The Future of Voice Broadcast and Voice Messaging

November 19, 2007
Filed Under Branding/Buzz/Viral, Entrepreneurship | Leave a Comment

At the DMA conference a few weeks back, I met Dinesh Ravishanker. He runs a unique, effective voice broadcast offering called Callfire that allows micro-targeted opt-in outbound phone calls. It’s unique, user friendly and efficient in the demos he showed me. He was alot of fun to speak to and recently sent me the executive summary of the company that is seeking growth funding.

It seems like a collaborative offering that could be highly effective when utilized with other parts of the multi-channel ecosystem. Maybe one day I’ll get to utilize it in my toolbox! Many people in the Internet society have forgotten about the effectiveness of phone conversations to drive collaboration, interaction and create actions. I recently had a conversation with my 82 year old great aunt in this regard. She stated that, “I lived for 72 years without the Internet just fine. I’m not sure my life is truly better with it.” A non-mainstream view perhaps but one that elements of how to be a successful marketer in the multi-channel sense.

Ad Age Interviews IAC’s Barry Diller

November 12, 2007
Filed Under Ask, Google (GOOG) | Leave a Comment

Last week, I wrote about the breakup of IAC by Barry Diller. At the time I stated:

He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.

Today Adage released an interview with Mr. Diller. In it he adds some sensibility to the Facebook valuation discussions, confirms that the Google sponsored listings deal is for five years and discusses how he’d like to buy AOL. I’d love to pick his brain on the future of Ask in a more detailed interview. It’s clear that he is shaking up a lot of things and it will be interesting to watch this breakup as it progresses for clues as to how the company will be run going forward.

Ad Age: You in the past have had a pretty good grasp on speculation. What do you think of the valuations being thrown around about a site like Facebook?

Mr. Diller: Those are not valuations based on anything fundamental; those are valuations based upon rather enormous hopes and dreams. Not that they won’t necessarily come true, but at this point, that’s what they are in terms of revenue and profits getting to the level that would sustain a very high asset value. … The physics would demand that this becomes more rational at some point, I think maybe sooner rather than later. But again, that’s a prediction based on nothing but hot air, to mix many different metaphors.

Ad Age: I can’t let you go without asking about Ask. Are you happy with how Ask.com is doing?

Mr. Diller: We feel great. We’ve been able to grow queries second only to Google. We’ve increased retention, frequency. All the metrics for Ask are very good. Now we have a new five-year arrangement with Google on the sponsored listings that’s going to be very, very remunerative to us. Ask is going to be able to continue to innovate.

Email From Gmail Blocked As Spam on Many Networks

November 7, 2007
Filed Under Google (GOOG) | 1 Comment

I’ve had three different people state that Gmail that I’ve sent has found it’s way into spam folders this week.

Since this is happening on multiple platforms now (Yahoo! Mail/Gmail), I have to ask the question, how is the email spam crisis going to resolve itself?

Death of Blog Search Part 3 - Technorati Cuts Data

November 6, 2007
Filed Under Blogging, Customer Experience | Leave a Comment

You’ve seen me talk about this before. Now the new CEO not only hasn’t fixed the Typepad duplicate counting problems, there are dozens of links that aren’t being counted. It is cutting the most useful asset. Historical data. Nobody cares about the past 6 months worth of links - total links and the historical reference of long tail terms matter much, much more.

I’m not going to rant about it, others have quite well…

IAC Split Up Conference Call Summary

November 5, 2007
Filed Under Ask | 2 Comments

In the call it was stated that Barry Diller will continue as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC. There are a ton of other reports. I won’t repeat all of that, I’ll just point out the conference call highlights. He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.

- The new metric is query growth - I find that to a strong signal about ask.com and other properties

- On Video - there is so much runway ahead

- Mobile - nobody has really started yet

- Internet advertising is effective and trackable

This is an exciting change for IAC, look for good things in 2008.

Web 2.0 was NEVER a Business Strategy

November 5, 2007
Filed Under Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital | 9 Comments

You saw the craze. People built up Web 2.0. It’s frequently a term that people used to avoid business principles and focus entirely on technology without any end goal. I have always disdain it. Many folks surprisingly jumped in with funding for some of these ideas, likely more due to existing dot bomb relationships that business principle.

