Posts tagged Care
Why Don’t More People Care About Tech News?
Dec 16th
Earlier this week on his personal blog, one of Google’s product management directors, Hunter Walk, posted a very interesting sampling of responses from technology journalists about the broad question of whether they are receiving the level of journalism from our business that they deserve. I found it very interesting that a product manager from any company was able to reveal at least as much, if not more, about the folks who usually interview him than they reveal about his company.
The emerging theme from the journalists’ responses was distinct exasperation and frustration with the level of interest that you, their reader, have demonstrated in their product. It’s getting “harder… to convince people to read these stories” on broader subjects like piracy, said one. Another remarked, “I wish more people cared about” the very topic on which his publication was founded (you’ll know the one I mean), and which you would think his livelihood is based. And a third went so far as to blame readers for being interested in the wrong things, saying, “I am dismayed every day by the crap that people seem to find worthy of page views.”
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I can sympathize to some extent. When your job is to engage people’s interest not only in topics that should be naturally engaging and attractive, but at the same time in the most obscure and esoteric ones (I have a piece I’m working on now about a new high-bandwidth VoIP routing component for use by regional voice carriers), and you’re given the tools to measure what appears to be reader sentiment on a moment-by-moment basis, the feedback you get will be depressing. Stories about the everyday innovations that happen in our business here and there, only attract about a few hundred people each. If your career began with a publication whose claim to fame was dethroning TV Guide and Penthouse as the nation’s most purchased newsstand magazine, you start to have dreams about how many more people you could attract if you stood atop a kiosk at an airport gate and banged a tambourine. (And as Carl Jung might point out, you start to refer to yourself in the second person.)
I thought you cared
But here’s something I know, and it’s what keeps me working every day. I know that the conclusion arrived at by these folks Hunter Walk interviewed is wrong. I know when I walk into a café and listen to the stories you tell about the technology you use, and when you hold it in your hand to show me something you’ve discovered, you’re far more interested in the depths and details of technology than any analytics or heuristics or demographics would pretend to reveal.
The problem (dear Brutus) is not with you. And frankly, it’s not with us either. There’s something keeping us apart, that’s disconnecting you and me from what we want to know, in ways we haven’t yet begun to fathom.
The Web as a tool for generating interest in information and ideas is overrated. I will go so far as to say it is defective. While nothing thus far created in the history of humankind has given individuals greater access to information at any level, from any place, as a web – as a device that links information with common contexts together to make it meaningful – it fails miserably.
Would you like fries with that?
I’ve used this analogy for over a decade, but here I go again: We “tech news” journalists perceive a world where the product that we produce is being under-consumed. It is as if we established a chain of French fries restaurants, serving up French fries at incredible volume. Out front of our stores, we build long treadmills where we stamp out packets of fries, one after the other, piping hot. When not enough people show up to buy fries, we produce more. We compete with one another to make the most fries.
And when we wonder why, why people aren’t eating our French fries, we try innovating. We serve up varieties of fries with your choice of flavored salts, toppings, and packet colors. We try sour cream, salsa, different textures of ketchup. It attracts some interest for a while but then it dies down again.
“Why Don’t More People Eat Our Fries?” we write on a big banner, which we hang outside our store in big, bold letters. Even pleading with our patrons fails. On a late Friday night after a particularly hopeful sales promotion for French Fries with Chocolate Sprinkles and Free Justin Bieber Doll crashes miserably, we come to the obvious conclusion: People hate potatoes.
Hopefully this metaphorical model makes a little plainer what analytics services fail to account for: The Web, such as it is today, mandates that all information be served up on individual plates, a la carte. The most effective tools and apps produced for the Web today are those which offer folks some way of making a meal of it all (Pulse, Flipboard, News360, ShowYou, Qwiki). But despite the advent of the hyperlink which supposedly sparked this entire revolution, the Web does not link itself to itself. More to the point, it does not generate its own context – the frame of reference that gives meaning, flavor, and value to one element by relating it to all the others.
Main course change
It is therefore somehow fitting that the one response Walk received that speaks to the core of the real problem, came from the writer for the publication that defined context for generations.
“There are topics which receive significant coverage, but are not being addressed in ways that I find particularly effective,” wrote Quentin Hardy of The New York Times. “That is, I think people may care about them, but they tend to fall back on familiar tropes and biases which prevent them from engaging with them successfully. ‘Care more’ in this sense might be seen as ‘address differently.’ [An example is] our national financial situation. Ideological biases, strengthened by a desire to avoid painful disruptions to the status quo, are preventing many people from addressing the choices we have made about revenues in and payments out.”
It was a question about tech news, but for Hardy, it became about the economy. There are aspects about our business that are not the least bit interesting, and may not even make much sense, taken unto themselves. In a media environment that is obsessed with what the business calls “verticals,” we forget that vertical is only one dimension. If we wonder why the cross-sections of our readership look somehow wrong, small, insignificant, uncaring, perhaps it is because no one out there is as vertical as we think they are.
