Merry Christmas!

2005 Crystal Ball

I usually don't like to do predictions because, as an optimist, they end up being just a wish list. But finally some things on my wish list might come true .... so without further a due ... Scott Knowles' 2005 Predictions:

1. First and foremost, 2005 will be known as the year of the long tail. The efficiency found in the 80/20 rule will no longer be necessary and old, traditional industries will struggle to adopt. As Chris Anderson puts it, 99% of the market can act efficiently as a marketplace because scarcity doesn’t exist in the digital realm. This applies to everything from music distribution to Aunt Nelly’s frilly fabrics to how we manage the radio spectrum. The long tail embodies the the concept of micro markets. Peers reaching peers. No control of the masses, but by the masses. Chris has more in Wired and on his new blog supporting a book he is writing on the subject:
   

   To get a sense of our true taste, unfiltered by the economics of scarcity, look at Rhapsody, a subscription-based streaming music service (owned by RealNetworks) that currently offers more than 735,000 tracks.

   Chart Rhapsody's monthly statistics and you get a "power law" demand curve that looks much like any record store's, with huge appeal for the top tracks, tailing off quickly for less popular ones. But a really interesting thing happens once you dig below the top 40,000 tracks, which is about the amount of the fluid inventory (the albums carried that will eventually be sold) of the average real-world record store. Here, the Wal-Marts of the world go to zero - either they don't carry any more CDs, or the few potential local takers for such fringy fare never find it or never even enter the store.

   The Rhapsody demand, however, keeps going. Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.

   This is the Long Tail.

2. Bloggers will become woven into newspaper content: A major print newspaper will fully integrate reader generated blogs into its content either via the offering of branded blogs or integrating outside blogs by correlating content between the two sites. As a side note, when my employment was a little less certain a few years ago, I was tooling around some business plan ideas that would involve this. I had visions of pitching Washington Post execs this concept and them wondering even what a blog was at the time. Now it’s obvious. Lemonde was the first to do something similar.
   
3. Google will introduce a sell-side advertising model via web services.
4. Only a few social networking sites will exist as a destination, and social networking will shift to be primarily a tool that’s layered across myriad aspects of the web. Foafnet will be the killer app of 2005. Meanwhile big media players keep buying up social networking sites but miss the importance of Foaf.
   
5. Web Services will enable the customized aggregation to be integrated into search (think i-local meets Technorati.).
   
6. Local Search becomes easy for local businesses through bid management companies like Local Launch and Reach Local and the hockey stick gets started.
   
7. The music longtail becomes more enriched through Podcasting, which spreads beyond tech talk and sees the return of the DJ (or shall I say podjay). Traditional media tinkers with distributing content via podcasting but doesn't integrate user created podcasts into its own content (save that for 2006 or 2007).
8. Out of fear of losing its power, the FCC settles with Fox over its indecent indecency fine and the Courts do not get to limit the self proscribed power of of the FCC.
9. iPod allows a lossless music compression format (a la Flac).
   
10. Tivo and other DVRs accept RSS video feeds.
11. I drink too much egg nog on New Years Eve.
    

History of Spin

Lisa Stone traces the origins of spin and the history of how journalists have dealt with it. A long, but good read. The bottom gets really good ... and by the end it becomes apparent that bloggers are changing the fabric of journalism and media and, I think, 2004 will be the year that history looks back and identifies this shift.

Cool Origins, Dude

Scientific Linguist Scott Kiesling is publishing a scholarly paper on the origins of "dude."

Historically, dude originally meant "old rags" - a "dudesman" was a scarecrow. In the late 1800s, a "dude" was akin to a "dandy," a meticulously dressed man, especially out West. It became "cool" in the 1930s and 1940s, according to Kiesling. Dude began its rise in the teenage lexicon with the 1981 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

Thanks to PhysOrg.com for the pointer.

Fox Brief Filed

ahh ... I love a good fight in the courts against censorship .... Fox is the latest challenging the FCC's authority over fining "indecent' broadcasts. Jeff Jarvis summarizes extremely well (too long to quote... so just read it). If Fox indeed wins, this would be a great first step in taking away the power FCC exerts in governing the airwaves and is trying to exert in other media.

mean to link to this earlier .... the value of the long tail.

The Aggregation of Disaggregation

Blogads weblog: "Isn't disaggregation -- not just of content but of bodies -- the trend?" (Henry Copeland's response to Mark Glaser's new news media wish list).

Which makes me think about the concept of the aggregation of disaggregation. Think Foafnet, Technorati and Local-i.

QuackTrack

.... claims to have the world's largest blog index. Technorati probably still holds that title (as David Weinberger points out). But QuackTrack must have the largest structured blog index. Neat site .. check it out. I would be curious to know how they rank the blogs.....

