44 Seconds of Youtube for All!

Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article today regarding the usage of Youtube talked Johan Pouwelse, a Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School professor and Andrew M. Odlyzko, a mathematician who heads the Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota.

Based on the figure provided of 9305 years, each person on earth has watched 44 seconds of video:

Years                           9,305
* Days                             365
Total Days               3,396,325
* Hours                              24
* Minutes                            60
* Seconds                      60
Seconds of Video 293,442,480,000
Earth’s Population   6,644,395,948
Seconds of Youtube
per everyone on earth      44 seconds
percent estimated US            0.70
US Population             299,605,719
Seconds of Youbtube per
US Population   686 seconds or 11:26

Mobile Marketing/Search - Open Thread - Comment Away!

I’m researching mobile marketing and mobile search, a lot, lately. There are articles everywhere you look.

The following are opinions I seek:
- What do you want to see on your mobile device?
- What don’t you want to see on your mobile device (perhaps more important actually)?
- What companies are the leaders in the mobile marketing/SMS/messaging space?
- Who are the movers and shakers in the mobile marketing/SMS/messaging space?
- Who are the thought leaders in the mobile marketing/SMS/messaging space?
- What are the barriers to international standards and metrics creation?
- Will pay per call truly migrate to the mobile device? How will it be different?
- What are the other barriers to success of the space?
- What oligopolistic and/or blocking will prevent adoption of superior technology?
- Will customers true needs and desires be considered fully first?

Gee, that’s a lot of upside down M’s at the start of the thoughts above!
Other links for you to consider for discussion: Mobile Marketing Magazine, Engadget, The Mobile Weblog, Mobile Marketing & Spam, 4Info, Goobile, etc

OK now, please comment away and ask your friends to do the same (heck even link it if you want), I want this discussion to focus on your thoughts and ideas and drive my future research and discussions here. Thanks for your time.

Guy Kawasaki Interview

Thomas Mulready of CoolCleveland.com interviews Guy Kawasaki via podcast as Guy will be visiting Cleveland on September 6th for a speech.

Thomas talks to Guy about “Art of the Start”:
- evangelist - used more than ever in job sites
- Xerox Parc and mouse and graphical user interface
- the mass of inertia that is against you when you starting a company
- talk about being pissed offness
- if a product or service isn’t good enough that is a good reason to start a company
- just starting a company because you hate them is not good
- what do you look for as a venture capitalist?
- young people who are not proven and a business model that is not proven
- the “Market doesn’t need it” argument is stupid
- dislike of mission statements, prefers a mantra 3 to 4 words long
- to avoid failure you’d have to try nothing - there are many cases of people
who have failed and have come back to win. I burned through $50 million!
- it starts with the universities, the engineering - if I had a choice between $100 million
in venture capital or a great university engaged with what is around it I’ll take the later
- Guy says his speech will be more about what not to do than what to do (this is great!)
- current state of Apple Computer is also discussed

Interesting to hear Guy interviewed outside the valley the vibe and questions are different. Enjoy!

Danny Sullivan to leave SES and SEW

Yes, it’s sad, for now…Danny Sullivan is leaving SES and SEW.

The rumors that he is leaving to build the world’s largest design firm of flash web sites are unfounded!

Please do a blogroll lesson here and update your blogrolls to daggle.com, many people change primary blogs and the blogrollers don’t follow. For example Robert Scoble’s old blog still ranks above his new blog in Google…

Thought for the Day

Sometimes reality can be much stranger than fiction.

How true…

Yahoo!, Ebay, Google = Strangeness

Am I the only one who is confused by the action to sign an agreement with Google by Ebay less than three months after being acknowledged on stage at the Yahoo! annual shareholders meeting? Is this a result of the recent Yahoo! platform delay? What is really going on here?

To refresh your memory, you will recall that Yahoo! announced a partnership with Ebay in May…

Yahoo!, eBay Enter Partnership To Expand Searches, Advertising
(Extracted from the Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2006) Yahoo! and eBay have announced a strategic partnership for Internet searches, advertising, online payments and a co-branded toolbar. “This partnership with eBay provides us with a great opportunity to further extend our sponsored search and graphical advertising reach to one of the largest and most active communities on the Web,” Yahoo! Chief Executive Terry Semel said in a statement. The two companies said Yahoo! will become the exclusive third-party provider of all graphical advertisements throughout the eBay site as well as so-called sponsored-search ads — a potential blow to Google, which is Yahoo!’s fiercest rival in that category of business. The companies will also develop “click to call” advertising technologies, in which consumers can use a link included inside an advertisement to directly call that advertiser.

