The Case for Print

Posted on by
Reply

In the publishing market for technology enthusiasts, print has almost evaporated. That’s what makes O’Reilly Media’s Make magazine so remarkable. Make was launched well after the destruction of the technology print media had already begun. The publishers thought there was value that print brought to their target audience of tinkerers that couldn’t be reproduced on a Web page. Not that the Internet isn’t important. In fact, most of Make‘s circulation development has been done on line. The publication also hosts a series of popular fairs where readers show off their inventions. But in a market that has largely turned up its nose at print, Make is a notable – and profitable – exception.

In this podcast, publisher and editor Dale Dougherty tells of the counter-intuitive wisdom that led to the creation of the Make brand. The speech is only 17 minutes long, but it will remind you of the value that print still brings to the publishing equation when applied sensibly.

Pet Owner Lookalikes

Posted on by
Reply

While strolling through Pet Rock 2008, the annual festival in east-central Massachusetts that brings hundreds of dog owners together in a celebration of their pooches, I was struck by the old cliche that dog owners and their pets frequently look alike. I started snapping examples of where I thought that was true. While the cliche is by no means universally true, there are some striking similarities in some cases. Just for fun, here are a few examples.

Study Finds Rapid Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks

Posted on by
Reply

New research funded by Awareness finds that Web 2.0 technologies are gaining rapid acceptance in enterprises and being combined with internal systems. I haven’t had a chance to read the full report yet, but you can download it here after filling out a short registration form (note, you may get a call from a sales rep later).

Here are highlights from a press release distributed today:

  • Employers are starting to allow social media participation more freely in their organizations: The number of organizations that allow social networking for business purposes has increased dramatically to 69 percent in 2008, up from 37 percent last year;
  • Employers are finding the benefits of using social media: 63 percent are using social media to build and promote their brand, 61 percent are using it to improve communication and collaboration, and 58 percent re using it to increase consumer engagement;
  • 75 percent of employees are already using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn for business purposes, up 15 percent from 2007;
  • Use of internal-facing communities is on the rise with 6 percent of organization already reporting they deployed internal-facing communities, while 33 percent indicate their organization plans to implement internal-facing social media initiatives;
  • External-facing communities are increasing: 27 percent of respondents said their companies are planning to deploy external-facing communities while only 13 percent indicated their organizations already have external-facing communities;
  • Online communities directed at specific interests and groups of people allow for more targeted marketing techniques and better results so for this reason 37 percent of organizations have specific areas of focus for their communities;

Open Source Quality

Posted on by
Reply

From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.

The market for data quality software has gone open source, and it’s about time.

Late last month, Talend Open Data Solutions, a maker of data integration and profiling software, made its Talend Data Quality software available under the General Public License. This follows the French company’s move in June to open its Open Profiler product in a similar way. The tools can be used together to assess the quality of the information in customer databases and to correct basic name and address information against a master list maintained by the US Postal Service.

What’s more important, though, is the potential of open sourcing to bring down the costs of the complex and frustrating data cleansing process. As I noted a few weeks ago, data quality is one of the most vexing problems businesses face. Data that’s inconsistent, out of date or incorrectly formatted creates inefficiency, angry customers (have you ever gotten three direct mail pieces at the same time, each addressed a little differently?) and lost opportunity.

Solutions to data quality problems have existed for decades, but they’ve always been sold by small vendors, usually at prices starting in the six figures. Over the last few years, many of these vendors have been snapped up by bigger software firms, which then bundled data quality tools and services into giant software contracts. There aren’t a lot of vendors left that specialize in solving the quality problem specifically.

This fragmentation has frustrated a process that should be a part of every company’s IT governance practice. While each company has its own data quality issues, many are common to a large number of businesses. Talend’s approach doesn’t address the cost of accessing databases of “clean” data, but it has promise to make the cleansing process itself cheaper and more automated.

The secret is the magic of open source, which enables users to easily exchange their best work with each other. For just one example of how this works, check out SugarCRM’s SugarExchange. This collection of third party applications has been built by contributions from SugarCRM’s customers and independent developers. While some modules carry license fees, many don’t. The point is that software authors who useful extensions to the base CRM system have the wherewithal to share or sell them to others who have similar needs. That’s difficult or impossible to do with proprietary software.

