Dlibert's Romance

Email on its Death Bed?

With the phenomenal increase in subscription and usage of social/professional networking websites (Facebook, tuenti, myspace, LinkedIn, corporate social networks etc.) and more recently micro-blogging (Twitter) for communication and keeping in touch...does this mean that there will be a point when those Web 2.0 tools will replace what would then be the old-fashioned email?

"We are all in the process of creating e-mail 2.0," David Sacks, founder of business social network Yammer said. - BBC.com; for the full article, go here

Monetizing Customer Information

As I have addressed previously in my posting about menéame, the biggest challenge of managing Web 2.0 applications, is for companies to know how to best monetize them, whether so as to just cover the costs of maintenance or to make it a profitable endeavour. Currently, there are a few business models out there, subscriptions, premium subscriptions, CPC advertising, CPM advertising, etc. With the growth of Google, came with it the huge growth in reliance on advertising as being the main revenue stream of many Web 2.0 business models.

Is the advertising model effective?

Well, it depends since it has been very effective for Google, however it has been far from that for the some such as menéame or facebook. It does a lot to do with understanding the kind of users that are frequenting such websites and networks. Therefore, although such websites have created a wide user base, which is the first essential step for triggering the network effects and the potential for profitable monetization, they have still not come close to fulfilling their profit potential.

However, have they all been unsuccessful in terms of monetization through their user base (rather than the developers of 3rd party applications in the case of facebook)?

No! An example of success when it comes to monetizing the user base is tuenti. Tuenti is the leading online social network in Spain, only open to users joining through invitations. Tuenti managed to do this through see their user base as much more than just a user base but rather a wealth of information on specific individuals with specific preferences and interests. They used that to bring online social networking advertising to a different level with what they had called "events". These "events" are basically a form of highly targeted advertising. They usually show in the form of an icon on a user's profile and when clicked, it directs the user to information about a certain product, usually with some kind of offer or so. I have not been able to experience the "events" myself first hand, however being taken through the way it works and the kind of results the "events" have generated is impressive. How are they successful? Basically, through highly specific targeting that brings advertising in a well scheduled way to any specific user, where any user would not receive more than two or three events in any given week. This leads to reducing clutter and a high click-through rate.

The wealth of information that can be capitalized on is expanding in size as well...The fastest growing part of the user base, can be called "the transparent generation" with the advent of microblogging and location based services, the information and the monetizing opportunities are numerous.

So what does this mean to everyone else who is not making enough money through their user base?

1. Ensure that you are collecting as much information as possible about the user base
2. Look at creative ways of using this information to achieve highly specific targeting bringing relevant messages to the relevant user in a clutter-less environment
3. Re-invent your pricing so as that it reflects the higher value you are providing advertisers and partners
4. Ensure that you are fair in the way you are using customer data so as to build trust in them sharing more information which in turn will lead to better services and messages tailored to them.

Word of Caution:

The collection of user data means that there needs to be legal covering to support such activities through giving users the choice to opt-out after they are educated in a transparent way about the benefits they would receive out of opting-in. As mentioned before, there needs to be trust so that the user base can be truly monetized in this way.

Going through a recession, there is a need for creativity and a bigger need for better understanding the value that comes with a wide user base...and once that is in place, it would be time to make smarter and more sustainable money!

The Internet and Communism

A few weeks ago, I had set up a survey to gauge whether the readers of my blog would prefer to go for Wikipedia or Britannica as a source of information. The survey was launched and closed in the early days of this blog and therefore did not attract as many responses as would be needed to make any conclusions. However, it can bee seen that the majority of the surveyed readers have opted for Wikipedia.

Many of the traditionalists and the less informed would probably be shocked to see that kind of result.

So, why?

