11 Predictions for 2011

There's nothing wrong (or hard) with making predictions, especially when everyone is making the same ones. Whether they're regarding the real-time web, location based services, digital curation or content creation, many pundits are on the same wavelength. So, why not take all of this one step further? Since it is already 2010, why not predict what will happen next year? Just for fun, here are 11 things that will definitely, without hesitation or question, happen in 2011.

My Predictions for 2011

1. The Facebook Murders: Millions of Facebook users begin to be more conscientious about their updates (location-based and otherwise) as a rash of murders occur due to over-sharing. Their new, organically grown location-based service never eclipses FourSquare. Consequently, ad revenue (and stock price) dives due to lowered weekly visits and gloomy trends in overall traffic. 
2. Generation No: Facebook loses its grip on an entire generation as kids (from middle school, high school and college to young professionals) don't want to be on the same social network as their parents.
3. Where's Happening? Twitter's merger with FourSquare proved deft as advertising revenue for the location-based service skyrockets, the perfect precursor for their upcoming IPO. FourSquare/Twitter users protest the use of the app by food chains as they finally realize the costs are a fraction of the benefits and dominate the ad market.
4. Minor Crackdown: Congress prohibits minors from check-ins on all location-based services.
5. Digital Rabbit Ears: CBS, NBC, FOX and ABC will all be owned by national cable providers, after major consolidation in the space in 2010. 
6. iTubes: Apple TV and iTunes proved to be the perfect infrastructure for delivering video content, live or on-demand, to millions of consumers. Taking it one step further, and to compete with Google's venture into the space (stay tuned), Apple will begin testing a new version which will allow consumers to get the content free of charge. By confirming with the Apple Remote (or retinal scan) that you viewed a commercial when prompted on screen (randomized time during each commercial), viewers earn credits which subsidize the cost of the $30/month service. Advertisers will receive hundreds of millions less impressions, but will finally get the precise measurement and accurate targeting they'd been promised for over a century.
   
7. ThemTube: Not to be outdone by Apple, Google launches a new section of YouTube which isolates video from the major content creators. In Pure High Definition (patent pending) viewers will be able to receive live and on-demand content free of charge. 
   
8. 50% of all online purchases are made from a mobile device: I don't know what the current percentage is but I'd assume it's under 10%, maybe under 2% or even 1%. I have a feeling that Google Goggles will have a major effect on purchasing decisions as consumers will be able to find the products they like at Brick and Mortars and buy the product from somewhere else using an application on their mobile phone. Amazon makes a bid on the Goggles before realizing Google sees them as a competitor.
   
9. Steal OS': Google's operating system begins selling on desktops, laptops and tablets after a successful launch with netbooks. Google will subsidize many of these devices due to the enlarged ad-delivery network that will result.
   
10. Faded Glory: As a fad for some, social media fatigue sets in for millions of users worldwide as they realize that it takes a lot of effort to create content constantly, even if it's only 140 characters at a time. Many major influencers and social media experts that appeared out of nowhere in 2009 will quit the space in dramatic fashion.
    
11. iCar: Apple will break into the automotive space by offering their own line of in-dash music players. Due to the collapse of the satellite radio industry, the lack of advances in the terrestrial space shows the huge potential for the line. Additionally, major advances in fuel cell and hybrid technology, combined with attractive rebates for new consumers, lifts auto sales close to pre-Great Recession levels.
    

Ok. I can't help but put in a few for 2010.

1. A huge acquisition or merger will occur in the PC market. Microsoft may even choose to purchase Dell, HP or Compaq as they all were successful in their first foray with mobile phones.
2. IBM acquires SalesForce.
3. TimeWarner reacquires AOL as no one purchases the stock in the IPO.
4. Google Wave integrates Google Voice features and begins to make Skype worried.
5. As many newspapers go online-only in 2010 as banks failed in 2009. New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are the only 2 U.S. papers to see an increase in print subscribers. Politico prepares to go daily as Rupert Murdoch launches a competing, conservative daily. (Both go weekly in 2011.)
6. The new conversation trend for self-proclaimed social media experts in 2010 will be Authenticity (not realizing it was a trend 4 years ago because they weren't in social media 4 years ago).

