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Personal Information Safe Measures

Published Saturday, December 31, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


I've writen the following letter (and alerted him to this post) to my CTO at Hitachi Data Sytems, Hu Yoshida, hopefully this measure of safety will save him time and risk...


>>>


Yoshida-san,

In regards to your last post "Waiting for my Marriott Letter", it is very concerning that your personal information may be comprised.

Last night, I (ok my wife) found a strangers purse in the streets of San Francisco. Fortunately for her, we were able to find her, and will return it to her exactly as we found it. (thanks to Washington Mutual) I had access to her drivers license, Visa/bank card, hospital info, some cash, and a variety of other personal information. If I was a "bad guy", I could have done some horrible things.

Unfortunately, it appears your personal information was taken by “bad guys,” and that is concerning. Being our CTO, you’re a very busy executive traveling the globe, meeting customers, the last thing you would want to deal with is a identification or credit issue. (let alone cut into your blogging time).

I kindly reccomend you take the preactive steps offered by the Marriott in addition to recomendations from the Federal Trade Commission regarding identify theft, rather than wait for the package from the Marriott – and so you can continue to make our customers smile, rather than focus on cleaning a messy situation.

Also, Is it best practice for companies to send tape backup offsite like the Marriott has done? What would be the best solution in your opinion?

Oh, and um, if you’ve ever got some extra nights at the resort you don’t need, my wife and I would be more than happy to take them off your hands. (providing my personal data would be safe)

Sincerely,

Jeremiah Owyang
Hitachi Data Systems



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A Call Center that Worked: Washington Mutual

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


I'm the third "Jeremy" to write about customer support today...but my story is different.

There has sure been a lot of bad post about tech upport, Jeremy Zawodny has had problems with Dell and Jeremy Wright's had problems with Netgear share their experiences. I feel for you guys I really do.


I'm ALSO a Jeremy (but I go by Jeremiah), I guess three's a charm, becuase I had a GREAT experience with tech support today. As a matter of fact, I’m going to rave about the support center of a one bank in the US. (and I’m not even a customer) Cynthia of Washington Mutual was able to help Delia D. get her purse back --something I couldn't do, although I tried hard.

The story so far...
I’ve got the whole story here, (It starts with my wife eyeing a purse...no surprise there, sigh) but to quickly summarize, Delia (who I don't know) dropped her purse in SF, my wife Shirley found it, we’ve been trying to find Delia for the last 16 hours.

I tried to find her, but could not
Being the geek that I am, I was so sure that I could find her in the internet, but to my disappointment, I couldn’t find her. I even drove to her the address on her license 30 minutes away to hand deliver it to her. Unfortunately, she didn’t live there anymore, (I think I scared the current residents).

I sifted through her effects, there was NO phone numbers and NO way to contact her. and found her Washington Mutual Check Card….Hmmm I though what would be the first thing someone would do if they lost their purse…AHA! She’d cancel her card.

I tried her bank's call center, my last resort
I called the number on the back of the card, and told them who I was. “Cynthia” answered my call (although I had to wait about 2 minutes) and assisted.

“I found a purse and want to return it to the owner” I said.

“Thank you sir, however the card has already been cancelled” Cynthia said.

“Can you give me her info so I can give it to her?” I said

“No sir, that’s against policy” Cynthia Replied

“I understand, can you call her and tell her to call me?” I asked.

“Sir, that’s against policy we don’t have outgoing calling options” She said

“Oh cmon, I’m going out of my way to help a stranger…” I pleaded

“Yeah you are, lemme see what I can do..,what’s your name and phone number?”


After a new year’s greeting, and a quick farewell to Cynthia, I received a call from Delia. She was very pleased to hear from me and called me her “Guardian Angel”. Now I don’t want to take all the credit, I’ve got to thank “Cynthia” from Washington mutual call center, she saved us all a lot of time, and Delia headaches.

Happy New Year Cynthia and Delia

From, Jeremiah and Shirley Owyang
(Jeremy and Jeremy, I wish you both luck)






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Delia D, I have your purse, but I can't find you.

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


Note: see Comments

Delia D. Where are you?

We found your purse last night in SF (well my wife did, she has a good eye...esp for purses) in the middle of the street on Harrison and 11th around 11pm. It was storming bad, it's quite understandable why you dropped it. When we opened your purse we saw your picture, I think I saw you go into the bar called "public" I went back to see if you were there, you wern't there nor did anyone recognize you.

You've got some important stuff in your wallet, your ID, your Bank card (which you didnt' sign) and other personal effects, I know how important this stuff is to you, but yer so damn hard ta find! I know how important personal information is, my own CTO is going through an issue right now.

I've tried to find you online using zabasearch, online yellow pages, yahoo, google, (even some blog directories)and a variety of other tools, but I can't seem to find your phone number or location. (this frustates me, as I'm usually very good at finding people using the web)

You left your drivers licence and other personal effects in your purse. I just drove over to the address listed on your licence, (9am) but that was clearly not you, the residents said they didn't know you. (I think I freaked them out) I suspect you don't live there anymore.

I've posted two listings in craig's list in lost in found, one for SF, and one for Oakland (Where I suspect you live)

Here's what I know about Delia D: (I won't list too much, to protect her identity)
  • Edit: I used to list a brief description about her, however now the information is removed, as the purse has been returned.
I don't have that much more info about you, but if you, or someone who knows you, please send me an email to jeremiah_owyang@yahoo.com.

I'll hand deliver your purse and it's contents as we found them to you.

Update: 10am
-I just called your bank Washington Mutual, and talked to a support rep named Cynthia (she said you called in the lost card already). I gave her my cell number and she's going to call you, and as you to call me back.

So far, my call center experience is better than Jeremy Zawodny's this morning with Dell

Update: 11am
I found you, we just talked. The good people at Washinton Mutual (you should be thankful that Cynthia was willing to bend the rules and contact you directly, although she said that wasn't policy) contacted you and gave you my cell. I look forward to meeting you when you pick it up from our house.

mystery solved.


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Dinner at Furenzu - Web Strategy Discussion

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.

Last night I was invited by Tony Tam, a software lead for Yahoo News to the recently opened Furenza Restaurant (the pic above is from their website) in Emeryville.

We dined WITH the owner (Cynthia) in this small and intimate restaurant in an upcoming trendy area, there are many trendy lofts being built. Here's a review I read before I went.

Furenzu, which is the Japanese slang version of the world "friends", is a boutique Asian Tapas restaurant that draws unique dishes and flavors into new creations, never before seen on the planet. Although on my ‘higher’ end of the dining scale, it can be enjoyed both on special occasions as well as opportunities where you may want to get to know someone better-- we'll be back

We tried nearly the entire menu and had a unique conversation that floated between our personal lives and of course ‘web strategy’.

In addition to Tony, and the owner Cynthia, (a former SW engineer) we were joined by my cousin Kevin a Civil Engineer (who was with me when we I ran into Scoble) my Wife, and Phil Yeh, a seasoned Internet Marketing professional in the Silicon Valley area.

A summary of the conversation, most revolved around web:
  • We discussed the massive product list of releases that Yahoo has pushed out this year. Many I have not heard of.

  • Business blogging...no surprise there.

  • The internet industry's concern over the dangers of click fraud.
  • Phil’s strategy within the auto dealer network at Dealix, and how it feeds into Yahoo Autos. (Phil, please feel free to share more in a comment below).

  • Memorandum, the conversation aggregator.

  • Phil’s upcoming Porsche Carerra (What’s up with everyone buying Porche’s now).

  • Gold Mining in Online Gaming.

  • Kevin's love for online fantasy football, and how it ties to online gaming and addiction. Tony asked some interesting questions about if it would be helpful if it were mobile. Kevin gave a long story about a mutual friend and his wedding...the answer was "yes".

  • Social Networking sites vs Blogging, and how it can connect people, I stated that the next presidential election will be fought on blogs. Phil gave me a hard question, that I hoped I answered...(it doesn't matter which blog tool you use, or social networking site, they can all link to each other, it's about the people connecting)

  • Although not in the tech industry Kevin raises great points: “How can you determine the value of a blog that’s important? How will we know what’s important, I don’t want to hear any opinions that are worthless. I had a hard time answering this, because it really depends on what’s relevelnt. I've been thinking about this myself.

  • Blogging is not important, what is important is that people can easily connect and communiate.

  • Phil's events he helps to promote and manages

  • Tony can work from France and keep his role. (lucky guy)

  • Tony's flooded basement.

  • How women rule the decision making in purchases, (I was teased by my wife) a report on more women on the internet than men, and Yahoo's responses (I don't know he details, you'll have to ask Tony).

  • Tony invited me to the Yahoo HQ for lunch next week, I'll take him up on his offer.

On the other end of the bay area, was Scoble’s Geek Dinner, which he suggested that my CTO and I attend, maybe next time we’ll go to that. Looks like they had some interesting conversations as well.

It was a good food, company and converation as we headed to sf to have a few drinks.

I know I missed something...what else did we talk about of interest?

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My visit to Google HQ --was it a dream?

Published Friday, December 30, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


Yesterday, I had the pleasure of visiting a good friend of mine, In fact he was one of my groomies at my wedding at his new employer’s campus, Google.

I really can’t say to much about the experience, out of respect to Google’s information lockdown. (picture on left is from google images) The corporate HQ is absolutely amazing, it reminds me of a College campus in a Science Fiction film. I was bug-eyed as young, hip, employees rode around the path on electric scooters zipping between modern cut buildings.

The food was amazing, you could select from a variety of food types, at no charge.

