Finally, a way for us schmucks to make money in social media! July 9, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 1 comment so far
Verbs 2.0 — tweeting, digging, blogging, emailing (ok, that one is 1.0) — can now make you some extra change for doing what you do already. All you need to get is a Google AdSense account and add it to your MessageDance profile. Send YouTube videos, Songza songs, Digg articles, Amazon product recs, and emails to Twitter (and any of your other social networks) and when people click through to your message detail on MessageDance.com, your AdSense ads will show on the right side bar. The impressions and clicks are all yours!
Imagine, when you tweet about how you just ate a bowl of Wheaties for breakfast, you might make someone realize it would be cool to order a box of Wheaties with their face on the cover. And you”ll make some money off that weirdness (maybe $0.02, but hey it adds up).
But seriously, why not? Set it up once and see what happens. We at MessageDance are constantly surprised by the traffic we get on our users content. It”s your content, so someone should make money off of it. Why not you?
Here”s how you set it up.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
A backseat economist’s view on how the Oil Bubble will burst June 23, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : Off Topic , add a comment
I’ve been thinking a lot about oil lately, not surprisingly. I’m convinced its price is approaching bubble status but based on the reasons for its rise, it may not have quite reached the point of popping. Some analysis has almost 50% of oil’s price increase solely based on the depreciation of the dollar, so this among other reasons, there are fundamental reasons for a price rise independent of speculation. This said, bubbles are believed to be psychological creations and a seminal event typically causes it to burst with consumer and investment sentiment turning on a dime. I’m looking for this event now.
I remember the moment the Internet Bubble of the late 90’s burst. It started with an unlikely player — Microsoft. When a finding-of-fact came against them in their anti-trust case, it sparked a sell-off in the NASDAQ that didn’t stop for a couple of years. Microsoft wasn’t a high-flying dot-com, but being tied to technology in general, investors ran for the hills when it appeared that technology stocks may take a hit from a wounded Microsoft. In the weeks following, the NASDAQ dropped 50% and my friends in the VC and investment community told me the party was over. They were leaving San Francisco and going home to New York. One nice effect was rent in SF dropped with all of these NY ex-pats packing up and going home.
So what will be “the event” to cause the Oil Bubble to burst? As seen with the dot-com bubble, it won’t necessarily be something directly tied to the oil industry (or its supply and demand) but will be something on the periphery that will cause sentiment to change. Some possible candidates:
- an Enron / Bear Stearns style collapse of an energy trading company due to oil futures bought on credit (can happen with just a modest decrease in oil prices as futures can be bought with only 5% down)
- a report showing a major consumer sentiment shift in willingness to change their lifestyles to avoid oil (this doesn’t have to be an actual drop in demand, just a willingness to)
- impending political change in US that will result in an obvious shift in the current energy policies (read: no more Bush / Cheney cronies in charge)
- Chinese currency revaluation / signs of a slowing economy / oil subsidies reduced (hard to see it happen on a large enough scale but if the Chinese have to pay more for oil, their demand may appear to be decreased — again an actual decrease in demand doesn’t have to happen, just an appearance to let markets be bound by market forces, not the government)
My sentiment about oil has already changed, as I sold my meager investment in energy stocks. It will be very interesting to see how oil prices change over the next 6-12 months and what may cause the bottom to fall out. As with all bubbles, you don’t know for sure you’re in one until it bursts. And then with 20-20 hindsight, you wonder how it got so big in the first-place.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
I clicked on a web ad today! June 12, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a comment
It's probably been over two years, but I actually clicked on one today. Because Gmail thinks I'm a spammer, I've been getting tons of delivery failure messages. Gmail served up an ad for help (for a price) for getting email accounts off spamming blacklists. Geez, talk about a perfect revenue scheme for Google. Practically shut down a user's account and then serve an ad for a vendor to help you fix it. Righteous business model. Not evil?
