Archive for 2009

Vivu.TV @ AlwaysOn Summit

August 4, 2009

As mentioned here and on my personal blog, I attended the AlwaysOn Summit @ Stanford last week and was impressed by the degrees of innovation discussed not only from within the panels and the Summit’s speakers but also that which was applied by the AlwaysOn conference itself.

As a virtual conference attendee, my experience was made entirely possible by technology that was  incorporated into the show’s production.

Vivu.TV was the webcast / video provider for AlwaysOn and their technology made my virtual attendance possible.

Vivu.TV

Vivu.TV

More about Vivu.TV from their website:

Founded by startup veterans from Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and a team of IIT graduates, ViVu develops first-of-its-kind Participative Event Platform that enables live video participation from a PC, Mac or Linux without any proprietary downloads and seamlessly integrates with most of the popular streaming video and conference solutions.

The team developed the first enterprise quality video over IP a decade ago and is now building a participative platform that scales and provides the ease-of-use, quality and availability expected in an enterprise. ViVu solution is targeted at enterprises and is being used in a variety of ways: remote training courses, sales training on new products, and remote live video caller participation during Webcasts.

Like their site says – I am a Mac user and I was easily able to log into and participate in the AlwaysOn conference without having to download anything.

Peter Drucker defined Innovation as “a new dimension of performance”.

If Mr. Drucker were alive today, I am pretty sure the Vivu.TV “participative event platform” would qualify under his definition of innovation.

Twitter Analyzer: Twitter Audience Segmentation

August 3, 2009

According to its site, TwitterAnalyzer.com is the most advanced Twitter account analytics system in the world.

I am not sure how their claim can be confirmed, however their site does parse Twitter account data into segments I hadn’t yet seen.

Twitter Analyzer users can view an account by Tweets, Chats, Popularity, Reach, Subjects, HashTags, Links and Apps.

Twitter Analyzer Tweets

Twitter Analyzer Tweets

Tweets graph a Twitter account’s Tweet activity over a thirty day period.

Twitter Analyzer Reach

Twitter Analyzer Reach

Twitter Analyzer reach charts the reach of a Twitter account daily over a thirty day period.

Twitter Analyzer Subjects

Twitter Analyzer Subjects

My favorite charts at Twitter Analyzer are the ones for Subjects and Hashtags.

Subjects produces a graph of the top ten subjects tweeted from an account in both descending order and via pie chart.

Twitter Analyzer Hashtags

Twitter Analyzer Hashtags

Hashtags presents Twitter account hashtag data also in both a descending frequency order and by pie chart.

If you have someone you are following who has Tweeted a lot, Twitter Analyzer tools can provide data centric insight into which segment of the Twitter audience their messaging most likely resonates.

Purchasing Associated Press Articles via iCopyright

August 2, 2009

The Associated Press has begun selling their content via a site called iCopyright.

AP Copy and Paste Excerpt

AP Copy and Paste Excerpt

Understandably, the Associated Press membership is trying to find new ways to monetize content generated from their printing press era cost structures in the digital age.

AP Pricing

AP Pricing

I am not sure how the AP arrived at their article pricing structure though.

Websites can use up to four words for free. Using 5 up to 25 words will cost users $12.50.

Websites using Associated Press articles with over 251 words will cost $100.00

AP Referring Web Site

AP Referring Web Site

If I were to guess how well the AP’s new article licensing service and its pricing structure will sell , I would guess not very well.

At least not very well to anyone other than those companies or people who were themselves the subject of an Associated Press article.

AP Article Purchase

AP Article Purchase

Why?

Two reasons:

1. General circulation news is perishable and has little value to the internet audience beyond the time in which it was generated.

2. Advertisers accustomed to targeting and measuring buyer activity on the internet will find news related content converts less frequently into buyers and thus makes advertiser justification for supporting internet based news nil.

Twitter Research Via #Hashtags

August 1, 2009

Hashtags.org is a great tool for researching trends, tags and people Tweet data on Twitter.

Under Trends, searchers can investigate Twitter updates in four different time categories: Right Now, Today, This Week and This Month.

From a marketers perspective, longer term #Hashtag tweet activity revealed in This Week and This Month data shows which Tweets have sustained the most consistent share of voice on Twitter.

#Hashtags This Month

#Hashtags This Month

Sorting Trends by shorter time frames Right now and Today reveal the transitory nature of human attention.

Searching by Tags provides another rich source of Twitter data.

A hashtags search for Top tags produces a list of the most popular tags used on Twitter.

Top Hashtags

Top Hashtags

Although the data set collected by Twitter is nowhere near the size Google collects and then make available through it Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool, Hashtags.org appears to provide a statistically relevant sample of Tweeted keywords occurring @Twitter.

I am looking forward to applying this new found data toward reaching more of the Twitter Audience.

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford #AOSS09

July 31, 2009

I virtually attended my first conference this week at Stanford University called the AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford.

This year was the seventh addition of the conference and was titled: “Meet the New Captains of Innovation”.