Now I'm content.

Happy New Year!
 
Photo Source

Share on FriendFeed

Bye Bye Bit.ly - 7 Reasons Why Goo.gl Will Kill Bit.ly

Both Google and Facebook announced today that they are launching url shorteners. They are entering the space that Bit.ly has owned as of late, stealing traffic and mindshare from sites like tiny.url and bud.url. Bit.ly saw an incredible increase in traffic and usage due to their infiltration of twitter applications.












(source: Mashable)

While some believe Bit.ly's ace in the hole is that they are already embedded in many twitter applications, Google has a significant chance to steal those partnerships for many reasons.

1. If there's anyone that can convince CoTweet, TweetDeck, Tweetie, Hootsuite, Brizzly, et al to switch their default shortener, it's Google
2. One of Bitly's best options for sending url's to Twitter is their Bookmarklet. Goo.gl is going to be installed first on the Toolbar. If you don't want the toolbar, a Bookmarklet will probably be created shortly thereafter
3. Feedburner will replace TwitterFeed because TwitterFeed is mortally flawed due to their initial OpenID requirements (pre-Google and Yahoo integrations)
4. Why would choose to work with a site like Bit.ly over a company like Google?
5. Integration with Google News, Google Reader and iGoogle
6. Google might even be able to appease the Murdoch's of the world by integrating with major publishers allow easy dissemination of original content and point to the genesis instead of an aggregator
7. Bit.lys stats are nice but how can Analytics not do a better job. Comparing links month to month? Overall monthly statistics? These are things Marketing, PR and Advertising firms would actually be willing to pay big bucks for
   

The winner in this race will be the company that has the most mindshare, the most visitors
for news destinations, better word of mouth, better analytics, better speed, better security, authenticity, and a better reputation.

All of these ingredients create a perfect storm for Bit.ly. I don't think fb.me will win this battle because Facebook is not a news filter or destination like Twitter is. However, having a bookmarklet which would allow Facebook users to shorten links and send them to Facebook will give them a great headstart considering their 350 million person population.

Google, however, has a far bigger footprint and much more of a wide array of uses. From GMail to Toolbar to Reader and iGoogle, to YouTube, Orkut, Android, Chrome, Chrome OS and even Wave, Google will be able to leverage their shortener to provide incredible analytics and distribution much better than any of the other competitors. Add in the fact that Google could just as easily decide to buy a Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Tweetie or CoTweet and their potential goes even higher. Don't forget that those sites could be leveraged for advertising, unlike Google.com.

Many of the good twitter applications are becoming web-based instead of desktop applications. These applications are making money with ads. Is Twitter? The future of twitter does not mean revenue for twitter, it means revenue for the apps that manage your accounts that have advertising.

Share on FriendFeed

The Future of Gaming is Not Mobile

Ben Parr wrote a terrific piece on the future of gaming over at Mashable. I agree with most of the prognostications but I think Ben buried what will turn out to shift the space in the most substantial way. He wrote that he expects to see a "wave of social gaming on the console." While there has been social gaming on consoles for quite a while now, I think this is a major understatement.

Games such as Pet Society or Who Has The Biggest Brain will likely make their way onto the console, either in disc or downloadable form. It’s lucrative and people have proven their willingness to pay for the HD, console-based experience.

Other social gaming platforms will either be acquired or strike lucrative deals to bring their games to the console as well.

Delivery of advertisements into video games is nothing new and, as Jeremy Pepper pointed out to me last week at the Audience Conference, ads even appeared in relics like Pole Position. Advertisers have embraced video games as a very relevant and cost-effective platform but we haven't even seen the beginning. Contextual advertising has been appearing everywhere from web search to email. I believe we will see a ton of targeted advertising in video games for consoles over the next 5 years. I think the consoles will be able to tell advertisers which games are being played on the console and then deliver relevant and unobtrusive advertisements to players. Consoles will be able to mine data about web history, game-playing habits, chats within games, movies played on the device, music and pictures uploaded, etc. Then ads can be streamed into games instead of burned into discs or software.