• Wikipedia has built a brand that is synonomous to convenient access to information
• Wikipedia is totally free
• Wikipedia does not represent a corporation and therefore sparing it the negative sentiments that many of the younger tech savvy users of the Internet have for corporations
• Wikipedia has proven to be a democratic space employing continuous improvements to ensure that its quality, through it accuracy rate, is comparable to that of the longer established paper encyclopedias

So those are some of the key reasons that I have been faced with through my conversations with some of the people in my class. However, I would also say that some part of Wikipedia's success that it is perceived to be created by the people for the people - which ironically for the Internet and its users sounds a bit like communism...

So is the future of the Internet a communist one?

Yahoo! up for a fight

Yesterday, The New York Times revealed Yahoo's new plans to introduce images and videos to search ads, presenting a richer offering to advertisers.

Search advertising has been typically in the form of only text advertisements and links, contrasting to that of banner and box advertising which typically show images or video. The step taken by Yahoo also comes at a time where it has been proven that the recession has pushed advertisers towards investing more in search advertising rather than banner and box advertising. This is attributed to that search advertising gives more direct and measurable results.



Recently, Yahoo's strength has been that of banner and box advertising, so this move on their side makes them enter the fight to gain back market share from Google for search advertising. Yahoo's market share for search advertising has fallen from 13.8 percent in 2004 to 10.5 percent in 2009, while Google has doubled its market share to reach 67.7 percent in 2009.

The new offering had already been made available to larger advertisers, one of them being Pedigree, which has seen the benefit of the new form of search advertising.

“Video is always more powerful than just words on the page.It’s definitely compelling to us to have options like this, where, when you type in ‘Pedigree,’ you get more than just the words, you get the video itself.” - John Anton, the marketing director at Pedigree

The new offering would present the most value to those who are big enough to invest in their advertising and brand.

Yahoo is currently offering the new service for a monthly service fee which contrasts with Google's current model for generating revenues out of search advertising.

Yahoo's offering is currently unmatched by Google or Microsoft. However, will long will it be before Google follows the lead and capitalizes on its larger advertiser base to ensure it protects its market share of search advertising.

Is Yahoo really up for a fight or just creating a better place to offer itself again to Microsoft?

menéame - Finale!

To read the first two parts of the series of blog postings related to the Spanish website menéame, then please follow these links so as to have done the background reading....

menéame -Part 1
menéame - Part 2

So basically the question on the table now is what is it that menéame can be doing to better monetize the user base that it currently has? Some thoughts:

• Before taking any specific steps, it seems more than warranted to start off by understanding the issues to a much deeper level. This would mean running a marketing research to better understand its users' behaviour but also understand why there advertising revenues are not pouring in, in other words, what is keeping advertisers from menéame.
• menéame has also maintained a policy of not collecting any specific demographic data on its user base. This might seem to be something they should consider changing since a better understanding of what kind of user base they can offer advertisers will make a more solid sales pitch to advertisers
• Currently menéame has seen a more prevalent appearance of CPC (cost per click) advertising which might not be the most successful considering that the majority of menéame users are not actually the "clicky" type, therefore, although probably generating less commission per unit for menéame, CPM (cost per thousand impressions) would prove to be more profitable overall.
• menéame does act as a traffic broker for some of the mainstream Spanish media websites and this can also be a place where menéame can search for revenues. How can menéame monetize its positive impact on such media websites? The creation of click through cuts or charge for direct menéame links from the media wesbites might be an option. However, this would need a closer look at how the online media industry works and what value-added services menéame can provide to the media websites. Although menéame would have a certain degree of leverage since it is the leader with no real competitors in its field in Spain
• Creation of paid corporate accounts and clearly marking them as such is another option. They need to be clearly marked as being corporate accounts since their objectivity will be highly contested and it would be needed to set them apart so as to stick to menéame stands for in terms of an untainted democratic space.
  
• For many of the proposed alternatives to be successful, there needs to be a great degree of transparency with menéame users so that their support wouldd guarnteed and no adverse impact would occur on the user base.
  
