I just became aware of a new beta Web 2.0 site, Commentful.com, that just soft launched. Commentful.com is designed to watch all of your comments and posts from Digg, Flickr, Zooomer, Youtube, etc. I just opened an account and I am going to toy with it for a bit. Let me know what features you think it needs via comment so I can see how well it works.
Month: July 2006
562,820,000+ Visits Served Without Disclosure
The past few days there has been posts raging on blogs regarding Payperpost and the issue of disclosure. While technically not a blog, Steve’s Digicam’s is a heavy traffic, blog like web site that reviews new digital cameras as they come to market. The site has no disclosure at all on what happens to the cameras after they are reviewed. Personally, I could care less whether Steve returns the cameras, keeps them until they fill every room in his house, sells them on Ebay or gives them away after he reviews them. Why? Steve provides a valuable service via a disciplined process that he follows with each camera. The site is so successful in fact that Steve’s Digicams is imitated and scraped in countless splogs that you can find on blog search engines
Steve’s Digicams includes high quality, expensive to serve test photos, most painstakingly taken from the exact same location and lighting conditions so that site visitors can make their own decisions and judgments on quality before purchasing a camera thanks to the site. The service he provides is invaluable, I couldn’t imagine buying a new digital camera without visiting the site. But the site has no disclosure. If what the disclosure crowd says is indeed correct, this site most certainly should have been rejected by the public for the non-disclosure in regards to the cameras, right? Then why is it a popular (Alexa ~4,000) site still running strong 8 years later? When it’s a source you trust that provides consistent value to you, disclosure is a non-issue.
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One more prop to Steve’s Digicams, they understand their visitors and they value highly that each site visitor has a smooth user experience on each visit and they focus on visitor retention – as stated on their about page:
“Steve’s Digicams was created in early 1997 and since then we have often considered making major site changes to make it “flashier” — we have opted not to do this in an effort to keep our site accessible to everyone. It’s nice to visit sites with tons of fancy graphics and lots of WOW factor, but many times those sites do not load properly or they take a long time to load due to net congestion. We also realize that not everyone has DSL or cable modem access to the net, many are still using 28.8 or 56K dial-up modems. We write our code in a manner so that our pages load as quickly as possible and, for the most part, you can find what you are looking for within 2 clicks. We know many people bookmark pages on our site, so for that reason we do not remove any items which we have previously posted nor change their URLs.”
Chicago Tribune Lauches Embedded Video Ads and Stories
I don’t know when they started doing it, but currently residing in Chicago, I read the Tribune Online often and this is the first time I’ve seen it. You can view the story in question via this Google News link without subscription.
While I highly applaud the video being added to this story as it adds an emotional element, I have one major problem with it. That is that the ad and the video starting running and stream audio without my permission. They should immediately add a YouTube like feature to allow the user to choose when and if in fact if they want to view this ad and story. This is a serious issue as I frequently edit audio, record streaming audio or am listening to music as I surf. What if a viewer is in a public place with a laptop and the audio launches when they don’t expect it? This is bad news. Anything that launches audio automatically is going to get on my bad side towards the publisher at one point or another. They should listen to this feedback and take swift action. I would welcome discussions with Dan Hess or anyone else over at the Tribune on this issue. Since Ryland Homes is the sponsor, it would be great if they led the charge on making this change.
In addition, how does this advertising model work exactly? If I’m an advertiser, how do I know how many people are actually listening to the 10 second ad that it is automatically launching without permission? There are people in offices and other places with no professional speakers who will never hear it for example. How do you charge for something so variable and uncertain?
If the Tribune wants to be innovative, I would suggest a Sphere This link or the ability to add blog trackbacks directly to a news story would be a good move!
UPDATE: It appears that all video has now been changed to starting with a click.
Barcamp Chicago is July 15-16, 2006 – 648 West Randolph
1st Annual Internet Service Provider Only Day!
Yesterday, I canceled my cable to become an Internet only household! So today is not only a day of Independence in the United States, but it is also the First Annual Internet Service Provider Only Day! Say no to tiered, duplicative service monopolies and speed the integration of Internet with TV and force a discussion about saving net neutrality – go Internet Service Provider only today!
TECH Cocktail This Thursday – Bring Your Business Cards!
The first ever TECH cocktaill event is scheduled for Thursday, July 6, 2006 from 6:30 to 9pm at State in Lincoln Park in Chicago, Illinois. Wine will be available for free as part of Stormhoek’s 100 Geek Dinner series!