This so-called “forge” approach to development lends itself particularly well to data quality because so many issues are common to multiple companies. For example, if I come up with a clever way to compare employee records to a database of known felons, I should be able to share it and even charge for it. That isn’t possible when the market is spread across an assortment of small, closely held companies. If Talend can extend its TalendForge library to incorporate a robust collection of data quality components, it can make data cleansing practical and affordable to a much larger universe of companies.

The data quality problem is so pervasive that it demands a collaborative approach to a solution. This is a good start.

While I Talked, People Twittered

Posted on by
Reply

Have you ever had an audience comment loudly on what you were speaking about while you were actually speaking? I did this week, and I found the experience to be weird, invigorating and a little bit 
The scene was the New Marketing Boot Camp, a seminar I conducted with Chris Brogan and CrossTech Media. The group was the most tech-savvy I have addressed in some time. About a half-dozen of the members were using Twitter, the short-message microblogging service that inspires a fanatical following.

Sitting down after my presentation, I was able to call up search.twitter.com and read what people had been saying while I talked. Most of them simply summarized points I made, but a few added their opinions, and not all of those opinions were complimentary.

I can tell you that the act of presenting to a group that is actively talking about you requires new skills. Simply knowing that thoughts are being exchanged can be flustering; the tendency is to speak to the people in the room who you know are documenting your talk, hoping to get an inkling of what they’ll say. There’s also a certain ego-drive voyeurism that comes from this kind of instant feedback. I found myself wanting to hustle back to my computer to get the online evaluations of what I had just said!

There was a famous story at the South by Southwest Conference last March in which a keynote session was disrupted by negative Twitter messages from some members of the audience. In that case, the speakers were in the difficult position of having those comments actually scroll across a public screen while they were on stage. That was an extreme case, but an increasing number of events are incorporating Twitter conversations into the experience by encouraging attendees to share messages with each other using specific tags or keywords.

Like most new technology developments, there are both good and bad sides to this new form of instant feedback. On the positive side, speakers and conference organizers need as much audience reaction as they can get, and the sooner the better. Having recently waited six months to get audience evaluations from one presentation, I can tell you that the immediacy of the tweeted feedback was wonderful. I was able to use it to get a read quickly on the tech-saviness of the audience and adjust accordingly for the rest of the day. Hopefully, that was a good thing for everyone.

The major downside of this trend that I see is that real-time feedback from a small number of people can force a speaker to unintentionally focus on trying to please that vocal few. This is dangerous if the small but loud group isn’t representative of the majority of listeners. It’s human nature to fixate on criticism, and focusing on the comments of a few audience members can throw a presenter off track. The feedback is great, but keep it in perspective.

I’m telling you this because many of you work in the technology industry. You will soon find (if you haven’t already) that attendees to your meetings and events will use tools like Twitter to share their observations. Encourage this. Ask attendees to use Twitter’s hash function (#) to label their messages for your event. Use search.twitter.com to filter their comments and save the search query as an RSS feed so you can collect all this feedback in one stream or even display it on a public screen.

However, Twitter feeds aren’t a replacement for the tried-and-true tactics of feedback forms and post-conference surveys. Real-time impressions can be incomplete and misleading, so take them with a grain of salt. But seek all the feedback you can. Your presentation or event will only be better for it.

Update: on Twitter told me about RateMyTalk.com, a “service that allows conference attendees to provide immediate feedback on a conference via Twitter or through our web site.” I haven’t tried it yet, but it’s a very timely idea.

How NOT to Cope With Bloggers

Posted on by
Reply

My passion for journalism keeps me in close touch with the newspaper industry, a business whose perilous decline I’ve documented through my Newspaper Death Watch blog. A trend has been playing out there recently that is relevant to anyone who is trying to cope with the new influence of citizen publishers on their market.

Nearly every major newspaper company has recently seen blogs spring up that speak to their problems and future. Among them are TellZell (Tribune Co.), McClatchy Watch (The McClatchy Co.) and The Gannett Blog(Gannett Co., Inc.) It’s the Gannett example that intrigues me most.

The independent Gannett Blog is written by Jim Hopkins, a former Gannett editor and reporter. It covers all kinds of topics related to Gannett’s business and its future. These days, that content includes a lot of speculation about layoffs and cutbacks at a company that recently announced it will cut 1,000 jobs, or about 3% of its workforce.

The Gannett Blog has gone viral in its quest to become a sounding board and information source for employees. Jim Hopkins recently revealed some traffic statistics: 91,000 visits and 189,000 page views in the last 30 days. That’s serious blog traffic, and much of it comes from Gannett employees who feel they can’t get a straight story from their employer. Gannett Blog has become the virtual watercooler for a company of 46,000 people.

