the size of your organization and what you sell, I would start asking your legal and web team to police this. Right now, it seems to be a feeding frenzy which needs legislation to stop this abuse.

CAUTION: Second Life owns your IP

The virtual world of Second Life has become a hot topic of discussion among marketers. But Second Life isn't a game; it is a medium in which like-minded people meet inside a global environment and ponder common issues. The appeal for marketers is clear; more than 1.7 million tech-savvy men and women with a median age of 32 comprise its population.

Several companies, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, Reebok, Starwood Hotels, Reuters and Wells Fargo have all set up online storefronts and identities on Second Life, where they are selling products and services to other Second Life visitors, testing concepts and products, and holding virtual events.

But beware Linden Lab, the company that created Second Life, explicitly states that Second Life residents do not own their accounts or any data on Second Life servers. "Linden Lab retains ownership of the account and related data, regardless of intellectual property rights you may have in content you create or otherwise own," the company's Terms of Service agreement says.

Possible Buzz Kill for Buzz Marketers: While I truly believe this is the start of something really revolutionary, brands have to watch what they do on Second Life. Recently, I blogged about Starwood Hotel who has been testing a new hotel brand called Aloft that will offer loft-style rooms with flat-panel TVs and Wi-Fi Internet access. But since they were built on Second Life and won’t be built in real life until 2008 - does that mean that Second Life owns the design? Yes it does!

Sun is holding Virtual Press Conferences

Sun Microsystems broke virtual ground as the first Fortune 500 company to hold a full-scale media event in the online world of Second Life.

Sun Chief Researcher John Gage appeared in this online world in the form of an avatar, to launch the company's official presence in Second Life, debut its new virtual Sun Pavilion and introduce Project Darkstar - a software program designed to help online game developers with server-side technology.

While about 60 people attended the event, Chris Melissinos, chief gaming officer at Sun, said: "There were no members of the press in an actual audience. It was all done virtually, and that's pretty cool." He "attended" the conference from the comfort of his home in northern Virginia, while Gage was in the Sun office in Santa Clara, Calif. Philip Rosedale, CEO of Second Life publisher Linden Labs, joined from San Francisco.

So where is the Buzz? I am unapologetic in my fascination with this medium and I think to be successful in Second Life takes knowing your audience and tailoring products and activities to them specifically then allowing the consumer to make the experience their own.

To read more about this event check out the B2B magazine write-up

Where to find the next YouTube?

With all the hype about Google’s purchase of YouTube – I think we are in for an onslaught of innovative upstarts dishing up video.

Take something as basic as how you track down specific clips. Getting video search right is critical because the technology is still primitive. Upstarts like Blinkx and TVEyes, are looking for actual images and spoken words.

But the startup that's creating the biggest buzz is the Venice Project which is tackling the problem of streaming long videos of nearly high-definition-TV quality in a cost-effective way by counting on peer-to-peer technology (P2P).

That's no surprise founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström are the masterminds behind two of the best-known P2P applications: Kazaa, the infamous music file-sharing service, and Skype, which eBay bought for $2.6 Billion!

So where’s the Buzz? Not sure yet - there's still plenty of work to be done before video blossoms into its full potential. What's the advertising model? How does search work? What's the syndication model? It's the same questions asked of the Web in 1995 that startups helped answer.

New Business Model for Writers and Editors

Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan, early spring 2006. A bottle of J Russian River Pinot Noir. A discussion with a good friend who’s a magazine publisher about declining page advertising and how to offset it by increasing online page advertising.

A couple of hours later we had the answer. Instead of having his team of writers and editors just pen articles for the publication, why not have them write a blog as well?

Not a bad idea. Let the writers and editors begin to cultivate an online following on their own individual blogs. Have the publication brand the blogs, then give the talent a cut of the proceeds as an incentive to build their own online communities.

Well to our surprise, the first evidence of how good an idea that might be has arrived: Josh Quittner, editor of Time Inc.'s Business 2.0, is asking all 15 of his writers and editors to create their own blogs, which Time Inc. will try to monetize. And, yes, the talent will get paid based on the amount of traffic their individual blogs generate.

Where is the Buzz? If it works, it could be a model for all magazines. “I can definitely see a day when all journalists are given nothing more than a place to work, a platform and a percentage of traffic," Josh said. "And if it doesn't work, we learned a lot about new media."

Getting Buzz from Reverse Product Placement

It’s interesting to see the developments of Second Life and the potential power of this as a marketing channel. Virtual worlds have many marketers considering product placement in video games and beyond. Studies suggest that well-designed placements in games are more effective than placements on television or in films because, in a game’s immersive environment, players can interact with the products they see.

But while embedding products in video games is increasingly common, an equally interesting commercial opportunity has gone relatively unnoticed: reverse placement, or the commercial translation of fictional brands or products from games into the real world.

Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, a candy found in the Harry Potter books and movies, was converted into a popular real-world product by Cap Candy, a division of Hasbro. New flavors—including, in 2006, pickle and sausage—encourage repeat purchases of a product that allows children to gleefully share Harry Potter’s nauseating experiences and magic powers.

So where is the Buzz? Why spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars fighting mature competitors for mindshare and shelf space in the physical world when you can launch a new offering in an uncluttered fictional one? Indeed, with ever more consumers playing video games, the physical world may ultimately cease to be the most important battleground for new products. And if nothing else, reverse placement promises to be more fun than, say, your umpteenth focus group.