I love asparagus. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say it is my favorite vegetable. But not one time in my life did I munch on a sprig of asparagus as a snack. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, the reason I know as much about the industry of technology as I do is because I see it in a context that gives every element of the subject some degree of pertinence to the rest of the world – to the broader economy, to the subject of our world’s infrastructure, to the question of our fate as a society. In other words, I eat my asparagus but in the context of a full meal.
If publishers are to resolve the issue of maintaining your attention in tech news, we in this business will all need to come to the collective realization that tech news is a side dish. We need to break the barriers that the Web imposes upon us, and learn to provide it with a main course.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
3 Reasons Why Startups Should Care About the Facebook IPO
Nov 29th
The Wall St. Journal’s report today that Facebook will make an initial public offering on the stock market next year has been met with plenty of press comment on the expected size of the offering ($100B, huge) but seems to have left many other people unmoved.
It’s easy to feel cynical about Facebook, a lot of people do. The news may be important for more than just holders of the stock, though. It could prove very big for the whole tech startup world and for those who enjoy the innovation that startups create. Why? Because the Facebook IPO could mean more and bigger startup acquisitions, more support for more startups and an infusion of smart money and experience into radically new tech experiments.
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1. Early Facebook Employees Will Flood the Startup World With Smart Money & Experience
The best thing that came out of Web 1.0 for the next generation of startups was either the Google IPO or the PayPal Mafia. Hopefully a lot of the money that early Facebook employees take from that company’s IPO will be pushed back into the web to fuel the next generation of startups. In theory at least, it should be very smart money – not dumb money at all. Not even just smart money, but experience and connections.
There’s a good thread on Quora (ironically, itself a great little startup spun out by very early Facebook employees) on the “PayPal Mafia” type experience.
Venture Capitalist John Greathouse says there that there are a number of conditions that a company’s early employees need in order to spawn the creation of a meaningful wave of startups after they get a big win.
“Capital from past venture successes. Pertinent experience – folks who have helped drive the bus, not gotten a ride in the back. Operators who are still hungry enough to ‘do it again.’ A desire to work together again.
“The people who fit the bill for spawning new startups are usually the Entrepreneurial Lieutenants, who make good money in a past venture, but not huge money.”
Greathouse says there are a “fairly predictable list” of companies today that could fit the bill, including Twitter, Zynga, Google and Facebook.
Greathouse goes into more detail in a blog post he wrote on the joy of getting the band back together again. It’s a good read.
“Entrepreneurs are pathological,” he concludes. “Most of them simply cannot help themselves and are thus repeatedly drawn back to the startup world. They often temporarily ‘check out’ from the startup treadmill but many of them ‘never leave’. Savvy investors and young entrepreneurs take advantage of this phenomenon by joining Serial Teams and helping them leverage their past successes to achieve new startup victories.”
That’s likely to be an important part of the story of the Facebook IPO.
2. Facebook Will Probably Acquire More and Bigger Startups
Facebook said last December that it would acquire 15 companies in 2011. That would be double the pace at which it acquired startups in 2010.
I’ve only been able to count 8 companies Facebook has acquired so far this year: WhoGlue, Friend.ly, Push Pop Press, Sofa, Daytum, Snaptu, Beluga and Rel8tion. Cool companies, but no medium sized or big ones.
Flush with cash from an IPO – perhaps Facebook will pick up the pace and the size of its acquisitions. That’s good news for startups, both those acquired and others throughout the supply chain that are emboldened by the market validation of the acquisitions.
Facebook’s IPO documents will detail what it plans to use the money raised for and if the company signals then that more and bigger acquisitions are an important part of its strategy, that alone will be good news for startups.
3. An Improved Economic Scenario for Startups Will Lead to More Support for All of them
“Are you going to be the next Facebook?” grandparents around the world will ask for the next several years, whenever the young people in their lives start companies at all related to computers.
Since in much of the world people assume you’d only start your own company if no one else would give you a job at theirs, a burst of enthusiasm for commonly understood tech entrepreneurialism could honestly be a good thing.
More importantly, the whole startup ecosystem will feel vindicated if the Facebook IPO is a sustained success. Apple may have surpassed Exxon “The Death Star” Mobil as the world’s wealthiest company, but you’re probably not going to build an Apple. You might build a Facebook, or so many boldly and thankfully naive people believe every day.
Smart money should follow pies that are getting higher, too. A lot of people will say that first Groupon’s stupid business model and now Facebook’s wildly overblown valuation prove that there’s “a bubble.”
Facebook is reportedly set to claim something like $4 billion in revenue this year though, so the decoupling of asset prices (valuations) from their underlying economic fundamentals that characterizes a bubble doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not drastically, in this case.
