WebProNews

Tag: WebProNews interviews

  • Content Curation: What Does it Take to Be Successful?

    WebProNews had a little Q&A with Kate Brodock, the Executive Director of Digital and Social Media at Syracuse University about content curation on the web. She will be giving a talk on this subject at BlogWorld next week, but we decided to pick her brain ahead of the talk, as this subject is one that only continues to become more important to the web as consumers are bombarded with endless information from so many different web channels.

    WebProNews is partnering with BlogWorld and New Media Expo, the world’s first and largest new media conference, in an effort to broadcast how new media can grow your business, brand, and audience. BlogWorld takes place November 3-5 in Los Angeles and includes speakers such as Kate Brodock. Stay tuned to WebProNews for much more exclusive coverage.

    Answers to the following questions are Brodock’s .

    What does it take to be successful in content curation?

    “It comes down to a few key processes. You need to have good aggregation tools in place to gather and filter information. You then need to have a way to centralize and showcase that information in a way that communicates to your audience effectively. Lastly, in most cases – especially those involving gathering information from digital, user-driven sources, you’ve got to nail down the verification of that info. While in many ways curation has become easier, it’s also become harder to sift through and find the reliable and factual sources.”

    “What are the best tools available right now for content curation and why?

    A few of my favorites: Storify.com, for a centralization tool. I use it a lot, for various purposes, and they actually just launched a bunch of major changes yesterday, I’ve played around with them and it’s a great improvement on many levels. In terms of aggregation, I’m a Google Reader person, but I’ve also started playing around with pearltrees.com lately. It’s as if you mind-mapped your RSS feed list. Very neat concept. A few others that stick out are the Zite and Flipboard apps for iPad for content discovery. Depending on what needs you have, blogging platforms like Posterous and Tumblr make it easier for teams to curate and centralize third-party content as well.”

    “In your opinion, who is doing content curation right on the web?

    In terms of media outlets, I’ve been impressed by BBC and their content curation desk and Al Jazeera, especially with “The Stream” which was launched this spring. I like Clay Shirky’s Thought Leaders channel, and Andy Carvin has led the way in disseminating critical information quickly, but still having a high standard for verification. The Smartbrief industry roundups, of which I’m subscribed to many, are great curated resources. I’ve also come across “Earth Knowledge,” which is a really neat Google Maps mashup.”

    “Who is doing it wrong?

    People or organizations tend to falter in two areas. In the verification process or when they should be giving proper attribution to the original content creator. These two areas need special attention.”

    “What are the boundaries of fair use in content curation in your assessment?

    Again, proper attribution of the original content creator is very important. There are many ways to do this on various platforms, and there are generally recognized “best practices” that people use. If you neglect the attribution part of the equation, this is when you get into sticky situations. For instance, when Posterous first came out, several content creators were upset by how little attention Posterous users paid to giving them credit for content… in some cases the “creators” thought the “curators” had downright plagiarized their work. Since then, the community of users has developed a set of practices to support both parties. It pays to take a look at how each platform handles this aspect of curation and make sure you’re dotting your “I”s and crossing your ‘t’s.”

    “In your opinion, how much does it matter to the consumer if they’re obtaining information from its original source, as long as that source is credited? Consumers want information, and that means different things to different people. Many consumers are only concerned about the information they receive and being able to process it quickly because they’re reading these sites simply as a way to quickly digest information and move on. Other consumers may want to dig deeper, explore more sources, get to the original source and expand their body of information. And others still may actually NEED to have the original source for verification purposes or if they’re conducting research or writing an article. This depends on what type of consumer you are.”

    Have additional thoughts on what it takes to do content curation right? Share them in the comments.

    For 5 years, WebProNews has partnered with BlogWorld and New Media Expo, the world’s first and largest new media conference, in an effort to broadcast how new media can grow your business, brand, and audience. Stay tuned to WebProNews for much more exclusive coverage.

