Alert Blog Reviews

So I had to open my big mouth on my previous post today and say that Facebook is keeping its nose clean with regard to news as of late. I guess it still is despite this particular incident that happened to a woman living in our neighbor to the north, Canada. You remember Canada. The place where Facebook had to adhere to their privacy policies for threat of shutting them down ? Well, I wonder how that privacy deal is working out because it looks like companies working on Canadian soil may need a lesson in privacy. The CBC reports A Quebec woman on long-term sick leave is fighting to have her benefits reinstated after her employer’s insurance company cut them, she says, because of photos posted on Facebook. Nathalie Blanchard, 29, has been on leave from her job at IBM in Bromont, Que., for the last year and a half after she was diagnosed with major depression. The Eastern Townships woman was receiving monthly sick-leave benefits from Manulife, her insurance company, but the payments dried up this fall. When Blanchard called Manulife, the company said that “I’m available to work, because of Facebook,” she told CBC News this week. Now before you get your knickers in a twist, I am not defending this woman. Honestly, I don’t really care if she is trying to get over on a company or not. I have too many other things to worry about. What does make me wonder is how the insurance company accessed her Facebook account if they were not allowed by Ms. Blanchard? My guess would be that someone at IBM who is her ‘friend’ on Facebook turned over some data but I am not a private investigator and any speculation as to how this happens stops here. What doesn’t stop here is where are lines going to be drawn moving forward. Of course, if you are ignorant (or even stupid) enough to put damning evidence on Facebook then that’s nothing that anyone can control. What will be considered actual evidence as retrieved through social media? The story says She said her insurance agent described several pictures Blanchard posted on the popular social networking site, including ones showing her having a good time at a Chippendales bar show, at her birthday party and on a sun holiday — evidence that she is no longer depressed, Manulife said. Huh? What if she was just trying to get undepressed (is that even a word?) and and part of the process was to share her ‘happiness’ with others? Where will a line be drawn on this kind of stuff? In the US it’ll like land in the 9th Circuit because if it’s weird that’s where it goes. Anyway, what’s your take on this one? Should the insurance company be ale to use Facebook as evidence if they were not directly connected to her account? Is finding out information in Facebook any different though than investigators digging to find evidence any way they can? Or will these kind of stories just always be part of the social media world we live in and we just need to make sure to keep our side of the street clean? Fire off before you head out for the weekend. We’d like to hear from you.

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Woman Loses Benefits, In Part, Due to Facebook

In a headline from yesterday, the Wall Street Journal tells us that Digg CEO Jay Adelson has one less thing to worry about: “ Profitability Is Not A Problem Anymore .” In an interview with Fox Business Network, Adelson addressed the issue of monetizing social sites—but I’m not so sure I’d say profitability isn’t a problem anymore. Adelson says that last year was the big year for pressure to monetize social sites—”to monetize fast and to get to profitability quick. This year, not as much. We’re back focused on growth.” (That’s all well and good for them—they are “monetizing well.”) And growth is good—but haven’t we learned anything yet? Having a lot of users isn’t a business model. Relying on angel investors for the next 20 years is not a business model. (Then again, I guess focusing on growth means you don’t think about the “next 20 years” just the “next 20 users.”) Advertising, however, is a business model—and one that seems to be working for Digg, despite the economic downturn. Despite his insistence that they have no need to worry about monetization anymore, Adelson does focus on Digg’s advertising efforts—and recommends their model to newspapers (typos corrected) (because I’m like that). Right now what we do is we go to these advertisers and try to convince them to create content as advertising . Instead of the standard billboard or whatever you read on the Internet, we’re going to create ads – and we do create ads – that are literally content, so if you click on it you read an interesting story or article, and you put branding next to it. And we get literally get 100 times the clickthrough rate of what a typical ad would get, so that’s good for advertisers. Now if I can take that same concept and syndicate it and put it on a newspaper site and help them monetize it the same way, I can help them solve their problems. But advertising isn’t a panacea, even for Digg—while Adelson says that “We’re making money which is the most important thing” (not growth? Hm.), he also notes, “ I feel like we’re going to get to profitability ” (but he’s not losing sleep over it). What do you think? Could the content as advertising model work for newspapers or other social sites (*cough*cough*YouTube)? How would you feel if you clicked on content only to discover it was (partially) advertising?