I really can’t give any other information away, but here’s a link to the campus via Google Maps. Use your imagination, this is one of the most amazing places I’ve seen in my life.

I would love to work in an environment like that!


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Holiday Internet Sales Report 2005

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


I made a prediction a few weeks ago, about online sales over the holidays:

My 2005 Black Friday Predictions:
  • Overall changes will go up a solid 45% in conversion (dollars spent) compared to 2004
  • Increase in overall web activity by 30% compared to 2004
  • American consumption dollars will be about the same, 950$, both online and offline.
Michael Barbaro has written the following report over holiday sales:

"Consumer spending online reached $18.1 billion in November and December, a 25 percent increase over 2004, according to the research firm ComScore Networks.

Nielsen/NetRatings, another research firm, said Web purchases totaled $30.1 billion in the period, an increase of 30 percent. Unlike ComScore, Nielsen includes spending at online auction sites like eBay, accounting for its higher figure."

My prediction figures were a bit high, however it's still trending upwards from year to year.



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Juniper Networks

Published Thursday, December 29, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


I fear for Juniper that they may have opened pandora's box.

This recent lawsuit came to me an email yesterday from a colleague as well as from as well as in my personal email email. Apparently, Juniper Networks is attempting to sue anonymous users.

"The Sunnyvale, Calif., company filed a lawsuit in the California Superior Court of Santa Clara on December 14 claiming that it had been defamed and libeled by up to 10 persons unknown.

These persons, referred to as "Does 1-10" in the court complaint (as in "John Doe," or anonymous), are being accused by Juniper of posting harmful statements about the company and its executives on Light Reading's message boards."

Read the full story from Light Reading. I admire how Light Reading is responded to this, although they are not the target, it attacks their credibility. (and the rest of the internet) They sent out a poll and posted results, which I participated in. This has been heavily discussed at Slashdot, there are over 250 comments.

I don’t have the time to scour light readings bulletin boards to find out exactly how harmful this was, (nor does it matter) but companies need to be realistic about attempting to censor opinions, it just doesn’t work, and could create a backlash.

Recommendations to Juniper
Without knowing more, I would suggest to Juniper to listen to this buzz from detractors, acknowledge their opinion, ask them to public ally state their opinion and stance, then address it like a responsible company should.

Every company will have detractors and defamers, this is the biting realism that today's open communcations provides. Most importantly, how a company responds to a bad situation is what is measured.

Juniper is not alone, read how other companies have been responding to bad press. (there are and will be many more)

It did cross my mind that this could be just a message from Juniper to detractors to please sit down, and it could even be a clever 'back-buzz' technique to generate buzz, doubtful, but possible.

In my opinion only, the internet/blogs/message boards are incredible resources for companies to listen to consumers, collaborate and then build better products. No matter how bad you're defamed on the web, you can control the situation, perhaps create a corporate blog where you can defend on your own ground.

by the way, blogs are a lot cheaper than lawyers.

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Web continues to move towards primary medium

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


Online Ad Growth Accelerates, Outpacing Newspaper, TV Spending (Bloomberg)
" The move to online advertising is happening faster than analysts anticipated as companies devote more of their budgets to the Internet than traditional media.''

In this clip, the key word is "budgets". I hate to sound like a captilist, but you know what happens when the money moves.

I've been talking about how industries and companies must morph, after seeing Larry Weber at the Syndication conference, here's my thoughts on what companies need to do.

I realize this is very tough for people to swallow, someday, when the web is replaced by the 'next' thing, I'll really need to motivate myself to morph. I emphasize, I really do, but for your own sake, please wake up.

Thanks Scoble for turning me on to memeorandum, this is a great news aggregator for my geeky interests.

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Great lunch today

Published Wednesday, December 28, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


My camera setting was wrong, sorry for the blur

I had a great converation with Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, and Hu Yoshida today, we talked about blogging (my favorite subject of late) and enjoyed a really nice Japanese lunch in Japan Town in San Jose at Kubota Restaurant.

Thank you Robert and Shel for the great info, swing by anytime.


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IBM Impresses me

Published Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


Jack be Nimble...

I saw a great post today by IBM's chief strategist, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, his last post of the year is entitled Reflections on Blogging. He discusses the impact blogging has made in his personal life as well as connecting with consumers.

"It is fitting that my last blog entry for 2005 should focus on blogging. I think that years from now I will remember 2005 as the year when I started my personal blog." -Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM


He references IBM's Blogging Initiative, I ran across Catherine Helzerman blog "odd bits" who is well known IBM blogger. I've met a few IBMers that have told me about their projects for internal blogging, external blogging, and even the company wide "jam sessions".

I know they are releaseing products now to harness the blogosphere, conversation benchmarking, hopefully they can provide some enterprise solutions for intranets. That would be intersting (contact me if you do please).

IBM impresses me
IBM for a long while has impressed me as a company that has unleashed the power of the web, blogging, and really engaged the company and people by using web as a tool to connect people. This particularly amazes me as it's such a large 'monolithic' company known for it's size, mass, and rich heritage.

It's a 'grandfather' tech company that is as nimble as a college kid.


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Ran into Robert Scoble tonight in SF

Published Monday, December 26, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.

On my way out of the Metreon after watching King Kong (Great movie btw) with my wife, sister, and cousin, I saw a lady wearing a 'blogger' tshirt. Of course this caught my eye, but I didn't think anything of it. A tall man in a red t-shirt that had some cool geeky icons on passed by. He was pretty tall, and had a stubble beard. They joined.

Something clicked in my brain...I said quietly under my breath in a non-directional way, so if I was wrong, no one would know.

Jeremiah: "Scoble"?
Robert: "yeah that's me"
Jeremiah: "HAHA I knew it, and extended a handshake and a big smile."

Robert Scoble is the blog evangelist at Microsoft, who I attribute his actions for changing the perception of the 'evil empire' to a much cooler and open company. He's paved the way for many business blog programs.

I introduced myself, He was pleased that "people recognized him on the street" now, which was funny to me. (I'm sure his wife was very impressed now more than ever) I told him I was reading and reviewing his book of Naked Conversations (which he co-authors) and that I was going to attend his book signing party. I also told him a bit about my role as a blog evangelist, he introduced me to his wife Maryam, as well as Dave. I didn't want to keep him, so we made a quick handshake, and parted.

Robert is much taller than I remember at the SF Blog business summit. I'll see you at upcoming events and conferences.

Heh, interesting week this will be, I have lunch with Shel (the co-author with Robert Scoble) on Wednesday.

My sister, and cousin turned to me later when I was telling them and said "Wow you really are a geek huh?" My wife rolled her eyes as she usually does when I start talking blogican.

Yeah, I'm a geek, you know it baby, you know it...



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Talking about Naked

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


Having an interesting converastion with Shel, the author of "Naked Conversations". We're discussing my journey as I read the proof version before it hits the shelf. I've been adding my "juicy" notes as I read each chapter. I've invited Shel to lunch on Wednesday to talk shop and tour around my work in Santa Clara. I find it intersting and amusing that he and Dave Taylor disagree on nearly everything, it makes the blogosphere exciting and fresh, party due to opinions.


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Podcasting update, what am I consuming?

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


As you know, ive started personal research into podcasting, which includes posting my podcasting analysis and resources. I'm also consuming more and more podcasts, and even figured out how to create my own free podcasting using a phone, here's my first podcast.

How I consume Podcasts
I don't own a portable mp3 player, I listen to them at my computer, as I'm nearly always in front of a PC. I've got XM radio in my car, so I stream music that way. I listen to them on my headphones when on the PC, or put it on loudly at home, while working in other areas of house. Anyways, here's a checkup on what I've been listning to and learning about, this new medium is building steam.

The future in podcasting is strong-- and spreading to all walks of life
There are tons of podcasts directories (a website that indexes and allows you to surf through the millions of podcasts)

  • Pastors are getting the hang of it and creating "godcasts" (groan, please stop with the buzz words). I recently met some church staff in Dublin CA, they said nearly all the pastors in the bay area have podcasts. Amazing.

  • We'll also see politicians podcasting soon as well. I'm not quite sure what to think about that yet...

  • Someday, we'll see podcast audio books, or even entire books done in podcasts? Why? it's a time saver for the author, and consumer.

  • Prophecy: People will podcast from their phones, it will be so seamless with their experience, and easy to do, kind of like how 'mobblogging' is now with cell phones that capture pictures and you can write text on the go. It auto synchs with your blog tool, so you can blog anywhere at anytime. This will happen with podcasts on mobile phones, I'm positive.


Want to find a podcast? Try these directories.
Go to these directories and type in a topic, you'll be surprised what appears. click and listen, it streams in mp3 format. If you prefer you can then subscribe to the podcast feed, or download to your portable mp3 player

Podcasts I've Listened to (Note: This is just a partial list, I'll update this as I listen to more)

How will podcasts integrate with Corporate Marketing Mediums?
We'll continue to see this trend increase, as podcasts merge with other 'traditional' marketing mixes. Bob Lutz, the Chairman of GM had a podcast, check out my review on this monumental shift from text to audio.

I had a converation with a manager from a corporate education group. He discussed how soon, sales teams will be able to hear podcasts from core leaders in their region, on their portable mp3 players as they zip through airports. Of course, it will be auto-synched and saved so they just need to grab the ipod and go.

It won't be just podcasts however, there are other 'new tools' that are integrating with this new medium.


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Blogging, Podcasts, RSS, Forums are mixing in Enterprise Communications

Published Saturday, December 24, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.

