Tag Archives: google

An Intro to Social Data Portability

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Social Data Portability allows you to bring your friends, interests and relationships where ever you go across the web.  For users, it means not having to create a new account on every site, and having immediate access to your network of friends.  For businesses, it gives you more demographic insight into your users, as well as let you leverage the popularity of existing social networks to promote activity on your site.   In this post I will discuss the strengths and differences between Facebook Connect, OpenSocial and Sign in with Twitter and show a few examples.

Facebook Connect

Simply put, Facebook Connect allows you to build a Facebook application outside of Facebook. You can integrate with Facebook’s authentication, retrieve profile information about your users, allow your users to find their friends who have “connected” with your site, as well as selectively publish actions to a user’s activity stream.   Developing a Facebook Connect application requires software development chops but gives you access to Facebook’s 200m users.  Digg and CNN both demonstrate different approaches to integration.

CNN
CNN offered a live video stream during Obama’s inaugration.  It included a Facebook Connect application which allowed users to sign in with their Facebook credentials and participate in a live global chat.

Chattin' bout Barry

The participation numbers are staggering.  According to Mashable:

1. 600,000 status updates posted through the CNN.com Live Facebook feed
2. Facebook averaged 4,000 status updates per minute during the broadcast
3. 8,500 status updates were posted during the first minute of Obama’s speech
4. “Millions” of people logged into Facebook during the broadcast

These numbers would’ve never been achievable if users had to register with CNN to participate.  Recently, the Whitehouse has taken a cue and announced a similar application for it’s live video events.

Digg
Digg’s Facebook Connect implementation allows you to link your Digg and Facebook accounts.  Each story you digg, shows up on your activity stream (for all your friends to see).  For Digg, the beneifts are immediate, more people will see that I am digging stories and click back to the site.

Facebook Connect Digg

Signing Into Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect Digg2

Digg story on my Facebook activity feed

Facebook Connect is now also available for the iPhone.  This is huge and will create a whole new world of mobile social applications.

OpenSocial

OpenSocial is similar to Facebook Connect but allows you to build applications that run in orkut, MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, Ning and Yahoo! and other 3rd party sites.

Virgin Global Row
The Virgin Global Row is a one crazy dude’s story about circling Antarctica in a boat by himself (and raising some money for charity).  OpenSocial integration allows you to login, connect with other people who have joined the site, and push your actions on the site to your various social networks.

Open social options

Open social options

Google Friend Connect
Google has also release a set of plug n play widgets based on OpenSocial called Google Friend Connect.  Currently there are about 10 widgets available including sign-in, comments, polls, reviews, events and recommendations.  This is cool because it allows anyone to quickly and easily incorporate social elements to their site (no coding required).

Sign in with Twitter

Yep, you guessed it, sign in with Twitter allows 3rd party sites to publish activity to your Twitter stream.  One example of this is Spymaster (the Twitter game which equally amazed and pissed people off).

Spymaster
Spymaster is a game which allows you to go on missions, raise money, buy weapons and attack other spies (Twitter users).  Success is based on how many of your followers play the game and how often you send out updates through your twitter stream.   IMO the game is pretty boring although it is undeniably attracting a huge following and a really nice example of a successful viral campaign.

Bribing you to tweet about your activities

Bribing you to tweet about your activities

Real time spymaster activity

Real time spymaster activity

Conclusion

There’s a big battle over who will become the defacto social OS of the web.  In the future sites/widgets/apps will be social (and location aware), the question is where your data will be sourced from.  At this point Facebook is clearly in the lead, but Google has deep pockets and Twiter is making huge strides.  As Facebook and Twitter launch payment platforms, the opportunity to monitize through social ads and microtransactions presents a huge opportunity.  Got friends?


http://virginglobalrow.com/

Advertising Is Not a Sustainable Business Model for the Web (unless you are a Search Engine)

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The long-held myth that web companies can achieve profitability through free products, services and content solely based on advertising is fading.  The diminishing rates of online ads, and the slowdown of venture capital and IPOs, has led to a realization that a sustainable business model for web companies must have multiple, diverse, revenue streams.

VC Slowdown

Over the last few months I’ve seen a growing number of companies offering alternative strategies to generating revenue.

Subscription Services / Premium Content (Blizzard, New York Times, GigaOM, Forrester)

The most straightforward revenue source is paid subscriptions. Blizzard, makers of World of Warcraft, absolutely crush it.

“if [their] 10 million subscribers were to pay the regular $14.99 month-to-month fee, then Blizzard would fill its pockets with almost $150 million every single month… that means a revenue-target of more than $1.7 billion for FY 2008.”