The conundrum for Gannett is what to do about Hopkins. So far, it’s chosen a strategy of benign neglect. Tara Connell, Gannett’s chief spokesman (and interestingly, a former managing editor at USA Today) has gone almost silent recently as rumors have swirled about layoffs and cutbacks, Hopkins says. Meanwhile, traffic has grown. This recent post has drawn more than 160 comments, many of them from people who identify themselves as Gannett employees. People are now actively trading rumors about layoffs at their individual newspapers, with Gannett blog functioning as the gathering point.

Gannett’s strategy is worse than “No comment.” Not only has the company not contributed its perspective to the flood of comments, it now barely even responds to Hopkins’ requests for information, he says. As the chorus of pleas for guidance from the company grows in volume, Gannett becomes more closed and insular. Gannett didn’t respond to my own requests for comment.

Gannett is approaching this problem in the worst way possible. Regardless of its opinion of bloggers and citizen journalists, the fact is that The Gannett Blog is drawing huge attention among the company’s own employees, who are the most valuable spokespeople it has. Gannett’s failure to respond to the speculation and allegations of this critical constituency has become almost as big a story as the company’s business problems.

In the new world of citizen-powered publishing, institutions have fewer places to hide than ever. Silence is an invitation to speculation, and individuals now have the means to state their opinions in a very public way. A better course of action for Gannett would be to respond to the comments posted by Jim Hopkins and his readers. Even if that response is a “no comment,” it’s at least an acknowledgement that their concerns are being noted.

You might argue that an engagement strategy is risky for a publicly traded company. That’s just wrong. Public companies live under all kinds of regulations, but there is nothing to prevent them from acknowledging that they care about and listen to the concerns of their stakeholders. Any comment is better than silence.

One of the great ironies of watching the newspaper industry collapse has been to see the same media icons that have long scolded institutions for their insularity become reclusive and inwardly focused when the spotlight is turned on them. Gannett Blog is exhibit A in how not to handle new influencers.

Daily Reading 09/08/2008

Posted on by
Reply

  • Study: 58% Aren’t Familiar With Social Networking

    More than half the people surveyed by Synovate said they don’t know what social networking is. Perhaps more interesting that a third said they’re getting tired of the networks they belong to.

    Synovate says it “spoke to” more than 13,000 people globally (we doubt that; this was probably an online survey). While the results aren’t statistically valid, there are some interesting international comparisons. The Dutch and Canadians are more active social network users, although the Canadians are losting interest faster. They prefer MySpace to Facebook. The Japanese are losing interest the fastest.

    tags: daily_reading, social_network, research

  • destinationCRM.com: A Company Like Me | Diigo

    Paul Greenberg believes that businesses have to develop the same kinds of relationships with customers that customers develop with their friends. This is difficult to do, but in the new customer-empowered world, it’s the only way to gain a sustainable edge. Do your customers trust you as much as they trust each other? Is there something you can do to earn that level of trust? Read this thought-provoking article for a very lucid perspective on the changes being brought about by social media.

    tags: daily_reading, crm

Daily Reading 09/07/2008

Posted on by
Reply

  • Events Industry: Robust Growth Through 2011

    Events are emerging as the brighit spot of an otherwise dismal media industry. A new white paper sees growth of 5.5 percent annually through 2011, with biggest opportunities overseas.

    tags: daily_reading, events

  • Gap Widens in Online Advertising

    Online advertising continues to grow at a 20% annual clip but search is pulling away as the vehicle of choice. Search ads are forecast to represent 42% of overall U.S. online ad spending in 2008, according to eMarketer, up from 40% in 2007.

    tags: daily_reading, google, search, advertising

  • Google Chrome is fastest browser

    A variety of independent tests have established that Google’s new Chrome browser is the fastest on the market, particularly when running javascript applications.

    tags: daily_reading, google

  • Facebook micro-payments total $35 million, VC says

    Facebook may book $35 million in small-dollar virtual gifts this year, or about 10% of its total revenue, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew. This indicates that people are willing to pay good money for items that have no practical value, as long as the sentiment is there. Facebook could be an innovator in creating the kind of micro-payments system that has been unsuccessful in other markets.

    tags: daily_reading, facebook

Daily Reading 09/05/2008

Posted on by
Reply