Here's some examples of some large companies are using with the 'new tools' such as blogging, wikis, rss podcasts, and forums. This report talks about how IBM is using blogs internally and externally. Thanks Easton at the blog business wire for this great find.

"IBM is embracing the explosion of Internet-based new media like wikis, blogs, and podcasts. In fact, we're putting these collaborative tools directly into our employees' hands and encouraging them to explore, learn, and gain practical experience."

Oracle is applying podcasts already to it's "Community Marketing Program" Check out Oracle Technology Network, they've got blogs and podcasts.

"Other companies are already doing similar things, and the trend will likely continue. According to an eWeek article, for example, Oracle "currently offers a podcast series on its OTN (Oracle Technology Network) website, titled "Oracle OTN TechCasts." ... The TechCasts are online audio interviews with Oracle's tech experts, delivered via Podcast. ... In addition, Oracle recently offered podcasts from its OpenWorld San Francisco Conference."

It's well discussed that Google uses blogs for internal project management. This promotes sharing of information, and visiblity to the overall company's activity. Google also has a public facing blog to promote recent changes in the company

IBM is also creating 'vertical' public facing blogs for health care, it has several guest bloggers rather than one voice. IBM also has a blog for "IBM leaders discuss the future of gaming" as they tap into relationship marketing.

RSS is the common thread
Users can subscribe and consume their content on their own. How mainstream is RSS and Syndication going to be? Well, the new outlook will have a feedreader built right in. Be sure your company has a strategy to understand this new medium. It's important you don't 'abuse' this medium, or users will unsubscribe from your content --keep the trust

This brings to mind some of my other thoughts..



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Value of Blogging: Community, Conversations, Connecting

Published Thursday, December 22, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


I really see a lot of value in blogging, and I've encouraged many people around me to blog, both in my personal life and at my work life. What a great way to share ideas and connect with others.

For the first time in the history of the world, nearly everyone has access to easy to use tools that anyone can use to publish, and the ideas and voices can be easily found. There is a global converation now.

More importantly, as I've been thinking about the value of blogs, is connecting to others that I already know and interact with. Most recently, there has been a welcoming trend as my personal network begins to join me in the blogosphere.

I was talking with DjHowatt yesterday about how it's interesting to see how 'birds of a feather' connect online. It's very easy to connect with others of like interests, thoughts and experiences, they just kind of gravitate towards each other being pulled by invisible strings. You gotta check out his take on branding

A former coworker has started a blog, I remember having a conversation via email with him a few months ago about blogging, and he's quickly taken to it. Good luck with your ventures, you really demonstrate your expertise on Reach 4 Polaris. His post "Marketing: The Emmisary Goat to the Devil" is interesting.

I'm hoping to see some posts and pictures from Brian's Blog, who aside from being one of the best damn web developers I've ever met, a fine confectioner of gourmet chocolates.

I'm keeping special focus on eclectica, a blog from a respected collegue and friend. Her "vacations" are amazing...she runs for hours and hours on end up and down mountains, valleys, fields of flowers. I want to see and read about her adventures as an ultra marathon runner.

I'm sure this list will grow, blogs are doubling in quantitiy every 5 months. I'll know we've hit critical mass when I get my dad to blog.

eHugs all around, I'm loving this.


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Blogs bought and sold

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


A blog called Small Business Branding, was just sold. They didn't use the calculative values tool "how much is your blog worth" in the tool that I mentioned yesterday. It was sold for less than that value.

Now this is getting interesting...Now we're back to the value question of blogs.

Read his story as his blog is sold. This of course is not easy to do, many bloggers feel a close connection to their blog, as it does represent their ideas and person.

The blog was purchased by Yaro Starak. Good luck Michael with your next successful venture at Solostream! It's self described as "Solostream Global Media is a web-based media company run by solopreneurs for solopreneurs".

I've got a feeling we'll hear from Michael again real soon.



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Measuring the value of a Blog

Published Wednesday, December 21, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


Is it possible to measure the value of a blog? So, exactly what should we measure?

This is an interesting tool, although more of a novelty, it's spreading around user groups, forums and the blogosphere quickly. I've seen it 3 times in the last week.

How much is your blog worth? This calculator measures the incoming and outgoing link (so I assume) based upon technorati's analytics. It doesn't measure however the perception and brand that others have on your blog. I'm sure there will be some tools to measure opinion, in the near future.

How do you measure value?
A blogger's reputation of course can change the weight of measurement, how can you measure true popularity? If George Bush had a blog, how would you rate that? What if it were Saddam Hussein?

Likely these will be free, maybe with an google analytics display to show "what do readers think of my blog?"

There are already some tools out there that let users measure user opinion while on a site, I wonder when that will come to blogs. I know it's been a feature of forum and bulletin boards for quite a while.

I'm noticing that that the blogosphere is becoming more aware of value, is this a trend that is going to continue? What are we really measuring however? Is it a blog, the ideas, the person, or a brand?

There's tons of related branding thoughts from Learfield Creative's blog "TellTale Signs",
as well as an intriguing insight from DjHowatt's "Unbranding Branding"

Can we place actual value on blogs? if so, what are we really measuring? Is it measurable at all?

Sort of Kinda Related:
Gold Farming and other virtual economic services (World of Warcraft)

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technorati

Published Monday, December 19, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.

I recently added myself to technorati, and will do so to other indexers soon.

Here's where I'm at (not that I'm really counting) but it's interesting to note
  • Technorati Rank: 243,697 (27 links from 11 sites)


12 25, 06
  • Technorati Rank: 148,660 (38 links from 18 sites)
12 26

* Technorati Rank: 148,681 (38 links from 18 sites)

12/27
Technorati Rank: 139,646 (39 links from 19 sites)


12 29
Technorati Rank: 131,869 (40 links from 20 sites)



12 /30

Technorati Rank: 131,974 (40 links from 20 sites)


12/31

Technorati Rank: 131,997 (40 links from 20 sites)

12/31
Technorati Rank: 132,011 (40 links from 20 sites)

1/2/06
Technorati Rank: 101,222 (49 links from 25 sites)

1.3.06

  • Technorati Rank: 92,222 (51 links from 27 sites)

1-9-06
  • Technorati Rank: 81,122 (59 links from 30 sites)

1 -10 -06
Technorati Rank: 81,094 (59 links from 30 sites)


1-12-06
Technorati Rank: 80,938 (59 links from 30 sites)


1-14-06

Rank: 77,967 (60 links from 31 sites)


1-15-06
Technorati Rank: 77,958 (60 links from 31 sites)


1 16 06
  • Technorati Rank: 71,852 (66 links from 33 sites)

1 17 06
Technorati Rank: 72,001 (66 links from 33 sites)


1-18-06
Technorati Rank: 72,121 (66 links from 33 sites)


1- 19 -06

Technorati Rank: 72,115 (66 links from 33 sites)

1-20-06
Technorati Rank: 72,107 (66 links from 33 sites)

1 23 06
Rank: 52,812 (93 links from 42 sites)

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Gold Farming and other virtual economic services

Published Sunday, December 18, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


I had the pleasure to have dinner with the founder and CEO of a gold farming company in downtown san jose two weeks ago. Learn more about gold farming.

"A gold farmer is a person who acquires "gold" (or other in-game currency) or items in a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) for the sole purpose of sale to other players via an out-of-game venue, such as eBay or IGE."

He's able to outsource low-cost gamers in asian countries to play online games such as World of Warcraft by Blizzard. These 'gold farmers' collect virtual gold, resell it to this American firm, who then is able to sell it to affluent gamers on ebay.

Check out their gold farming site here: Gaming for less. When we met, it was 8 dollars US for 100 online gold. Apparently Blizzard, the parent company shut down many of these asian accounts, I'm sure that will make the currancy inflate dramatically.

He's in progress to create a more service based company, that will focus on 'leveling' so when users are at work or school. (many are you co-workers or your kids) they can hire other gamers to play their characters and level up their characters, making them more powerful.

How could a virtual world become so real and addictive? It's a fantasy where anything is possible, users connect with real users, and achieve wild and amazing adventures as a team.

If you think this is silly and a waste of time, you may change your mind after seeing his recent purchase.

I know the average person would sneer, snicker, or laugh.

Although only in his mid 20's, I realized just how lucrative online gaming is when he sped away in his brand new 2005 911 Carrera and his plans for purchasing his international residences, and global travels.




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Naked Conversations --Interesting juicy bits

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


I've got a sneak preview of the upcoming book Naked Conversations. That means I get to read it before the rest of the public. (although many bloggers have already been reading and contributing to it).

I usualy take notes when reading books, It helps me to pull out the important stuff, and I can organize my action items. In any case, I'm going to highlight a few of the areas that I found interesting or helpful.

I'll be updating this post as I plow through the book, every time I get through a couple of chapters I'll write down some juicy bits I liked.

Observations and Comments of "Naked Conversations" :
(starting on Dec 16th, 2005)
  1. Overview and first impressions.
    First of all, I think I'm the right audiences for this. I'm a web manager at a company that evangelized the blogging program. Also, I'm a blogger (duh), so this book is resonating with me
  2. Secondly, the language is simple and clean, which I really like. Having a day job, being a husband, and a blogger doesn't give me much time to use a dictionary or thesauras.
  3. What's up with the page numbers? Every page starts off with a new set of numbers, is this how the final print version will look? I was confused when trying to write down pages numbers...
  4. I like how the book ties in with others sources, most of which are on my shelf, quotes from Cluetrain, Godin, Gladwell and others...
  5. I like how this book was constructed with the input of dozens of bloggers. (FYI I was not one of them, however I recognize many of the names on the list)

  6. Chapter 1
    I've been talking to others about how blogging has changed the image and face of Microsoft, and now it's on paper, with some measurable results. I told this to one colleague, and he said "C'mon get real"....awesome, now I can share this.
  7. The "Channel 9" name and domain came from the airline listning channel! I get it, behind the scenes puts customers at ease. brilliant.
  8. Where's the ROI? Yup, just like other marketing or PR efforts, how do you measure this? Does everyone measure this the same? The book suggests that measuring 'Communications' and 'Relationships' is a good metric.