Despite Google's AdSense victory over me today, it has been a very, very long time since I clicked on an ad. Honestly, when was the last time you clicked on AdSense or a banner ad with the intention of possibly buying something? Seems to me that today's web ads (read adwords/adsense) could be built on a house of cards. I worked at Ask Jeeves when the banner ad business collapsed. It wasn't pretty — and it wasn't until Google devised contextual ads (with a large enough base of ads to allow specific targeting) that online ads became (a very good) business again. However, revenue for online ads is declining again, signaling the need for a disruptive ad model to spur new and robust growth.
The next generation of ad products will not only need to be contextual and targeted, but will need to be interactive. I need more than relevant hyper-linked text to get me motivated to look further. I need marketers to understand the social media I use and communicate with me the way I do. Use Twitter, FriendFeed, MessageDance, and even TiVo. Have my friends opt-in to show me what they liked. Engage in a conversation with me, if I choose. I know this is controversial and not fully-baked, but main-stream web users are quickly becoming desensitized to the current way of delivering ads.
Google believes it is their "moral" duty to help fix online ads; it's also 98% of their revenue. Hurry up because Web 2.0 is counting on you!
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
Apple Store is Genius May 30, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : Off Topic , add a commentI will admit I thought the Apple Store was a bad idea when they first opened. I saw them going into high-end shopping centers like the store in Walnut Creek, CA located next door to a Tiffany store. How could a traditionally low-margin business justify expensive-as-hell retail locations? I figured Apple expected these to be just cost-of-sale demo centers / brand-builders and never expect the stores to be profitable. Again, I admit I was wrong. When Apple choses a location, they do so with the requirement that it be profitable within a year.
“It was very simple. The Mac faithful will drive to a destination, right? They’ll drive somewhere special just to do that. But people who own Windows - we want to convert them to Mac. They will not drive somewhere special. They don’t think they want a Mac. They will not take the risk of a 20-minute drive in case they don’t like it. But if we put our store in a mall or on a street that they’re walking by, and we reduce that risk from a 20-minute drive to 20 footsteps, then they’re more likely to go in because there’s really no risk. So we decided to put our stores in high-traffic locations. And it works.” - Steve Jobs
The aspect of the stores I believe to be the smartest thing they did is the Genius Bar. I’ve had nothing but excellent experiences with the support I’ve needed with my MacBook and iPhone. I’m not one to run to technical support when I first have a problem but will dig into it myself until I exhaust all options in the guides or online. My MacBook’s keyboard cover cracked and they fixed it at no cost. My iPhone had some problem with the audio and they fixed it on the spot. The people staffing the bar are not the clueless types you likely find at big-box retailers, but are “geeks” (in a complimentary way) who really know their stuff.
What makes the bar genius is that customer and technical support for most other consumer products sucks. The shift to online and off-shore support to cut costs leaves the consumer feeling isolated (for the record, this is true for Apple online/phone support too). Ever try Linksys support? You know what I mean. The Genius Bar gives consumers an outlet (lifeboat) to go and see someone in person and explain the problem first-hand without the barrier of impersonality and communication. Sure, the stores and bar can be crowded, but you can make an appointment online, often for the same day.
Apple has gone against the group-think, MBA-concept, that there is always a race to the bottom for margins in the consumer electronic/computer space and there is nothing you can do to fight it. Using the Apple Store, they have justified the higher margins they charge for their products and made a profit on the vehicle itself. It’s not the first time that Apple went against the grain when it comes to sales strategy. When they opened iTunes, they offered songs for a flat 99 cents — no bundling, no tiered (discriminatory) pricing. This goes against the conventional wisdom for pricing where you should attempt to claim all levels of a consumer’s likeliness to pay for something.