  • Demand Media Talks Pluck 5 Discovery, Exchange & Management Engines

    This week, Demand Media announced Pluck 5, the latest version of its social platform, which is used by some pretty big brands, such as AARP, Kraft, NFL, NPR, Target, USA Today and Whole Foods.

    In addition to launching some new applications within Pluck, the company has redesigned some of the old ones. The new version also sports ten different engines. There are discovery engines like: Pluck Participation, Recommendation and Reputation Engines present timely, relevant information. There are exchange engines like: Pluck Relation, Notification, Connection and Syndication Engines drive personalized, targeted communication. Finally there are management engines including: Pluck Identification, Localization and Moderation Engines power robust control for multiple roles, spanning customers to moderators.

    WebProNews reached out to Steve Semelsberger, SVP and GM of Social Solutions at Demand Media, who told us some more about these engines. Following is what he told us about them.

    “In general, consumers who participate in a Pluck community interact with some combination of our fourteen Pluck Applications (Forums, Blogs, Comments, etc.). What consumers don’t see is the ten Engines that power our Applications. Our ten Engines, grouped as Discovery, Exchange and Management functional families, drive experiences available through the Pluck API, including Applications and Collections. Discovery Engines present timely, relevant information.”

    “Each of the ten Pluck 5 Engines powers a particular aspect of community – social reputation, for example, or localization – which can be manifested in any of Pluck’s pre-built Applications. For example, the Participation Engine highlights online community member presence. The Recommendation Engine captures and serves recent and scored items. The Reputation Engine manages points, badges, rewards and more. The Engines are also accessible to developers through the Pluck API, which gives brands the ability to modify how our Applications function or even to create entirely new Applications.”
     
    “Our ten Engines naturally fall into three families, which you refer to in your question. The Discovery Engines surface community information, about which community members are present (Participation Engine), which pieces of content are new or have been reacted to (Recommendation Engine), and who among the community is active, respected, or influential (Reputation Engine).”
     
    “Exchange Engines support personalized, targeted communications that help facilitate communication inside the community and from the community to external social destinations and back. The Relation Engine authorizes following and friendship management within Pluck services. The Notification Engine manages email and other updates. The Connection Engine makes it easy for community members to bind their accounts from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The Syndication Engine manages how content is delivered to, and shared with, third-party services.”
     
    “Finally, the Management Engines power control across roles – community members to moderators to business owners and provide oversight of and control over various aspects of a Pluck community. The Identification Engine manages single sign-on authentication against social, proprietary and Pluck services. The Localization Engine enables one instance of the Pluck platform to serve multiple language experiences simultaneously. The Moderation Engine handles key features like user tiers, blocks, filters, routing, listening and more. More information on Engines is available on our website, including detailed pages for each Engine that describe uses and benefits.”

    “Our Applications are built on top of these engines and interact with them in a live community. The Engines in turn rely on the Pluck platform’s underlying Technology (with its Data, Presentation, Performance and Processing layers).”
     
    “We tend to do business with large brands that have a culture that predisposes them to customized and tailored systems. They bring this same predisposition to their use of Pluck. By making all of the capabilities of our Engines accessible to their developers, through the Pluck API, our brand customers can create precisely the community experience that meets their business objectives. Our best and most successful customers have taken full advantage of this customizability and have delivered a community that is unique to them, is consistent with their brand, attracts their core audience and cultivates the precise passions and experiences that this core audience demands, all in the interest of particular business outcomes.”

    In its most recent earnings report, Demand Media reported a 32% increase in revenue. While perhaps known best as a content company, the company generates revenue from its social and registrar businesses as well. Pluck is obviously a key part of the company’s social strategy, and clearly Demand is very serious about improving that.

  • Will Everyone Be Using 100% Web-Based Signatures in 4 Years?

    Will Everyone Be Using 100% Web-Based Signatures in 4 Years?

