Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Semantic Sauce

Following on from my measurement post, Sphere is the latest blog search offering making waves.  It is getting well reviewed by people in the know and has a seriously clever bunch of folk working on it.  The big news is that, apparently, it goes some way to providing a semantic view of the blogopshere - the element which founder Tony Conrad calls the 'secret sauce'.  Right now, the beta is closed 'cos that sauce is just too darn good....one to watch.

Big Beeb Speech

Following hot on the heels of Murdoch, Glocer, Rusbridger, the BBC's head honcho Mark Thompson gives another wide ranging uber-view of web 2.0 trends in the media in a speech you can read here. The beeb has been innovating out of its skin in this area for years now and Thompson's speech is really just pulling the pieces together.  But he provides the vision thing well: "Although technological change is enabling the second wave, it's not the essential driving force. That force is a revolution in audience behaviour."  However, Tom Coates one of the technologists Thompson refers to (now at Yahoo) points out...

Who's The Analyst Now?

I am giving my presentation - A User Generated World - at the Investor Relations Society's annual bash next week so James 'Redmonk' Governor's latest post is very timely.  As JG points out the world of analysts is undergoing familiar changes as traditional lines blur and influencers start to be heard in unexpected quarters:  "I expect to see more and more bloggers turning up at Industry Analyst conferences. The vendors and AR programs that invite this new constituency along will be marking themselves out as industry leaders."  My shorthand for this is the 5th Estate which basically frames the blogopshere as a new seat of power in society following on from the 4th Estate.  As JG continues: "In a world where the first port of call for an inquiry is Google, patterns of influence are bound to change. From top down to clusters, for example."

So How Do We Measure This Stuff?

This is a question that always comes up with Collaborate's clients when working with user generated environments such as the blogosphere.  And so it should.  However, there are many misconceptions floating around when it comes to what type of metrics are available.  One common misunderstanding is that there are systems available that will search for crumbs of unstructured data  in every nook of every forum, blog and post and carve them up into neat parcels which can then be summarised on a crisp sheet of A4.  Now while there are some pretty big hoovers available with some very fancy pattern-recognition kit bolted on to them, they still have their limits.  Because - and this is the important bit - machines can't read (yet).  And they certainly can't understand sentiment.  Technorati is a great tool...

Google - Blimey

Yesterday Google announced that its Adsense programme made the company $2.25bn in the first quarter - an increase of 79 per cent, which produced earnings of a cool $1bn.  As the VC points out that's a $10bn business growing at almost 80 per cent a year on year with margins of almost 50 per cent.  Now let's be clear Google's main income is advertising - making it a media player extroadinaire.  Compare that to WPP, the world's second largest network which has reported revenues for the same period of around $1.87bn on a margin around the 15 per cent mark.  Blimey.

Economist Loves The Bazaar

The Economist runs a special report (sub) today entitled "Among The Audience" about the new media scene.  It's all very positive and, borrowing the analogy from Eric Raymond's seminal essay, states that: "To reject the glorious fecundity of new media is to choose the hushed reverence of the cathedral over the din of the bazaar."  Amen to that.  Modern Marketing's favourite uber-blogger, Dave 'Cluetrain' Weinberger gets several mentions and doesn't hold back: "The mainstream media are in a good position to get things wrong".  And talking about participatory media: "It must be understood not as a publishing phenomenon but a social phenomenon'.  Go Dave, Go Dave....

When Silos Become Bunkers

John Gapper nails the challenges facing broadcasters in today's FT (sub).  He summarises all of the well-trodden issues including copyright, control, speed of change and rising power of the audience.  One factoid that caught my eye was: "The top six video sites (Google Video, MSN Video, Yahoo Video, YouTube, iFilm and AOL Video) now gain twice as much traffic as the top six broadcast network sites."  Gapper comments that: "Until they make their own sites richer by allowing viewers to choose from more material, broadcasters will remain at a self-imposed disadvantage.  Even then it would be self-defeating to remain in their own silos".  The problem is that those silos are deep and were expensive to build.  They also make good bunkers to hide from stormy weather.

Modern Marketing University

This blog is required reading for the pupils of Alex Brown, who runs a course called Infotech Applications in Marketing at the University of Delaware in the US.  Last week I did a Skype presentation to the class about the ideas behind open source marketing.  It was difficult at the time to know how it went down but judging from the subsequent blog posts the class found it useful - which is great.  It will be interesting to see the reaction to Robert Scoble for whom I was the warm up ;-)

Prosper's Opening The Bank

Last week Johnnie and I spoke to Prosper, a company that is trying to open up the banking marketplace by putting lenders and borrowers in direct contact.  Our chat was a follow-up to the Zopa conversation.  One of the interesting themes from both was that openess and transparency is a good way to manage risk.  That's because people's ability to borrow or trade is closely linked to their credibility and reputation.  But it's a thought which can seem counterintuitive to some - who see transparency as ushering in all sorts of problems and dangers.  It's early days for Prosper and Zopa but both have a Skype-style whiff about them in the way that they have managed to undermine massive, established marketplaces by empowering individuals and using distributed technologies.  And from a marketing perspective, it's interesting to see a company where the business model is the market position.

Content 2.0

It's some way off but the lovely folk at New Media Knowledge are organising Content 2.0 on June 6th - a big bash for anyone and everyone from the world of media and content to chew over the bones of Web 2.0 and work out what it all means.  I've been involved helping kick start some ideas for the event so you can blame me (partly) if it's no good.  My involvement on the day will be joining a chat about customer collaboration and co-creation in marketing (what else?) with the estimable Hugh and Jamie Kantrowich from the juggernaut that is MySpace.  Highlights will include Marc Canter, Bradley Horowitz, Suranga Chandratillake and Shel Israel and, natch, Alex Barnett with whom I will be sharing beverages in the evening ;-).