Then yesterday Ebay announces an agreement with Google…

MOUNTAIN VIEW and SAN JOSE, Calif., August 28, 2006 - Google Inc.
(Nasdaq: GOOG) and eBay Inc. (Nasdaq: EBAY) today announced a
multi-year agreement to benefit both companies’ collective communities
of users, merchants, and advertisers around the globe. The agreement
consists of two primary components involving text-based advertising and
“click-to-call” advertising functionality.

Specifically, Google will become the exclusive text-based advertising
provider for eBay outside the United States. In addition, eBay and
Google plan to integrate and launch “click-to-call” advertising
functionality that leverage both Skype and Google Talk globally in each
company’s respective shopping and search platforms. The companies said
the financial terms for certain components of the deal involve revenue
sharing, but did not disclose specific details.

Google Maps Local Indexing Time Less Than 2 Weeks

I posted my information on the day they rolled out the local listing and coupon service.

It appeared when I checked today in less than two weeks, since they said it could take up to 4 it exceeded the low expectation set. Two weeks, Google did you reinvent Internet time?

dellbatteryprogram.com = poor customer service

Shel Israel says Dell warned customers about the Sony hot battery problem. However, I’ve got to say not good enough here. In fact my Dell laptop does run hot. When I got a recall notice on my car once, they mailed me a letter and notified me directly. What a concept actual communication to the affected customer.

Dell has the data to inform the customers themselves directly. Instead they are sending people to a lame web site asking customers to do their work for them. If you are Dell you have service codes, you have email addresses in other words you have all the data necessary to contact these people…yourself. You didn’t need to spread panic in this manner. You could have issued a statement saying “We contacted all the parties with the batteries under recall and will immediately be shipping them the new batteries after we have verified their current address.”

Dell, you can and should do better here. I want you to tell me whether I’m affected. Even if I’m not, my laptop still runs hot, why is that?

Speaking of Dell, the Dell blog has still never acknowledged my post about USB shortcomings in my new Dell desktop. Will they ever innovate from customers?

Is Google Still Full?

Ian Kallen pointed out that Google’s servers were full early in Q2, I wonder if that is still true?

Speaking of Ian Kallen, you should closely watch and learn from his video.

Commercializing Software Ideas via Crowd Wisdom

My friend Peter Harkins has joined this new place called Cambrian House. They are based in Calgary, I’d love to do some marketing for these folks as a trip to Banff or Drumheller would be oh so nice!

“Cambrian House’s mission is to discover and commercialize
software ideas through the wisdom and participation of crowds.
Contributors earn royalties, sharing in the success of the products.”

I could have oh so used this concept for my music business plan from 2003 that went unexecuted! I see great world changing value in the new things that are being created out there that are removing friction from the start up process!

Management Consulting

Fellow Chicago GSB MBA alum Steve Shu recently wrote an interesting post on consulting. If you are seriously considering a career in the space you should become familiar with a book written by Martin Kihn which you can find on Amazon as well.

Entrepreneurs Sharing Ideas = Success

Eariler this week, I posted the 7 Reasons Crazy Egg will be Successful. Leading that list is that Crazy Egg was transparent to the world about it’s plans for the service from day 1.

Ironically a few days later, Hiten Shah of Crazy Egg showed me a new site, buildv1, for connecting entrepreneurs. I looked through all of it’s blog posts and there was this gem from a few months back. Read it, I’ll wait here for you. No, really read it.

Do you get it yet world? Share your ideas, win. Shield your ideas, lose. Please send this post to someone you know who is hiding great ideas and isn’t trusting and living an empty life of non-execution.

Yahoo! Answers My Purple Cow Question

It’s not a Chicago original, but I thank Yahoo! for researching the history of the purple cow in their lobby as per my request on a recent post.

Thanks Nicki!

I Joined the Internet Explorer IE7 Beta 3 Party

I heard some people say this will change the way we all surf the net. Well after trying it out last night, I like the tabs. What is the best thing about IE7 you ask? The favicon.ico works now in IE!!!

While the tabs make for a more efficient memory footprint, Firefox is still more efficient memory wise.

It has ”feed intergration” all I see is that it allows you to view feeds more easily. I don’t see a storage feature that is in my face as has been described. Am I missing something?

AOL Dismisses Three Employees Over Data Leak

The Wall Street Journal and other outlets are reporting that the CTO and two other employees were fired over the recent data incident. If this is an internal control and procedure problem why blame them when the accountibility is ultimately higher than this? This action after a long silence is a cop out and doesn’t address the core issue based on what has been communicated to me. What actions exactly will be taken to prevent a repeat?