    Last month, Adobe announced that it had acquired EchoSign, a provider of electronic signatures. WebProNews recently discussed the evolution of e-signatures and cloud-contracting and the future of the technology with EchoSign’s Founder and former CEO Jason Lemkin (now working for Adobe).

    “Although electronic signatures were validated when Bill Clinton signed the Federal E-SIGN Act into law on October 1, 2000, some still question the legitimacy of e-signatures,” the company said in an email. “Companies like Groupon, Aetna, Dell and Comcast are all early adopters of this technology and now Adobe EchoSign hopes to make this technology common practice for businesses everywhere. Paper agreements have always presented a frustrating, expensive, time-consuming process for businesses and Web-based contracts offer a sustainable IT practice that gets more deals signed in less time, with less hassle.”

    When asked about what specifically users of Adobe products can expect as a result of the acquisition, Lemkin said, “EchoSign is an important and central piece of Adobe’s web-based Document Exchange Platform, which includes document and file collaboration at Acrobat.com; file sharing from SendNow; web forms from FormCentral; and the CreatePDF and related PDF web tools.”
     
    “Beyond the Acrobat web services, EchoSign during the next 90 days will be integrated inside of the 500,000,000 copies of Adobe Reader, followed by the enterprise-approved Adobe Acrobat,” he added. “Anywhere you create, collaboration, or review a contact — EchoSign will be there with Adobe.”
     
    On strides made in the digital signature space, he told us, “There have been two key accelerators. The first was the rise of modern, 100% web-based Web 2.0 business services like EchoSign that made it possible to sign contracts on the internet or any mobile device (e.g., iPhone, Android, iPad, etc.) without having to learn, install, or download anything.”

    He said it works “just like email and like the other great web products you use every day.”

    “The second key accelerator was the rise of the ‘web worker’, i.e. the company and office worker than spends much of their day on the web, using web tools,” he added. “Once you’ve already adopted Salesforce or NetSuite or Adobe Connect in your business — closing customers and contracts with EchoSign then just seems like another natural way to enhance your customer and sales processes using the web.”

    How are digital signatures changing business?
     
    “First, they are accelerating business,” Lemkin told WebProNews. He said their average customer signs contracts in 42 minutes, which is down from a week or longer otherwise.

    
”Second, and just as important, they are dramatically improving the customer acquisition and on-boarding experience,” he said. “Forcing a customer to find a fax machine to do business with you just isn’t acceptable in 2011.  Too much friction, too dated of a customer experience.”

    What does the future hold for e-signatures?
     
    “Ubiquity,” he says. “You’ll see us in 500m desktops with Adobe Reader. You’ll continue to see EchoSign integrated everywhere, from DropBox to Evernote to Salesforce to NetSuite to Xobni to wherever your documents and contracts live.”
     
    “Beyond that, in 4-5 years, we won’t even really use the term e-signatures,” he added. “Because everything will be signed on the web.  Just like we don’t even really need to talk about ‘digital photography’ anymore, since hardly anyone uses analog film.”

    What will it take to make e-signatures more mainstream? More trusted? 
     
    “We’re there,” he said. “We’ve crossed from the early adopted to the early mainstream phase. Now all it will take is a little time.  In 24 months, everyone you know will be using e-signatures. In 48 months, everyone will be using 100% web-based signatures, period.  A ‘written’ signature will feel as dated as a can of ISO400 Kodak film.”

    Will we get there 100% in 4 years? I’m not sure about that, but that is a long time in technology terms.

  • Augmented Reality To Become Our Sixth Sense?

    Augmented Reality To Become Our Sixth Sense?

    Late last month, augmented reality developers Layar announced that it was making its platform available to all developers of iOS apps, opening the door for a lot more innovation and practical use-cases for AR technology. "All apps and services that have a location aspect can now easily and without license costs be enhanced with an AR view of their content," Layar co-founder, Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald told WebProNews. "It fits with the new trends within the AR industry, which is the democratization of this new medium – lowering the barrier to enter the new realm of AR."