Apple is a great case study in how a company should keep its head down on its core principles and strategy and throw out the MBAs who say they are wrong. At MessageDance, we have the same belief with a focus on what we believe our users will want; we will go against the social media early adopters who are ga-ga about life-streaming aggregators but don’t see the value of a service for mainstream social media users who need to simplify the way they share their stuff in the first place.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
I don’t need a special UI for my iPhone, thanks May 23, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a commentWith the Safari browser and the iPhone’s sweet touch screen functionality, I can look at any web page and do what I would do on a laptop. Granted, browsing on the AT&T Edge network can try your patience, but when connected to wi-fi (and soon 3G), the browsing speed is perfectly reasonable.
So, it bothers me somewhat when I land on a site and they serve up an “optimized” UI for mobile devices (try MSNBC from your phone). Typically, there is less functionality available to you and in the MSNBC’s case, it won’t let you switch to the standard UI from a mobile device. I have the same issue with Twitter where the mobile UI doesn’t have the functions and details seen on the standard UI such as Reply, Delete, and how it was sent (Twirl, MessageDance, etc.).
If I choose the “Standard” UI option for Twitter on my iPhone, it works perfectly fine. Sure, maybe it’s small but two quick taps on the screen and it zooms in.
There was a lot of buzz yesterday about the availability of FF to Go which is an optimized FriendFeed UI for mobile devices. It lacks several of the features found in the standard UI, most notably search. Standard FriendFeed looks and works great on my iPhone.
At MessageDance, we believe in the future that the iPhone has brought us. Web companies don’t need to develop special UIs for mobile devices because the browsing abilities on ALL devices will move towards what the iPhone offers today. The same is true for companies that build resident application clients for mobile devices. Why not just take advantage of the native applications on the device? All you need is a good browser to access an application and an email client to use as an integration layer. Wi-fi is becoming ubiquitous so being connected all of the time seems less like a dream. Execution is critical; develop your applications accordingly.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
It’s the blog, stupid! May 23, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 3comments
The title is apropos for the election season, but I'm going to propose an idea here and I hope to get some feedback. Lots of people are talking about the disconnect with comments and conversations happening on Twitter, FriendFeed, and their blog. For example, you make a blog post and (with MessageDance automatically) it goes to Twitter (and thus to FriendFeed), people can comment about it on your blog, Twitter, and FriendFeed (and on MessageDance.com). Big-time fracturing of comments. Since you started with your blog, shouldn't you be able to stay on your blog and see all of the comments come back to your blog? There should be no reason why you have to monitor everything to see what people think about what you said — just have it fed back into your blog.
Your blog is the center of your universe
When you post your blog entry, wouldn't it be right to have it say on Twitter that it came "from {your blog name}"? Not from Twirl, the web, or MessageDance — it is actually you and your blog that created the content — you should get the credit! When someone comments on FriendFeed, shouldn't that go back to your blog as a comment, regardless if it was your original post or on a Google Reader reblog by someone else? Same is true for a Twitter reply. Heck, why not make tweets, @ replies, and FriendFeed posts directly from your blog for that matter.
To steal a late 90's term, your blog should be your portal. You start with it everyday and you don't need to leave it to keep up with your friends and your conversations. Your blog is all about you. Keep it all together.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
Sharing tip for FriendFeed entry May 22, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , 1 comment so far| On a FF item, I clicked on “More” and then “Link to this entry”. Using iPhone’s “Email Link” feature, I emailed it to “blog @ messagedance.com”. Voilà. The URL is nicely expanded with blog post. Sent from my iPhone |
|
Website Snapshot
|
Blogged with MessageDance using iPhone | Reply On Twitter
Will FriendFeed be as kind as Twitter? May 13, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a comment
Just read this piece about FriendFeedLinks on TechCrunch and the first thought I had was — will FriendFeed have a problem with this? After all, could you imagine a MicrosoftLinks or GoogleLinks?
Corporate lawyers live for this kind of stuff. But that was before Twitter.