Besides, as several observers have noted, the time to get scared is not when lots of people are cautioning that there’s a bubble – it’s when the money is piling up fast and no one thinks there’s a bubble.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Three Reasons Why Startups Should Care About the Facebook IPO
Nov 28th
The Wall St. Journal’s report today that Facebook will make an initial public offering on the stock market next year has been met with plenty of press comment on the expected size of the offering (huge) but seems to have left many other people unmoved.
It’s easy to feel cynical about Facebook, a lot of people do. The news may be important for more than just holders of the stock, though. It could prove very big for the whole tech startup world and for those who enjoy the innovation that startups create. Why? Because the Facebook IPO could mean more and bigger startup acquisitions, more support for more startups and an infusion of smart money and experience into radically new tech experiments.
Sponsor
1. Facebook Will Probably Acquire More and Bigger Startups
Facebook said last December that it would acquire 15 companies in 2011. That would be double the pace at which it acquired startups in 2010.
I’ve only been able to count 8 companies Facebook has acquired so far this year: WhoGlue, Friend.ly, Push Pop Press, Sofa, Daytum, Snaptu, Beluga and Rel8tion. Cool companies, but no medium sized or big ones.
Flush with cash from an IPO – perhaps Facebook will pick up the pace and the size of its acquisitions. That’s good news for startups, both those acquired and others throughout the supply chain that are emboldened by the market validation of the acquisitions.
Facebook’s IPO documents will detail what it plans to use the money raised for and if the company signals then that more and bigger acquisitions are an important part of its strategy, that alone will be good news for startups.
2. An Improved Economic Scenario for Startups Will Lead to More Support for All of them
“Are you going to be the next Facebook?” grandparents around the world will ask for the next several years, whenever the young people in their lives start companies at all related to computers.
Since in much of the world people assume you’d only start your own company if no one else would give you a job at theirs, a burst of enthusiasm for commonly understood tech entrepreneurialism could honestly be a good thing.
More importantly, the whole startup ecosystem will feel vindicated if the Facebook IPO is a sustained success. Apple may have surpassed Exxon “The Death Star” Mobil as the world’s wealthiest company, but you’re probably not going to build an Apple. You might build a Facebook, or so many boldly and thankfully naive people believe every day.
Smart money should follow pies that are getting higher, too. A lot of people will say that first Groupon’s stupid business model and now Facebook’s wildly overblown valuation prove that there’s “a bubble.”
Facebook is reportedly set to claim something like $4 billion in revenue this year though, so the decoupling of asset prices (valuations) from their underlying economic fundamentals that characterizes a bubble doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not drastically, in this case.
Besides, as several observers have noted, the time to get scared is not when lots of people are cautioning that there’s a bubble – it’s when the money is piling up fast and no one thinks there’s a bubble.
3. Early Facebook Employees Will Flood the Startup World With Smart Money & Experience
The best thing that came out of Web 1.0 for the next generation of startups was either the Google IPO or the PayPal Mafia. Hopefully a lot of the money that early Facebook employees take from that company’s IPO will be pushed back into the web to fuel the next generation of startups. In theory at least, it should be very smart money – not dumb money at all. Not even just smart money, but experience and connections.
There’s a good thread on Quora (ironically, itself a great little startup spun out by very early Facebook employees) on the “PayPal Mafia” type experience.
Venture Capitalist John Greathouse says there that there are a number of conditions that a company’s early employees need in order to spawn the creation of a meaningful wave of startups after they get a big win.
“Capital from past venture successes. Pertinent experience – folks who have helped drive the bus, not gotten a ride in the back. Operators who are still hungry enough to ‘do it again.’ A desire to work together again.
“The people who fit the bill for spawning new startups are usually the Entrepreneurial Lieutenants, who make good money in a past venture, but not huge money.”
Greathouse says there are a “fairly predictable list” of companies today that could fit the bill, including Twitter, Zynga, Google and Facebook.
Greathouse goes into more detail in a blog post he wrote on the joy of getting the band back together again. It’s a good read.
“Entrepreneurs are pathological,” he concludes. “Most of them simply cannot help themselves and are thus repeatedly drawn back to the startup world. They often temporarily ‘check out’ from the startup treadmill but many of them ‘never leave’. Savvy investors and young entrepreneurs take advantage of this phenomenon by joining Serial Teams and helping them leverage their past successes to achieve new startup victories.”
That’s likely to be an important part of the story of the Facebook IPO.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Take Care with UK Local – A Data Flaw in Directory Sources
Nov 22nd
Is there any real value to directory-based link building? The answer to this question depends on how you define “value”.
There’s still a general place for marketing your online business on good quality directories. Such directo…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Big Question (Answered): “Did Your Klout Score Plummet? Do You Care?”