    Since then, WebProNews spoke with Layar’s augmented reality strategist Gene Becker about what the future holds for not only Layar and the apps that take advantage of its platform, but for the technology and the industry as a whole. "We think of AR as really a emerging medium for creative expression and communication. It’s a medium that’s digital, that’s interactive, but it’s also uniquely physical in nature," he said. 

    "Think about the web back in 1994," he said. "The web was really – as we look back on it now – it was a democratization of the ability to publish – basically to put anything out on the web and connect with anybody in the world. We see augmented reality as kind of being in the early stages, a little bit like the web in 1994. That was kind of the days of black text on gray backgrounds, but it was a fundamental shift in terms of what kind of capabilities it gave people to publish and communicate with the world."

    "We think it’s really important that we enable anybody to create AR experiences to augment their physical world, and that’s going to be one of the things that really helps AR to take off and become mainstream, and a part of everybody’s life," he continued. 

    Once Layar opens up its platform to other developer ecosystems, growth is bound to be fueled even more. Lens-Fitzgerald told us, "We are always looking to expand to other platforms," and Layar’s Layar Stream feature, for content discovery went to Android even before iOS. 

    "When you augment the world it’s probably going to touch just about everything eventually, but I guess if you look at the kinds of content layers that we currently have on our platform, you can kind of get a sense of the range of things that are starting to be touched," said Becker of the technology. "We have commercial layers, and things like retail store finders. We have promotions – marketing promotions for new films coming out…there are games. People are making a variety of different kinds of interactive games…there’s data visualizations – people looking at things like visualizing earthquake magnitudes in real time, looking at pollution visualization…there’s also art exhibits both from established museums as well as from ‘guerilla artists’ who were sort of appropriating AR space for their works."

    "I think ultimately, it will touch everything," he said. 

    "I think one of the big challenges that we have is, it is early days, and up until now, a lot of people have really positioned augmented reality as this sort of really cool technology thing," Becker said.  "That’s pretty typical for a new, emerging space. We really feel like one of the big challenges for this year and the next couple years is to get past that ‘wow, gee whiz technology’ thing, and really get onto the business of creating a new medium that people can use to express, to connect, and to communicate."

    "The early adopters – the techies – get it," he added. "They like it, but that’s not where we’re going to add value to people’s lives more broadly."

    Of course Layar isn’t the only company out there making use of AR, and Layar prefers it that way. 

    "There’s definitely a growing number of AR companies out there," said Becker. "Most of them are actually our good friends. It’s a small industry, and at this point, I think the fact that there is competition is actually one of the best things that we can see, because it says there really is something here. There’s a real market. It supports multiple players, and we’re looking forward to helping push the envelope along with a lot of our friends in the States."

    "I think that over time, AR is really going to become an essential aspect of the mobile experience," he said. "The same way that today we think about email and social media and mapping and so forth. I think that AR is really going to be something that people use every day when they’re out and mobile. In the longer term, we all like to envision a world where we have immersive displays that you can put on just like a pair of sunglasses, and then suddenly the entire world can be sort of continuously augmented with information all around you. And I think that’s several years away still, but I think that when it gets to that point AR’s going to be almost like a sixth sense that we just rely on that we won’t know in some ways, how to do without."

    Do you think we’ll reach that point?

  • How IntoNow Plans to Monetize Your Conversations About the Shows You’re Watching

    A new startup called IntoNow has been generating some buzz with a social TV app for the iPhone/iPad. Founder and CEO Adam Cahan told WebProNews about how it works, and why users will find it useful for entertainment content discovery based on what you have in common with your friends’ viewing habits. 

    "About 60% of people watching television are also connected to the Internet, so they’re doing something online while they’re watching TV," said Cahan. "If you dive a little bit deeper, what you find out is that the vast majority of those people are communicating with their friends or doing something related to the actual content that they’re engaged in. So what we tried to do was create a really easy way for people to connect with their friends around the shows that they love."

