The Way Things Work
Another wild weekend with things that we thought that worked not working and things that we thought would never work working. First off - Second Life is dying. At least in a corporate way. Corporations are leaving in droves because the CPM is just way too expensive. While there is a higher CTR the CPM is not justifiable. Secondly - The TiVo numbers are out. And...Direct response commercials are the least fast forwarded commercials out there. Strange. Thirdly - Why aren't people clicking on those Facebook ads?

So those three points are some interesting issues that are going on in today's tech beat. But I think the more interesting thing is the growth and spread of these networks like Second Life. (or un-growth). Why is Facebook so large and ConnectU the company suing Mark Zuckerberg not? So advertising as we know it is changing. Things aren't spreading the way we think they are. A virtual 2D world like Barbie has more users than a Second Life and will soon rival World of Warcraft.

A new world of thought has emerged that is rivaling Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point strategy of Influentials well influencing people. It's from Columbia Professor Duncan Watts who believes that its not the influentials but the easily influenced people that make a difference. BzzAgent utilizes this strategy as well. I think though that when it comes to viral marketing and the way that it works it really depends on what you are trying to market. If you are marketing Coke and Pepsi then sure, you should go with the Watts School of thought. After all, everyone needs to drink a soda every so often. And when you're thirsty do you really care if Paris Hilton is drinking a Coke (although you would care if she was drinking a Vitamin Water, which is arguably, a reason for its great rise)? I think fashionable products and name brands work better through Influentials (like Paris). Products where you can charge a premium because its the celebrity's choice, etc. That works. But I think when you are going after mass merchandising buzz (let's say you have a website that let's you create a profile and all you care about is number of profiles, all right let's just say you have MySpace) its a better deal to go after the lowest common denominator (hence the simple yet poor design of the site).

As we've seen before, we've been wrong, but we'll be keeping our eye out on how things grow in this new viral economy.

Labels: tipping point

  ¶ 8:41 AM 0 comments

  The Tipping Point Something that I've been looking at is why and how things "tip." How does a site like YouTube go from 0-60 in 3 months? Why is MySpace the premiere destination for social networking? Has Second Life "tipped" or is it still a geek's toy? Why did FaceBook grab so many users? Let's look at some thoughts into why these things happened...








YouTube - YouTube was launched by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, exPayPal employees in November of 2005. Shortly thereafter (around December or January) the trio has no one but the copyright infringer who uploaded SNL's Lazy Sunday to thank. Traffic spiked at that point. And even more traffic came to the site when it was reported that NBC asked them to take it down. But by then it was too late, YouTube was the "it" place to be for user generated video and any kind of online content.

MySpace - MySpace was founded by the friendly Tom Anderson in November of 2003. It started as a site to share music and eventually became "a place for friends." MySpace could be attributed as one of the first successful social networks that really brought about the entire Web 2.0 revolution. However, traffic for the site didn't really tip until what I think was the entire Friendster debacle. Friendster arguably the first social network, was experiencing slowness and server difficulty. A message was sent around Friendster saying that they would start charging and that MySpace was free. Many addicted social networkers flocked to MySpace and that was all they needed. With the newness of social networking, MySpace quickly grew and that rolling stone gathered enough momentum that MySpace is a household name.

Second Life - Second Life is the avatar based role playing world. So far its received a lot of attention in the media and by brands. However, as you can see from the chart, it still hasn't tipped. I think that its a combination of things here and one of the big barriers is the user experience. Second Life for the non techy is hard to use. That's agreed upon. Secondly its a separate software download. That's a pain. Compare this with Flash based ClubPenguin who's traffic is slowly creeping up on SecondLife, and was recently offered $500 million from Sony.








Facebook - The darling of Social Networks - Facebook was rumored to be worth in the $2 billion range. How did a dorm room start up at Harvard become one of the most valuable properties on the web? The chart below shows how Facebook really hit straight up growth in the beginning of 2006, which corresponds to their high school out reach. But why did all of these high schoolers want to join Facebook? I think here the tipping point was based on what Malcolm Gladwell calls influencers. And there are many influencers at Harvard the birthplace of Facebook. Would Facebook have survived if it started at another school? Princeton? Perhaps. University of Middle of No Where? Probably not.