• One of my classmates, Alberto, brought up a suggestion with regards to setting up a donation campaign so that users can be contributing to menéame, similar to what Wikipedia does. However, I would be more skeptical on the results of such a campaign since Wikipedia is run by a non-profit foundation which in many users' minds warrants the collection of donations. Therefore, I would probably only consider such an option in the case that the initial marketing research tells us something that might support the running of such an initiative.
• Finally, there was a point brought up with regards to that the brand menéame might have had a deterrant effect on advertising due to the sexual connotations it carries. This is something to investigate through the research to be conducted. In the case that these assumptions are proven correct, then menéame should look at an incremental re-branding effort. It might be a scary prospect due to the brand equity that the brand name menéame currently carries, however, there have been many cases in the non-virtual world were companies and products were re-branded successfully, the key was an incremental long term approach.
  

Today was the last day of my Web 2.0 classes but it will definitely not be the last day for this blog...I had discovered the power of blogging a few years back but then now I am much more determined to think of it as a muti-purpose tool that I will continue to use to become a greater part of bringing my existence to the virtual world....

Quickie: ICT Spending spike in the Middle East and Africa

IDC, a technology research and analysis firm "forecasts global spending on IT to rise by just 0.5 per cent this year, while spending in the Middle East and Africa will grow by 6.7 per cent. The region’s estimated US$63 billion (Dh231.4bn) in new spending this year will be focused largely on software and services as companies look to squeeze maximum value out of existing infrastructure." - The National - Full article here

Giants in Distress

"In a damning sign of the times, Fujitsu’s bosses recently called upon the firm’s 100,000 employees in Japan to buy its goods. This week shares in Hitachi and NEC fell to their lowest levels for three decades. All this seems to have prodded the giants into action: all have announced job cuts and factory closures of extraordinary brutality by Japanese standards." - The Economist

In the latest edition of The Economist, an article sheds light of the magnitude of the woes of the Japan's electronic firms that are going through one of their worst times ever. Once the rising stars of innovation and technology are now "too big" to deal with an ailing Japanese economy that no monetary policy actions are bringing it back to its feet. The companies are looking at abandoning the law of the samurai and are starting to surrender, the first being Sanyo Electric, which got bought over by Panasonic.

Has the pre-longed Japanese economic slowdown brought the sun to set in what was called "the land of the rising sun"?

India's Newest Budget Item

After launching the low cost car, there is news about a low cost laptop...

"The cheap laptop has been developed as part of a broader national plan to update the technology used by Indian colleges and schools.

Details of the laptop are scant, but it is reported to use wireless to connect and have 2GB of memory on-board.

It will stand as a rival to the other cheap laptops made by the One Laptop project and Intel."

-www.bbc.com

The rise of the "Anti-Google"

"Google's search service has been hit by technical problems, with users unable to access search results." - bbc.com

The problem has been solved and Google has started investigating the problem.

It would be interesting to know whether there was a security breach.

Google has been faced by rising levels of antagonism in recent months. To see how much that antagonism is growing....go to a search engine and search for "hating Google"...there are many results that will show up...however, they would not show up if one does the same search on Google (censorship?)...I tried Yahoo! so go for that (instead of linking to specific articles and blogs, I just linked to the search results page)...

Marking the rise of the "Anti-Google"...

Regulating the Wikipedia Democracy

False revisions of Wikipedia articles on 2 US Senators, implying that they had died has spurred a discussion about radical changes at how Wikipedia regulated user revisions...

"Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, is proposing a system of flagged revisions, which would mean any changes made by a new or unknown user would have to be approved by one of the site's editors, before the changes were published.

This would mean a radical shift from the site's philosophy that ostensibly allows anyone to make changes to almost any entry." -www.bbc.com (full article here)

This has spurred a heated discussion that has reached a point where Jimmy Wales has asked the opposers to the proposed changes to the revision process to present alternative solutions.

It is becoming the more obvious that just like a democracy needs some degree of regulation to operate propely in countries, it needs some form of regulation to be successful on the Internet.

Open Source for Education?

"Looking around the British Education Training and Technology show, BETT 2009, it was clear by the sheer size of the event, that an awful lot of money is being spent on technology in education.