Beyond gaming on consoles like the PS3, XBOX 360 and the Wii, streaming movies is also a new avenue for marketing and advertising. Instead of getting outdated trailers for movies from 8 years ago when you decide to rent Wonder Boys, you would be able to stream trailers for movies like Where the Wild Things Are or Paranormal Activity (maybe here Netflix could help more).

Especially after today's AdMob acquisition by Google for $750 million in stock, Google has emerged as the undisputed leader in ad delivery for almost every medium. Owning Massive gives Microsoft a solid head start though it hasn't helped them in the past when going against Google. Some are predicting massive growth for that group but one blogger doesn't see how that provides value to the gamers ... more on that in a minute.

I think Google needs to buy or partner with Wii or purchase Sony's PS3 unit. I'd like to see them build the hardware but that doesn't seem to be the way they do things. I would also like to see a gaming console built on Andriod, which would allow anyone to create games, alter games and probably lower the price significantly.

The name of this blog is Eyeball Economy. I believe almost all media should, and will, be free. As a consumer, an organization should subsidize my media consumption (eventually to zero-cost) with the realistic hopes that I could then become one of their consumers.

A lot of things I've been thinking about over the last few months concern distribution. I shouldn't find that odd considering I work for a company primarily known for the distribution of multimedia and plain-text press releases. I think there will be a ton of consolidation in the TV/Internet delivery space and I think the best companies to make those moves will be Microsoft, Google and Apple. Sony could still contend but they have no foundation in advertising to become a factor. Having internet capabilities built into televisions is a great start, but they're going to have to rely on other companies to deliver the content.

To recap a scattered post:

• Google should buy the PS3 or the Wii and Scientific Atlanta or another set-top box maker (like Cisco's recent acquisition of DVN.)
• Video games will primarily be played on the television or computer for a lot longer. Delivering ads to those eyeballs is where the money will be. Look for some action in the space over the next 6-12 months.
• Media (tv, internet, video games, web content) will all be subsidized by advertisers
  

Share on FriendFeed

A Death Greatly Exaggerated

Over the last few weeks, we have seen a reincarnation of the old debate that the press release is dead. Though recent forms of the argument have been a little less dire, the sentiment is still the same in some circles. Whether the argument is that the Social Media News Release will replace the traditional release or that the press release is dead, it is an argument I'm willing (and eager) to take part in.

It's been a very peculiar few days in the blogosphere as it relates to this topic. On Monday we saw an epic post (yes, another great one) by Brian Solis entitled, Reviving the Traditional Release. He focused heavily on how to enhance a traditional release and what kinds of tools are out there that enable a release for use across all media and mediums.

New media releases aren’t a new tool to package the same old marketing "speak" that form and enforce the stereotype of existing press releases. They are indeed an opportunity to improve how we, as individuals representing a company that helps real world customers, share our story with them in a way that means something.

Some of the conversation that ensued circled around different tactics, grandiose claims, agreement and disagreement. I largely agree with what Brian went over in the post, however the were a good bunch points I'd disagree with. Adding a photo to a release, no matter when it was done, does not make it Social. PR Newswire has been issuing releases with photos since 1996. Those weren't the first Social Media Releases either. Let's not forget that there really weren't any viable social networks in 2001 that were being used widely, let alone in 1996 (except for ProfNet, maybe ;-). The first social media release was the MNR created for the movie, Pearl Harbor, in 2001. Since then the MNR and SMNR have evolved greatly as has the space it was created for.

When Todd Defren used the MNR to disseminate his template, a new version (and name) for the vehicle was born: The Social Media Press Release. There was, and still is, a ton of conversation around the template and the theory: A release with multiple multimedia assets will be more of value to journalists and consumers. While that theory has held true in my mind, many of the tools used in that template were superfluos. The most obvious example of this are tags to delicious or technorati. These tags are disruptive, are a barrier to stickiness and take the audience away from the key messages. Additionally, there has been no data to suggest that bullet points or isolating quotes makes a release get more pickup, views, or visibility. What do you have left then? A release with multimedia enabled for the social web ... an MNR. Will the IABC version of the template make this an easier vehicle for journalists and bloggers to consumer with an hTemplate? I doubt it.