I think that its interesting to look at the different ways that these things "make it." YouTube had a unique piece of content, MySpace was positioned at the right place at the right time, and Facebook had influentials behind it. What will it take for Second Life or the plethora of Web 2.0 companies? Sometimes its dumb luck.

Labels: facebook, myspace, second life, tipping point, youtube

  ¶ 8:37 AM 0 comments

  Loving Google
Ok, I admit, I've been bashing Google a bit on their quest to take over the world and its probably a bad thing because the traffic to this blog from non-subscribers will probably plummet, but I couldn't ignore the incredible earnings release last night as well as their announcement of purchasing a WebEx type company this morning. Everywhere I turn Google this Google that, and now with a market cap that is about half of Microsoft, Google is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Coupled with Yahoo's drop in earnings, Google is the leader on the Web. But the interesting thing about Google is that for all of the neat little things they put out there, nearly all of its revenue comes from Search. How many times have you seen someone fire up their web browser go to Google and type in the URL? I bet Google (or some derivation with a Google search box) are on 70% of a person's starting (home page).

That being said, as a marketer, SEO (search engine optimization) is becoming more and more important. The first three pages must be positive about your firm and its products. And if they are not, get a PR team and an SEO to make sure that they are. However, the beauty of Google is that it is a true meritocracy. Just because you are throwing more money at a problem doesn't mean that it will go away. If a product is truly faulty, and appears negatively in a blogger's blog, and is linked to many times, you will have a tough time pushing that mention off the first page. Wikipedia no doubt will be on that front page as well (if you are popular enough to have a Wikipedia entry) so hope that that has a positive spin on you as well.

We haven't even spoken about SEM or search engine marketing, Google's bread and butter. Monitor your entries and make sure that you aren't overpaying for clicks that can be had for less. And while I'm not going to go into a whole lesson on SEM I think the most important thing: Make sure the landing page is relevant and ready to purchase. Imagine, you clicked on the link for the book The Tipping Point and it just brought you to Amazon.com's home page (where you'd have to redo the entire search). Sounds small but you'd be annoyed and you'd have a smaller chance of capturing that conversion. But the lesson today is that search is becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives especially via Google (the numbers are our evidence) so please don't ignore that as part of your marketing plan.

Labels: amazon, google, sem, seo, tipping point, yahoo

  ¶ 8:34 AM 0 comments

  The Butterfly Effect
The New York Times had an interesting article this weekend about how Hollywood and the music industry figures out if they have a hit in the early stages of its career. They don't. In a study that seems like it would be a great case study for the Tipping Point, the author, a Columbia professor, talks about a study that he conducted that talked about rating music. In it, he subjected one group to simply the names of songs and bands, and the other group also had the number of downloads on it. As you can slowly see, the one group with the download number had markedly skewed results than the other one. Turns out that the subjects were not only influenced by the music but also by the number of downloads. The Butterfly / Snowball Effect in play here, where people are influenced also by what they perceive others to like. He goes on to site examples of Harry Potter being turned down by eight other publishers, the Beatles, Star Wars, etc.

Well how does that affect your marketing plan? Very interestingly, this comes back around to social networks and the Tipping Point. People have the herd mentality which is why even a stock price falls or rises higher when perceived news comes out that is bad or good, respectively. We are all Lemmings to one extent or the other. We are social creatures, and we don't want to be left out. So, in this case, we need to find those influentials, those people willing to take a risk and endorse something (even if its as simple as putting it on a blog, MySpace page, or creating a YouTube video about how great something is).
They're taking this risk, knowing that if all doesn't go according to plan, their reputation is on the line. But who are these people? I think that while mainstream media is the easy answer, you can find blogs that are certainly influential to a certain community (TechCrunch for techies for example). Tila Tequila, the infamous, most "friended" MySpacer. Perhaps you have to "game" a system to even be noticed. I know that when I go to YouTube, there is so much content, that I just want to view the videos with the most hits. People have figured out how to game these systems to appear just there (although their rating reveals what the content really is). I'm hoping that this is helpful for those of you out there trying to market your products in this vast ocean of "stuff." (After all, MySpace definitely is not the cleanest or best social networking site, yet, they somehow caught). But if I could figure out the next hit, I would be doing so, and as William Goldman once mentioned - "No one knows anything." Very true not only in Hollywood, but when trying to figure out who will be the next YouTube.

Labels: myspace, tipping point, wisdom of crowds, youtube

  ¶ 8:39 AM 0 comments