While many media companies have experimented with paid subscription models, very few have been able to do it successfully.  The exception is research focused companies like Forrester which banks on corporates with deep pockets shelling out $700 for a 12 page report.  GigaOM and TechCrunch have also recently launched similar premium research and analysis services.

The New York Times recently released it’s TimesReader 2.0 Adobe Air client. While the client offers an improved user experience, I can’t ever imagine shelling out $3.45 a week for content I can get for free.  Though I would pay for their $3 iPhone app.

It’s possible that with the success of the Kindle, these paid content services will flourish in the future.

Freemium (Wetpaint, Pandora, Google Apps)

A variation on premium content services is the freemium model. Give away 80% of your service for free, and charge for heavy users who want more functionality or a better experience. Pandora, a music discovery product, recently launched a premium services which, for $36 a year, removes ads, provides higher quality streaming music and offers a desktop app.  A compelling offering for their top tier of users.

Wetpaint is another company that has found success through the freemium model:

“When Ben Elowitz formed Wetpaint in 2005, it was intended to let anyone create a Web site free… Wetpaint typically offers advertisers space on a few Web sites with a few hundred thousand visitors. But last fall, many of their advertisers raised their sights to publishers with more than five million readers, Mr. Elowitz said. Rates for leftover ad space fell to 25 cents per thousand views from $1… Now, Wetpaint charges its big company customers, like HBO and Fox, a fee in exchange for providing extra services like site promotion and moderating reader forums… Smaller customers can pay to keep their sites free of ads. Wetpaint plans to add more paid services, including additional storage for big files and personalized domain names. It is also considering selling virtual goods on its sites. “

Finally Google Apps is another nice example of successfully upselling premium services. The communication and collaboration platform is free for up to 50 users, but for $50 per user per year you get access to a whole range of services including: additional storage space, email security and archiving, video sharing, phone support and access to API’s.

App Stores (Apple, Nokia, Blackberry, Google Android)

It’s tough to argue against the game-changing success of the Apple App Store.  Rival companies like Google, Nokia and Blackberry have launched their own stores (the Android Market, Ovi store and Blackberry App World respectively).  A cursory glance on the Blackberry store only showed about 20 apps, and none of them were paid.  While they won’t be competitive with Apple (at least for some time), it’s at least showing that this model is profitable and worth pursuing.  I’m sure this is now central to how mobile handset makers and software developers plan on monetizing phones.

Interestingly this model is now being extended beyond just phones (and why not!).  According to the Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz:

“Vector is a network service to connect companies of all sizes and types to the roughly one billion Java users all over the world. Vector (which we’ll likely rename the Java Store), has the potential to deliver the world’s largest audience to developers and businesses leveraging Java and JavaFX.

Our runtimes reach more consumers than just about any other company on earth. That ubiquity has obvious value to search companies, but it’s also quite valuable to banks looking to sign up new accounts, sports franchises looking for new viewers, media companies and news organizations looking for new subscribers – basically, any Java developer looking to escape the browser to reach a billion or so consumers.

How will it work? Candidate applications will be submitted via a simple web site, evaluated by Sun for safety and content, then presented under free or fee terms to the broad Java audience via our update mechanism. Over time, developers will bid for position on our storefront, and the relationships won’t be exclusive (as they have been for search). As with other app stores, Sun will charge for distribution – but unlike other app stores, whose audiences are tiny, measured in the millions or tens of millions, ours will have what we estimate to be approximately a billion users. That’s clearly a lot of traffic, and will position the Java App Store as having just about the world’s largest audience. “

I believe that a paid app store is also a viable business model for social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Microtransaction (Tencent, Zygna, Facebook)

Tencent, the largest Chinese social network, focuses on microtransactions as their primary revenue source.  Users pay for subscriptions, virtual clothes for your avatar, new weapons, cute pets, etc… From their ’09 first quarter results:

Internet services (digital goods, game subscriptions, micro-transactions) – $279.9 mil (76% of total revenues)
Mobile Subscriptions – $64.5 (17.6% of total revenue)
Online Advertising – $21 mil (5.9% of total revenues)

Online advertising only 5.9% of their total $350mil revenues?  Impressive.

Another company successfully generating revenues from social gaming microtransactions is Zygna.  According to TechCrunch:

“Zynga, the online gaming publisher, is making a ton of money… [close] to $100 million. And clearly, it’s accelerating… There looks to be a bright future in the online gaming sphere and specifically around micro-transactions. That’s how Zynga makes most of its money. With some of its leading games on MySpace and Facebook, it charges users for playing time or for things like chips in poker. These small purchases which usually amount to only a few dollars at a time, start to add up quick. And that’s only with a small percentage of overall players opting to buy them.”