Today, on the other hand, Hubspot hosted a Webinar to supplement a blog post entitled, Study Shows Social Media Releases Are Less Effective Than Traditional Press Releases. The webinar and the blog post featured some really great tips that all wire clients should heed. However, the target audience for the webinar and post is more Marketer than PR Pro as Hubspot was determining success by the amount of times a release was syndicated as opposed to picked up ... the perpetual earned vs. unearned media dilemma. They took a close look at traditional text releases vs. SMPRs. But they didn't look into dissemination and syndication of video, audio or photos. They didn't take into account traditional releases enabled for Social Media. They didn't take into account a lot of things ... A release isn't successful if it's only displayed, verbatim, on another site. A release is successful by so many other factors that their too numerous to list. Here are a few: earned media pickup, traffic driven, conversation, tonality, volume, impressions, etc.

Considering three of the major voices online have taken mostly contradictory views of the future of the release, I am curious to find out, "What's Next?"

What do you think?

(Photo Source)

Share on FriendFeed

The Twitter Backlash Begins? Nah

Though today wasn't the first day where we started seeing #unfollowfriday, it did begin the avalanche of negativity and vitriol from the bleeding edgers and first adopters.

As a result of Ashton Kutcher vs. CNNBR and Oprah, Twitterholics, geeks and media nuts went berserk on twitter. Some even abandoned it ...

Now the New York Observer and The Industry Standard are predicting that Google will acquire Twitter. I don't see how this is a logical or even sane reaction when on March 3rd Google's CEO called Twitter a "poor man's email system."

Google will not by Twitter. Microsoft might think about it because they have to do anything they can to try and compete (though this won't help).

No search engine will or should buy twitter. AOL could be dumb enough too, though. Twitter could be purchased by someone like LinkedIn, Skype, Amazon, IAC or a news company of some sort.

Twitter will be fine. As a matter of fact, after this so called backlash ends, the community may be even stronger. Twitter didn't die when the fail whale was a common sighting. It won't fail when Kim Kardashian shares her sunburn photos either...

Share on FriendFeed

The Price of Passed Links

Everyone's favorite Venture Capitalist, Fred Wilson, wrote a terrific article today on "The Power of Passed Links." The conversation that ensued was equally as robust. He excerpted a quote from a previous comment that raised earned media vs. unearned media as it related to conversion rates. This comment seemingly implored Fred to take a critical look at where traffic is coming from, where it is trending from, and how that will effect conversion rates, growth rates, and value to marketers.

Fred, admittedly, unscientifically analyzed traffic patterns to websites to determine the effectiveness of shared links (twitter, facebook, email) vs. Search (paid or natural).

Here is the chart he shared:

(Photo from A VC)

An email link is a direct suggestion from one friend to another. A Facebook link is a suggestion passed from one friend to a group of friends. I get that those links would be more potent than a search link. And I understand why a Facebook is a more potent link than a Twitter link since Facebook is friends following friends, and Twitter is more like blogging where people follow other people who aren't necessarily friends.

As noted in the comments, where traffic comes from is completely dependent on what kind of site you are analyzing. For e-commerce sites you should expect a large majority of referrals to come from search (50-80%). For small and medium-sized blogs you should see a majority of referrals from search but a much more sizable audience come from 'friend' referrals... sometimes 15-30%. This is probably due to the fact that the bloggers are much more active in the communities that share than are the ecommerce companies and other organizations.

Where the rub of this whole argument lies is in the eyeball economy. How much is a view worth?

We may be seeing the beginnings of a standard for the worth of an online eyeball thanks to the AP's desperate grasp to make up for lost time.

