Big Opportunities for Small Business
I think that most small businesses have felt closed out of the Internet loop. Many don't feel the need to advertise or promote to a global audience when the majority of their business comes from a radius within a few miles of their physical location (or in Manhattan a few blocks!). However, with the relaunch of Google Maps, meaningful online advertising for the small business may be possible. With their
Mapplets Preview (via
Mashable), the big business known as local search may become a reality.
Craigslist is one of the largest properties on the web. With no graphics, no fancy Ajax, and a staff of a dozen, Craigslist is a true success story which is focused strictly on content. What makes Craigslist so successful that fancy sites don't have? Sure, Craigslist is free and that's a big factor but the other one is the locality of Craigslist. Just like other local tools, like Citysearch, Meetup, and Yelp, Craigslist turns an online conversation into an offline transaction/encounter/meetup etc. Why is this important? I don't know if I need to answer this question, but we are social creatures and while we've been talking about great tools like MySpace, SecondLife, and YouTube, we still need to meet each other physically and not just through our computers! So enter the Local Market, which to date has felt shunned by the Internet. Very few tools out there cater to the local market and most have to do with restaurants, tourist attractions, and / or movie showtimes.
Enter Google Maps and their contextual AdSense. With
Google's new street views program, this will really allow ALL businesses to have a virtual storefront. Could this be an integration of a virtual world like Second Life with the other intricacies of the Web? Could you be walking down a virtual Fifth Avenue and enter into all of the big department stores and then make a turn down 45th street and also enter the mom & pop deli? I think that Google Maps might be the key to Google's growth especially with local search, since most local businesses do not have domain names or websites (most of them still use a hotmail address if they even have one!). It could be truly interesting times, except that it might keep you in front of your computer more instead of being out there with real people like we were programmed to do!
Labels: craigslist, google, trends
OpenFaceBook
The
Facebook Platform, launched yesterday, is designed to do exactly what MySpace didn't want: Allow for third party content. Facebook has opened up all of its API's in order to encourage development for its site. There are tons of applications now that are sanctioned for use on Facebook. So unlike MySpace (when
they shut down Photobucket, which they now own), Facebook encourages open access to their proprietary network. Facebook has some impressive statistics on growth and engagement and with the launch of their video network could really give MySpace and even YouTube a run for it.
Why is the opening of Facebook so important? Better yet, is that the right move? After all, third party widgets could take users away from the site. I think that it is. Think of Facebook as Windows. If Windows could only utilize Microsoft applications, there would be some utility but not as much as if Windows could also use Adobe products and (gasp) Apple products. Sure, the third party widgets are going to lure some users off of Facebook's site, but in the long run, users will be more engaged, Facebook will have free development, and third parties will develop cooler things for Facebook (leading to more and longer page views for the site). Think Amazon, Second Life, Linux...all of these tools were made better because users and developers could plug in their own enhancements.
From a marketing and monetization standpoint, this offers unlimited possibilities. Zuckerberg noted that Facebook was the sixth most trafficked site in the country. The ability to create embeddable widgets on a site like Facebook offers huge possibilities for commerce and contextual advertising. Favorite books, shows, music, and media could be purchased off of someone's profile page. Facebooks photo application (the largest in the world) could be integrate with an Ofoto or Kodak Gallery to provide for prints. Mashable talks about
some of the applications already created for Facebook. The lesson here is that closed source does not work in today's open world. The music industry learned that, Hollywood is learning, and Microsoft will eventually learn that. If we can embrace our users and partners, then we'll hae a better platform all around.
Labels: amazon, apple, facebook, myspace, second life, social network, trends, youtube
Social Network Woes?
This past week
MySpace announced the purchase of Photobucket for $250 million in cash. Compared to News Corp's $580 million acquisition of MySpace, this looks relatively expensive. Further since
Photobucket users are primarily MySpace users, News Corp is paying a lot for an incremental amount of eyeballs. Why would News Corp do such a thing?
Well, in a case of the rich getting richer, MySpace is the primary destination for social networkers out there. Sure, there's
LinkedIn for business folk,
Friendster for early adopter social networkers,
Sneakerplay for sneaker lovers,
Facebook for college students and so on and so forth. However, nothing beats the shear strength of MySpace's reach and depth (176 million as of right now). MySpace helps to launch many items of interest
including a high proportion of Michael Eisner's Prom Queen episodes, various movies and television shows, and of course the original intent of MySpace: music and unsigned bands. MySpace video is second only to juggernaut
YouTube and the numbers for MySpace are staggering, with the social networking site consistently in the top 5 sites hit, searched for, and session time.
MySpace is protecting its territory and rightfully so. However, those of you who remember Friendster also remember how quickly that social network flickered out. With niche social networks coming out, MySpace wants to be the ONLY destination for social networkers. Two weeks ago, I was notified that my account on Nike's Runner's social network would no longer be supported. I suspect that as time goes on this will be a common scenario. However, the niche social networks do have targeting which many advertisers find valuable. The social network is stronger than ever however, we are slowly seeing segmentation.