Intellext - Dr. Jay Budzik and CEO Al Wasserberger

I sat down with founder Dr. Jay Budzik and CEO Al Wasserberger of Intellext late last week. They vividly explained how Watson helps people change their search experience from active to passive. They are finding new users, early adopters in information technology, bloggers and journalists. If you are looking for Shakira tickets at the United Center, looking at a web page and find Linkedin or Myspace contacts – it can help you. Watson brings traffic to content publishers. The search box, Google, Yahoo!, Technorati currently become the arbiter to when you see it instead of information as you need it. Intellext recently won a US Department of Homeland Security development grant. Dr. Jay’s sets the future context for Watson.

When listening, the first voice after mine is Dr. Jay’s then Al Wasserberger answers the second question…special thanks to Leigh Winter for her time in first explaining Watson to me a few months ago and then arranging this interview. I’ve really enjoyed deepening the relationship with Intellext’s people as they are both brillant about technology and yet business focused - a rare combination. Watson’s value proposition is complex until you reach a certain inflection point then it becomes amazingly simple - finding ways to reduce that cycle time is the secret key and my mind has been buzzing since my visit with ideas!

Prediction: While there are significant and interesting challenges to overcome in education, marketing, change management of the entire Internet and distribution, the core value proposition is sound and the vision is quite clear. While this has quietly lurked out there so far, I truly believe it has the power to be extremely disruptive if consumers can be educated on the convenience of passivity and change their behavior.

UPDATE: August, 2007 - Due to the rebranding of Intellext to Media River, this podcast has been removed. I however would be happy to share it with anyone who contacts me in Chicago to ask for it explaining why it’s relevant to them at this time.

My Next Big Gig

Lots of people ask me for details of what my next leadership role would look like. They want to know my ideas for using traditional sales, marketing and business development in conjuction with strategies to build passionate users and use attendance of events, networking with influencers and blogging about the events themselves to put focus on these issues. So I was challenged to put that together by someone. **I want to be clear that this a corporate and not an agency or consulting perspective!** I’m happy to customize a spec once we have a discussion, please ask!

CUSTOMER EVANGELIST

POSITION
As Customer Evangelist, you will contribute to lowering customer acquisition costs and increasing the frequency of acquisition, remove objections to usage and adoption, drive continuous innovation from customer and partner listening and increase usage frequency. Customers whose lives you touch will be transformed into passionate spokespeople to create positive word of mouth and make YOUR COMPANY the most adored brand in the world leading to high user adoption rates of your product and feature introductions.

This individual is a leader and rainmaker capable of seeing the big picture as well as the finer details. This is a roll up your sleeves, dig in and get it done role. The CEO strives to create a participative and progressive culture and is committed to executive sponsorship of the customer evangelist’s transformational activities to meet priority goals through resource allocation as necessary.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Role will likely be about 50% (depending on the organization) mix of traditional brand shaping, partnering creation, sales, marketing, viral marketing, data metric and reporting invention, business development and you are always seeking ways to do things differently and better using new technologies and/or techniques like search engine optimization. Create viral acquisition.
Travels to networking events and conferences targeting early adopters, influencers and generation to listen to customers, potential strategic partners and expand brand awareness. Strive to develop speaking engagements and evangelize YOUR COMPANY’S BRAND AND PRODUCTS as the preferred product distribution channel and consumer’s destination of choice for local purchases.
Identifies new partnership and distribution opportunities as they arise in networking and communicate them to other team members for analysis of brand implications and then participate in execution.
Be a critical voice of YOUR COMPANY’s new customer experience blog. This blog profiles unique product usage by customers as well as blogging about conferences attended by Customer Evangelist where you build strong networking relationships. This blog also creates transparency and trust by listening to blogosphere feedback to prioritize feedback for introducing new features and initiatives.
Participates in blogosphere brand monitoring, conversation and shaping as well as competitive landscape with YOUR COMPANY’s team to build the world’s most responsive and adored brand.
Places periodic feedback phone calls to existing partners leaders to ask “How are we doing?” and “What can we do better together?”
Monitors new disruptive technologies (like mobile and location based services), through networking events and other research, in order that they can be embraced. In some countries, PC ownership is low and mobile devices rule, we need an individual to be open to that changing in North America and making our platform flexible and relevant in eventual foreign markets.
Coordinate with other “voices of the customer” touch points throughout the company to integrate the feedback into the continuous innovation research and scope expansion.