With Open Source Software (OSS) freely available, covering almost every requirement in the national curriculum, a question has to be asked why schools do not back it more fully, possibly saving millions of pounds." - bbc.com (full article here)

A question raised by Andrew Miller (an independent British journalist) with regards to the kinds of savings that governments can make on public education if they would resort to free open source software instead of proprietary software they currently use. Other than open source software being free, its quality is increasingly becoming comparable if not better than that of proprietary software.

Other than the implications that such a suggested move would directly have on owners of proprietary software, what will it mean to the consumer of the future who would be exposed to open source software during their school experience, increasing the chances that they would resort to that option for their personal computers.

Open source is getting to be more and more under the spotlight and it seems that things are just starting to shake up, creating rapid intermediating change in the software industry, as Anita McGahan would label it.

menéame - Part 2

As I had mentioned in my last post, menéame was doing very well in terms of traffice, however it was facing the challenge that the traffic did not necessarily turn into any substantial financial returns.

menéame is reliant on advertising revenue as its sole revenue stream. Its advertising was handled by an agency for most of the campaigns that relied on CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) for bringing revenues and then they had Google adwords to fill up the empty advertising space and those were CPC (cost per click) based.

Looking back at the behavioural segmentation of menéame users would help shed some light onto why is that menéame has not been making as much money as it is supposed to. The users can be classified within a spectrum, passive users being on one end and then the ultra active on the other. Roughly, the most active menéame users whom are are always uploading content and participating in voting and commenting would only account for around 1% of the total user base; 9% would be the users who vote and comment but do not necessarily upload content themselves; which then leaves 90% of the user bases as generally the more passive type that would probably just visit to read a few things and then leave without making any impact.

What does this mean??

Basically around 90% of the people whom visit menéame are not the active "clicky" type, making CPC advertising not very effective.

So why are they not using more CPM advertising instead?

Well, basically they are not attracting enough of it.

Why?

There are a few different speculations on the reasons behind that...(as per our in-class discussion with Enrique Dans):

• Are the users of menéame an attractive market for CPM advertisers?
• Advertisers mind putting their advertising next to some of the content which is not regarded as of acceptable quality (trivia) - which links to that menéame is not able to really exercise any control on the type of content it has
• A more interesting reason would be that advertisers do not like the name, menéame, due to the secual connotations it has...
• The lack fo demographic data on the users leads to an incomplete understand of the users and therefore making targeting less effective and less attractive
  

So basically, although menéame is proving to be quite a successful virtual space in terms of user base and traffic bokerage, it is still quite flimsy on revenues...

Those were just some of the basic facts...I am currently thinking out to make some suggestions on the way forward for menéame...However...do please offer any thoughts, it would be highly appreciated...

So stay tuned for more on menéame!

menéame

menéame is a website made for users to share and find content found on the Internet. It works by having the users submit links and stories, and voting and commeting on the submitted links. The number of votes submitted determines whether a specific story or link makes it to the front page. However, content can also be accessed through a search function and content categories. So, basically it is the Spanish form of what many of us already know as Digg.

menéame basically was first developed as a clone of Digg. It was not started up as a business venture but rather as a small project. However, it has become a phenomenon! In a few months after its launch it became a hit and within a few months it was getting more than 200,000 visits a day. It has become so much of a phenomenon that people in the Spanish Internet business would refer to any fast growing Internet venture as characterized with having the menéame effect.

Now it has been a little bit more than 3 years that menéame has been created and it has continued to maintain its poularity. However, it has still not managed to become the kind of financial success that many would expect it to be as a result of its popularity. Many factors come into play and some of them can be used to justify such disappointing financial results.

We have had a quick discussion about the case of menéame in class and we are going to be thinking out what is it that menéame can do to become more financially successful than it currently is...

An anlaysis of menéame's current state and suggestions on what it can do is the new project that I happily have on my plate and here is where you will get to know all about it...

So, stay tuned!