  9. Chapter 2:
    Microsoft has 2.6% of it's employees blogging.
  10. There are 12 million blogs in the world as of 2005
  11. It would really be nice to have some graphs right about here...
  12. Technorati claims that growth is faster in Asia and Middle East than in North America. I believe it.
  13. Blogs build trust and humanize a company

  14. Chatper 3
    blogging is about conversations and WOM...on crack
  15. The old way is 'interuption marketing', the new way-- WOM
  16. Create customer advocates, who'll do the job for you.
  17. WOM strategy MUST be 2 directional, or it will appear 'cheesy'. 1 directional WOM could backfire...Yup, I've seen so many stupid viral videos later...please stop that, it's obvious you don't know your audience.
  18. Good quotes and references to Seth Godin, like I said above, I like how this book ties with other common ideologies
  19. "Awesome/Sucks" great teen keywords to measure.
  20. Using blogs as WOM tool is so much faster than going door to door, village to village.
  21. The Blogosphere is a WOM engine! (that's a really great line)
  22. When others are talking about you in your market, let them know you're watching. Drop a comment, say hi. Often their future references will be better.

  23. Chapter 4: Direct Access (added Dec 23rd)
    Now, for the first time ever, companies/execs can bypass press and PR to give their message to audiences directly.
  24. No need or fear of the message being minprinted or slanted, it's pure, and can be read directly by target audience.
  25. GM fastlane uses blogs not just for output, but also for gaining insight from customers.
  26. At Sun, Schwartz uses blogs as part of the corporate culture. It was a strategic iniative.
  27. According to Schwartz:

    "The perception of Sun as a faithful and authentic tech company is now very strong. What blogs have done has authenticaed the Sun brand better than a billion dollar ad campaign could have done. I care more about the ink you get from the developer community than any other coverage. Sun has experienced a sea change in their perception of us and what has come from blogs. Everyone blogging at Sun is verifying that we possess a culture of tenacity and authenticity."
  28. Maverick's owner Mark Cuban uses blogs as an outlet. He's a real firecracker, his spirit is tranlated to his blog, and draws audiences to his team and businesses. good stuff.
  29. Intel's Paul Otellini, uses blogs internally, as well as companies like six apart, disney, and department of homeland security.

  30. Chapter 5: Little Company Long Reach (added Dec 28th)
    Smaller companines (and also smaller business units) can use blogs to cheaply and quickly connect with their audiences.
  31. A great way to communciate passion (of course this is a requirement in a blog IMO)
  32. Blogs are a great way to network within your market, like social networking.
  33. Interesting uses of blogs to increase 'fellowship' at churches
  34. Five Success Tips:
    1) Talk, Don't sell (yup, be conversational)
    2) Post often and be intersting (yup)
    3) Write on isses you know and care about (there's the passion part I was talking about)
    4) Blogging saves money buy costs time (I'm not so sure about that, people that repeat themselves a lot can save time by using a blog)
    5) You get smarter by listning to what people tell you. (absolutly, I need a lot of that)
Loic Le Meur

a blog is apublic debate

france big on blogging, americans like to show opinoins, germans tend to be more reserved
france has 3,5 million bloggers

GERMANY
geman y has 200,000 half of which are business bloggers

Marcel Reichart, Managing dir of marcom at Hubert ZBurda, one of Europose largest media companies

SAP has claims to the largest busessin blog

cultural differnces in germany, who may not be apt to sharing personal info


SPANISH blogging
-spanish is the second largers popular western world language
only 50,000 blogs total, which is probally fewer in US west coast


among the populare are clarin.com

China dragging
-governemtn censorship may be an issue
-it was reported that blog china.com has 2 mil blogers in july 2005
-cnblog.org
-blogging may b e for personlal use says, may not be used for business uses
-active censorship may be happening

Japan rising
is accelaerating, particularly among women
70% have heard fo blogs
25% OF WOMN UNDER 30 ARE ACTIVE BLOGGERS
why is this? people here are differne at work than they are at home, at home we are informla, its differnt when you are in the office, part of an orginaziaotn,m when nyou leave, you can easily become very personal.



Nissan motor blogs
blog.nissan.co.jp



Update Jan 22, 2006
After over a month of pick up and pick down, I've now completed Naked Converstaions. It was a great read, and I was able to pick up quite a few copies for my co-workers as well. When I get time (which is limited) I'll clean up the above and add my analysis and notes.




By the way, I'm not getting paid to do this, this is all on my own accord. I guess Shel made an 'advocate' out of my by giving me one of the preview books...




and as suggested...




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Industries that must "Morph" or wither away

Published Saturday, December 17, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


I've been thinking about this a lot about Larry Weber at the Syndication Conference. One of his slides was talking about the new and old, and how Marketers must 'morph' or die. I can think of tons of others industries that need to wake up.

I realize that these are 'gross' examples, and that many of these industries will never go away (on left) but they do need to first accept change, understand change, then adapt to change.
From Larry Weber

"Old" >>> "New"

Press Release >>> RSS Feed

Marketing Collateral >>> Blog

Interviews >>> Podcast

Media Tour >>> Webcast

Event >>> Social Network

Customer Reference >>> Community Advocate

Data Sheets >>> e-Newsletters



Jeremiah's Additions

"Old" >>> "New"

Newspapers >>> Blogs

Email Newsletters >>> Syndication (RSS)

Encyclopedia >>> WikiPedia

Phone >>> Skype, IM

Email >>> IM, Blogs

Classifieds >>> Craig's List
Newspapers are oblivioius to Craigs list

Music Stores (Tower, Warehouse) >>> iTunes
Apple ousts Borders and Tower Records in sales

Blockbusters >>> Netflix
Blockbuster was hurting, and had to make changes (they have online order, and no more late feeds now)

Traditional Music Industry >>> MySpace, Podcasting

TV >>> Rich Web Media, VideoBlogging

Radio >> Podcating, XM Radio

Travel Agencies >>> Online Travel websites

Magazine >>> Blogs, RSS

Talent Agents (Music, Film, Modeling) >>> MySpace, Blogs, other social networking

Middleperson >>> Internet


Many of these changes are already happening, either companies have figured it out, or someone is moving into their niche'.

The way of 'old' marketing is going to be drastically changed in the next few months and years. Be sure to get on board, things will move rapidly as consumers take control of how they want information.

Don't worry, I'll keep you ahead of the curve, stay with me. (RSS subscribe)

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So you wanna learn about blogging eh?

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


New to blogging? Afraid to ask?
I'm compiling a list of resources from well known blog experts. This list will serve as a great starting point for immersing yourself in understanding and then participating in the blogopshere (the online world of online conversations) If you've got a link to share, please email me or leave a comment.

Now you don't have to be afraid to ask, pretty much everything you need to know to understand and get started is here!

Overviews: What is blogging? The Big Picture: Why is this important?

What are the benefits and drawbacks of blogging?
  • Blogging is publishing, it's designed so your messages will be found. Tools like 'pings, rss, indexing, and trackbacks' make your ideas on your blog to easily be found. Be very aware that what you publish can easily be found, and are persistent.
  • It's easy to discover who's linking to you, and vice versa, so be careful on what you say and write, or use this to your advantage to be heard.


Getting Started Being A Blogger


Companes that Blog
  • submit a link



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Intranets are NOT going to die

Published Thursday, December 15, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


I attended the Syndication Conference in SF yesterday, and heard Keynote Jonathan Schwartz, the COO of Sun. He was sharing how blogging has become so important to Sun, that it demonstrates true openness to it's customers. He shocked the bejeeebel out of me when he said:

Jonathan Schwartz: "Intranets are an anachronism. They're gonna die, it's just a matter of time."

I understand what he was trying to covey: That employees and customers will create products together, in a trusting conversation. but could it really go that far? David Berlind was one table in front of me, He took a bunch of notes

I don't buy it
Although there's a strong trend for openness and transparency to build trust, I'm not sure how this will happen. I get the message, the walls will lower between the employee and consumer, makes sense. But Won't, there will always be some need to protect customer information, employee information, and other sensitive stuff?

What's Jon talking about exactly? What did he mean by this?

I think this statement should be revisited
Jon, I really respect you and your company, but I think that you could have phrased this a little better. Maybe we should focus on the relationship, not the firewall.
Jeremiah: "Open communication between employees and customers is the future. They're gonna talk, it's just a matter of time."

What do you think? leave a comment
Is there truth to this? What's everyone's thoughts on this? I need some other points of view, I've been thinking about this a lot. Talk back.

Before you flame me, realize that PART of my job is being an Intranet Manager, this has been my lifeblood for some time. (I'm on my fourth enterprise intranet). Even with that said, I'm not close minded, as I also lead my company to adopt and establish a public facing blogging program.

Check out my thoughts on how websites fuse relationships.


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Naked Conversations Preview

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


I got my grubby little hands on an unpublished, raw, preview of the upcoming book Naked Conversations

It's titled "Advance Uncorrected Proofs -- Not For Sale" version of the upcoming book Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.

By Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal. Shel, (in his genorsity) tells me there are only 10 versions of this preview of the book, how lucky I am! It's only availble for pre-order

Thanks Shel, it was greating meeting up with you. Obviously, I've not cracked this open since yesterday, but I'm planning to take a stab into over the xmas time. I'll provide my honest (raw) feedback upon reading it. There's a blog focused on the book. I'll see you for lunch in a few weeks.



Above: Shel Isreal




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Day Two: Syndication Conference notes and *pics*

Published Tuesday, December 13, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.

WARNING: the following content is not edited, filtered, or organized, it's my raw notes and thoughts. This will develop into a more refined document, I'll have a seperate post about the 'theme' of the conference.

Welcome back, to kick off this post, I'll be blogging live from the conference, showing my notes, and a few related pics. I've refined yesterday's notes, and cleaned up some of the mess. I've also added more info to my other posts regarding "Stats for Global Blogging: Usage and Growth", as I'm getting lots of information from contacts.

Syndicate Conference Buzz
Technorati: links to blogs that are talking about this
Flickr Images: Syndicate


Above: On my way to the Syndication conference via BART. I can get to the Hilton in under an hour, door to door. There's quite a few famous bloggers at the event.


Above: SF Hilton


Above: Blogging live from the conference keynote


Keynote: Jonathan Schwartz & Doc Seals 9:00am
Summary: The President and COO of Sun and Doc Seals toe off in the morning conversation.

Key message
The value is in the network

Intranets, they will eventually die. (It’s all about external facing) And the utility is dying away.

Jon encourages employees to be online to do personal stuff, always stay connected

Jon encourages employees to connect with their audiences

They have a program to reward employees that got letters from employees. You want to show off your employees to the world. Not hide them.

"Blogging has played an enormous part in the revitilzation of Sun's Brand"

Everything is open source and is free, this is his strategy to get into many other ‘larger’ markets rather than a small focused controlled one.

"Authenticity" is the fulcrum now regarding blogging and corporate transparency.

Cell Phones

Sprint is now becoming a wholesaler, and will license out their network for others to brand.

“Information age”, now evolve to the “Participation Age”

Edges inform the center vs vice versa.

What’s going to happen with DRM?
John: Consumers will win.

You can fight all you want, buy you can’t fight consumers who make choices.

People want choice.

This all boils down to “fair use”

How do you enforce “fair use”

If you make it difficult to get your product to the final consumer, you're limmiting your opportunity. Fighting with the 'bottom of the pyramid' you're going to lose. Being propriatary is often a succesful bubble for the SHORT RUN only. A long term solution is to embrace the consumers

The power is now to the participants

Consumer Generated Media: Sun employees love the company, they care deeply. they rallied and said this is going to stop. So they started to speaking with thier own voices. authentic

Trust is the currency of the Particiaption age

Regarding Web 2.0

The second generation fo the web, not all of it's coming through the brwoser

ipods, cell phones, but

Leverage Connectivity to the Network!!!


Yahoo and Google's biggests expense is Power (next to employees)
think of all those server farms.


Regarding Web 2.0

The second generation fo the web, not all of it's coming through the brwoser

ipods, cell phones, but

Leverage Connectivity to the Network!!!


Yahoo and Google's biggests expense is Power (next to employees)
think of all those server farms.


community amlrketing strategy from technorati
-support requests, and then make webpages

Scott Gatz: Head Yahooligan on Personalization and Syndication
Summary: Good overview on where Yahoo has been with RSS, it's current product set, and the future

31% use rss
only 4% who use rss are aware of what it is

washington post is using RSS

Purina is doing this as well

target offers tailored RSS feeds by location, specials

"consumers will get whatever they want via RSS"

yahoo podcasts were just launched


Whats so good about feeds
-efficiencts
-relevence
-Disovery is evlovling, becoming social

allows users to obtain info in their own persoanlied feed, not within traditional channels

Question; Publisher Statistics
-how do you measure
-myyahoo has stats, as well as feedburner
-they have social media tools (Save to my web, that help to drive metrics)
-


Publishers, Consumers, and Advertisters

How do we make money with RSS


Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of IE and RSS, Microsoft 1pm

Review of live.com

Fully syndicated with RSS,

Syndication is becoming mainstream

Gadgest enable you to reach customers in richer ways

You control the UX around your content with gadgets

live.com

microsoftgadgets.com






Corporate Blogging: 215

Charlene Li, Principal Analyst, Devices, Media, and Marketing, Forrester Research, Inc.

Speakers:
Greg Reinacker, CTO & Founder, NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
Jeremy Zawodny, Technology Development Group, Yahoo! Inc.
Jodi Baumann, Senior Manager, Corporate Public Relations, Network Appliance.
David Geller, President & CEO, WhatCounts, Inc

Added Dec 16th:
















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About the "Prophet"

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


(Left, the original Jeremiah, lamenting)

A lot of people laugh, scoff, or make fun of me when they hear my URL of my blog, ya know what, I'm actually glad!

If you got the 'joke' then no need to read farther. You're already in the know.

Here's some typical responses:

"Jeremiah the what?"

"Should we take this guy seriously?"

"Somebody drank the 'I'm full of myself' juice..."

"You know that Jeremiah was a bad news dude right?"

"Should I buy more Google stock?"

"When will my son move out of the garage?"

"ROFL, LOL, LMAO, WTF, HaHa, MuHaHA, and TTYL"

Origins of the name Jeremiah
For those of you who don't know, the name Jeremiah has biblical origins, check out wikipedia for more info on the original Jeremiah. (there are others too such as an amphibian, and an Indian fighter)

What I'm really about
Unlike the original Jeremiah, I'm bringing good news, which is best practices for using web to meet business needs and delight customers. Heh, no I don't claim to speak the word of god, or to predict what will be the top website in 10 years, or when google will split, but I can talk about immediate web strategies that companies could consider to maximize their business efforts.

It's just a play on words!
and by "play" that means it's fun, catchy and memorable. So if i got a smirk, scoff, or snort out of you...it's working. This means my Marketing Degree is paying off. My only predction is that you'll subscribe to my feed and come back, right?

I can assure you, I'm not arrogant, I'm waaaay to good for that! ;)


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Structured Blogging Initiative Announcement

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


So I'm sitting live at the Syndication Conference and the "Structured Blogging Initiative Announcement" is happening.

It's an collaboration between 40 companies, 'working together' to create and improve standards for blogging. Check out Structured Blogging

There's quite a few people talking about it: See the Technorati Buzz

I'll check it out more later.


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Notes from Syndication Conference

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


I'm known for taking a lot of notes at conferences, this time I'll just do it live from my blog. I'm currently at the Syndication Conference at the Hilton in SF, near union square.

BTW, there are others blogging, and a few people podcasting as well, information travels fast now a days.

WARNING: the following content is not edited, filtered, or organized, it's my raw notes and thoughts. Continue to refresh this page and you'll see it develop into a more refined document, I'll have a seperate post about the 'theme' of the conference.



Doc Searls: Co-Author of the Clue Train Manifesto, 8am

(I have this book at home, and pick it up from time to time)

The Cluetrain Manifesto Website

!Get this book for others at work














Term: "Live web" vs "Static web"

Scott Anderson HP, Enterprise Brand Communciations 830am
Summary: HP is benefiting from blogging.



Merchant to Customer
Depth = Deep
Breadth = Narrow

Mass Marketing
Depth = Shallow
Breadth = Broad

(we're in between these phases now)

Dialog age
Depth = Deep
Breadth = Broad

! Live Chat used by HP storage. Check that out.

Principles of the Dialogs (this is great)
  • A corporation cannot dialog as it's an inanimate entity
  • A corporation is a collection of people
  • People diaglog with other people
  • It's people are its brand
  • Marketers in the dialog age enable dialogs, but cannot be the dialog
HP Blogging Program
  • Conversation Benchmarking
    HP uses Intelliquest for blogosphere measurement
  • HP has bloggers internall and externally
  • They like to showcase “community involvement”
  • HP uses blogging internally to communicate with other teams.
  • HP external bloggers do not ghost write. (thanks god)
  • Scott had battles with marketing, legal, and even execs over the purity of the HP blogs...
The conversation must not be censored
HP keeps comments on live, until they recieved a bad comment, an HP IT guy removed the negative comment. The guy who was censored, starting blogging about it, and it was published in business week, and slashdotted, backfire!

Lesson: The right thing is to enable comments, and let it flow (question however, companies are liable for comments, so this needs to be thought through)

The blog is here: David Gee
David gained crediblity from this, as he answered questions straight forward.

Certain blog ettiquette is required, in agreement with public discourse policy (approved by Marketing Management)

General Blogging Best Practices
  • Speak for yourself
  • Target timely topics
  • The communication lines open
  • Always show respect
  • Preserve privacy and confidentiality
HP has had its blogs going of a year now.

Rich Marcello is a key blogger, a general manager of Business Critical Systems

Marketer's must evolve

Emergency Syndication Lessons of Katrina 915am
Summary: Blogs and Syndication empower ground level communication, which is critical during emergencies. People find each other, look out for each other, and help each other using these tools.

Abstract Here

when Katrina hit, it created a huge spike in the blogosphere
  • "Sharing our Stories"
  • "Can we tell our stories with such power that we change the ending"

Thought from Jeremiah
Will the victors ever be able to write or re-write history again? Doubtful...all sides and views will forever be shared, stored, and found from now on.