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Digg CEO: Content as Advertising

This is one of those subjects that I can say that my personal experience actually mirrors what the rest of the market is apparently seeing. Oftentimes that’s not the case since I can be somewhat of a contrarian in my views and habits. Apparently much of initial push back against ads attached to video, in particular pre-roll, is starting to give way to some level of acceptance. While I am still not thrilled with it, I do tolerate it much more these days especially when an advertiser actually gets that 10-15 seconds is not nearly as annoying as 30 seconds. The NY Times reports that news sites are finding more and more success with their online video offerings as ways to increase ad revenue. The impact is even being felt beyond the delivery of news. Beyond news sites, video is now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet advertising market. Digital video amounted to $477 million in revenue in the first half of 2009, up 38 percent from the same time period in 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. I have wondered over time as to just how much video ‘regular’ people ingest and if there is room for growth. I am certainly not a ‘power consumer’ of video but I am finding myself watching more online offerings. I still avoid the ‘stupid human tricks’ side of the online video experience. In fact, any ads attached to that kind of offering will fall flat with someone like myself but I am just one point of view. What’s interesting is that the online news experience is starting to look more and more like one medium it is supposedly challenging: television. News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television. CNN.com and ESPN.com are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages, often prompting visitors to press play before they begin to read. Even The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com. The shift is likely a natural progression since there seems to be more news than ever. Of course, we have the same number of events that are newsworthy it’s just that the ability to now see more is exponentially increased. “Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before,” said Charles W. Tillinghast, the president of MSNBC.com, a joint venture between NBC Universal and Microsoft. So as the consumer becomes more accepting and the advertisers actually pay attention to what consumers will tolerate the combination of the two is starting to become a real player in the online advertising space. One drawback will be the cost to produce this content will keep competition down but the big guys actually like that idea. “It actually works really well,” said Brian Quinn, the vice president and general manager of digital ad sales for The Journal’s digital network. A 15-second pre-roll “followed by two to five minutes of high-quality content is a fair-value exchange,” Mr. Quinn said. Analysts say they expect the flow of online advertising dollars to video to continue. The research firm eMarketer projects 35 to 45 percent growth for the segment for each of the next five years, topping out at $5.2 billion in 2014. (Even then, it would hardly rival search advertising, which is projected to be a $16 billion business.) So as this option for marketers grows there will be the usual growing pains. Among those is people starting to confuse an event with actual news and then rushing to produce more noise and junk so an ad can be slapped on it. At that point, it will be up to the consumer to “Just say no!” so the healthy balance between news and commerce can be reached as quickly and painlessly as possible. How do you feel about ads attached to any video you would like to watch? Is it more acceptable depending upon the venue? Do you make exceptions abot your reactions to ads depending on what you are trying to find?

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Online Ads Attached to Video Working Well

Welcome to this Friday’s version of surveys, research and statistics to ponder. Of course, how and what you ponder always has more to do with the source of the statistics and your mood which makes the numbers kinda funky but ‘Hey!’, if we didn’t have stats what would we do with our days? This latest statistical ‘he said / she said’ consists of different numbers regarding the state of e-commerce. Today’s particpants are, “In the red corner”, comScore. They are in the red corner because they are reporting that e-commerce is slipping for the first time in the history of the world (you get it right?). “In the blue corner” is Forrester who tells everyone to not get our knickers in a twist because even in the cruddy economy e-commerce is the light on the hill or a veritable economic ‘beacon o’ hope’. Today’s match is brought to you by the Wall Street Journal . On Thursday, comScore reported that U.S. online spending in the third quarter slipped 2% to $29.6 billion versus last year. That represents the first time since comScore began tracking the figures that online spending has shrunk for two quarters in a row. (Online shopping was flat in the first quarter, and slipped 1% in the second quarter.) ComScore was slightly more upbeat about the potential of growth in the fourth quarter, if only because we’ll be comparing it to last year’s dismal fourth quarter. But on Monday, Forrester Research put out a report that reached a different conclusion: online sales in November and December are likely to grow 8% compared to last year. Moreover, a survey Forrester conducted with the National Retail Foundation found that online retailers reported sales in the third quarter grew 16%. Geesh, can’t we all just get along? Let’s just say this. The rest of the article is the two researchers pointing fingers at each other saying that how they collect data is better than the other guy and having a researchers equivalent of a “my dad can beat up your dad” argument. How about we do this? How about we look at what has happened and then work toward getting better. Then we assess if we did or did not get better after we actually DID SOMETHING! What a concept. Aren’t rosy predictions and unfettered prognostications how we got into this mess in the first place? Isn’t predicting the future that never was a mistake? If the Internet truly is a better way to do things then why can’t we find a better way to assess things rather than act like we have some magic 8-ball or crystal ball that tells the future as well. We don’t. My prediction? People will go out and do their very best to make something happen in Q4 regardless of these predictions and then they will live in the world of reality of whether things are good or bad, not in the fantasy land of what they may or may not be in the future. This research is for the big boys and not the rest of the world and even then it’s dicey at best. One man’s opinion. Have a fun Friday!