    "One of the biggest technical achievements was the fact that we could do it against live TV," he said. "We do it across 130 channels of live television, and so what we basically designed was a way for you to press a button, and simply say ‘this is what I’m watching, and this is literally what I’m doing right now,’ and be able to connect with friends."

    It’s important to note that the app doesn’t work only with live TV, but also with online content. 

    As far as what makes IntoNow useful, he drew upon some comparisons to location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, etc. "The television or entertainment industry right now is a little bit like where those location-based services were before GPS existed," he said. "Basically what you have is people typing into a box, ‘Hey, I’m watching House,’ or ‘I’m watching the VMAs.’ That’s not really a terrific user experience, nor is it frankly an easy way to connect. You can be saying something like, ‘I’m watching the music awards,’ and I’m saying ‘#vmas’, we’re having two disjointed conversations. What we found with location-based services is those services never took off when people had to type in, ‘hey, this is the restaurant I’m at.’ That was kind of the fire that got us going."

    He called the service a mashup of TiVo and Facebook, and explained what makes it such a useful tool for entertainment discovery in the above video.  

    So why use this over simply sharing directly through Facebook/Twitter?

    "We’re not actually saying, ‘hey, we need to own that conversation," explained Cahan. "If you notice in the app, the first thing that we suggest you do is share. Share it on Facebook. Share it on Twitter. Share it anywhere you want. Frankly, we already know based on the links that we generate, that a lot of the conversation is actually happening on a place like a Facebook or Twitter. So, all we’re trying to do is seamlessly establish those connections. So really, it’s about getting recommendations, and about getting a sense of your tastes, your friends’ tastes, and then starting to come back to you with ideas around things that we think you should like."

    Cahan talked a little bit about privacy, as the subject is bound to be on users’ minds from time to time. He said that People often ask if they’re shipping audio from the device, and that the answer is no. "We can’t hear anything that’s going on in the room or anything like that," he assured us. 

    Users can always delete what they’ve done, but everyone sees the public stream. Things that happen between friends are locked down. You can only comment on friends’ material, and you can get notifications when you’re both watching the same show. 

    IntoNow Conversations

    Eventually, the conversation turned to monetization. Many startups simply build their audiences and worry about how to monteze them later. IntoNow already has a few things in mind for the future. 

    "If you’re watching a commercial on TV, press that button – that green button, and see the response that you get back," said Cahan. "So right now, the response that you get back is, ‘hey, you’re watching a commercial.’ What we’re doing going forward is enabling those commercials, meaning, I’m watching a Pepsi commercial…Press that green button. Here’s an offer from Pepsi. I’m watching a car commercial. I’m actually really into this car…Press that green button. Here’s more information about the Audi A4. Here’s more information about where you can find it…all of that kind of stuff. So we very much want to activate it and enable a lot of those commercials to add value back."

    "The other thing is, when you think about the landscape of different players here, there’s also content owners," he continued. "We know in a validated way, ‘hey, this is what you’re watching. You are watching Jersey Shore Episode 3, and by the way, are you watching it live or not. Is it actually on air…’ So you think about the content industry, what they’re really focused on is loyal viewing and also live viewing. We have the ability to validate that that’s what you’re actually doing, so we’re talking with a lot of content owners around, ‘hey, let’s create a program for your audience – that is if you ID live, every single episode while it’s on air, and do that throughout the season, here’s some…who knows what that is. Snooki’s going to give you the fist bump…who knows?"

    "The other area is in terms of general advertising, clearly we have a good understanding of ‘psychographic’ segments," he added. "Here’s all the people who like crime. Here’s the people who like comedy…"

    IntoNow is the number four free social networking iPhone app after Facebook, Skype, and Twitter. While it’s only available for iOS right now, Cahan says you can expect Android and web versions soon, and they’re looking to get their app pre-installed on TVs.