Facebook finally launched it’s much anticipated payment platform for testing.  Facebook hopes to be the OS for the social web.  They are banking on companies like Zygna figuring out what it the masses want and developing social applications on top of their platform.  App developers will be able to charge for subscriptions and create opportunities for in-app transactions. Facebook will get a cut of each transaction.  Cha-ching!

Another interesting company in this space is Tipjoy, which facilitates small payments on Twitter. I haven’t seen this used effectively yet, but I imagine a micropayment based Craigslist Twitter app could be successful.

Trend Analysis (Twitter, Zensify)

It’s undeniable that Twitter has achieved massive popularity, but that doesn’t always translate to profits (see YouTube). I believe Twitter’s most effective strategy for monetization will be mining and performing trend analysis on the millions of thought bubbles created by users daily. Both companies and individuals would pay big money to answer the following questions:

  • What are people saying about me/my product right now?
  • How has the perception of my brand changed recently and in what direction is it trending?
  • Geographically where is my biggest, rapidly emerging and diminishing audiences?
  • Who are my biggest evangelists, in what demographic do they fall in, where are they located?
  • Who are my biggest naysayers, how can I change their perception?
  • What is the perception of my product vs. my competitors?
  • What are the trending (in both directions) topics in my industry?

On a smaller scale the new iPhone app Zensify:

“Shows the user trends within your social graph in the form of a tag cloud of key words. In other words it brings a lot more intelligence to your social graph. Suddenly, you can see a big trending topic amongst people you follow… “Wouldn’t it be cool if “trending topics” were localized to the people who are followed by the people you follow.” Well Zensify does this… And it doesn’t just do it across Twitter. It does it also does it across updates from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, Photobucket and 12seconds.”

Zensify Tag Cloud

I believe that providing a set of tools to monitor trends amongst your social graph (and public timelines), will be a huge revenue opportunity for companies looking to monetize on social and real-time.

Conclusion

When the internet was originally created the “page metaphor” mimicked the existing print industry. It followed that the way to monetize was through advertisements. As we move from pages to activity streams we’re starting to see entirely new, innovative ways to profit. We are still in the infancy of this new stream based revolution and while companies like Twitter and Facebook have achieved huge valuations no one (especially the Newspaper and Music industries) has yet figured out Monetization 2.0. Put on your thinking hats…

The Case For and Against Google's Rumoured Twitter Acquisition

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There’s been a lot of talk the last few days about Google’s rumored “late-stage” acquisition talks with Twitter. While current consensus is that they are merely discussing mutually beneficial product strategies, it doesn’t mean that this deal isn’t being thoroughly considered and dissected by executive committees (not just of Twitter and Google, but MS & Yahoo as well) and tech pundits alike.  In this post I will briefly give some background, describe the potential best and worst case scenarios for both Google and Twitter, and give a final opinion.

Background: Why is Twitter Important?

Microblogging (whether it be Twitter, Facebook Status’ or anything else), was always thought to be about about marketing.  The business appeal of social media is that you can have a two way conversation with customers directly, at almost no cost, and let them do the dirty work of promoting your product “virally.”  Personally, our iPhone-toting, attention-lacking, cause-of-the-day promoting, have-it-your-way generation thinks our opinions are important and should be heard…now.  Equal parts narcissism and genuine interest in enhancing communication.

Now that Twitter has achieved mainstream popularity people are no longer think of it as a niche, social network.   If it’s possible to organize, make sense of and data mine these millions of thought bubbles, Twitter becomes an incredibly powerful, real-time, social, search-engine.  In this light, it is obvious that Google wants a piece.

Why Google Needs Twitter

Although Google dominates search and remains increasingly profitable, there are still a number of factors which could contribute to a Google’s fall.

Why Could Google Die…

With the belts tightening and infinitely high expectations, Google is struggling to find their next big source of revenue.  YouTube has the viewers, but no revenue.  Other products like Lively (which always felt very pets.com bubbly to me), Jaiku (microblogging) and Dodgeball (location based services) were all killed off.  Not only is Twitter (real-time search), a natural compliment to Google’s core product (static search), but Google also has the knowledge and experience to monetize this effectively.  The sticking point is the cost.  Twitter turned down a $500mil offer from Facebook a few months ago (though mainly in overvalued FB stock).  Right now, a compelling offer from Google would have to be in the $750mil – $1bil range

What if Google Buys Twitter?