In this image, taken from Betanews.com, the AP is demanding $12.50 from publishers and websites that display between 5 and 25 words from one of their articles. The rates, as you can see, go up to $100 for 251 words and up. Does this mean they think a view is worth $12.50? $100? With newspaper and magazine circulations drowning, we are finally reaching the point where the online will be worth more than the offline.


Comparing this to the STRAWMAN from Fred Wilson where a view is valued at $0.50, we have a slight difference. Should the value be determined by the content or the content creator? What about time spent? What about referral type? How much less if it's not a unique visitor?

These are all questions that need to be addressed before a standard is created or adopted and I fear that it is such a complicated endeavor that we'll have to get the other geeks involved... applied mathematicians.


Share on FriendFeed

Counterpoint: The Associated Press Is Necessary and More Important Than Ever

Chris Lynn and I were going back and forth a few days ago about the Associated Press and the state of the newspaper industry. Chris followed up our twitter conversation with a solid post on why he thinks the "AP is outdated and losing relevancy."

The AP has been a burning effigy for the bloggers and twitterers for the last year. The AP has brought a lot of this heat on by itself because of their slow adaptation to online news and the shifting revenue models for newspapers and online publications. They have had to react quickly to this shift due to the economic conditions that are forcing publications to quit the cooperative.

Over the last year, we have seen publications like the Tribune Blade, The Columbus Dispatch, The Bakersfield Californian, The Spokesman-Review, The Yakima Herald-Republic, Wenatchee World, and even the Tribue Company leave the AP or file an option to leave the AP (apparently the "AP requires two years' notice for members to cut ties").

Last summer we saw some publications form their own 'Hyperlocal AP' as a result. Ironically, this move validates the need for the Associated Press.

The AP was created in 1846 in order for five New York City newspapers to receive news and reports from the fields of battle during the Mexican American War. In 1900 the Associated Press was set up as a Non-Profit Membership Organization in order to protect itself against people using the cooperative for free.

"In 1891 it was revealed that UPI was getting AP news for free causing a rift among the subset groups and most defected to the UPI. AP responded by striking a monopoly deal with Reuters in England, Havas in France and Wolff in Germany. Most of the papers returned to the AP.

"In 1898 the AP discovered that Chicago Inter Ocean was using news from a wire set up by then rival New York Sun publisher William M. Laffan. AP refused service to the Inter Ocean and the paper filed suit with the Illinois Supreme Court which ruled that the AP was similar to a public utility and could not refuse service."

It's amazing that the AP is going through similar trials over 100 years later due to aggregators and the dominance of web news.

Without the Associated Press, subscribing news organizations would not have been able to publish timely and accurate news on events ranging from the Civil War to WWI to WWII to Bush's National Guard Service toRick Wagoner's resignation, threats by Somali Pirates, #AmazonFail, the Russian incursion into Georgia, to Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson 'taking a break.'

The Associated Press has "243 news bureaus and serves 121 countries." There is no way news can be reported fairly, timely and unbiased without an organization of this type and size. It is even more important to have the AP because of platforms like Twitter and Facebook where memes can spread instantaneously, without the benefit of an editor or fact-checking. There is no question that the immediacy of news is a good thing for all people. This immediacy also inherently lacks the patience, perspective and process that news and information must go through. The absence of this perpetuates incorrect information.

Twitter updates, Facebook, RSS, email alerts all ensure that people receive news in near-real time. It, however, doesn't ensure that people will receive accurate news or corrections. All of these platforms, devices and portals are part of the seemingly infinite echo chamber and, without a filter or editor, we'd be doomed to see that the first iReport will be the only report.

While blogs, twitter, and wikipedia have all been the resources that broke major news stories over the last five years, they've also been a haven for disinformation, misinformation, lies, errors, etc; So have Mainstream Media publications.

Essentially, accurate news is fleeting. When the World needs accurate information from the most and least remote locations, bloggers and twitterers just won't suffice. The AP is necessary to the Fourth Estate and the Fourth Estate is necessary to Democracy.

(Photo from newsroom-magazine.com)

Share on FriendFeed