I would compare this now to the age of network television versus cable. We have the big players, the MySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, and Facebooks (akin to ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) and then the niche players like SneakerPlay,
MuscleDog,
Barack Obama Supporters, etc which all serve a very important purpose. And if we take this a step further, I could definitely see MySpace purchasing other social networks (like StockPickr for example) similar to NBC and CNBC, simply to sell highly targeted niche advertising.
Labels: barack obama, eisner, facebook, myspace, news corp, nike, prom queen, sneakerplay, social network, stockpickr, trends, youtube
Juiced!
Joost (pronounced Juiced) has been signing deals left and right with everyone from Viacom to CBS to independent filmmakers to now Heavy.com (via
Mashable). It's being billed as "a new way to watch TV" bringing the best parts of the Internet (social networking, time shifting, etc), together with the best parts of TV (high production quality and quality content). Joost created by the founders of Kazaa and Skype (in other words pretty smart guys), could
be the next YouTube killer? While Joost doesn't support user generated content (yet?) most of
YouTube's traffic or at least a consistent portion of it comes from YouTube partners like CBS, NBA, and other established brands and Joost could be taking a large portion of those eyeballs away especially since YouTube's quality has been criticized as of late.
I think that as an audience we seek a more interactive user experience. On one hand we have traditional television where we simply watch. The most interactivity we have is by flipping channels. On the other hand we have video games where we are essentially watching a movie but one in which we are making a decision every fraction of a second. The trend appears to be toward the latter, as we see an explosive upward trend in video games and a gradual downward slope in TV. However, to graduate everything to a video game would be much to extreme and I think that Joost will do a great job in letting people understand that if they are interested in the t-shirt that
Matt Fox from Lost is wearing, they can pause the show and purchase it in real time and then go back to watching. Further the social aspect of TV watching will have content creators spinning even more elaborate webs than the ones in 24 or Lost, which will engage audiences. Ad model here? I'm not sure, I think that Joost will probably provide some type of interactive commercial as opposed to the traditional 30 second ad spot. Perhaps Joost can even provide some more power to the almost dead
Bud.tv?
Keep an eye on this space as I can't wait to download my Joost trial now!
Labels: bud tv, commercial, joost, skype, trends, video ads, video games, youtube
Update: Companies Happy with Web 2.0
Well everyone that's spent some cash on your peer to peer network you can now be happy.
McKinsey's Survey (registration required) shows that most people are very satisfied with their Web 2.0 investment over the past five years. Most of these folks categorized themselves as fast followers or early adopters, probably because they were able to get in before demand increased and therefore got a good price. In fact 42% said that they invested at the right time while 24% said that they should have invested sooner. A gray web services investment was being used by 80% of respondents followed by collective intelligence, peer to peer, and social networking. Bringing up the rear was mashups, blogs, and wikis, which are not even being considered by many of the respondents. India had the greatest percent increase in investment dollars followed by AsiaPac and Europe, while Retail and High Tech led the way for industries.
Overall the report doesn't say anything that we don't know or couldn't have inferred. The greatest tech growth is obviously in the countries with little to no tech infrastructure. At this time, India and China. Blogs and Wikis still are having a tough time being adopted because companies are still very protective of their IP and don't want anything out there that could offer up their competitive advantage to the industry. Web Services, peer to peer and collective intelligence strategies are leading the way as they are the backbone for any type of further collaboration internally. One lesson learned though is that many of them wish that they had implemented this technology faster. I guess sometimes we never learn, since collaborative technologies like blogs and wikis will (possibly) become a norm, yet very few companies are investing in them.
Labels: mckinsey, surveys, trends, web 2.0
Another "Wisdom" Application
After
talking about Marketwatch last week, which by the way, when everyone was bullish the market went down (what does that say?), I've stumbled upon
another Wisdom of Crowds type application courtesy of Mashable called MyMuv.
MyMuv (pronounced My Move) is a trend tracking tool where you can create "battles" between two different things. Examples: Hillary Clinton vs George W Bush, XBox vs PS3, Coffee vs Tea, and a whole bunch of other battles, some that make sense and others that don't.
Now just like Marketwatch, once MyMuv achieves some type of critical mass, will it be able to accurately predict trends? I think that this will do a better job than Marketwatch since there is no financial incentive (at least not apparently) to choose for example coffee over tea. You choose hopefully what you really use or like and the wisdom of the crowd will determine whether or not you are in the majority. Since its a social network, it will prevent one from loading any of the battles and it will determine what type of person you are from your choices, although IE vs Firefox won't say much about you....perhaps.
I think its an interesting play and will probably require stricter monitoring to make it appeal on a macro level. It seems that it is India based with many references to India, which is fine, but many of the battle participants like a
Bajaj Pulsar or
Dharwad need more explanation! (Although Google and Wikipedia do a good job in defining.) Again, we'll keep our eye on this and see how it predicts the future!
Labels: social network, trends, wisdom of crowds
