Hi Dooode.

Bloomberg is buying pounds of web ads today.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:29:02 -0500

Bloomberg is buying pounds of web ads today.

fred-wilson: fun picture of Pincus, Zuckerberg, and Paul Graham...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:58:00 -0500

fun picture of Pincus, Zuckerberg, and Paul Graham at Startup School

Anyone else feel slightly funny about this photo?

As Rafer sez, “Facebook doesn’t try to hide their intent at all”, but can you imagine Sergey Brin slapping five with some, call it, potential black hat SEOs or SEM arbitrageurs 6 or 7 years ago. They made Brin a lot of money as well, but he wouldn’t be caught in public with them. There’s Don’t be Evil, maybe we need a Don’t be Stupid.

"The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously today to outsource its e-mail system to Google Inc.,..."

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:42:23 -0400

“The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously today to outsource its e-mail system to Google Inc., making it the largest city in the nation to make the move and handing the Web search giant a major victory in its quest to become a software provider to the world’s cities and businesses.”

- Los Angeles adopts Google e-mail system for 30,000 city employees | Technology | Los Angeles Times

Google = Enterprise

Still think Android will be a big play for the G in the enterprise.

Gawker Gets Scammed

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:40:18 -0400

Gawker Gets Scammed:

mikehudack:

spiers:

ryanbrown:

spiers:

The sponsored posts should go for far more than the $3 CPMs on display. They’re taking a premium form of advertising and using it as an add-on, when they should be upselling it. (And there’s no inventory for sponsored posts.)

And in that email exchange, there’s no upselling, just throwing it in for free.

What’s more: this lead CAME to them! Why are you throwing in fries and a drink when the client is clearly willing to pay full price for the stand alone product? I’d understand if this was an effort to build a portfolio of executions for a new product or something… but the “sponsored post” is pretty old hat for Gawker Media, and the “client” is already starting at the 25k line!

What Ryan Brown said.

Because the rebuy is better than the buy. Because you want clients who get real value and keep coming back. That’s how you build a business.

Classic sales rule; Don’t sell what has already been sold. No need to throw in the sponsored posts, that is how you build value over time, and get the renewals. The drip feed of added value while also up-selling.

But I feel for this rep. Calling on the autos, its been slow all year, and then bam, economy comes climbing back, and you get this call from Spark for Suzuki. All the hard work has paid off and you are looking to hit your Q4 number so you throw a little extra at them.

I wouldn’t have noticed the slight tweak in the Spark email(-).

"Ted’s answer is ultimately the way to best target niche communities, that runs contrary to much of..."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:32:00 -0400

“Ted’s answer is ultimately the way to best target niche communities, that runs contrary to much of what brand advertising needs; broadcast and reach.”

- Hi Dooode. - The future of branded advertising

Rafer sez:
@rahmin @jamesgross There’s nothing that says that brand advertising, in the mass media sense, survives the transition to the Internet. It may be that only brands which know how to create demand without uniformity of reach and without low-hassle large media buys survive.

(via rafer)

There is no evidence that there won’t be reach or uniformity with the web. Brand advertising already has survived on the web, the question is how powerful it becomes. I would bet that 95% of brand dollars online go to 6 media companies(GYMFFA; Google, Yahoo, Microsofy, Facebook, FIM and AOL). YouTube has more reach than any broadcast channel, Yahoo has more reach than almost all newspapers combined, and Facebook has more consumer minutes in a day than any media conglomerate can throw at an advertiser with TV, Radio and Print combined. The Web is creating media monopolies and brand advertising opportunities, that all the past moguls would kill for.

The future of branded advertising

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:45:00 -0400

rahmin:

tedr:

bijan:

Much has been said about the issues facing publishers and advertisers particularly when it comes to branded advertising.

My head always hurts when I hear people say that at least with television, brands can safely advertise their brands.

Yes, television has been a success story when it comes to branded advertising. The dollars are big. Forget big, they are enormous.

But I’m convinced that it’s a fragile business. First, it’s not growing. And our attention is shifting. Even if Nielsen says we are all watching 25 hours of TV per day we know it’s not true in our hearts and our brains. The second the TV commercial comes on we whip out our mobile phone or we turn our eyes to our laptops. Or we just click thru the ads on our DVRs.

Yet online branded advertising has real challenges. The current search business doesn’t deliver branded advertising. The classic banner ad if targeted works well for many things — except branding.