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E-commerce. Up? Down? All Around?

Despite a 18% drop in earnings and a 14% drop in revenue in Q3, Microsoft still beat Wall Street estimates for its earnings per share by 25% (eight cents). Naturally Microsoft’s revenue reports cover their bottom line, which includes all of their software, hardware, gaming and other offerings, not just their search engine. Bing falls under their Online Services Division. Last year, that division posted an operating loss of $321M in Q3; this year it’s down to a $480M loss. A large part of that loss may come from the $100M marketing blitz to promote Bing—or that cost might have been listed in Q2 of this year. In the earnings call , executives said online advertising earnings were down by 3%. Although they’ve seen growth in page views, the lowered ad-rates are still hurting them in the display arena. However, they believe ad rates have stabilized and expect ad rates to turn around gradually next year. Meanwhile, the WSJ reports from the call, “U.S. search revenue up in mid-single digits.” Microsoft lowered its headcount 4% YOY (the largest reduction in its history). What do you think? Are ad rates ready to turn around?

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Microsoft’s Q3: Earnings, Revenue Down, but Still Beat the Street

It’s been a little while since we have drug the already weather beaten newspaper industry back into the spotlight with regard to its desperate need to generate new life. In what appears to be one of the success stories of this new era of content delivery, the Wall Street Journal is stepping up its efforts in this arena. Already one of the premier providers of a paid online version of the paper there is now the introduction of the Professional Edition according to a report from Reuters . The Wall Street Journal, ever on the hunt for new ways to please its readers and new ways to make money (and what, we ask, is wrong with that?), will launch a new, pricier version this November. Called “The Wall Street Journal Professional Edition,” it is designed for business readers who want more than what the daily newspaper and website provide on their own. Essentially, it is the Journal’s daily offering, with reports from Dow Jones Newswires and a reservoir of news and information from Factiva, the news archive that Dow Jones owns — and a bunch more stuff. That ‘stuff’ includes a lot of information that would not be of use to someone like me but to it is to a supposedly large group of business types that need more than just the paper but less than having a full service offering from Bloomberg or another provider. Some of the information includes Information from more than 17,000 global sources, some of which are not available to the public. A one-year archive of Factiva’s global business sources and a two-year archive of wsj.com content. More than 30 industry pages, managed by Dow Jones editors Six industry sections managed by Journal editors who select news and information for readers on pharmaceuticals, healthcare, energy, media and marketing, telecommunications and technology. Personalized homepages and news alerts for when things break. So what’s the cost? It’s $49 per month (you can get the current regular edition for around $9 per month depending on the deal you can find). Too rich for my blood but I also don’t require the level of information it offers. This makes sense to me. It is the slicing and dicing of information to fit a particular niche market. Ideally, this is one of the greatest benefits of the Internet. It would be ridiculous to put together a print edition that tried to address this group because the physical limitations wouldn’t make it much different than the regular paper. When companies try to repackage their regular offerings with an extra bell or whistle here and there then have the gall to call it ‘bigger and better’ that’s when you get screwed. We are now in a time where there needs to be a significant improvement or much deeper offering to merit any cost at all. This approach in the business sector will work because information wins the day. Will it work in the entertainment magazine or local newspaper market? Not likely. So there will be models moving forward that make sense to pay for. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that an audience like the WSJ’s can afford it either. Are you seeing any other pay for content models that make sense out there? If so let us know. Are there any publications that could do the same as the WSJ? Think about it. We would love to hear your thoughts.

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Wall Street Journal Ventures Further Into Paid Content World