Sony Branded

Welcome to the new world of branding, Sony. This is what your overzealous legal team is doing to your brand. And This doesn't help either.

A La Blog

Lots of good stuff out there today and no time to comment on all of them so I will just link:

Jeff Jarvis challenges broadcasters to fight against the FCC and states they are finally about to do so. In the same breath Jeff points to the brodcasters (CBS and NBC) who are refusing to air a commerical from the United Chuch of Christ because it's "too controversial" (and we're not talking abortion).

Mark Glasser on how the news media is dead to the wind and what he's looking for in Journalism 2.0.

Doc Searls on Chris Locke's new venture.

And Doc Searls tons of linky love on blog tails.

Jason Kottke is asked by Sony lawyers to take down audio clip of Ken Jennings' loss and its description.

Making the Perfect Marketer - Strategy + Business.

This piece by Halley Suitt on the Alpha Female Blogger has something to do with my last post. Still formalizing what that it is. But read it any ways. It will make you understand bloggers (and writers). And will probably make you laugh.

I won?t tease you. I?ll give it to you straight. Blogs are artful. The best ones play with language, play with style, reference prior art and artfulness. They can reach down deep, make us laugh or cry, be a call to action. I thinHenry James is also famous for calling the novel a “loose, baggy monster.” I?ve always
liked that description. As they incorporate all types of writing within their ungainly
bodies, weblogs certainly commit the sins of loose, baggy monsterhood. As in James?
homage to the novel, I want to bow down to blogs and give them their due. They are
art. They are up to something. They are getting away with murder, entertaining us,
amusing us, making us act. They are not going away. They are here to stay. Get used to it.

They are also political — in the broadest sense, by sharing divergent voices across a
worldwide population — as well as in the literal sense, of often taking politics as their
subject and getting people fired up about new beliefs and calling them to immediate
action.k they are artful and artistic and radical as any new art form. They should be entertaining.

Why I Write - George Orwell

The Literature Network posts an essay by George Orwell in which he gives a look into why he and others write. There is an element of truth to this for bloggers as well:

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

1. Sheer egoism.
Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen ? in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all ? and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm.
Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

3. Historical impulse.
Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose.
? Using the word 'political' in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Real War Bloggers

Kevin Sites, who was responsible for video taping a marine firing on an unarmed Iraqi insurgent, tells the full story on his blog. He's been covering the trenches of war as a journalist for 5 years. This is my first time stumbling upon his blog, and the rest of it is just as gripping.

Adfreak Weblog Launched by Adweek

Adweek has launched a weblog, "Adfreak." Jack Freuer, on of my favorite Adweek writers, is a contributor. Kudos to them for launching in true blog fashion with a solid blogroll with self depricating links to sites making parodies of their own publication and those critical of the ad biz. (via Adrants).

Senator Spector Key to Judicial Future

With a possible 3 Supreme Court Justices being replaced in Bush's next term, if there's one small fight worth joining, it's moderate senator Arlen Spector's bid to head the Judiciary Commitee.

FCC Lies to Push Forward Indecency Case

Using the Freedom of Information Act, Jeff Javis uncovers that only 3 people, out of the 159 claimed by the FCC, actually wrote letters to the FCC about sexual suggestive programming causing $1.2 million dollars in fines, chilling the speech of our media and trampling over the very meaning of the First Ammendment.

There's a second travesty in all of this. It is the blatant laziness (or even worse, submission) by the mass news media to uncover this while reporting on the story. Every jounrnalist claiming to have covered this story should be ashamed of the standard they have upheld.

The FCC should repeal the fines they issued. Other citizen journalists should file similar FOIA requests and uncover what really happened with the Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction. And the mass news media should either get it together or just pack it up because you're worthless to us and you're losing to citizen journalism.

FCC Chills Speach of ABC Affiliates

KOMOTV: As many as 65 of the more than 200 ABC Affiliates chose not to air Saving Private Ryan due to fears of heavy fines and potential loss of broadcast licenses from the FCC.

Is branding dead, or just need to be redefined?

Hugh at Gaping Void gives us the top 9 reasons it's dead.

Number 4:

"Branding" is backwards looking. It's all about capturing past associations. It's never about what the business could become, but protecting what came before.

But an astute reader who works in branding counters convincingly in Hugh's comments:

brands should never be backwards looking, but tell the people - as you say - what the product is for. Make a promise and keep up to it.For me, the bradn itself is the key to the conversation between the companies and their stakeholders. It's like the common base for the conversation/discussion.Could sound like this:Company: "Hey, we know your problem and have a solution that's calles XYZ (the brand)."Customer: "Nice, but your XYZ lacks ...., fix it and I like you more."Company: "Ok, now we know better what you mean and will try."

