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| Friday, December 30, 2005 |
 Reuters reports on the idle dream of a U.K. college student hard-pressed to come up with his tuition money that turned into big money overnight. His Million-Dollar Home Page sells ad space for $1 a pixel for advertisers wanting to put up a graphic with a link and some supporting text that pops up when you point your screen cursor over an item. Kind of a dumb idea? Maybe so, except for one thing - the page has almost completely sold out its inventory of a million ad display pixels and has attracted attention from potential investors. Even more significantly, the page is generating traffic for advertisers that is providing an excellent return on investment, attracting big-name advertisers along with smaller fry trying to get some sort of visibility in the limitless space of Web advertising. What's at play here is an old idea that has found new life in the Web community. Think of Million-Dollar Home Page like a microscopic Times Square of online ads, random signage that's attractive in its ability to entertain people by the sheer number of large and small interesting and novel sights in a crowd. There's something very fundamental about enjoying picking something interesting out from a busy landscape, I suppose. Regardless of the metaphor that applies to this phenomenon it is interesting that this idea is proven out with such tiny pieces of variable Web real estate within a fixed block. Million-Dollar Home Page is proving this out in a very static model, but imagine what this could look like if it were combined with auctioned contextual advertising and social bookmarking topic heatmaps found on services such as del.icio.us. Ad values could soar per pixel of attractive screen real estate in the most valuable contexts and be tweaked from click to click depending on a given audience. The power of tiny advertising units is proven out already in a small way with VietmamNet, which provides tiny logo ads on the section headers of its navigation. It's a little like a ride in a Tokyo subway, where every tiny surface that the eye can appreciate gets used for ad space. In 2006 the key to big ad dollars online may be borne out in thinking about smaller increments of screen space that can be of use to advertisers and attractive to audiences.
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By John Blossom - posted at 6:56 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:38 AM |
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| Thursday, December 29, 2005 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:56 AM |
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| Wednesday, December 28, 2005 |
WSJ Online notes that in the face of free competitors such as Web portals, Craigslist and ad-supported street handouts many newspaper companies have decided to...raise their ad rates. While this would seem to defy some basic rules of economics regarding supply and demand, it's been a tactic that has at least stanched the blood of falling revenues in the short run. WSJ notes that Gannett Co.'s USA Today has been able to keep ad revenues at least flat through an 8 percent raise in rates as ad packages dropped 6 percent for the last six months, so at least the move has kept the cash flowing. But obviously the move is towards smaller audiences who prefer print delivery. At this rate newspapers may yet fulfill the dark view of the future found in the EPIC 2015 online multimedia essay: in EPIC 2015 ( nee EPIC 2014) it's presumed that by 2014 The New York Times will fold and become a newsletter for the elderly and the elite. But would that be such a bad thing? As noted in The New York Times itself, SoBe News, the developers of Ocean Drive magazine for the affluent South Beach community in Miami, Florida, is launching a magazine with a fixed circulation of 25,000 in February. The magazine will be distributed exclusively to current and prospective owners of condominiums developed by a Florida developer. The ability of print to appeal to upscale readers with time on their hands and coffee tables on which to put flashy status magazines is going to keep ad costs comfortably high for these types of niche publications for quite some time to come, especially when it's an elite few who can receive them at all. Much of the Times' print ad content is decidedly upscale already, as is its community-oriented content, so to some degree the Times is already on this path of catering to the carriage trade and drifting away from mass audiences. The answer to the dilemma of what to do with print may be to push harder to make it a more exclusive medium, both through demographics and the quality of personalized services that can be made available in customized print delivery. As to what this may mean for the quality of news coverage is a debate for another day, but it's a trend that's progressing perhaps far more quickly than even EPIC 2015 is predicting. The sooner that news publishers can move away from status quo print publications the sooner that they'll find a solid bottom to falling circulation and through loyal and appreciative targeted audiences.
