Louis CK

Most Important Tech Companies in 2011

In the first instalment, we discuss which companies were the “most important” in 2011. We openly invited nominations from viewers, but some of the companies we mentioned were:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Google
• Apple
• Twitter
• Groupon
• and a few more…

Louis CK Goes Direct to Consumers

In this second instalment, we examine Louis CK’s latest comedy special, which was made available online directly to users for only $5. Some of the angles we consider is how (1) he was already big enough to pull it off, and (2) being the first to do it makes it a bigger, more successful initiative than it might otherwise be.

Lightning Round: Tech Blogs, SOPA, and Big Brother

In this last segment we enter the lightning round and answer email of the week. The questions we address include:

• The value of Tech Blogs
• What SOPA means for the average user
• and how Big Brother is getting privatized

Then in the email of the week, we talk about how technology is disrupting the Madison Avenue and the ad industry.

So last week I was down at SMX East 2009 in NYC. I had a blast, both during business hours and afterwards. During business hours, though, I was blogging and video blogging for NVI. Well, of all the video interviews I did, here’s the one I enjoyed doing the most — and I’m not even in front of the camera.

This is the first of three installments of a chat with Rand Fishkin and Guillaume Bouchard. They discuss where they think search might be headed in the coming year.

Rand is the CEO of SEOmoz, Guillaume is the CEO of NVI (my boss), the two of them are good friends, and they have both forgotten more about search engine marketing than most of us will ever know. All in all, it was a bit of an intimidating experience to be hanging out with them both.

It looks like Microsoft’s (MSFT) re-entry into search with the launch Bing.com might have less to do with taking on Google (GOOG) as a search engine, and more to do with entering more uncharted waters: cloudvertisingg. Of course, this would still be putting them in direct competition with GOOG, but in more of a proactive way. In other words, rather than playing catch-up (which is what the launch Bing engine initially looked like), MSFT might be prepping to compete with the GOOG of tomorrow. As AdAge reports:

The software company and Mediabrands, the media division of Interpublic Group of Cos. that counts Microsoft as a major ad client, are collaborating to build a software system that marketers can use to track everything from search advertising and e-mail newsletters to CRM systems to TV buys in one place.

The logic is that too many of the tools used today to analyze and execute those various marketing functions don’t “talk” with one another, which creates inefficiencies and clouds decision-making. Microsoft’s goal is to create a single platform to do so.

In a nutshell, cloudvertising is about sourcing user data from a variety of internal (proprietary databases) and external sources (third-party APIs), and using that data to hyper-target according to their actual interests (not the advertisers), behavior, and even current mood. The result is better conversions and return on ad spend because users are shown ads that are relevant to them.

Presumably, the platform would use cookies and IP addresses to identify users, index their interaction with different CPM, CPC, and CPA ads, and then cross tabulate that data to serve ads that users are more likely to act on. Users would be better off because they wouldn’t be shown intrusive ads, and marketers would be better off because they could target consumers who are actually likely to buy, and not just consumers who they think might buy.

Should MSFT pull this off, they’d not only be competitive with GOOG, but would essenitally “cut’em off at the pass.” After all, search would only be a single facet of a multi-channel ad platform that can “decide” what ads to serve to which users.

Of course, chances are that GOOG is already working on something like this, and has been for a while. And if I was a betting man, my money would be on GOOG because their in-roads into cloud-computing country are significantly more extensive than MSFT’s.

A fully comprehensive cloudvertising platform would also have to leverage third-party, social media APIs to profile users beyond the platform’s database. By reading third-party social media cookies and indexing the activity and content on users’ social media profiles, such a platform could hyper-target users according to their actual interests and behavior much more effectively. And given that GOOG is first and foremost a cloud-computing company, they seem much better poised to deploy this technology than MSFT.

Who knows? MSFT may have been working on this all along and are only now saying something because they’re so close, or they might just be trying to
maintain investor confidence by maintain industry and market perceptions of them as a leader in technology.

The only real reason that Yahoo! remains to be relevant is Flickr. Now, by relevant, I don’t mean profitable, long-term viable, or responsible for x-thousands of jobs. I mean only that “if it was gone, people would miss it.”

Flickr is the only real part of the Yahoo! portfolio that really gets it. And it wasn’t even a Yahoo! legacy, it was an acquisition.

Other than Flickr, Yahoo! will go down in history as a footnote in the Google story — the market leader that didn’t buy Google while it was up for grabs.

Now don’t get me wrong. Jerry Yang isn’t a dumb guy. And under his leadership, Yahoo! had plenty of good ideas. They were all just poorly executed.