Best Case Scenario: Google develops an Ad-Sense for Twitter, and is able to elegantly incorporate Twitter into its search engine.  Twitter-sense comprises a significant amount of search revenue,  the real-time search offering creates a huge gap between Google and it’s closest rivals, and the perception of Google’s superior innovation and foresight lives on (profitably).

Worst Case: Twitter is unable to live up to the hype, a true monetization plan never pans out and people finally realize that no meaningful information is actually contained in a tweet.  Investors are angry that Google paid a $1.65bil for YouTube and $1bil for Twitter and haven’t made a dime back.  The next new thing is all the rage, Twitter is left to journalists, b-grade movie stars, politicians and retro-nerds.

What if Twitter remains independent?

Best Case Standalone Twitter:  Twitter remains open and partners with Google, Facebook and every other major site on the planet to publish conversations streams on every page of the web.  IM, SMS and newspapers die.  Consumers and brands are able to interact directly, in a powerful way to improve products, services, politics and communication.  Twitter is able to effectively generate revenue through a mixture of paid services for corporates and search monetization.

Worst Case Standalore Twitter: With VC money drying up, web valuations plummeting, and no clear revenue model Twitter collapses under it’s own inability to scale it’s services to meet demand.  Eventually sells to AOL for $50 and a cheeseburger.

Final Thoughts

Biz Stone and Evan Williams are already rich (having previously sold Blogger to Google), have funding from VC’s who don’t care about revenue (yet), have a product that’s generated popular, mass appeal and has the potential to change the world. The product is still in its infancy though the concept has been validated by the interest generated by the big players (FB and Google).  Just like Google can be called an operating system of the static web, by remaining open and allowing 3rd parties to develop useful, innovative businesses on top of Twitter, they can become the foundation for the real-time web. I say go for it, roll the dice, take the mystery behind door number two and build Twitter into a real value-adding, sustainable business.  Then again, there’s a lot you can do with $1 billion dollars…

Why Would Anyone Advertise Online Without Google/Facebook?

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As part of my new job I’m in charge of developing and executing a marketing plan for a new website.  I’ve been doing a lot of research into online advertising and trying to figure out the best way to allocate my budget.  There are a number of ways to purchase ads online.

  • CPM (cost per one thousand impressions) is the cost to display your ad one thousand times.  For the sites I contacted the range was from $20-$70 per 1000 impressions.
  • CPC (cost per click), instead of purchasing ads which do not guarantee clicks, Google Adwords and Facebook both allow you to pay only when someone clicks on your ads.  Better.
  • CPA (cost per action), you only pay when a user clicks on your ad, comes to your site and does something (i.e. fills out a form).  This is obviously the best for ad buyers, but worse for ad sellers (since it depends on how convincing you/your product are to get someone to take that action).  I haven’t found any advertisers willing to sell on CPA basis.

There are also a number of other factors that allow you to specify your audience better.

  • Facebook allows you to specify where (to the city), what sex, age range, keywords, education (even to the specific college, year and major), relationship status and sexual orientation of your target audience (so that’s how my profile info is used).  In my example below, Facebook tells me there are 220 single college women between 18 and 23 in New York who like Pizza (hey ladies!).  You only pay per click, set daily limits on how much you want to spend and a maximum you want to pay for click.

  • Google also allows you to specify location, keywords, daily budgets and how much you will pay for a click.  The graph below shows me how many clicks I am likely to receive and how much those clicks will cost me (in Rupees):

In comparison the Google and Facebook models will give me a lot more value for my budget.  Here’s why:

  • Cost (CPC is better then CPM) – The number of clicks I get is much higher per dollar with Facebook and Google.  One of the major tech sites I contacted (can’t give their name but you’ve heard of them), offered me 174,000 impressions for 4k over two months ($23 CPM). They estimate a clickthrough rate of .25% which would equal 435 clicks.  In comparison I can set a maximum bid on Google and Facebook ads (let’s say .50 cents – $2 per click), giving me  2,000-8,000 clicks.
  • Targeting - While the tech sites I contacted gave a lot of demographic information about their users (what percentage are IT decision makers, developers etc…), it doesn’t mean the individual viewing my ad actually is in that bucket.  With Facebook, I can guarantee that the people who are viewing my ad are in the target audience I want them to be.  With Google, it’s up to me to define good keywords that people are searching for in order to reach them.  Assuming I can do this (there are a lot of tools out there to help as well), I’ll know my ads are only seen by the right people.
  • Analytics - There is no way for me tell how many times the ad publisher is actually displaying my ad.  They can tell me they showed it 100,000 times but I have no way to validate this.  All I can see is the number of people that actually click on that link.  Google and Facebook give me tools to see how well my keywords and ads are performing, guaranteeing my investment.

