Chart of the day.
Why the newspaper industry collapsed.
Classifieds.
Google.
eBay.
Craig’s List.
Free websites are better than paid for newspapers. And on and on. Click here. This is quite telling.
It has always been surprising to me. Newspapers have a collection of really talented and really smart folks who tell everyone how to run their business yet – see chart – why didn’t the collective talents see this coming and strive for reinvention and a rebuild of their own? Yikes.
For those of you who blog or manage a website, if you want to feed the monster you must know what the monster likes to eat.
Read this article. Algorithms rule. Google is like oxygen – get used to it.
Move up or move down on the page. It is now up to you to understand what monster finds tasty these days. I am an investor in Mahalo, a great young company, and this news concerned us all. Mahalo is hand crafting very good video intensive content.
As an aside and as long as I am at it, have you ever noticed how the new media have become a virtual brotherhood? All in service of feeding said monster?
In this newly enabled world where anyone with a keyboard is a journalist, media are allowed to say whatever they want to feed the monster. If you ever go at it or disagree with a member of the media online, other members of the brotherhood will run to the media’s defense. That creates “relevance” and more click throughs and better listing positions and it feels really good emotionally as well. Many members of the media want a one-way relationship. Dish it out. Don’t get dished back. But that is anathema to an interactive real time two-way world.
In this new transparent real time world media itself ironically have developed very thin skins. They can dish it out but they are truly reactionary and defensive when you dish it back. But if I am blogging and I manage websites then I am a part of the media. I, too, feed the monster. The lines have blurred, haven’t they?
Feed the monster carefully. It can bite back. It can create fortunes or take them away. It can make you self important or render you irrelevant. The worst case for most media? Irrelevance and just being ignored.
Monster hungry. Feed it today.
A very smart piece on what Google is doing to make search results more “social.”
I think this development is quite meaningful. It will alter how listings get ranked and it will also make consumer’s social networking pixels feed the monster. Read this one if this stuff interests you at all. Thank you.
Search is how the world gets to its info. Google is a start page for us all.
Being on the top page of listings is crucial if you want to reach people with YOUR news and point of view. The first page of listings gets 93% of the views. If you are on the third page of listings it is like you don’t exist.
You must take control of your own algorithm. You must learn how to “feed the monster” and take control of your listings. If you don’t, someone else will.
Click here for a good primer of sorts. Four simple ways to claim your own digital real estate. Read it and reap.
AOL is valued at about $ 2 billion plus.
Yahoo is valued at about $ 20 billion plus.
And Google is valued at almost $ 200 billion.
There is a message in here somewhere. It amazes me. Google is now trading at 100 times AOL. Wow.
What a fantastic company and what great execution.
What blowout numbers – click here.
Apple. Google. Microsoft. Intel. Cisco. The big five all-time winners in technology.
Facebook and Twitter and Groupon and Zynga. The up-and-comer private companies.
Kudos to Google.
I agree, it will.
The Internet remains the fastest growing medium ever. More than 2.2 billion people are on the Internet now and the growth is just off the chart outside of the United States. And most of the growth is in handhelds and mobile devices where the screen size is small. Twitter owns this concept of self-publishing and small burst text format that is very relevant to young adults and students. Google will get to a billion users. Facebook will get to a billion users. And Twitter will get to a billion users.
I used to forecast that “who ever gets to a billion users first wins.”
I think these three companies win.
A company is born. It is innovative and it creates markets. It grows. It goes public. It hires lots of people and then it bogs down.
A sure sign of this? When a company thinks it can launch a product and service years late and catch a young private company in the space.
See article on Goo.gl URL Shortener here.
For the most part, a slow follower never wins. Specialists rule the day.
Fast followers have a shot. Slow followers - not so much.
That is a pretty strong word, isn’t it?
I believe that small businesses are the life blood of our economy. They mostly serve local consumers in neighborhoods and it is tough to compete against big companies if you are a small business.
One of the barriers of entry to success has always been the cost of advertising and trying to find customers.
If you are a small business, you have to spend money in the yellow pages and then you have to find creative ways - mostly through media – to reach your audience and let them know you are open for business.
For decades, the only options available were print; TV and radio advertising and sampling; and direct mail. The risk is all in your hands as a small business as to expenditures.
Most of these outlets were more mass and expensive than desired or needed by small businesses. They also weren’t very accountable. Many times a small business would run a set of ads and wait for the phones to ring. When that didn’t happen, the money spent felt like it was wasted; and the business suffered.
In the last ten years, two new methods have emerged to help small businesses become successful: Targeted search marketing from people like Google where you bid and pay for targeted search words and clicks and now social shopping sites a la Groupon.
Both methodologies are accountable; are focused on geo-served audiences; can be used creatively; and can drive traffic into stores or make the phones ring. And best of all small businesses only pay when the programs work.
And more and more these programs really do work. Your neighbors want to support you. They want to sample your wares. They want to come in and buy from you. Group couponing is a powerful tool and a positive breakthrough for small businesses. You get customers for free; no up front media buy; and you get to keep the customer after they come in to your store. You also get to build your brand and you get data about who purchased. And best of all, you get to control what you offer; how many customers you want; and the like.
This new set of tools is a big breakthrough for merchants.
From time to time, a program will be too successful. Read here. But truly - as a small business owner - you must become expert at how to market on the web via Google and how to harness the power of group couponing. Literally millions of local merchants are growing and thriving now using Google and Groupon per se. It is amazing to me how accountable these programs are and how successful these programs are. These kinds of articles will spur usage of the medium. As small businesses say, “Wow - how can a program be too successful? I must learn how to use this tool to my advantage.” Don’t be afraid. Accountability is good. Geo targeting is good. Test it. Learn from it. Grow with it. This social shopping phenomenon is the future. It is the most positive development I have seen in decades for small businesses.
I am proud of the way Groupon has handled this set of articles about programs being too successful. The people of Groupon truly are focused on serving merchants and neighbors in a friendly manner.
Facebook wants to be like Twitter.
Google wants to be more social.
Microsoft wants to be more like Google.
Bing is growing. Google is flat.
Foursquare is cool.
Groupon is real.
AddThis is way up in sharing.
Amazon is innovating and taking virtual currencies.
Twitter makes nice videos and understands it brand. Click here. I will still use TweetDeck but this is a wise move by Twitter.
Facebook to respond? TweetDeck to respond?