I’m wishing I had one of these for BlogWorldExpo this week…
Adam Bartholl and Markus Angermeier teamed together to bring you this, the "Are You Social" T-shirt, on which you can check off (with a pen) whatever web 2.0 social media/network/community you belong to!
The blogosphere has been all abuzz with the latest news from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, in that he is attempting to construct a human generated search platform to rival Google.
Search is part of the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. And, it is currently broken.
Why is it broken? It is broken for the same reason that proprietary software is always broken: lack of freedom, lack of community, lack of accountability, lack of transparency.
Here, we will change all that.
There are already dozens of thoughts and opinions on whether or not this will work or if it is even original or feasible (see the holy tech trinity of Techmeme, TechCrunch and Technorati if you haven’t been following).
However, one of the questions very few are asking is whether or not Google is doing a decent job at providing access to all of the world’s information, which was one of the company’s original mission statements.
Does Google have enough incentive to provide a decent search platform? I’d argue no, because Google is at its heart an advertising company.
Dave Winer sums it up the best with:
Today Google’s profits come from ads, and that business gives them a reason to keep search weak. They want you to do a lot of searching to find what you’re looking for — and the stuff they find for you for free is competing with the stuff they make money on. So Google actually has a disincentive to make search better.
Amen, Dave.
Whether or not Jimmy’s project succeeds or fails is important to watch, but realizing that Google’s hegemonic grip on providing quick access to our information is beginning to loosen is also important to ponder.
It means everything to online marketing.
Whether you like them or not, CPA networks reflect the democratization of the affiliate network structure which held the affiliate marketing industry back in terms of reach, technology platforms and stature within the larger scope of online marketing. In a way, CPA networks show the market’s ability to prefer democracy over hierarchical and non-transparent imposed structures.
The next 50 years will see the exponential demand for “open source” and “free” technological equipment and platforms. This will extend WELL beyond just software such as browsers (Firefox) and begin to make us question why we allow companies to set boundaries on our own entertainment and consumption habits (think of how restrictive your iPod really is on your music).
Think of fonts. If you had told any professional newspaper or magazine publisher that consumers and individuals (from 3rd graders on up to grandmothers) would know the difference between the Helvetica and Verdana fonts in 2000, they would have thought you were crazy. We don’t realize the impact that such technologies as MS Word have had on our culture in terms of opening up the publishing and content creation business to non-specialists, but now it is taken as cultural competency that kids entering college know the difference between Courier New and Times New Roman since you can squeeze an extra page and a half out of a 10 page paper if you are using Courier New rather than Times New Roman. Profs and freshmen know this, and that’s just odd considering the course of human history.
If you don’t watch Ze Frank’s The Show, you should. At least watch this episode (on this very topic) for me.
So, what does that have to do with Google and online marketing? Everything.
Consumers will begin to examine why they can’t listen to their iTunes music on more than 5 computers if they bought their music fair and square. Consumers will begin to wonder why Vista restricts the application of certain handy software programs. Consumers will begin to wonder why Google doesn’t provide the best links on the front page.
And this will happen soon.
So, don’t get stuck in the present or the 2005 as we enter the new year. Realize that it’s not a matter of consumers becoming more educated about technologies, but they are becoming more accustomed to using these technologies and realizing what things like Google, search, affiliate links and top down technologies and services can and cannot do.
Eventually this will be a mute debate, but as a species we have constantly dealt with attempts to co-opt and control the learning process, going back to the roots of literacy, trade and sociological functions such as religion. It is inevitable that everything will be open source and non-proprietary, it’s just going to take a few more thousand years to get there.
Knowledge is power and Google’s power seems to be slipping as consumers realize that Google’s main product is not knowledge, but advertising.
[As an effort to show my cards and provide disclosure, I’m a hippie libertarian (deep down I think Shawn is too) teacher/student and online marketer who distrusts efforts to make knowledge (or access to knowledge) proprietary at heart and this post was made on the Drivel blogging platform (Gnome blogging platform) inside the Linux-based open source Ubuntu OS with links provided by the Epiphany web browser (a Gnome based browser similar to Firefox but more community minded). I listen to my music (non-drm) on a Rockbox hacked iPod Mini while reading my feeds on Liferea and chatting on Gaim.]
[EDIT: Here’s the link to the Search Wikia page from Jimmy Wales.]
First, Time Magazine anoints web2.0 users as the “Person of the Year” (see below for conversations on whether or not that includes those involved in the affiliate marketing community).
Now, Newsweek is describing 2007 as the “Year of the Widget.”
“It’s better than advertising,” says Om Malik. “It’s in front of your eyes constantly; that brand becomes your brand.” Your widgets certainly don’t need to come branded, however. Indeed, that’s the whole point: to help the World Wide Web become your Web”
Nice job, Om. It is better than advertising. As Jeff D. says in the comments below, our experience online and offline with brands is quickly becoming a part of our own identity and in the future we’ll be debating in an explicit manner on what types of brands to associate with on a day to day basis.
As Bob Dylan sings, “Things have changed.”
Is big media reading the blogs such as CPN or Steve Rubel and making these claims in order to appear as if they are not absolutely out of touch, or have they wised up to the future? Based on media buys and advertising dollars being spent, I’d say that it is the former.
Shmuel Tennenhaus has just compiled an incredible video on his YouTube channel exposing some of the potential for fraud that exists on the YouTube platform.
Specifically, Shmuly has uncovered some of the dirt on this week’s #1 subscribed to YouTube channel, “SupermanReturnsDVD.”
While it’s not out of the realm of reality to suggest that the Man of Steel could rise to the level of YouTube stardom, realizing some of the tricks that Warner Brothers may be using to push the release of the Superman Returns DVD to the top of YouTube’s subscription list opens a rusty can of kryptonite on this whole marketing attempt.