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By John Blossom - posted at 1:10 PM |
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While I am fond of using Amazon.com as much as the next person, I tend to view it much as I would any other store: find what you need, get out and do something else. Amazon is designed to make a content purchaser as smart as possible in as little time as possible; its pioneering pre-eminence in content ecommerce still leaves most outlets in the dust. I appreciate the Nordstrom's-like pampering I get on my visits via the contextual information that the site makes available such as reviews, looking inside the books and such, which help to enhance the purchasing experience, but at the end of the day it's still more of a storefront than a destination. So when The New York Times notes that Amazon is hosting weblogs of authors whose books are sold through their portal it's an interesting feature that brings the portal closer to being a destination site for people who want to hear from authors more directly. As shown in the example page for the Amazon Connect weblogging program, content from authors can be read as a part of one's personal Amazon home page, including mentions of local appearances and reflections on other topics that can help to build a relationship with an author. While book publishers offer promotional opportunities for their authors via online content through their own portals, Amazon is the first to try to aggregate weblogs from book authors in an environment that encourages interaction with authors in such a well-integrated content ecommerce experience. It's an extension of existing marketing methods in some ways - authors travel regularly to libraries and other community settings to speak and to interact with readers - but weblogs have the ability to bring communities to the author in ways that can build into more different kinds of revenue streams. Expect to see more authors develop online content in 2006 that will draw new kinds of revenues beyond book royalties.
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:33 AM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:22 AM |
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| Tuesday, December 27, 2005 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:49 PM |
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| Monday, December 26, 2005 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 2:58 PM |
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Content crystal ball-gazers, rejoice: the best is yet to come in 2006 as publishers and technology companies vie for the hearts of publishing-savvy users looking for personal and professional content. Shore sees investing in users for 2006 revolving around four trendy "Ps" shaping content today: packaging, platform, premium and personalization. Watch the cash flowing into these investment area quickly as both established and new players in publishing get very, very serious about who is going to be on top when realigning business models settle down. You'll need real-time tea leaves to keep up with the content deals in 2006, but fear not - we'll be with you every step of the way. Click here to read the full News Analysis
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By John Blossom - posted at 5:07 AM |
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| Friday, December 23, 2005 |
 While in Rome this October I had the good fortune of being interviewed by Robin Good for his open source movie The Weblog Project; my contribution was posted today. I was pretty tired by the time he rolled the camera but it was fun in any event and I am honored to be a part of this innovative work. I wished that I had mentioned how in some ways Rome is the birthplace of weblogs via the diurna journals from the age of the Roman Empire that slaves would compose and send back to their masters out in their countryside villas. Oh well, next time. Here's our clip (Apple format) along with a transcript...Here's the same on Nessuno.tv's site in Windows Media format, a little better contrast
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By John Blossom - posted at 5:38 PM |
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In this holiday season, we remind you to reach for the stars... for how will we ever get to the stars unless we reach for them? Our very best wishes to you, your families and your colleagues for a peaceful holiday season and a New Year that brings joy and dreams worth reaching for! From all of us at Shore Communications Inc.  Click here to view our online greeting card
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:45 AM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:41 AM |
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| Thursday, December 22, 2005 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:37 AM |
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| Wednesday, December 21, 2005 |
CNET News covers proposals for new U.S. legislation backed by major broadband Internet access providers to charge varying rates for varying types of traffic. This is a move which is meant to increase the ability of major ISPs to pave the way for more profits as video programming, IP telephony and other streaming media begin to gear up for Web delivery. While some of the proposed legislation (PDF) provides good basic regulatory reforms in light of the merging of telecommunications, television and Web marketplaces, it also sets the stage for ISPs trying to move from Internet access being a neutral commodity to a service that will have tiered pricing for different levels of access quality for content providers. Given the bandwidth-intensive requirements for streaming video and other content sources reliant on high bandwidth services there's perhaps more than a grain of sense to this proposal. But it also may wind up deterring the market penetration of these services as content providers find themselves having to wrestle with a new layer of commercial arrangements that may have to be onpassed to their audiences in one form or another more directly. Given that multimedia services are an increasingly important element for premium content providers maintaining and accelerating their market penetration the need to deal with premium communications fees is likely to slow that penetration, and hence slow the development of services. This may be good for major ISPs intent on creating their own video and phone services, hence their push. It also may tend to put a drag on other types of publishers that find themselves having to pony up to have performance that's on a par with their competitors in an escalating ISP fee war. Publishers of all kinds would be wise to look at this potential legislation carefully and to consider how their own lobbying efforts may need to be accelerated to ensure that they are not going to find themselves grabbing the short end of the available bandwidth. While it's important to make sure that there's adequate funds for building out broadband facilities it's probably best to have those funds come from more intelligently scaled user access fees that allow them to choose the quality of overall performance that suits them best.