The citizen reporter is among us
Brian Oberkirch, (see his Katrina blog) was a blogger in the middel of the Katrina storm, he became a first person citizen reporter. He began to report, and even CNN emailed him. they had 85,000 readers, and hundreds of comments. For some people, the only way people could get information was via blogs. Some photos of people within the damage were recognized by readers.
Back in 911, people posted "missing" photos on lightposts...In Katrina, blogs become the new lightposts, this is how people connected and found each other

Katrina, People Finder Project: to locate missing individuals, Zack Rosen.

Fixthegulf.com Britt Blaser


Peoplefinder Project:
katrinalist.net
Master database of missing individuals, contains
  • 650,000 records
  • processed over a million searches
  • Shared data with redcross, google, LA commisioners via IBM
This is the first consolidated database for disaster.
(imagine the hours and worry this saved)










Picture: Zack Rosen

Evelyn Rodriguez was at the Tsunami in 2004. She used blogs to let her family and friends that she as alive. She became a citizen journalist, and is frequently read.

Sign of the times
Plywood signs become the way to communicate within a neighborhood...sign boards...the new sign boards are blogs.

Interesting Story
In florida (says a guy in the audience) during katrina, cell phone networks were knocked out, but WIFI was accesible from everywhere. He got 65 emails from neighbors or people in his area asking for "How is my house?"

Opportunity
live sattelite imagery at diasters is needed

The "ripple effect" is amped and accelerated from social networking and blogs. (when her blog was mentioned by Robert Scoble)

"during crises, blogging is at it's best" the real human element comes out.

Even after a diaster, social networking empowers regrowth
There are small groups of people meeting online called "salon's", this also occured in real life after the SF earthquake, these groups networked for common goals to restore art, life, society, connnecting financeers, etc. the web helps to accelerate this.

term:
flattening of information, "if you start at one location, on the web, it will eventually link to every other page on the web" It's all connected

Cute Phrase
Recovery Effort is somewhat being held online:called recovery 2.0, we're interested in "do tanks", not "think tanks". haha good one.

Note to Jeremiah's Friends and Family
When the big earthquake hits the bay area, I will blog. I'll let others know where I'm at, as well as try to connect others.

Key takeaways from Katrina Session:
  • The citizen journalist is here, they can share first hand experiences faster than press
  • Blogs, unlike press, can show personal pain and passions from a first hand account.
  • Blogs can connect people in disasters, they are centralized, searchable, findable, and persistent
  • Communication is very important for every effort.
  • Blogging is mainstream


Searching the Syndisphere: 1045am abstract
Summary: Lots of RSS feeds are coming, and an exponential amount is coming. It's not clear from these panelists (of indexers) how to organize, sort, and deliver this massive amount of information.

(Syndisphere: A new made up buzzword, omg please stop the buzzwords)

Niall Kennedy, Technorati
Chris Redlitz, Feedster
Debby Richman: Looksmart
Liz Lawley, Microsoft

Live web is a separate space than static web.
These new search tools (feedster, pubsub, icerocket) are being used instead of mainstream search tools, such as google and yahoo, why? What’s the benefit. Let’s talk about the toolset.

! 75% of blogs on MSN spaces are not in English
(note to self, put this on the global research post)


What these companies do:
  • Feedster: does indexing, search, content syndication and advertising
  • Looksmart: focuses on vertical search, on a repetitive need or passions. (deep web)
  • Microsoft: Hmmm I don’t know.
  • Technorati: Blog searcher, exclusively focused on blogs. Great way to create alerts on specific conversations and follow that conversation. Syndicates content to mainstream media (like feedster)

Benefits of Searching the live web
  • Searching the live web has a benefit, as you can get opinions.
  • It’s difficult to track conversations across multiple sites with the static web.
Methods to search "Live" web
  • Furl.com is a social bookmarking service that will garner ‘saved’ conversations. Benefit is having the ‘in’ topics and conversations.
  • It’s difficult to search with search behavior. What method will become common? Bookmarking? Search? Trackbacks? Syndication, Vertical Search, There’s not enough info yet.
  • When people know what they want, they will go into that deep vertical search.
  • These are great ways to find out about your customer or market.

Note to self
Technorati released a new service today, great way to get buzz amongst bloggers
release products when speaking at conferences ;)

Change in Feeds and Managing them
  • Feeds today are timely content based
  • Tomorrow, it will be more focused on relevancy. (many rss feeds will be created)
  • Don’t’ throw away library science with folksonomies, be sure to check out faceted vocabularies.

Note from Jeremiah:
We will never be able to offer the ‘perfect’ search until we can read the human mind.

Opportunity:
Create a centralized tool to let other users search only content you’ve seen.

Elements of Vertical Search
  • License articles
  • What have other saved or bookmarked
  • What about activity?
One person will have multiple blogs


Technorati:
(Add this to global blogging site)

Korea has the biggest blogging company Cyworld
Mobile blogging in India is big, using this
4 million signed up in one week at India to do this. They are texting from their phone, and pics.

I asked: What is the growth rate of feeds?
Chris from Feedster:
  • First you must qualify some as spam
  • Most news services produce feeds.
  • And lots of CGM
  • now were seeing it in other categories such as UPS tracking.

RSS feeds are coming to TIVO, mobile, Xbox, GPS.

How to you aggreagate all this RSS? It's going to be huge!
  • Debby: you gotta use iron and put it on your own database.
  • Feedster: Asia is huge, and mobile computing
  • Delicious only has 300k users (relatively small)
Interesting intersection (Attention Journalists)
Opinons and first hand account preferred by people vs credible sources

What’s going to happen next?
  • lots of growth
  • social searches
  • tools getting more features
  • in the end, only a few feeds will matter, a few commonly agreed upon, and ones in your own network

Key Takeaways
  • Determine how buzz is created, managed and spread
  • Learning how people find information is the marketer’s mission


Jeremy Allaire- 1230pm
Summary: He's going to revolutionize web by integrating it with TV, Movies, and this intersection, Keep an eye on him, he's going to shake up the tv and movie industry like none other.

Lunch time keynote: Jeremy Allaire

What he's up to now

-He’s focusing on how TB and web intersect
-It’s difficult for TV companies to discover what users are watching.
-Tv is fundamentally a syndication system





Open distribution model
  • Anyone can publish and anyone can broadcast and anyone can view it
  • The architecture of the web is colliding with Video and Radio
  • Good Bye Middle Person
  • Creators of content can get paid directly by advertisers and cut out the middle man
  • Publishers can get paid directly by Consumer
  • Now with syndication, everyone can have their customized channel. (This has never happened before)
What kind of video will drive the future of web?
Answer: Highly specialized and diverse content. Wide AND deep
The quality will be well done amateur videos. Just as blogs are similar to that.


Larry Weber of W2- 1pm
Summary: Companies must morph to adopt to "Partcipants taking charge"

The future of journalism is Blogging: Larry Weber

look at weber's companies and tie with community marketing

There will be fewer blogs, more focused. The best writers will start writing blogs

Social networks will be so important for marketing

Sphere's of influence

Pandamonium: Marketing will get get much harder before it gest much easier

Enterprise Generated Media: Corporate Blogs

More loyalty programs are coming

It's not about controlling our consumers...

Stop focusing on clicks, start focusing on engagement, that's where we should measure ROI.

Current costs of Marcom in US (this is shocking)
  • 90 billion is spend on marcom in US a year
  • 60 billion is spent on TV

OH SHOOT, Tv will move to web! What does this mean? A lot for web folks, and even more for tv folks.


Morph (Attention Marketers this is serious stuff)
Here's the future of Marketing and Marcom
  • Today >>> Tommorow
  • Press Release >>> RSS Feed
  • Marketing Collateral >>> Blog
  • Interviews >>> Podcast
  • Media Tour >>> Webcast
  • Event >>> Social Network
  • Customer Reference >>> Community Advocate
  • Data Sheets >>> e-Newsletters

Best Practices in Sponsorship 215pm
Summary: A converation about blogging, ground up advocacy, corporate blogging as a response, and measuring ROI. I didn't get a solid theme out of this, but that's ok, it was more like a discussion, with different points, personalities...kinda like a conversation on the blogosphere. It was good.


Shel Isreal
http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/
Author of "Naked Conversations" which was written in the blogosphere on a blog platform









Deborah Schultz
http://www.deborahschultz.com/
former marketing of Six Apart








Andrew Susman
http://www.studioone.net/info/#susman










Can we ever have true converastional marketing?
  • Yeah it's already starting.
  • Even large monoliths are having conversations
  • Microsoft has over 2000 bloggers
  • Jeremiah: but marketing departments can only facilatate that conversation, right?

Blogging is a SOCIAL media, unlike traditional media

Does corproate blogging raise a company's stock?
  • It did with MS and Sun
Interesting
80% of converations is considered non verbal !!!!

six apart had a converation with others. duing infrastructure times

politicians are starting blogs

Visa is starting a blog centered around olympics.

How do we measure blogging efforts?
  • Blogging doesnt matter if there is no good product or offering behind it

Some conversations with blogs are just listning, and then offering a solution to their problem.

Shel: Examples of companies that have benefited from blogging
  • Nissan introduced a city car, only by a blog. by a Product engineer
  • Proctor and Gambel, in japan, asked people to vote on which product they liked best
  • A kid in France Leon, was passionate about tshirts so he started a blog about tshirts. makes 57k a year. US dollars. lephrase.com (sp?)
  • Andrew cartin, is a treonaut. has become an authority on it, even more so that the manufactures, he makes 45 k a year in advertisers. he's the expert.
  • loreal has an anti aging cream, they used a model, we know this story. now its the best selling product in europe, coming to USA
  • Naked Conversations enabled user based input to shape book
Converations and networks make succesful companies
  • ebay is the most converastional based business in the world.
  • yahoo, google, amazon as well.