Shmuly points out that there have been over 7,500 subscribers to the SupermanReturnsDVD channel just this week. However, there are only 9 videos in the channel, and there have been less video views than actual subscribers. In other words, more “people” have subscribed to the channel than actual videos viewed, which as Shmuly comments on, is simply ridiculous.
Additionally, many of the accounts subscribing to the SupermanReturnsDVD channel were created within the past week, have no favorites listed, have made no comments, have no friends, and are just linked to the SupermanReturnsDVD channel.
Perhaps even more disturbing in this context is the threats from Time Warner to sue YouTube for use of its material as copyright infringement. Dick Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, said in October:
“If you let one thing ignore your rights as an owner it makes it much more difficult to defend those rights when the next guy comes along.”
Even worse, Mr. Parsons, is when you attempt to game a user generated content site with inflated ratings and created user accounts because your company does not understand community, markets and the future.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFOu6d6y0k
The rapid rise of the online ad industry in the past decade has been widely discussed and hyped in a media environment where offline spending is decreasing while online spends (and ROI) continue to grow. According to Terry Semel, CEO of Yahoo, the valuation that most analysts have placed on the internet ad industry for 2007 are underestimated…
“The growth potential of Internet advertising has been underestimated because the predictions did not include advertising on video, social media or mobiles.”
Video as you all know will become a major factor on the Internet. It will be everpresent throughout the Internet and it will find its proper way to advertise.
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So whether it’s mobile or whether it’s video or whether it’s more and more community (social networking sites), these factors have not gone into those numbers, so we think the actual growth potential of advertising online is really being understated.”
Google has already recognized and cannonized this insight in the purchase of such properties as YouTube and JotSpot (wiki platform). Yahoo seemed to be recognizing and acting on this trend last year with the purchase of Flickr and del.icio.us. However, Google seems to be much more adept and willing to make the moves necessary to capitalize on the emergence of social media.
Farther down the food chain, networks in the affiliate, CPA and partnership marketing space have not moved as fast (or at all) to secure their footing in the emerging social media opportunities present. CPA marketing has an incredible potential to make relevant ads useful and profitable to individuals and consumers.
Will 2007 bring the first toe-dippings of CPA networks into the social media pool?
Links are dead (more on that soon).
I’ve been promoting widgets as a promising platform for the future of affiliate marketing. So, I decided to construct a widget for Cost Per News that you can place on web pages or your desktop. Updates and podcasts that are added here will automatically be updated on your widget, so it will save you a little time if you’re a regular visitor.
Here is the file:
costpernews_widget.htm
Let me know if you have any suggestions or usage questions.
A few weeks back I made big news and landed on TechMeme for pointing out that ZeFrank’s Gimme Some Candy promotion had been dropped by Google Checkout for not selling an actual product. In the end, this worked out for Frank’s benefit as many of his Canadian users pointed out that Google Checkout was not open to residents of Canada anyway. He moved his promotion to PayPal and it has (by all accounts) been a large success both for Frank and his viewers who are more than happy to pay for duckies (even me).
Now, it looks as if Google Checkout is going international (heading off Zanox at the pass, perhaps?). Why is this important? Think of the vertical channels, content creation/aggregation (YouTube and Wiki’s) and the limited scope Adense to adequately encompass the growing canon of user content. The international factor is a logical extension of where Google is heading with its Advertising Operation System.
Garret Rogers writes:
Since I live in Canada, purchasing or selling items on Google Checkout is not an option. I really wanted to check out the new “email invoice” feature they just announced today, but I’m unable to sign up as a seller.
Bitter, I decided to poke around in the source code to see what I could find. It turns out they are getting ready to open up the service to Canada, and probably other countries soon. When you are in the signup form for Google Checkout, you can type this javascript into your address bar to reveal a Canadian signup page — unfortunately I’m still unable to register.
This is potentially a very important issue as Google seems to be amping up Checkout for the Holiday and early 2007 season with major discounts available to consumers in partnership with participating merchants.
Google is heading into CPA next year and it’s going to be a much larger scheme than we’ve imagined in all of our pontificating!
Adify is an interesting new player in the video space. Underneath the heading of “Community Driven Ad Networks,” their blog states that:
At Adify, we are developing a business model that “wraps around” this emerging form of content creation with a unique set of services for supporting monetization. Our community networks are designed to enable any participant – publisher, advertiser or user / enthusiast – to benefit directly from helping in the advertising sales or support process. We think that this is a breakthrough model with the same potential to democratize the business side of online media.
Of course there are alternatives for anyone seeking to spread the use of their video in either a specific vertical or across many channels. Today, however, Adify entered into a partnership with vSocial to allow publishers the option of publishing, branding and spreading their user generated content.
vSocial is a social networking for video platform that enables content owners, site operators and online marketing organizations to custom brand, target, virally distribute and monetize their message via video, so this partnership makes for an interesting platform for publishers looking outside the Revver or YouTube models.
According to the press release, this partnership shows some differentiation from competitors by enabling the publisher to include advertising through ease of use:
“Enabling in-video advertising is the next logical step in the evolution of the online video space,” said Mark Sigal, CEO and co-founder of vSocial. “By integrating our vConnect video platform with Adify’s advertising platform, we are giving video publishers a simple way to create value around their content and their brand in a manner that harnesses the power of social networking to create greater reach than has been available in the past.”
The biggest problem I see with this new platform is the reluctance many publishers may have for turning over their content to serve ads which they have limited or no control over. Revver has done a decent job at confronting this worry by allowing some control of ad content, and by building up its own brand since well-known “vlogs” are using the service.
While attempting to bring some democracy to video generation, this partnership still has a few questions of ad-relevancy and long term vision to make clear before publishers begin signing up.