  • Why It’s Easier for a Startup (Than For Google) to Take Action on Content Farms

    A couple weeks ago, we reported that DuckDuckGo had followed its own blocking of content farms (like eHow) by promoting content from wikiHow. This begged the question: how much better is wikihow’s content? We had a conversation about that with Jack Herrick, founder of wikiHow (and one-time owner of eHow). In fact, we had a second conversation about that as well (look for an article on that soon). 

    We also had a conversation with DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg. Part of that was about how DuckDuckGo differs from Google with regards to privacy. The subject then turned to search quality, content farm blocking, and the hard-wiring of select content to the top of the search results. 

    "Right from the beginning when we launched two and a half years ago, one of the main motivations for even doing the search engine in the first place was to remove what I would call ‘useless sites’ (I try to use the term ‘useless’, not spam – although I guess people take offense with both)," Weinberg tells WebProNews. "Most of it’s algorithmic, so we crawl the web a lot, looking for these sites that just have ads on them basically…Demand Media is on a little different category, where they do have content on their sites. It’s just lower quality content on average. So for those type of sites – these big content farms, which are generating very low quality content, I sort of waited to see user complaints about it, and then do investigation myself."

    "In this case, right from the beginning, I was getting lots of complaints about eHow and the other sites," he continues. "Eventually, I started looking into it, and there’s lots of well-documented articles where people who have worked for Demand Media in the past, and who no longer work for it, and have written up their experience and evaluations of the content, and there are some high quality pages for sure, but there’s a lot of really low-quality, inaccurate stuff, and there’s so much out on the Internet now, that when you block something like eHow, users don’t even notice."

    "All they notice is that ‘you’ve got better results,’" he adds. "So it’s a pretty easy decision to make at that point from our perspective. From Google’s perspective it’s a lot harder because they can get in trouble…they’re under government scrutiny, and all sorts of things. They can get in trouble for censorship…it’s much easier for a startup to do it (like us) than it is for Google."

    He then explained the reasoning for the wikiHow "hard-wiring" (which by the way is the phrase wikHow has been using to describe it). 

    "We have this concept, which I mentioned, of zero-click info, which really shows a box above the results when you match the topic exactly," Weinberg explains. "It’s not really hard-wiring the first result. It’s more like above the first result, there’ll be this box occasionally that gives you instant answers. We’ve done this with literally 40 sources at this point. Wikipedia is the biggest, but we also do CrunchBase, Wikia – all sorts of high quality wikis that have good content and spam under control. So Wikihow is really just our 40th source of one of those."

    It is an interesting one, however, considering it comes from the previous owner of eHow. 

    "The reason why they’re better is that they’re more akin to Wikipedia, where they have this good process of user-generated content, where spam is kept down, and they have editors look at things, and generally they have a lot less pages than eHow, and their pages are a lot more high quality. So it just make sense to when you search for something…you get this information right at the top of the results that says, ‘ok, this is how you do it.’ And it says ‘more at WikiHow’ if you want to see the whole article. Then underneath that, you’ll get regular results."

    Weinberg says he hopes search engines will look more closely at these search quality issues.

    "It’s definitely come to a turning point in the past couple months with you and other people reporting…the problem is it’s really hard to evaluate relevancy across search engines, so a lot of this evidence is all anecdotal," he says. "You have to give Google credit in that respect. They have their internal relevancy metrics, and we have ours, etc. but a lot of these articles are anecdotal, but they could hardly be anything else, because there’s no standard metric. I do hope that it gets more attention, and I do think that it has gotten more attention recently."

    He says DuckDuckGO will continue to add more sources to the zero-click concept, the way it has added wikiHow. We’ll have more about wikiHow’s quality and editorial practices shortly, from a conversation with founder Jack Herrick.

  • DuckDuckGo Founder Makes the Case For His Search Engine (vs. Google)

    Gabriel Weinberg, founder of alterative search engine DuckDuckGo sat down to talk with WebProNews about what people can get out of DuckDuckGo that they can’t get from the Google experience. 