To make display advertising ads friendlier to brands, new formats are being introduced like this super sized banner ad I saw on Alley Insider today.

To give you an idea how big that Mercedes ad, that photo is my 15” MacBook Pro which has a 1440x900 display!

I’m not sure this format is the best for publishers, advertisers and consumers. I have a feeling it’s not.

But I am optimistic that there will be more compelling solutions for branded advertising. I’ve seen a number of creative ideas & technologies over the past few months and I’m sure we’ll see others too.

@bijan. I’m with you 100%. Though the first way for brands to be effective online is to ditch standards and seek out publishers that are willing to prepare custom integrations for the brand into their media form. Advertising has been a lie for 100 years and we have the metrics to prove it now. Brands needs to be where their customers are and make their intentions known by helping their customers enjoy their lives more. Red Bull’s arial and DIY events are a great example. Samsung power stations at airports are another. Even the Bud Light Wheat / SNL takeover is the future. All of these were envisioned by the brand (and with the publisher or property holder) as an actual adn real (vs. pretend) benefit to the customer. It says we think your lifestyle is great and want to make it better. (Note the Bud Light ad buyout meant there was more time to show more programming (classic SNL clips) which along with reduced total ad minutes is a win for viewers.)

This is how advertising will work in the next century. It will take much more work, it will allow for far fewer martini lunches and a roiling of creative destruction for years to come before things settle out.

I’m speaking with confidence as our advertisers on Dogster and Catster get all their ROI from providing fun and information to our audience. They still use banners, but their just to set the stage for the real sharing points. We almost always turn down agencies that request pure banner buy, because they’ll never get the return they want and thus never come back.

So think big about how advertising will change, but think beyond IAB and standards and think about integrating with customers actual lives in a meaningful way.

I always struggle when web heads(included) use their logic to explain to the world what brand advertising should be. Ted’s answer is ultimately the way to best target niche communities, that runs contrary to much of what brand advertising needs; broadcast and reach.

The web needs to make up it’s mind on what it can do. I’m concerned if the broadcast and reach model wins. Welcome the ad exchanges and the winner take all media companies.

"More than just security, though, the White House saw the opportunity to increase their flexibility...."

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:17:49 -0400

“More than just security, though, the White House saw the opportunity to increase their flexibility. Drupal has a huge library of user-contributed modules that will provide functionality the White House can use to expand its social media capabilities, with everything from super-scalable live chats to multi-lingual support. In many ways, this is the complement to the Government as Platform mantra I’ve been chanting in Washington. When you build a vibrant, extensible platform, others add value to the foundation you establish; when you join such a platform, you get the benefit of all those features you didn’t have to develop yourself.”

- Thoughts on the Whitehouse.gov switch to Drupal - O’Reilly Radar

This should help convince more brands that the LAMP stack is the way to go. Nice symbolic win.

"400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of..."

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:06:56 -0400

“400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta’s fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife — accurate down to the block — when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn’t get delivery.”

- Eric Sanderson pictures New York — before the City | Video on TED.com

Principles of the Web | For Marketing « JG Etc.

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:02:43 -0400

Principles of the Web | For Marketing « JG Etc.:

New blog post.

Bono in NY Times.

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 14:14:20 -0400

It is a strangely unsettling feeling to realize that the largest Navy, the fastest Air Force, the fittest strike force, cannot fully protect us from the ghost that is terrorism …. Asymmetry is the key word from Kabul to Gaza …. Might is not right

It’s easy to forget how disruptive Dell was….

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:41:38 -0400

It’s easy to forget how disruptive Dell was….

lunchfood: spiegelman: He won the Stanley Cup, too? The only...

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 12:38:41 -0400

lunchfood:

spiegelman:

He won the Stanley Cup, too?

The only public figure I enjoyed watching more than Sidney Crosby this year was Mr. Obama.

"I don’t know exactly what the future will look like, but I’m not too worried about it...."

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:09:14 -0400

“I don’t know exactly what the future will look like, but I’m not too worried about it. This sort of change tends to create as many good things as it kills. Indeed, the really interesting question is not what will happen to existing forms, but what new forms will appear”

- Paul Graham content article.

"As he considered the design of this system, Nelson applied his experience as a filmmaker with the..."