How can you quantify blogging?
  • You can measure activity, and effects
  • but just like other marketing activities, your can't measure ROI.


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I screwed up! (and a good lesson for all)

Published Monday, December 12, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


Whoops!

I made a boo boo the other day, I posted a link to a spoof article that I saw from a respectable site, and created a blog post to it, not realizing it was a satire. I wasn’t the only one who fell for it, or was confused, see discussion. The damage could have been to Jakob Nielson, or others related to the article, but in fact, he didn't write the article. A 'real' journalist would have checked their facts better than I.

Thanks to the anonymous poster who left a comment, (I think I know who you are, are you my guardian blog angel?) and I owe you thanks! (edit: Thank you Matt Star, read comments, I thought it was someone else, based upon the writing style...)

I’m not annoyed at Chris McEvoy, who created the very believable satire, you can read his response to the whole thing. On the other hand, happy that he taught me a little lesson about fact checking, I’ll try to be more careful in the future.

So, let’s learn from this, there’s a good lesson here, what should one do after making a mistake in the blogosphere?

I had a few choices:

  1. Ignore it
  2. Delete the post
  3. Put a disclaimer on the post
  4. Write a second post telling what I did wrong

There's some good things to do, and a few bad things, It's pretty obvious what happened that we're readers, but let's see what I did:

What did I do?
  1. Right off the bat, my biggest mistake was not checking my facts well. Things are getting a bit strange lately, with Wikipedia having less than accurate data, rumors spread faster than a high school band trip. I'll be more careful now.

  2. When you make a mistake, quickly correct it, and let others know. “Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.” From A Bloggers' Code of Ethics. I responded on my blog both in the comments section, and also leaving a 'disclaimer' at the top of the post within minutes. I know I didn't have an ill-effects on the stock market, or people jumping off buildings, but it was important.

  3. Show openness and your reasoning. For many bloggers, building trust with their audience is important. That's what this post is all about, I'm hoping my puppie dog eyes will when you back as your favorite web strategist.


The bigger picture
The same thing needs to happen with business and corporate blogs, this type of response is probally one of the best ways to respond to negative press. Read how other companies are responding to bad press as well. Most importantly, people that are publishers (bloggers esp) need to be responsible when publishing. It's intersting to note, that companies and public figures don't need a press release or spokesperson to communciate now, you can just do this on your own. As I sometimes act like a citizen journalist, I need to be more careful.

We all mess up, but how you respond is what’s really important.




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Stats for Global Blogging: Usage and Growth

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


[Edit Dec 17th, 2005: When I first started this post, I had only limited information, thanks to submissions, I've gained a ton of info, and have been adding it to this growing list. In my American-centric narrow minded view, I was wrong, upon further analysis, this is a global change in communications. For the first time in the history of the world, nearly all citizens have access to publish their voice for all to find and see. blogging is happening everywhere.]

As a Global Web Marketing Manager, (and as a curious global citizen) I'm doing some market research to find out the usage, growth of blogs across the globe. I've left a few messages in different forums, as well as performing my own research.

We know that it's exploding within North America since the Summer of 2005, blogging has even been on the front cover of a handful of magazines. I'm seeking some numbers or sense of scale and growth of blogging outside of my own region.

We've all seen the numbers from Pew Internet Research, but I find them to be very American-centric. Any useful information will be appreciated! Leave a comment or send me an email.

Questions I want to Answer:
  • Which countries are blogging besides the US?
  • Which languages are the most dominant in the blogosphere besides English?
  • Which countries will take to blogging and have the highest rate of growth?
  • Will countries/languages of large population eventually dominate the blogosphere (China, India, Spanish)
  • Help me to stop being so American-Centric, and a global citizen.

Global Blog Stats
I've yet to obtain a true global report for my needs, but it's slowly emerging.

North American Blogosphere

    • Pew Internet Research (Jan 2005) Blog Readership Surged 58 Percent in 2004 -click z stats, jan 2005. (by the way, these are the first stats I consumed on blogging)
Latin American Blogosphere
  • Please submit info
European and Middle East Blogosphere
Asian Blogosphere

    • New Edelman Opinion-Leader Study Shows Rise of CSR, Blogging & Web in Japan
    (Tokyo, Japan, Dec 14, 2005, thanks Mary Ann for article)
    "Edelman, the world's largest independent public relations firm, today announced the results of the 2005 Edelman Japan Stakeholder Study, a new survey of Japanese stakeholders that shows majority credibility for corporate CSR efforts, the rise of blogging, trust in 'personal contacts' and news articles (rather than advertising), and the emergence of corporate web sites as the most trusted information sources about companies."

    • Korea's large blogging company 'Cyworld' is in the news and gettings lots of buzz
    This blogging services was extended to India. During the first week 4 million signed up in one week at India to do this. They are texting from their phone, and and mob blogging with pics. (Thanks Niall Kennedy of Techonrati)


Summary
I won't draw formal conclusions, (edit, Dec 30th, I was wrong, many countries are aware and tracking) but I'm suspecting that only a few countries are even aware of what blogging is, let alone tracking it. Should prove very interesting in coming months. I'm waiting to see a global stats list.

I've also heard from many 'Blog Speakers' of their involvement and observations of countries they’ve participated such as UK, France, Japan, South Korean, and Brazil.

It's becoming more clear to me that there are tremendous opportunities for global conversation, understanding and commerce. Maybe we should all get our olive branches and doves, or will the human spirit of competition and fighting for limited resources continue to surface.

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A lot of interesting things are happening, here's the highlights

Published Thursday, December 08, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


Lots of input, lots of output

Lately, as you may have noticed, I've been expanding my thoughts and analysis to expand beyond business blogging. I'm focusing (in addition to my day job) on syndication, podcasting, web analytics, word of mouth marketing, and rich media on the web. I'm trying to devote at least 1-2 hours a day to consumption of info, and a few other hours on the weekend.

I've found that it's easiest to learn by listning to conversations or subscribing so it comes to meso I've joined several user groups, and created rss subscriptions. As a result, I've ran into a few interesting articles recently, below are some of the most interesting.

Highlights from this week's intake:
  • Why you should play nice in the blogosphere
    Wow, this is really interesting, I shared with a few others, and they found this to be interesting 'edrama'. Debbie Weil (business blogging expert) summarized in her article. be sure to read the background, the video, (NSFW: potty language), and read Mena's thoughts, as well as Ben Metcalf's (dot ben) response. Lot's of people are talking about this (techorati tags)
    There's a lot of questions to be answered now:
    • Should people only write what they would say to another's face?
    • Are blogs really free speech, or should we have some netiquette?
    • How should leaders behave when poked in public?
    • Is having life chat of speaker and audience a good idea or bad?
    • Should blogs and IRC be anonymous?
    • Is it good that global events spread very very fast, and PR teams don't need to be in the middle?

  • Is Google Analytics Good For The Internet Marketing Industry? Some people are concerned, others embrace it.
    Google released it's free web analytics tool, it's taken off pretty well, and they've reduced the amount of users can use it while they expand. Many web analysts were concerned that this free, easy to use webtool, would somehow reduce their need. Others felt this was great, as it gave companies insight to the value that user history can yield.

  • What the heck is "gold farming", they're doing WHAT?
    This is simply amazing, here's the summary: World of Warcraft is the most popular virtual fantasy game, there are millions of players. Within the game, people can win gold, to improve their online character and gaming experience. In cheap labor countries that are online (like China) sweatshops are being created to obtain gold, and sell on ebay. The rate this week is 8$ for 100 virtual gold. Some are addicted to gaming, and one baby died from neglect. Parents claim a boy imitated the game and is now dead. Man plays for over 2 days straight and dies. Even virtual fights turn real, as players attack each other over a virtual sword. (I can't find the link) Before you say those 'crazy chinese' remember that most of the demand is driven by affluent members of our own society.

    More questions to be answered now:
    • Is this virtual gold, good for real economy?
    • Does blizzard ruin the game by shutting down the players?
    • Are players cheating by 'buying' money they didn't earn?
    • Should the Chinese government restrict how long people can play?
    • Are wealthier economies taking advantage of weaker ones?
    • Is online virtual fantasies going to change our other lives, what if someone buys a virtual husband or wife? how about a virtual job?

  • Is Firefox Insecure? Should I go back to IE?
    I was reading wired magazine, and it feature this article. Like every new 'safe' and 'foolproof' technology, it's just a matter of time before it becomes corrupted. This cycle has occurred before the internet and will continue with every 'secure' technology.

  • Wikipedia is being vandalised, and stop "ruining" the internet!
    There's been a lot of vandalism on wikipedia lately, you can see the founder's entry, as well other entries. You can click on the history and see previous revisions. You don't even want to see what people have been doing to political leaders pages, it's def not work safe. Wikipedia responded by forcing users to have logins, the anonymousness is no longer part of the world's largest brain trust. As we move into this new era of free information and publishing, the rosy rules are bent as the 'human element' comes into play. I firmly believe that many political, religious, social, and racial revolutions will start on the web.

  • Publishers suing Google, is this slowing progress?
    Google's been under some fire for collecting and indexing all the copyrighted information on the web. In order to index the information, Google 'copied' the information and sorts on their own servers. As a result some greedy (IMO) publishers are trying to take advantage of the deep pockets that Google has, and really curb progress. Although I can see the point of the publishers, they're not realizing they can use this to harness and catapult their book sales farther. Maybe they need a web strategist.