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:30 AM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:17 AM |
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| Tuesday, December 20, 2005 |
There was a great collection of headlines on paidContent.org highlighting some of the mounting skepticism surrounding the Web 2.0 movement. In summary the inability of Web 2.0 protagonists to define the boundaries of this buzzword sometimes makes it difficult for it to mean something that can really translate into a serious discussion, much less a business plan. Even Richard MacManus, one of the people initiating the use of this concept, has pulled the plug on Web 2.0, saying that he plans to be "focusing on more media-related web technology." We pulled the plug on Web 2.0 in October, of course, arguing that Web 2.0 was the tail of the content dog that's wagging easily deployed publishing technologies in more venues than ever before. At the time we said "Content 2.X is the technology business evolving along with the publishing business into a common content business in partnership with their audiences." We're still on target, as far as I can see. There is a lot of great creative thinking revolving and evolving around the easily deployed technologies that are at the center of Web 2.0, but the real opportunity is in creating monetizable content value, not infrastructure. This is something that publishers and media companies are getting better at day by day as they learn how to focus on user needs in a plethora of new contexts. Web 2.0 is dead: long live Content 2.x!
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:17 PM |
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What's a "widget"? It's a digital module of computer program code and content that acts like an independent object within a given set of technologies. When the technologies of choice for widgets are based on the popular open standards for HTML, XML and JavaScript then it becomes easy to build popular widgets that can deliver sophisticated content services in standard Web browser environments without a lot of other technology getting in the way. This pretty much describes the widgets available through the new Google Homepage API, a new toolkit that allows anyone to develop interactive content that can be embedded on a user's personalized Google homepage. Yahoo also has a JavaScript-based Widget application, but unlike Google's it is a kit that allows very slickly designed graphic tools to be integrated into a desktop via a software download: they're not browser-based and therefore separate from a user's MyYahoo home page. While Yahoo gets the nod in terms of the visual sophistication of their tools and the breadth of widgets already built, Google is much closer in its browser-based approach to bringing useful content-serving applications into the environment in which most people consume content. This makes it far more likely that the Google approach will yield valuable content-oriented widgets. The widgets available through the Google Homepage API also benefit from the easy-to-use Google Homepage itself, in which headlines and other sources can be rearranged easily on the page with drag-and-drop clicks of a mouse. By comparison the MyYahoo home page requires more awkward rearrangement of page elements. This all adds up to a very prominent message to content producers that the aggregation of content is beginning to take on new dynamics via the development of widgets. Instead of trying to bring users to portals of a publisher's design publishers need to recognize that more and more content is being consumed in other portal environments, including the intranet portals of businesses and institutions. Via tools such as Google's widgets it becomes possible to maintain a personalized relationship with a user via a portal-embedded content delivery tool, enabling both information and technology services to be combined easily in an environment that users are drawn to on a regular basis. Unlike widgets developed for enterprise portals, though, the Google API opens up the possibility of widgets that do not require any institutional infrastructure: widgets can begin to have a life of their own, becoming digital content objects in and of themselves. There will be the usual little tools, toys and mashups developed for the Google Homepage API, but content providers would do themselves a favor by looking at this environment carefully and considering how they can create highly functional digital outposts on a major portal that can integrate in with a user's other favorite content and work tools. At the same time portal software developers would do themselves a favor by considering how easily imported widgets can allow users to assemble content-enabled digital objects in any environment a user desires. These are simple beginnings for online widgets, but harbingers of a major trend in content development.
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By John Blossom - posted at 5:57 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 4:54 PM |
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