Aside from Flickr, Yahoo! has made many valiant attempts at evolving. Take Yahoo! Pipes: very cool stuff, just a little too geeky.

And Yahoo! Answers: neat and fun, but not grass roots enough. I mean, it should’ve been launched outside of the Yahoo! garden, and possibly by a younger, less “experienced” team. Or perhaps left to someone else to develop and then acquired by Yahoo!.

Even Yahoo!’s Web 2.0 acquisition, MyBlogLog, was just another poorly executed idea about an over-evaluated  market niche. There just weren’t that many people who wanted to build a personality cult around their participation in the blogosphere.

MyBlogLog should’ve at least offered something more than a sidebar widget; maybe a WordPress plugin comment plugin that could (1) offer a map to the commenter’s other comments on other blogs so that (2) tracked your web-wide comments back on your profile so that (3) users had more of an incentive to stay logged in, and (4) Yahoo! would actually have some data tradeable and captlve data — i.e. if you uninstalled the plugin, a bunch of your comments were lost.

But Flickr is a site that has a very well defined market, offers them a useful service (hosting, sharing, printing, order fulfillment, community, etc.), and actually has a revenue model. I mean, I don’t even know how to use an SLR, but I’m considering dropping $25 USD/year on a Flickr Pro account because, over the last 2 years, I’ve passed the 200-image limit of a free account and I would like to share all my crappy pictures with the world.

That kind of acquisition strategy at that price-point is some kind of genius because it doesn’t even have anything to do with the technology. It’s all about people’s tendency to be digital pack-rats.

And just like some amateur like me is willing to pay for a service I only really use three times a year, the market would actually miss Flickr if it went away tomorrow. We’d lose a host, order-fulfillment solution, archive, and most of all, a veritable community. I don’t even think that MySpace can say that, anymore.

And that a kind of relevance that you can’t find in any search result.

It’s been a busy week in the world of newspapers. While publishers continue to watch their revenue streams dry up, entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and cable guy-turned-investor Leo Hindery, Jr. think they have the answer: an online paid-content model.

In any case, both these events have generated a considerable amount of opinionated dribble, and wading through it all, I’ve come across a few perspectives worth considering.

• Newspapers must grow their online news market share. Can they?: Writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard, Martin Langeveld explores how news consumption patterns have shifted online, but newspapers are in no position to charge for online content, so they’re just going to have to become “digital enterprises.”
• Don’t blame Google for newspaper woes: A former newspaper man himself, Alan D. Mutter puts the newspapers who repine about Google in their place by reminding us that “newspapers actually had a head start over Google. But Google “got” the web. And newspapers didn’t. That’s not Google’s fault.”
• Steve Brill wants to try charging for content online… again: Also writing for the Nieman Journalism Lab, Matthew Ingram of the Globe and Mail casts serious doubt on Steven Brill’s proposed paid-content model by asking “whether readers want to pay for any of the content that Brill and his partners want to lock up, regardless of how easy they make it.”
• Why Newspapers Shouldn’t Buy What Steven Brill Is Selling: Ryan Tate of Gawker points out that Steven Brill’s paid-content model isn’t so much about publishing as it is about micro payments, and companies like PayPal are already doing a very good job of handling that (suggesting that if micropayments could save newspapers, PayPal would be even richer than it already is).
• Should Newspapers Charge for Online Content? To Answer This Question, You Have to Consult a Lawyer: Peter Scheer looks at the Steven Brill’s paid content model from an even more practical standpoint, noting that “Copyright does not protect ideas or facts, just the way they are presented” — suggesting that it wouldn’t be worth it because newspapers would have to entangle themselves in litigative mire to fully protect their paid content.
• Newspapers: No Bottom in Sight: Ashkan has a great little clip from CNN about newspaper ad revenues, putting all the debate above back into context.
• This Sounds Familiar: The Death Of Newspapers… 91 Years Ago: A poignant reminder how this isn’t the first time newspapers have been in trouble, and it probably won’t be the last — suggesting that the sky might not be falling on the presses after all.

As I write this, I am at Affiliate Summit 2009 where everyone’s talking about making money online. It’s different than other Geek Conferences that way: less BS evangelizing about Web 2.0 and more of the bottom line.

And that got me thinking about this interview I did a while back. It’s with some who has one of the coolest job titles ever. His name is Avinash Kaushik, and he’s the Analytics Evangelist for Google. It’s his job to help the world understand how to use analytics to make websites that convert better — i.e. sell more.