  • Ten Tips For A Better Weblog
    Written by Rebecca Blood, it's a good short list, very good, I'd love to see an additional followup list later. She's an expert at writing succinctly.

  • Sunset Homes: "Breezehouse" modular homes in menlo park
    Interesting idea, with the center open atrium, and the ability to place the modules anyway you prefer. See the PDF brochure.

  • Verizon Wireless has a pretty cool splash and interactive focus site
    I rarely click on banner ads, but this one was from my yahoo email account, likely they were able to contextualize that I'm in the phone market, and found a banner that really spoke to me...I clicked on it (A web marketer's dream). To my surprise, I really enjoyed the animation, I smiled when I saw them 'introduce' the shopping cart at the start of the experience. I'm going to think about this product more carefully, maybe I'll buy one.

  • Media is colliding on the web: someday I'll be a "director"
    Text, Sound, Voice, Music, Journalism, Political Debates, Movies, Yellow pages, Maps, Resumes, and on and on. Sometimes I think about how my career as a web manager will grow, perhaps someday I'll be managing a famous website, and my role will evolve to more like a 'movie or tv director' rather than a 'web manager' hey, it could happen...


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Syndication Conference: SF

Published Wednesday, December 07, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


My coworkers and I are heading to the Syndication Confernce in SF. I'm hoping to learn a great deal, as I really see a lot of opportunities to harness syndication as a new medium. There's quite a few industry leading speakers. We're hoping to bring back some strategies to apply at work.

I'll likely post my notes, take a few pics, and maybe even podcast the event. we'll see.

I've been keeping my notes about syndication and RSS indexers here:
Anyone else going to be there?

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Does Ajax Really Suck Most of the Time? (Edit: This is a hoax)

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


Edit: This article that I link to is a hoax, I fell for it, read the comments. I'll blog about this later, shame on me, shame on Chris who 'impersonated, or "kudos" to Chris who did a good job with his satire.

Jakob Nielsen thinks Ajax Sucks (Most of the Time).
Jakob Nielson, who helped to pioneer web usability, and a variety of other web topics recently wrote: "Why Ajax Sucks (Most of the Time)".

The Ajax Craze is Among us.
It's being used for google maps, gmail, and spreading to many others sites. Although contraversial, readwhat Jesse James Garett has to say about ajax. In my opinion, although he did not 'invent' the technology, he did the world a favor by giving it a commonly understood name. Check out some commonly (sometimes) agreed upon thoughts of Ajax Programinng in Wikipedia.

Sound familiar? Think back 5 years.
If I remember correctly, he did the same thing by dissing flash back in the day. For the most part, he was right, and flash has subsided as a main navigation and interface component for the majority of websites. But it still has not gone away, we've found flash to be a nice little attention grabbing or rich interface component...just a tool in an overall website strategy. This is true, because only a few companies have their entire website completely in flash.

Is he right? Is he wrong?
I'm curious to hear how the Adaptive Path team will respond, as they host this event: Designing and Building with Ajax and promote Ajax design.

Leave a comment, does Ajax suck? if so why?
  • Is it more usable?
  • Is it faster?
  • Do you really need a back button?
  • Is it a wanna-be desktop application?
  • Will it persist in the future?


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Blogger has been really slow lately

Published Tuesday, December 06, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


Just a few weeks ago, Six Apart, a blogging platform provider received bad press by the blogosphere for being slow, and there was lots of discussion on how and when they responded. Interesting, Dave Taylor, a leading business blogger, and keynote at the blog business summit I attended, left a comment on my post, I responded.

Other users have been noticing this as well. After I got an IM from my bud Tony, then decided to post this blog. Chris even tells me he couldn't login recently. It could be a scheduled outage.

I think I know what happened, my recent podcast broke the internet, I'm THAT repulsive.

Does free software comes with a price?
I'm all about free software, as I believe companies can and do monatize from scraping a tiny bit off the transaction or providing contextual ads or information. Also, empowering every global citizen to publish their voice is part of what the web is all about. But at what cost?

We all know blogging is exploding. Have I made the wrong choice by choosing a very popular free blogging software that will get bogged down by lots of users?

My Options
Stick it out and hope for the better. Hopefully blogger will let us know what's going on, that's really important.

Maybe I should buy a six apart product, like typepad, or install moveable type on my own server to run. (that's a hassle to me). Or maybe go back to my yahoo 360 account and use that.

For me, I'll stick it out until I hear some news from Google. Perhaps they will put more resources into blogger. But if I don't hear from them and the situation doesn't improve (a blog, and article, anything, etc) within a month or so, I'll be forced to at least consider another tool.

Does anyone have any links to what google is going to do to fix blogger? If so, leave a comment. I wanna know.

Blogger.com needs to communicate to users
I hope the blogger team learned from the six apart team, please blog about this now, and let your customers know you're going to correct the issue. Cmon Blogger team, talk to us. I'm keeping an eye on this blogger buzz blog.

By the way, the picture of that slug is one I actually took in Muir Woods over thanksgiving weekend in Marin. what a wonderful park. see map. Mental note:use more of my own pics that I've taken in the future.

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My first podcast: "Hello World"

Published Friday, December 02, 2005 by Jeremiah Owyang.


As I've wrote earlier, I'm learning more about podcasting as a marketing vehicle.

So, to learn more, I've decided to podcast myself, and joined the podcasting trend. It's not really a big deal, audio is the next evolution in blogging, then followed by video.

I'm hoping to have some podcasts that provide some best practices for web marketing, and discuss web strategies. Also, if things go well, I plan to interview specialists, subject matter experts, and other web proffesionals.

Creating a podcast is easy and free
I'm using Audioblogger, which is a free service offered by Google. I simply call a phone number (in 415) and type in my password, and leave a message. It updates a draft message in blogger, and voilà, (Thanks Andy) I'm podcasting in 5 minutes or less.

The next step is getting the podcasts to the right audience.
I didn't syndicate or add to an RSS feed. Let me see what I can learn before doing that.



Listen below:

this is an audio post - click to play





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Yahoo plays to it's Strengths... its about time

Published by Jeremiah Owyang.


I've got a couple of friends, contacts, and former coworkers that work at Yahoo and Google. I even invited some of them to my wedding a few months ago, one was even my groomsmen. I try to stay neutral, and use both products, as an outsider and consumer I've got my own independent opinions.

I'll admit that I've recently thought that Yahoo is slipping behind Google. "Wow is Yahoo copying Google again with their latest release of product X?" Google has been getting a lot of press about their products, and some praise. I think that's changing, as Yahoo has recently started to play to it's strengths, media.

First of all, it's commonly thought that:

"Google is an Engineering Company, and Yahoo is a Media Company"

I agree, each of their homepage design justifies thier focus and intent within the web. Now, I'm seeing a pattern, a trend, that is exciting and interesting. Three interesting plays from Yahoo:

Recent Play 1: MyYahoo Syndication and Yahoo Mail
Yahoo has always had a strong grab on the syndication market (even if consumers don't know what that means) they've got tons of content, media content, and the famous myYahoo portal. I saw some recent stats that usage is now in 40% range, vs 30% a few months ago. Several C level execs I know use myYahoo, as well as web developers, it's a good tool for anyone with lots of usage. Scott Gatz and crew have now merged the best qualities of this tool with Yahoo Mail Beta with feedreader.

I like it, good move. I've been playing with it's getting some ground, sometimes, it's a bit slow, I'm not sure if that's due to the asynch content moving, my connection, or that it's still in beta, and they haven't given it a fat pipe. I like how myyahoo feeds were automatically inserted into yahoo mail. They should also consider going in the other direction as well, pushing some email features into myyahoo. slowly these will merge and become one.

Recent Play 2: Yahoo enters the living room
Also, Yahoo has aligned with Tivo, check out their love child will have the following: Yahoo photos, services, podcasts and a variety of other web based tools will now be available in your living room. Yahoo has strenghth with SBC, Tivo, and other family room tools, this is good. I don't watch tv much, in fact we don't even have cable, because I'm always online. I'm reconsidering that as the tv/web marriage is starting. Don't be surprised if I get cable and tivo soon, as I want to surf flickr and the web from my tv.

Recent Play 3: Sexy War Correspondent blogs in Yahoo News
Yahoo News has been one of the top news sites as far as activity and usage. Recently Yahoo News has branched out and branded a very sexy blogger, Kevin Sites in Hotzone, to bring first hand news from the warzone. Here's Kevin's personal blog he's qualified, and has even filmed and published contraversial material . He also's got the looks, very appealing and bringing a real story and pictures from the front lines. He looks like a soap opera star It's like a reality show in my browser.

See the difference in user experience and design between his personal blog and yahoo's? Yahoo is pumping some design resources into Hotzone, it's much more attractive and engaging...like online media should be.

Google keeps on Indexing:
Even with that all said, I wanted to provide some images of Kevin. I just used the yahoo images service and google images service, I didn't plan this, I just discovered this now. Intersting outcome, here's some pics of Kevin Sites from:
There are no Kevin Sites yahoo images, even though they are featuring him and google has catalogued several thousand. Now that's interesting, as indexing is what Google has done best.

I love this watching this battle between Yahoo and Google, it's great to see innovation, and most importantly great for consumers. I observe that Yahoo is playing to it's strenghts, rather than playing catch up.

What do you think? Is Yahoo playing to it's strengths?


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Jeremiah is a Global Web Strategist. These personal thoughts are his alone, and none others.