In short I can understand if you are Coca Cola you don’t really care who sees your ad.  In fact you don’t even care if people click on your ad. You are huge and all you want is to continue reminding people they are thirsty, your target audience is everyone. But for anyone else why would you advertise with someone who doesn’t offer targeted CPC ad purchasing? Your thoughts appreciated…

The Transition to Real-Time, Social Search

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John Batelle recently wrote a great post about the shift from static to real-time search.  To paraphrase he says that Google is/was awesome because for the first time, you could quickly and accurately get static information about any search term.  Though this strength is also a flaw.  By nature, newer content will have a lower page rank and thus appear farther down in search results.  The emerging “liveweb” will be able to answer the question “What are people saying about X right now?”  The current best example of this is Twitter Search.  But this isn’t enough.  The question I really want to ask (and the real moneymaker) is “What are people I trust saying about X right now?”

A few examples where static search is insufficient:

  • Breaking news/current events (we’ve seen many examples where Twitter breaks news stories first – i.e. San Diego Fires, Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, etc..,)  Many times Twitter is able to provide (arguably) more accurate real-time reports that the news that traditional news outlets later pick up on.  While Google is incorporating News Results at the top of it’s list:

It’s still not enough if I want to get a grasp on the current situation/perspective/events occurring now (though interestingly enough the NYTimes ad on the right is incorporating real-time content).

The equivalent of this is Facebook Lexicon (interestingly no label on the y-axis, not useful for an actual research tool) and Twitter Twist (been down for quite a while).  This is huge for PR and Product companies who want to be able to monitor how much buzz a person/event/product are receiving.

  • Product Reviews / Social Shopping – When most people want to buy a product online, they head to Google.  This is why advertising on search is a big moneymaker (as opposed to advertising on social networks which is seriously struggling – people go to Facebook to waste time, flirt, look at pictures of their friends drunk and write each other stupid messages, not buy products).  There have been a bunch of entrants into this market but none so far has provided a compelling product and achieved critical mass.  Hopefully now with Facebook Connect/Google Friend Connect, someone will make this possible.  If I’m looking for a camera, I want to know which camera my friends use and love, then find the cheapest place to buy it.  The first person who makes this easy to do (using my Facebook social data) is going to make a killing.

Google dominates static search, Twitter knows what you are doing, Facebook controls your social graph and Apple knows where you are.  The company able to blend all of these services (static, real-time, social, and location), while maintaining the strictest privacy controls, which will dominate the next era of the web

10^100 – Why Google still isn't Evil (yet)

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While Google was making headlines today with the launch of G1, I came across another article describing their Project 10100.  The project is described as, “a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.”  You submit a brief description of the problem you are trying to address, your solution, and who would benefit the most.  The proposals are divided into categories (i.e. Community, Energy, Health, Shelter), Google will select the best 100 and then let the public vote on the top 25.  A final advisory board will select 5 winning ideas and $10m will be given to the organization in the best position to implement.

A lot of companies donate $50m to charity and organizations, but it’s awesome that Google reaches out and let’s anyone submit ideas. Recently, Google’s shine is beginning to wear.  It’s fun to root for the underdog, but when the underdog is worth $135B and is dominating search and advertising, people start to get nervous.  Google has a ton of cool projects that remind us that they want us to still be around when the machines take over.

My favorite part about the site though was at the end of the FAQ: “(h) Any text or speech in the video must be in one of the following languages: English, German, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Korean, Russian, Swahili, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Arabic, Hindi, Greek, Czech, Hebrew, Danish, or Thai.”  Pretty much allows anyone entry (except of course for Native Central Siberians).

Check out the (cliche) video:

Recent Links

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Here are some noteworthy articles from the last week:

  • Google Friend Connect – Any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews
  • Ajax Performance Analysis – Using YSlow to improve performance
  • Opera Dragonfly – Firebug for Opera just released
  • Free Wi-Fi – AT&T has officially confirmed 17,000 wi-fi hot spots for the iPhone. Here’s how you “borrow” it for your laptop.

New Google APIs (Language/Charts/Visualization)

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Google releaesd three new API’s this week.

  • The first is for automatically translating content. Additionally there is language detection which guesses what language text is in (and with what certainty) .
  • The second is an update to the existing Charts API. Charts API allows you to really simply embed PNG of different types of charts and graphs. For example, and example 2. Try manipulating the variables in the URL.
  • Last is the Visualization API. Allows you to create embeddable widgets which display XML is different ways. All sorts of widgets are already available in their gallery.

For more google APIs checkout: http://code.google.com/more/