QUALIFICATIONS

An understanding that flexibility in what your role may periodically require from you, especially in terms of extensive travel, is critical.
A clear passion for satisfying and listening to customers, disruptive technology, simplifying processes and relationship building through both traditional and new age communications tools. It is required to do the customer profiles that you have had experience bringing out why people do what they do.
Communicates well with both C-level executives and other groups within and outside the organization. Understands that different types of communication are necessary. Respects the importance of each individual in driving both change and customer satisfaction.
Previous experience in a hyper growth company which utilized technology to transform customer experiences in a learning, innovation and highly collaborative, rapidly changing culture.
Possess a clear passion for networking, search, process simplification, online marketing and customer relationship management.
Superior command of data models and appreciates the importance of tying together disparate data sources to create value for both customers and the organization while appreciating personal privacy. Previous experience working with Phd’s or heavy engineering types is welcomed and is a definite plus.
Candidate will have an existing blog with a growing readership of A-list readers.
B.S., Top 10 MBA strongly desired.

Again, this is a draft document that is a foundation of postition customization (if you are a small startup this would be appropriate to do!) My ability to network and use event attendance in a unique way is one of my emerging and potentially most valuable assets when mixed with my strong strategy and data abilities.

Please read my bio further if this is your first time here.

Thanks!

Contact #2300 - Contextweb CEO Anand Subramanian

Anand and I recently shared a great conversation. Contextweb’s ContextAd is the only true REAL-TIME marketplace for buying and selling ads using patent pending Contextual Targeting technology (Patent Publication No.: US-2002-0123912-A1). You can learn more details here.

Anand is extremely interesting to talk to and I appreciate his views on a wide variety of issues. I look forward to learning more about him and hearing his ideas for the future.

Outlook Contact #2250 - Michael Miller - Avenue A Razorfish

I’m finally catching up on my indexing of business cards. At ad:tech, there was a panel at lunch that was hosted by Avenue A | Razorfish. I’ve interacted with the company several times now and I like the organization because:

1) They truly seem to customize their solutions for each client and situation.

2) During this session, they gave vivid examples of how they gave pushback to clients when they suggest “me too” and group think ideas. This is taking the hard road in the best interest of the clients. This is a good thing.

3) Avenue A | Razorfish’s team appears to be focusing on cutting edge tools that can create value.

4) Instead of presenting a long series of slides during this ad:tech presentation they took questions the entire time. This shows command of subject, a lack of fear of the unknown and a desire to both focus on potential customer’s needs and learn about what people are currently thinking about out there.

There were 4 Avenue A | Razorfish people on this panel the above mentioned Michael Miller, Bruce Woolsey (Seattle), Marc Stephens (whom I seem to see almost everwhere) and Dave Friedman. Props to them for leading this type of interesting discussion. I look forward to my next interaction with them.

7 Reasons Crazy Egg Will Be Successful

The eagerly anticipated launch of Crazy Egg (or do you say Crazyegg?) is here!

Crazy Egg allows you to “Visualize Your Visitors” and gives you a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking and allows you to enhance your site’s results. By inserting a simple few lines of code, Crazy Egg allows you to see where people are clicking on your site and generate reports via overlay, list and heatmaps. The product has already been used on sites at leading ecommerce retailers who have given it a big thumbs up. For my blog, Crazy Egg during helped me learn to rearrange and eliminate non-performing categories for a cleaner and more useful look, thanks Crazy Egg!

To see an example of the types of reports available - they have a demo that nicely cross promotes Pronet Advertising.

Crazy Egg will also likely one day make a great Harvard Business Case study on how to launch a web property for the following 7 reasons:

1) They have always been transparent since day 1, public and open about their idea and primary vision - no NDA talk EVER! (I hope everyone learns from this?)

2) They used case studies that focused on client’s needs of early adoptors in the blogosphere to tout the products benefits. This made the value proposition more clear to people.

3) The above two items enabled viral marketing to occur organically. I can’t say enough about the importance of this.

4) They sought out critical influencers to try the product and then asked for feedback.

5) Crazy Egg actively used this feedback in a timely manner to innovate and improve the product in numerous ways. This laser sharp focus on customer listening was critical.

6) The product is amazingly simple to install and activate and this reduces the barriers to adoption and usage. Many web products skip this important step.

7) Upon launch, a refined, non-beta product was delievered giving an optimal customer experience. Interesting and all too rare a concept these days.

Congrats to Hiten Shah, Neil Patel and the rest of the Crazy Egg team, they’ve worked tremendously hard to make this product a success and I’m certain this hard work will pay off.

Start improving your web site now!

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