Rich Karlgaard, Publisher of Forbes Magazine, has a nice article/column in this week’s issue of Forbes Magazine. It’s entitled ‘My Life As a Blogger’ and has a good number of simple conclusions about the impact of blogs on the business world. Among my favorites:
Rich’s blog is at http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules.
Many of you who read this blog are probably sick and tired of me talking about the ins and outs of RSS all the time. It really fascinates me, though…both because of the high potential and relatively low adoption rate. One thought I had this morning in the car: RSS is important with blogs moreso than online newspapers and magazines. With the latter there is an expectation of up-to-the-minute content freshness. As such, I know that I can go to an online newspaper at any time and see updated content. Not so with your typical blogs. Many of them go for days (or weeks) without any changes. My RSS-enabled reader keeps me from going to each URL all of the time. I’m afraid that if I subscribed to an online newspaper via RSS, I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the flurry of content.
I had the chance recently to give a talk to about 60 MBA students about the impact of blogs and social media upon the business world. Broad topic, I know, but I put together a few slides to try and provide some context for the discussion and shared my experiences and perspectives with the group. Among other items, here are a few of the topics we went over:
I did some ’show-of-hands’ polling to ascertain how many of the students were involved with blogging on some level. I was fairly surprised to discover that most of the students had never heard of Technorati (let alone used it) or blog search engines. Naturally, none of them had begun to subscribe to RSS feeds or even read blogs on a regular basis.
It has gotten me to thinking that the whole message of blogs is a long way from being mainstream. It seems to have been relegated to self-proclaimed ‘geeks’ who are interested and intrigued by the technology and overall movement. There are exceptions, undoubtedly, but there is much distance yet to travel.
The ironic thing, though, is that people really nod their heads in agreement when you explain the ‘impact’ stories of Dell-Hell, Kryptonite, and others. I think that the potential for traction exists, but the educational divide seems too great. I’m wondering what it will take for the business world to really grab on en masse. Will Microsoft’s inclusion of RSS in the next version of IE help? Will another cover story in a magazine bring it all to a boil? Will a newer, simpler platform for social media emerge to shift emphasis from blogging? Or is this just a technology whose time has yet to arrive?
I know that Technorati’s numbers create a pretty compelling case (i.e. the time has already come) for the media. But when will social media be empasized in more MBA programs? When will more small business owners (not just the fortune 500s) dig into the movement?
I have been comparing this response to my interactions with executives who are in pretty much the same place. Blogs are a known entity, but only on a superficial level. I am encountering very few folks who are truly considering the impact of social media on their organization’s future.
John Battelle has indirectly opened up a discussion about who the true king of search is. eBay is claiming they process upwards of 2 billion (yes, that’s with 9 zeros) searches per month which they claim is “on par with Google” (slide 18). Now officially Google refuses to disclose how much traffic they process but some estimates have put it at much more substantial number than 2 billion a month. This leads me to ask, where did eBay get their figures?
I heard about Pandora today via Seth’s Blog. Free site which features deep personalization for music lovers based upon The Music Genome Project. You type in one of your favorite artists (I put in Dave Matthews). From the artist(s) you select, the site suggests other (lesser-known) songs/artists based upon the underlying likes/dislikes you indicate as each song plays. As it suggests each new song you can ask why it suggested the song. For me, once I passed Coldplay, Travis, and others, it told me: “based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features mild rhythmic syncopation, use of a string ensemble, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, a vocal-centric aesthetic and heart-breaking lyrics…”
This site is another great Web 2.0 demo which should get marketers thinking way past the Web as a vehicle to put your brochure online! Naturally, the site is peddling the records it’s suggesting via Amazon.com and iTunes. Can’t say that I blame them!
Just saw the link for ZoomInfo over on Micropersuasion and was pretty impressed with this tool. It appears to be a Web 2.0 ‘people research’ tool. Many of us probably wouldn’t admit that we ‘Google ourselves’ to see what’s been written about us or, (cough-cough) Google other people to snoop. But for those of us who have done so, this tool will be your newest fetish.
It appears as if this tool harvests all that has been written about individuals on the Web and then intelligently ‘builds’ profiles for them based upon where they work, awards they have won, and affiliations they maintain. The site also presents the Web links from which the information is compiled.
Aside from the ego factor, the business implications for this could be potentially very significant. The site is touting premium memberships (with deeper results) organized around recruiting, prospecting, and business (i.e. competitive) intelligence.
Powerful stuff and a great example of Web 2.0 at work.
Today’s MSN site features a Happy Holidays page which has some very season-appropriate stories, tips, etc. to help you out this Thanksgiving holiday. I really like the additional emphasis they put on special occasions and the easy access to this sort of information without having to search all over the Web.
A few that caught my attention were:
Hope everyone enjoys the holidays and has a safe and Happy Thanksgiving!!
Much has been said about the decline of print newspaper circulation lately. John Spiker has a few interesting thoughts as does David Deans on the growing popularity of newspapers’ online versions.
Many newspapers are experimenting with various models to monetize the shift from print to electronic. The Palm Beach Post is exploring the use of reporter blogs, seemingly blended with the paper’s existing online ad network (as opposed to Google AdWords). The paper calls the effort “The Blog Squad.” I wonder if this effort will result in an incremental revenue thrust for the paper. Time will tell.
Chris Garrett has a great post today regarding whether or not a blog is viable. I find it interesting (and probably true) that blogs have their own tipping points–junctures at which momentum really picks up due to a hot piece of news, particularly insightful post, or breaking story. He also summarizes a few metrics to be aware of if you’re trying to figure out whether or not a blog is successful.
When I first started experimenting with Web pages in the mid 1990s, most of the educational literature for business folks was fairly 101 in nature. Most of it was purely philosophical with very little to offer in terms of case studies or any sort of results-oriented framework. Most books, magazines, and commericals (think IBM) were pie-in-the-sky and somewhere-over-the-rainbow wrapped in a big bow. More interestingly, most of the hype centered around marketing and sales (i.e. put a widget online and sell a trillion of them overnight). Along the way, the messages of hard work, strategy, and non-marketing benefits were lost. Times have changed.
Dear old Dad turned me onto a great article (full text) from BusinessWeek this week. The article is called ‘The Web Smart 50′ and it does a great job of showing how 50 organizations are using the Internet for true business results that are definitive and measurable. A few of my favorites are:
I encourage you to take a look at the article and start thinking about how the Web can become a more integral part of your company’s efforts.
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