Oct 26th
Earlier today we posted a story letting you know that many people’s Klout scores have dropped and the reason for the lowered numbers. Now, not all saw a drop, but many did so we wondered if this was a big deal or a non-issue for most of you.
We asked you this question earlier today and we culled your responses from Facebook, the original post, Google Plus and Twitter and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.
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View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Your Klout Score Probably Just Dropped – Do You Care?
Oct 26th
Today Klout released a new scoring model for its social media influence service. According to a blog post, this project “represents the biggest step forward in accuracy, transparency and our technology in Klout’s history.”
Klout Score is based on the PeopleRank algorithm, which gathers information about how many people you influence, how much you influence them and how influential they are.
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“Influence is the ability to drive action and is based on quality, not quantity,” writes Klout Director of Ranking Ash Rust. “When someone engages with your content, we assess that action in the context of the person’s own activity.”
Klout Score collects data from your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google+ and WordPress accounts in order to determine your overall social media influence.
But how it calculates your score based on the data is unknown. In his blog post “The Trouble with Klout,” long-time technology journalist Paul Gillin writes:
Klout uses a proprietary algorithm to estimate influence based upon comments, retweets, @replies and mentions, among other things. The company isn’t very transparent about how it calculates the score, and with good reason. The algorithm is a competitive asset and disclosure would inevitably invite people to manipulate the system.
He concludes by stating that “Klout essentially asks customers to put their faith in the service to do the right thing.”
What Is Influence Measurement, Really?
Let’s not forget that Klout measures algorithmically derived data points. It does not account for its users offline influence, or any digital influence that isn’t expressed on social media. Are critics of Klout missing the big picture? Jay Baer says yes, they definitely are.
Klout should be used directionally and for trending purposes, not adhered to slavishly. It’s one piece of information that needs to be combined with (ideally) several others to do social CRM well. After all, the most important thing to know isn’t online “influence” but historical relationship between that customer and your company, and their corresponding lifetime value…I fear that lazy companies use it as a replacement for sound CRM and database marketing initiatives that bolt together multiple data points for better business intelligence.
Klout Scores Keep Dropping, Users Get Angrier
In the comments section below the post, angry users are shouting that Klout has assigned a higher importance to Facebook than it gives to Twitter. Klout responded, stating: “We measure influence equally on every network. We care about your influence over your audience — not the network you influence them in.” Here’s another conversation between a user and Klout, suggesting that their algorithm updates are nothing to quibble over.
Klout has flaws. So who cares if your Klout score just dropped? That’s pretty vain.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Why “Second Chance” Tweets Matter: After 3 Hours, Few Care About Socially Shared Links
Sep 7th
There have been various studies suggesting that if someone doesn’t see a tweet or a Facebook post within a few hours, they’ll never see it at all. Now link shortening service Bit.ly is out with another. After three hours, Bit.ly has found, links have sent about all the traffic…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
I Was Wrong (And I Don’t Care) Facebook Deals Couldn’t Kill Groupon
Aug 26th
On the 25th of April Facebook’s discount shopping platform Facebook Deals was unveiled and I belligerently declared Groupon as good as toast. Today Facebook announced that it will soon shutter its Facebook Deals product. (“Facebook Deals Launches Tonight & Groupon Doesn’t Stand a Chance“)
There were so many reasons Facebook would win, I thought: it was free for retailers at launch, Facebook’s mobile apps and newsfeed are totally dominant and the big social network could share the rich demographic and interest data it has about consumers with the retailers who ensnare them. It was going to be a massacre, I said, and 63% of ReadWriteWeb readers agreed with me in a survey. Friends, we were all wrong – but I was especially wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
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But you know what? Who cares! Imagine living at the time of Gutenberg and spending all your time freaking out about which printing press’s coupons were going to be redeemed more often. Ridiculous!
The rest of the social web is so much more interesting than deals, discounts and coupons.
Social media technology is upending the fundamental relationship between performer and audience, between active and passive engagement with media, between voice and voicelessness. Entirely new world views are able to step into the light of public discourse and a blanket of assumptions about how the world works is being called into question when we get to see how one another lives. Every challenged assumption leads to new layers of freedom for everyone whose understanding of the world is expanded.
Half off getting your nails done while skydiving and eating a hamburger? Who cares? The daily deals movement is a crass mockery of the power of emerging social technologies.
I am open to the idea that it is also a new way for small businesses to advertise themselves without paying up front for ads they don’t know will convert…but there sure are a lot of people calling that equation into question.
None the less, I was wrong. User data, distribution, mobile apps and all the other advantages Facebook had weren’t sufficient in the face of experience, feet on the ground selling deals, dedication to the model and execution.
That’s a lesson that any business should remember in a time of rapid change: the fundamentals and execution still matter, a lot.
R.I.P. Facebook Deals…at least you were more interesting than Farmville.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