Please RSVP on the comment section of this web site. I look forward to meeting you there. Let’s show the world that Chicago can be a tech startup leader in the 21st Century! Remember to bring your business cards and I look forward to meeting you there and hearing your ideas!
Being Able to Trust…Even Without Disclosure
I recently read Robert Scoble’s and Shel Israel’s book “Naked Conversations”. It’s a great book. In fact I’m currently writing a positive review for it for a publication due to it being well researched and fascinating in terms of its’ leadership and change management implications. It earned my respect due to the extensive research that went into the book. For the record, Robert didn’t send me a copy of the book and I got it at a public library.
But Robert made this post yesterday about disclosure in relation to payperpost that Richard Brownell, Chris Brennan and David Krug make some extremely interesting points that people should consider in the comments of Robert’s post. I think Robert is not recognizing that creating buzz is in itself advertising whether you keep the product or not – so either you should take what is given to you and be discreet about it or return the items as they arrive if you care about potential ethics issues.
In Robert’s July 2nd, 2006 post you say that you’ve “never really given Sonos a review before”. Yet in his April 8th, 2006 post , Robert stated the following:
“This is much much more cooler than I thought,” says Buzz Bruggeman.
What’s he talking about? The Sonos music system.
First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”
I have to admit this is pretty cool. It lets you put a controller in each room in your home.
And you control it over Wifi.
This rocks. We’re playing my iTunes stuff right now.”
Then later in the post Robert says:
“Tomorrow Chris Pirillo and Ponzi is coming over for brunch. It’ll be interesting to see what they think. (Chris always has the coolest stuff before I do, so if it impresses him it’ll impress everyone).”
Let’s compare some statements in this post with the July 2nd post:
1) Robert talks about Sonos (with an outbound link to the product no less) in the April 8th post. You then use the terms “I have to admit this is pretty cool” and “This Rocks” to describe it. Then on July 2nd Robert says, “Well, I never really gave them a review until today.” If alongside an outbound link to the product it’s stated that something is “pretty cool” and that “this rocks” isn’t a review, I don’t know what is.
2) In that post it says that “First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”” In the July 2nd post it talks about a new Nokia phone that just arrived. If the “no more free stuff” was truly operational you’d send it back to the shipper immediately or refuse delivery. Which is the true policy?
3) Does one not get value out of something for using it for a few months? In the car industry it’s a called a lease and there are payments involved. Did you pay Sonos or Nokia for value received during usage of these products for a period of time? If not, would you not admit that you got some value out of them?
4) In your April 8th post you said the Sonos might impress Chris Pirillo and go on to say that if it impresses him it will impress everyone. Does one gain any personal value out of impressing people with new gadgets that were sent to you?
Regardless of whether you gave the items away after a few months or not, Robert did talk about them on his blog and if they had not been sent to you likely would not have talked about them. You then gave Sonos even more buzz again by giving it away at Gnomedex as “hundreds of people witnessed it”. Why did Robert choose this high profile place to give away this item instead of quietly giving it to charity anonymously? So regardless of whether you reviewed the product on April 8th, you gave it buzz on your blog twice and in front of an entire conference. That my friend has value to certain people with your increasing public profile in terms of buzz for Sonos. Disclosure or not Robert created significant positive PR here for Sonos by discussing it in his blog – when it arrived and again after giving it away as “hundreds of people witnessed it” at Gnomedex.
While the data from yesterday’s mention is not in yet, I would suggest that this Alexa (yes I know Alexa has flaws) graph showing the spike in traffic in April around the 8th suggests the buzz impact of this mention or review quite well:
As I discussed previously in e-mail with Robert a few weeks back, “Naked Conversations” is about trust (and how certain actions enable trust to occur). If someone were to purposely write something misleading about a Nokia phone and someone bought it and it sucked, that individual would call that person out on it. In other words, the trust is self-policing even without disclosure. I therefore don’t need to be told like a child each time that you got these items for free, as I believe that you would not do something so foolish as to blog positively about a product that you thought sucked. Just lile the “Claire” blog at Vichy, people figured out what was and wasn’t real on their own – without any disclosure.
To summarize, while I certainly can’t speak for the whole blogoshpere, I trust that you are wise enough to not write something positive that you don’t truly believe to be true about a product regardless of whether you disclose that you got something for free or not. Aren’t you worthy of this trust Robert?