Twitter really changed things by not going after 3rd-party services and the companies who used their name or likeness. Twittermail, Twitterrific, TwitterSecret — the list goes on and on. I believe the jury is still out on this trademarkless strategy as they can never reign it back in. True, they have allowed an incredible Twitter ecosystem to be created with so many tools and services they could have never built, but if the time comes where they need to expand their footprint, can they do it without squashing a friendly complementary service? I suppose they can buy out the good ones, but they can’t buy everything around them. And they clearly can’t put the genie back in the bottle and try to protect their trademark.
So, I’m intrigued to see if Twitter started a trend here by encouraging (or maybe it was just dumb-luck ignoring) unaffiliated hackers to use their name — or are the lawyers at FriendFeed just getting warmed up? The founders are from Google after all, and the company had a lot of experience in trademark law, albeit, defending their own trademark violations.
The Dark-Side, Dick Cheney equivalent is Facebook. If you’ve developed an application on Facebook or even tried running an ad, you know what I mean. They are the anti-Twitter where you can’t even use the word “face” in your app name or ad text. They allowed RockYou’s SuperWall and Slide’s FunWall as an application, but you can’t use the word “wall” in an ad. WTH?
I’ll give FriendFeed a couple of weeks to respond to FriendFeedLinks and if they do nothing, I call dibs on FriendFeederrific.
UPDATE: Saw Louis Gray had a mention about FriendFeedMachine today (and he wrote about them last month), so I guess FriendFeed is letting the trademark go and going the way of Twitter.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
I sense a disruption in The Force! May 9, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a comment
Nokia’s CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo says he will reinvent Nokia into an Internet company as detailed by Anders Bylund of Ars Technica. It’s a clear reaction to the success of the iPhone (with the frenzy of activity around jailbreaking it and the new SDK), the poorly kept rumor about the Google Phone along with the Android platform, and of course the decreasing margins that always come with hardware. I disagree a bit with Nokia’s intention to not innovate in hardware design and Anders’ thought that mobile devices will converge to basically the same feature set because there is a lot to be done in the area of usability and power consumption that a device maker could still differentiate itself greatly. The iPhone is an incredible step forward but there is obvious room for improvements such as data input and power usage.
ALL mobile phones are fast becoming mobile computers (not limited to “smart phones”) with incredible power, storage, and Internet capabilities. While I believe you can still set yourself apart as a manufacturer, it will be the services and software native to the phone that will be an even stronger selling point. For web companies, why build an app or user interface specific to each device when a really good Internet browser is all you need? Safari on the iPhone proves this. Why build a special mobile data integration layer for each device when you can just use the email client native to the phone? Web companies should build their site and services with this in mind and the device/platform companies should optimize their native apps and OS for these simple requirements.
At MessageDance, we recognize that the browser and email are the apps found on virtually every PC and soon on every mobile device. We’re not too keen on being device-specific so we use the ubiquitous tools already available and everyone knows. Using the “Share” feature found on many social sites like YouTube and Digg (and probably on all sites sooner rather than later), our users can send their favorite content to their favorite social destination or their friends’ by using their MessageDance email address. They can create a blog post from their iPhone or Facebook Messages section by simply emailing it to “blog @ messagedance.com“. The blog post also can go automatically to Twitter. All of this is done by a simple yet powerful email address.
Nokia senses the disruption caused by the iPhone and Google. They believe the higher margin business will come from the platform and services built on top of their devices. This is a natural evolution as witnessed in the PC business as well with IBM focusing more on software and services. I hope they will continue to innovate on the devices as well as make the platform and native apps stronger so companies like MessageDance can innovate and develop their offerings to be useful anywhere and from any device.
Blogged with MessageDance using Gmail | Reply On Twitter
MessageDance - Jailbreak Your Blog May 1, 2008
Posted by geoffwolfe in : On Topic , add a commentAnother installment of a "how-to" video from MessageDance. See how to break away from your blog platform and blog from virtually anywhere. BTW, it’s pretty darn easy making YouTube videos using Snapz and iMovie. Only wish the video quality was better on YouTube.
Blogged with MessageDance using YouTube