Yet Internet startups who focus on the following business issues closely will always have a good chance at succeeding:

1. Have a clear value proposition that meets some area of unmet need: Something that says, “We provide a first in industry solution to the problem of blah, blah, blah”. Not “This is kinda like part Digg, Youtube with a bit of Facebook - just way better”. I meet lots of people that say this stuff in the second category, I cringe when I hear it.

2. Realize that Internet companies are marketing companies first and technology companies second: I can’t tell you how many startups I see who hire a programmer, program something and then go hire a salesperson. They go through the whole process without a well crafted, customer focused value proposition.

3 . Have a clear data model that focuses on data integrity and creating a monetizable store of value:
Does your Internet startup attempt to focus on data integrity issues? Will it eventually create a monetizable store of value? I ask this question in the startups that I’ve assisted. It comes from my background in financial services where not having accurate information can cost you millions in an instant, the true Internet time.

4. Have a business model for the company as a stand alone entity. Key partners invested in your outcome? Good.

5. Have people that have worked in high performance startup cultures on your team who understand that real-time iteration of your offerings are critical to your success!

6. Look at and study the history of business and technology innovation. Then use it in your transactions and execution.

These are the five that are most critical, though I’m sure you can think of more critical drivers. Please join the conversation. I can also think of several blogs that focus on buzzwords instead of business principles that are now more than a bit obsolete. It’s time to focus on business success principles at the party. it’s a smaller party, but one that will drive hundreds of new Internet startups for years and years.

Microsoft Hotmail Blocking Yahoo! Mail as Spam?

November 5, 2007
Filed Under Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO) | 37 Comments

This is a joke. But all too real. Microsoft meet Yahoo!. Yahoo! meet Microsoft. Now play nice.

Remote host said: 550 SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your — Below this line is a copy of the message. Received: from [68.142.237.90] by <A href=”http://n10.bullet.re3.yahoo.com” target=_blank>n10.bullet.re3.yahoo.com</A> with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [69.147.75.182] by <A href=”http://t6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com” target=_blank>t6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com</A> with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] by <A href=”http://omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com” target=_blank>omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com</A> with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 3742.69458.bm@omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com Received: (qmail 894 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Nov 2007 14:25:18 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;

New York Times Article Andy Rubin Google Gadget Guru

November 4, 2007
Filed Under Google (GOOG), Mobile / Cell / LBS / SMS, Mobile Search Marketing | 1 Comment

I rarely see things like this anymore, but oh my what an amazingly well researched story by John Markoff about Andy Rubin at Google.

The article talks about the changing face of the smart phone market and you really get a feel for the history of Mr. Rubin. While the parts about Mr. Rubin’s doorbells and girlfriend dismissal methods are certainly interesting, I found the article to be lacking in one major area - his history of successfully monetizing any of the projects he has worked on in the past.

It is great reading about him as a person though and hope to see people expand on the overlooked area as time goes by.

Business Week Article - So Many Ads, So Few Clicks

November 3, 2007
Filed Under Interactive Ads, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media | Leave a Comment

Nice article talking about he decline in click through rates of ads. It includes this statement:

But as responsiveness declines, ad targeting grows more attractive. Marketers see increases of 30% to 300% in click rates when ads are customized based on criteria such as the location, content of Web pages visited, or information researched on search engines.

Exciting data indeed for a project I’m working on right now. It’s all about relevancy, not quantity, of viewers.

Jason Palmer and Others Leave WebTrends…Professional Interim CEO Appointed

November 3, 2007
Filed Under Metrics | 1 Comment

According to this Click Z story…Jason Palmer and three other executives have left Webtrends. Since the company is doing well to the best of my knowledge - one might speculate that it had something to do with things other than revenue and profit.

I only had one encounter with Jason Palmer, it was at my first SES conference in 2005. I was eating lunch with some people at a table and Jason sat down at the table with a client. About ten minutes later, Jason declared to someone that they should mind their own business and not participate in the conversation with his client. I recall thinking that time that guy had a lot of nerve to say that at a table in a public lunch room where he sat down at the table last. That was my one and only interaction with Jason Palmer of Webtrends.

What are other people’s experiences with Webtrends?