Britannica loosening up...

Earlier today, news came out about what would be quite a big move on the side of the sandstone Encyclopedia Britannica that it will be reaching out to the web in an attempt to catch up with its biggest contender, Wikipedia.

This comes as an interesting move due to that Britannica has lost much of its reach due to that it had not brought itself to the web in a way that was string enough so as to maintain its position. In this move, it has changed many of the things that it had been criticizing about Wikipedia in terms of user contribution and its impact on thee quality. Although the argument was proven to not be as valid as Wikipedia attackers would claim as brought forward by a study conducted a few years ago. The study showed that there was an average of 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and only 3.86 for Wikipedia. Therefore, Wikipedia through its later introduced accuracy and quality checks have brought its standards very close to that of Britannica.

However, it is important to note that although Britannica is reaching out to users and user content online, it is still not doing it the same way as Wikipedia does it. They are setting up a model where selected users are asked to contribute and there will be clear marking of which entries are officially produced by Britannica so as to differentiate them from entries made by the selected users. The President of Britannica explains that their belief that through Britannica online, the "creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative process but not a democratic one."

Will this pose a serious threat for Wikipedia's online dominance?

Well, it might very well do. Many of us still do believe that although Wikipedia is a convenient source of information, we still question its quality (although not significant statistically as I mentioned previously). Therefore if Britannica manages to make its presence as user friendly as that of Wikipedia then it would definitely make its online presence a significant one, leaving less of the online market to Wikipedia.

Will this mean the demise of Wikipedia?

Probably not. I would expect that Wikipedia using a combination of its strong online brand, better public relations and continuous improvement to make sure its keeps its presence. However, will the non-profit Wikipedia foundation be able to do much of that through the donations it currently collects annually? Will it still the need for it to exist when Britannica becomes stronger on the Internet? or will it insist on seeing that knowledge is made available for free and that it is created through a democratic model rather than an a "collaborative model"?

If you want to try it out, Britannica offers a 7 day free trial to its online version...

Recession Proof Business Models?

"Google, the internet search engine, saw profits fall in the final three months of last year as advertising revenue was hit by the economic downturn." - BBC.com

How solid is Google's business model? Will this mark the end of the advertising dominated business model of the Internet giant?

Top Online Security Threats for 2009

Human beings since the dawn of time have been ensuring the safety and security of what they regarded as valuable...Starting off with the simplest of things from the edible to the durable, from the private to the public and so forth...

In the much more complex world that we live in now, there is much more to keep safe and secure...and increasingly important we strive to maintain the security of our digital presence...

Came across this interesting article, titled Top Online Security Threats for 2009 and a report from Sophos...They definitely do not present an exhaustive list but then it is a place to start to keep one's guard up...

Why not Campus Online?

In the last post, I talked about how I saw Web 2.0 tools as useful for education...However, in the case of the classes that I am taking now, someone might say why not use IE's campus online (Blackboard). IE's campus online has proven to be a very useful tool for supporting the educational experience at IE.

However, Web 2.0 tools such as this blog can be better tools than Blackboard due to the following reasons:

• Blogs are typically open and therefore would mean the involvement of many other individuals from all around and with different backgrounds in the student's learning process rather than relying on just the class or the IE community at large through the IE communities
• Blogs allow for greater personalization so that the blog reflects the person who writes it
• Blogs allow for the usage of a multitude of different media and therefore allowing students to express their learning and opinions in different forms
• Blogs are open to interaction with other Web 2.0 tools therefore again enriching the possibilities of what the student can do with the blog. An example of that would be the possibilities to link a blog to RSS feeds or media from the web
• Finally, blogs are owned by their author and therefore are a product of theirs and can be used to market or present this person's views

These are just some of the reasons that I find the most important for choosing the usage of blogs rather than Campus Online (Blackboard)!