P2P Search

Smart Mobs points us to a new P2P search tool called NeuroGrid.... keep your eye on this space.

Targeted Filtered Advertising

Dave Morgan introduces a simple but profound concept for internet advertisers in ClickZ today. Put consumers first in determining how to serve advertising. Why target advertising when it can be filtered. I ask Dave to take this a step further to social networks as a platform to filter advertising -- a socially networked advertising model as the basis of filtering. We just need to think way outside the box of relevancy, clutter, personalized offers and privacy that Dave suggests. Although they are a good start -- the consumer still doesn't drive the experience.

Web 2.0 Presentations

.... can be found here. John Batalle points us to this one on search.

Kiosk Marketing by Yahoo Local

Search Engine Jounral reports that Yahoo Local is putting its product in the thick of it to kick off marketing efforts by placing kiosks on the streets of New York:

Early next week, NYC Transit users will get first hand glimpse of a cleaver marketing tactic from Yahoo. Yahoo plans to install bus stop kiosks featuring Yahoo Local-Search in order to test user’s responses in one of the densest urban environments in the US. The first kiosk will be installed at W. 42nd ST and Eighth Avenue. A search for a cybercafe on 8th Avenue NYC produced a lengthy list of all cybercafes in the five boroughs including the first reference, a short two blocks from the epicenter of my search, W.42nd and 8th.

UniGoog

Google's Desktop Search has arrived. Great overviews by Danny Sullivan and John Battelle. Kottke has even grander thoughts.

Rojo

Keep and eye on this space (more http://www.rojonetworks.com/and Rojo Blog here) (via Allen Searls).

Rojo is a free, web-based service dedicated to helping information consumers efficiently discover, organize, read, and share dynamic content—such as online news and weblogs. Rojo enables users to easily search and subscribe to feeds (sometimes called RSS or Atom feeds) published by online content sites, blogs, discussion boards, and various corporations. Rojo helps users identify what content is most useful for them personally and Rojo's community-building features enable users to easily share relevant content with friends and colleagues. Rojo also offers services for publishers and bloggers to help them harness the emerging world of feeds.

More Podcasting

Marc Eisenstadt of Get Real has a very good overview of the who, what, where and when of Podcasting.

Jeff Javis is blogging the heck out of Web 2.0 and in doing so previews Idea Lab's new search engine Snap. Also see Web 2.0's coverage.

Update: BoingBoing smacks Snap for a pitiful linking policy.

Torrent Casting

In the same vein as podcasting, Slashdot discusses the reality of creating your own television network via bittorrent, a popular method of p2p file sharing. More here and here.

Feedster's complete Web 2.o coverage.

Blog marketing explosion ... (well, "explosion" might be pushing it).

Podcasting

Imagine a world where portable audio blogs existed. Where you could take an audio clip from your blog world and listen to it on your way to work, at the gym and on the plane. Portable, time-shifted radio programming that you control. Because you want control. You need control to fit everything into your life. But not only do you listen. You participate. You create. The next thing you know there's a blogosphere of audio programming that you control what you listen to, when you listen to it and what you contribute. And it's not broadcasting. It's narrowcasting to and from your realm of passion. Just like blogs.

But it's already here. Thanks to Adam Curry and others, via podcasting, we citizens are creating our own programming, we are downloading it, and listening to it on our iPods on our way to work, at the gym, and on the plane.

Jeff Jarvis and Doc Searls have much more... (too much to quote, so I encourage you to read it all).

The More Things Remain the Same

Doc Searls digs up a long lost classic from 1995 (this is essentially pre-commercial web or just when just a few were entering the game, folks). How true it is today:

1. The Internet is the ultimate base medium -- it will either undermine or support all other media. Think of the Internet as a phone system, a postal service, a library, a distribution hub and a yellow pages -- all in one. Only, unlike all those traditional institutions, nobody controls it. Anybody can participate in any of those roles.
2. On the Internet, all communications are personal. The "mailto" link on every working Web site goes to an individual. If a site lacks that link, or if nobody responds to a mailing across that link, the site is virtually dead.
3. Communication = conversation. Markets are conversations, whether they consist of one person or ten million people. Marcom needs to take advantage of this fact, both within the company, and between the company and the conversations that constitute its markets. **
4. A company's "Intranet" connections should equal or exceed its Internet connections. Without groupware you get gropeware. Whether you use Notes, Groupwise, Collabra or POEMs (Plain Old E-Mails)... you need to make, and use, your internal connections. In fact, your company will be no more effective than its collaborative platform. Making that platform work should be everybody's -- especially marcom's -- job.
5. Customers are the best sources of useful information -- and the most abundant. Now they're good for a lot more than money.
6. There is no strength in isolation. Ivory towers are the last refuge of the clueless.
7. Relationships matter. More sales are becoming marriages, and fewer are one-night stands.
8. Service is everything. If you can't service your customers, they'll find suppliers who will.
9. Branding requires substance as well as style. If you can't walk your talk, nobody will follow your lead or listen to what you say.
10. There is no market for messages. In fact, there never was, but now the customer is in a position to say so.
11. Logic and reason sit on the mental board of directors, but emotions cast the deciding votes. This is why share of heart matters more than share of market and even share of mind.
12. The purpose of marketing communications is not just to tell & sell but to learn & earn. Every company needs to learn from customers and to earn their interest and loyalty. If they don't, they'll talk to nobody and sell nothing.
13. There is no market for secrecy. Customers rarely demand that companies keep secrets. But they always demand more information. Don't hide it.
14. Your "position" is a fact, not a statement. And the only fact you can't change is where you come from. This is the one thing you can't lie about, and the first thing people want to know about you.
15. Marketing should be as simple as a handshake. Your marketing should answer the same questions people ask strangers when they meet for the first time:
    • Who are you?
    • Where do you come from?
    • What do you do?
    • What are you doing here?
    • Where do you live?
    • Who are you with?
    • Where are you going?
    If your answers to any of these questions are unclear, or if you can only explain them at length, you're not making sense. This helps: one or two word answers work best.
16. Information isn't data -- it's the communicable form of knowledge. Derived form the verb to form, information literally changes what we know. The goal of a communications strategy therefore is to inform and to become informed. It must work both ways -- an exchange that makes a difference for both parties.
17. Competition is necessary to a marketplace, but not sufficient. Customers want choices; and every product choice results from many people, and many companies, adding their goods together, not just opposing each other. The next time you hear a story about the U.S. versus Japan (or Mexico, or Germany...), look inside your PC. On average you'll see labeled products from up to 13 different countries. Peace at work.
18. Conversation isn't win/lose or even win/win. It's play/play. Think of marketplaces as homes and communities, not just as ball courts and battlefields. The press loves sports and war metaphors for a good reason: stories are about conflict and struggle. No story starts with "happily ever after." This is why the press' job is to make trouble, often where there isn't any. Really, they can't help it. But the truth is usually much more complex, much less dramatic and rarely as conclusive as the stories told by the press. Just remember: if a customer loves your company and buys your product, that doesn't mean he's taking your side. If you think he is, you may end up fighting your wars alone.
19. Honesty is the only policy. "If you can fake that, you've got it made," George Burns says. Unfortunately, most of us can't. It's very hard to fake one side of a conversation. And truth is a lot easier to maintain than a lie.

Much more here and in Doc's post.

What the Bubble got right.... by Paul Graham. (thanks John Batelle). Something to really sink your teeth into ... which I haven't had a chance to do yet.

Tragedy of the Advertising Commons

from Marketing Profs

Google Overtakes Overture's Local Match

....or Media Post just goofed big time.

Poynter released their latest eye tracking study with interesting results for advertisers and architects.

Shut Up and Talk

Listening has been trumpeted as one of the skills that makes a great leader or manager. I think listening makes one a good blogger too. Stowe Boyd quotes James Surowiecki's "The Wisdom of Crowds," in a section which argues that those who are more talkative in small groups are perceived as being more influential. Stowe sees a correlation to this and blogging.

Curious Search

Just about to pick up The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, a story that is told through the voice of a young autistic boy, and noticed my new favorite blogger, John Battelle, has a great look into the allegory between the novel and search:

I'm not entirely sure why, but this really hit home with me, after a year or so of interacting with the engineers and mathematicians who drive innovation in search. It's not that, as a group or even as individuals, the geniuses behind search are autistic. But as a culture, and in particular, as a product, search certainly can be understood to be face blind in the very least - unaware and/or unable to discern the cues we as users give it.

And there is a certain...coldness to search, an aloof, detached, and passionless side to it, where all things which can be indexed, are indexed, and a certain arrogance with regard to those things or people who don't understand how to retrieve that which is in the index.

I can't put my finger on it in this passage, nor will I try any more than I have, but, in the end, this is why we read novels, to feel that which otherwise we might not even notice.

Viral marketing. Literally.

A Google Browser? Jason Kottke thinks so and it makes perfect sense to me too.

Democratic Marketing

Independence Air, the new low-cost carrier based out of Dulles, is putting its marketing in the hands of their customers. Members of their frequent flier club are asked to choose Independence Air's next promotion.