I stumbled onto the conference while doing research and ended up “attending” two days worth of sessions via my laptop even though I was 1,600+ miles from Stanford.

From the Summit at Stanford conference website:

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

On July 28-30, leaders in the global technology industry will gather at the Athens of the Information Age for high-level debates on trends and opportunities.

Who Attends?
Summit at Stanford, features the most innovative companies, eminent technologists, influential investors, and journalists in keynote presentations, panel debates and private company CEO showcases. Our goal is to identify the most promising entrepreneurial opportunities and investments.

Indeed.

880 people attended the three day event in person while thousands of visitors like myself virtually attended the conference from 80 countries according to show founder Tony Perkins.

I particulary enjoyed the innovative interactivity of the show.

Web visitors could log on to the Stanford conference via Vivu.TV to view the panel discussions while also asking them questions via chat or Twitter during the Q&A segments.

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford

I aggregated conference attendees Tweets via Twitter and then re-tweeted the comments I found most interesting.

I believe my approach to virtually attending this conference, aggregating and then rebroadcasting my findings was innovative in itself.

I enjoyed every panelists contributions particularly the comments about Silicon Valley’s origins from Norm Fogelsong, General Partner at Institutional Venture Partners.

The AlwaysOn Summit at Stanford has set the standard for how all other conferences should be run.

All my notes from the conference are posted on TimothyCohn.com.

Microsoft Consolidates Search Market With Yahoo Deal

July 30, 2009

As most everyone in the search industry already knows, yesterday Microsoft and Yahoo reached a long anticipated and rumored search pact.

Microsoft Yahoo Search Deal

Microsoft Yahoo Search Deal

Because of the capital costs of maintaining a competitive global search engine, search engine market consolidation was inevitable.

I have commented about the Microsoft Yahoo search opera on several search industry blogs and wrote a blog post back in February 2008 about the real reason Microsoft needed to do a search deal with Yahoo : Microhoo vs. Google: The Battle for Audience and Keystrokes.

TwitBlock Alpha: Parsing Twitter Followers By Their Fruits

July 29, 2009

1938 Media Tweeted about a new Twitter Follower tool called TwitBlock Alpha.

The tool scans a Twitter account’s Followers list and generates scores for each Twitter Follower.

TwitBlock Alpha

TwitBlock Alpha

The higher the score, the more likely the Twitter Follower is a spammer – or at least has used one of those automated tools that proclaim “1000 New Twitter Followers Overnight”.

Just yesterday, I asked who are the 10,000+ people  would follow a Twitter account with 14 Tweets?

Fake Followers

Fake Followers

Probably someone who’s TwitBlock score – coincidentally – is off the charts.

The following is the top Twitter Spam Score from my Twitter Followers list:

Twitter Spam Score

Twitter Spam Score

As you can see, 1 Twitter Update, Following 490 and 6 Followers is indicative of a spammy Twitter account.

As I have increased my Tweets, I have noticed a disproportionate amount of following by Twitter spammers.

Hopefully an app service like TwitBlock can ultimately predictively model and prevent Fake Twitter Followers.

FakeFollowers.com attempts to do the same.

FakeFollowers.com

FakeFollowers.com

Twitter Debuts New Home Page With Search Box

July 28, 2009

Twitter has modified its home page to include a Twitter search box for web users not already logged into their Twitter account.

New Twitter Home Page

New Twitter Home Page

Twitter search options are prominently featured and include search results by the minute, day and week.

This move was probably necessary on Twitter’s part to generate renewed interest in its service which a handful of people – myself included – believe has already peaked.

If Twitter has any one core differentiator for potential non tech users, its would be Twitter’s real time search.

It remains to be seen whether anyone other than tech savvy news hounds have an interest in real time search results.

It will also be interesting to see whether or not Twitter’s search team has addressed the Tweet Stream Pollution issues.

Interactive Marketing Spend Annual Growth Rates

July 27, 2009

Forrester Interactive Advertising Models predicts compound annual growth rates for Interactive Marketing spend in the US through 2014.

Interactive Media Spend

Interactive Media Spend

Forrester classifies Mobile Marketing, Social media, Email marketing, Display advertising and Search Marketing as Interactive Marketing.

Interestingly – combined all other forms of Interactive Marketing spend remains half of what is spent on Search Marketing annually both in the present and future.

If the other forms of Interactive Marketing were more effective than Search Marketing, it would seem their spend would exceed the investment made in search by marketers.

Don’t Forrester’s spend predictions confirm all other forms of Interactive Marketing are less effective than Search?

Top 50 Web Properties June 2009

July 26, 2009

comScore has released its Top 50 U.S. Internet properties for June 2009.

The top five properties are Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Fox.

New to comScore’s Top 50 US Internet properties, Twitter.com entered the list for the first time @ #46 with 20+ million unique visitors.

Top 50 Web Properties June 2009

Top 50 Web Properties June 2009

Will Twitter.com climb comScore’s list any further next month or has Twitter already reached its maximum potential audience?