Learning on the Web 2.0

A few days ago, we had a heated discussion in my Web 2.0 class. The discussion was about whether we all agreed with shifting part of the learning experience (and therefore the grading) to our responses to some questions posed by Enrique Dans on the blog. It all started off with reaching some agreement on whether it made sense and if it did, then how specifically would we go about it. One collective blog, or many individual blogs? Grading the content or the whole blog experience? Finally, we reached some collective decision that we would go ahead with an individual blog approach. However, we are still to come back and make a final call on what is it that is to be graded.

Web 2.0 is a “set of internet services and practices” that were given the chance to arise a result to “a number of technological developments that have come together to create new ways of using the web” (Charles Crook et al). Basically, these new ways have comprised of the continuous notching up of user involvement on the Internet. To most of us, this is most familiar through spaces such as facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, Wikipedia, Second Life, flickr, Shelfari, YouTube, amongst many others.

So, what does Web 2.0 bring to complement the traditional academic experience? and another question would be whether it takes away something from such an academic experience?

With increasing access to faster Internet, the highly affordable Web 2.0 tools become more and more attractive to be used in education. They would facilitate greater collaborative work outside the classroom; in addition to that it would extend this collaboration beyond the individuals in the classroom. This means that a learning experience would be enriched by giving any given student access to opinions and experiences from a wider variety of individuals and backgrounds. Moreover, it will also allow classmates to give feedback and interactivity within a format that would most probably not be possible within the limitations of class time, tools and space.

Using Web 2.0 tools also bring the opportunity for students to express their opinions and make their points using a wider variety of expressive formats. The opportunity arises for a student to express themselves in text, images, sounds and video, both in real time and non-real time temporal spaces. Moreover, within the virtual world, it is much simpler to link one’s opinions to those of others or to sources of information, capitalizing on the power of the “hyperlink”.

Tools such as blogs do also allow students to create a “safe” personalized space that supports them in communicating not just their learning, opinions and thoughts but also who they are as individuals. This fact can also be part of the counterargument to some skeptics who would say that virtual interaction diminishes the human touch to interaction between individuals.

Moreover, in the specific case of my class, we are all on a journey of preparing ourselves for bigger steps into the future. Traditionally, we would walk out of graduate school with a plan to market ourselves through a CV, a university transcript and our performance at aptitude tests and personal interviews. However, now Web 2.0 offers us alternatives. The simplest example of that is what is happening right here as you are reading through this posting of mine. A recruiter will potentially Google my name and find this blog and the other blogs I write or alternatively, I will probably include the links to my blogs on my CV and my email signature. So, Web 2.0 tools would have just helped to market myself as a potential employee far beyond what was possible spatially and temporally.

Some might say that using Web 2.0 tools diminish the level of the “human touch” to a class experience. As I mentioned previously, I would disagree since the continuous advancements in the quality and variety of modes through which one can express oneself on the web provide for that concern. However, I would definitely agree that it is in the interest of the experience that a class experience does not totally move to the Web but rather keep the mixture there as long as that the synergies between the different spaces are being sought…

So…yes, I plan to make this blog an essential part of my masters experience, it will be one of my additional tools to express myself and tell the world about ME...

A New Chapter...A New Blog

I have been a blogger for more than 4 years now but then I am at a different stage of my life...

Last October, I started a masters program at Instituto de Empresa, specializing in the management of telecoms and digital business...

This new blog came as a response to my classmates and I, deciding to take the "red pill" and by that immersing ourselves in the world of Web 2.0 as part of a class requirement. However, I have made the decision to not stop there but then make it the new blog through which I am sharing my learning and opinions on my newest journey of learning...

So what is the plan of action?

Will start off by fulfilling course requirements through addressing some of the most pertinent issues when it comes to Web 2.0 but also to the many other topics that I get exposed to in the next months...so expect thoughts on the long tail effect and how it is shaping the new global culture, on the security risks that come with the expansion of IT and many more on the general trends shaping the world we are living in now...A Convergent World...

Please feel free to agree or disagree...your comments are highly appreciated for enriching this space and definitely my learning journey...

Happy reading!