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:11:30 -0400

“As he considered the design of this system, Nelson applied his experience as a filmmaker with the conception of complex motion picture effects, moving from one shot to another, and conceived of the idea of hypertext”

- Ted Nelson - Hypertext, Xanadu, Web History

Everywhere you look from Nelson to Licklider and his advanced studies on acoustics.

The Arts Created the Internets.

merlin: The Original IBM ThinkPad | A Continuous Lean. This is...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:09:00 -0400

merlin:

The Original IBM ThinkPad | A Continuous Lean.

This is the notepad (the pencil and paper kind) that in the late 80s / early 90s inspired an IBM researcher to name the company’s new mobile computer the ThinkPad. To me, the IBM ThinkPad was the classic laptop computer to have. At least that was the case until I went full time Apple and the Chinese got a hold of the brand. At any rate, it is interesting to see the little promotional give-away that inspired a massive brand.

[via]

Context:

IBM Think - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Think is a motto coined by Thomas J. Watson while managing the sales and advertising departments at the National Cash Register Company, saying “Thought has been the father of every advance since time began. ‘I didn’t think’ has cost the world millions of dollars.” In 1914 he brought the motto with him to CTR, which later became IBM.

Watson was a damn good salesman.

hiten: rafer: joemuto: At the White House event today...

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:10:07 -0400

hiten:

rafer:

joemuto:

At the White House event today promoting Chicago’s 2016 Olympics bid, in the middle of a fencing demonstration, somebody handed Obama a motherfucking lightsaber.

There is so much awesomeness in this photo right now I think my head might explode.

(via Swampland)

heyitsnoah: A very nice New York Times visualization of the...

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:51:42 -0400

heyitsnoah:

A very nice New York Times visualization of the shrinking market cap of the finance industry.

That’s cool.

Vibram Fingers

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:03:00 -0400

I have seen a bit of buzz around the Vibram Five Fingers among my tech friends. I also just finished reading the book Born To Run(Recommended) where they were mentioned extensively as a potential answer the injuries that have plagued runners.

This all reminded me of when I loved running. Not in straight lines or on a treadmill, but when I played American Football. What I didn’t realize then, in wearing the Nike Speed TDs was they were probably GOOD for my feet, even though all the marketing in the world told me they were BAD for my feet. They were the lightest shoes on the market, so as a Defensive Back, we all loved them. They also had very little arch support, and little cushion outside of their bottom hard rubber plastic sole. This lack of “support” & “cushion”, based on the Born to Run/Vibram philosophy most likely strengthened my feet and helped prevent injury.

Funny that Nike marketed them as a way for Football players to run faster but were also quick to up-sell the more cushioned Speed TD high tops, if you were worried about injury…….

"My quick take? This is going to change display advertising for the better."

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:47:00 -0400

“My quick take? This is going to change display advertising for the better.”

- FM Ad STAMP – Display ads get social | V/Speak

It’s always nice to drink your own Kool_Aid, but seeing notes like this from one of your big clients is always much, much better.

AppleInsider | Inside Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Exchange Support

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:53:28 -0400

AppleInsider | Inside Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Exchange Support:

“In the software business, Microsoft has long known the importance of owning the client end. It worked hard to displace Netscape’s web browser in the late 90s, not because there was any money to be made in giving away browser clients, but because it knew that whoever controlled the client could set up proprietary demands for a specific web server. That’s what Netscape had worked to do as it gave away its web browser in hopes that it could make money selling Netscape web servers; Microsoft first took control of the client with Internet Explorer and then began tying its IE client to its own IIS on the server side with features that gave companies reasons to buy all of their server software from Microsoft.

As Apple takes over the client end of Exchange, it similarly gains market leverage. First and foremost, the move allows Apple to improve the Exchange experience of Mac users so that business users have no reason not to buy Macs. Secondly, it gives Apple a client audience to market its own server solutions, including MobileMe to individual users and Snow Leopard Server to organizations. In concert with providing Exchange Server support, Apple is also delivering integrated support for its own Exchange alternatives in both MobileMe and with Snow Leopard Server’s improved Dovecot email services, Address Book Server, iCal Server, the new Mobile Access secure gateway, and its included Push Notification Server.”

From one of my favorite sites online, AppleInsider. The above explanation is part of the reason why Snow Leopard Server and iCal server are very important for organizations like FM.

I wonder how many businesses will adopt Snow Leopard Server…..