    "I’m not anti-Google," he says. "I know that they take privacy very seriously, and I respect what they’re doing, but they’re doing a few things that – one they can avoid, and one they can’t avoid – and both of which, we don’t do."

    "The first is, literally, they save your searches when you search Google, whether you’re logged in or not, and we don’t log any of that information," he continues. "When you search at DuckDuckGo, we literally don’t save the information about your computer that you send to us, which is…your IP address and your user agent. So there’s no way to tie your searches to you, or even to tie your searches together. Whereas on Google, you can do that, so if law enforcement, say, comes and asks for your searches, they can be retrieved and used against you. In Google’s defense, they use that to help track you to make your searches better, and to target advertising to you across the web."

    "The other way is (which part of my campaign is hoping that Google will fix this, because I don’t think it’s necessary for them to do this), is when you click on a link in Google, your search terms are sent to the site you click on," he adds. "It’s this technical thing that got started when the Internet got started, but nowadays, ad networks will aggregate that information, and third-parties can sell your profiles to other people that use your searches. That’s completely unnecessary. At DuckDuckGo, we don’t do that. We do this special kind of technical re-direct thing to make sure your searches aren’t passed to other sites."

    Weinberg maintains that DuckDuckGo’s results are just as relevant without tracking your search history.  

    "The proof is in the results…they use that as one of like a thousand signals, and it just seems like it’s not a very useful signal," he says. "They say it’s used a lot to make your results relevant, and they do change a bit (you can tell by logging out and logging in), but it’s mainly more used to target advertising to you across the web, because Google runs a huge ad network. AdSense runs on millions of sites, and so it’s mainly more used for that when you’re off the search page [when] you’re on another website – to get good ads. We have no need to do that. We don’t run an ad network across the world, so we don’t need to save your searches for that reason."

    Weinberg also talked about DuckDuckGo’s approach to content farms and search quality. You can watch the above video for more on that. We also discuss that more in a separate article.

  • The FTC Endorsement Guidelines a Year Later

    As you may recall, about a year ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) set some guidelines into motion, concerning endorsements and testimonials. The main point of these guidelines was to ensure full disclosure when people lending endorsements and testimonials receive any kind of compensation from the marketer or advertiser. 

    IZEA, of PayPerPost fame, was one company who was forced to pay special attention to these guidelines, simply due to the nature of its business. CEO Ted Murphy seems pretty happy with the whole thing though. 

    "It’s been a great thing for the industry," he tells WebProNews. "What the FTC guidelines really did was gave everybody a standardized rulebook to play by. So whether you’re giving people free TVs or hamburgers or you’re compensating them with cash, all marketers are required to do the same types of things in terms of disclosure and transparency."

    Ted Murphy of IZEA Talks FTC Guidelines"I think that’s a great thing, and we follow the – we call it social media sponsorship – kind of that whole space, whether it be cash or product, and it’s just exploding," he says. "I mean…everybody’s just trying to figure out how do they get their piece. I think now that the legal aspects – now that we have some clarification on that – now we can all charge forward and deliver great campaigns for advertisers, and help people that are doing social media finally make some money."

    You may have noticed that disclosure, or at least more obvious disclosure seems to be much more prevalent on blogs these days. Though certainly the lack of disclosure will be less obvious anyway. Still, the guidelines would appear to have sunk in with many. 

    "I think from the advertisers’ standpoint, they don’t want to get hit by some judgment from the FTC, and if their competitors see them doing things that aren’t on the up and up, you probably run the risk of being reported, so I think that it’s really the advertisers are driving awareness of that."

    "But at the same time," Murphy adds. "We did a study just last quarter, and over sixty percent of marketers – people that are PR professionals – have never read the FTC guidelines. So there’s still a lot of room to grow there."

    "But we’re getting there," he concludes. "You know, we had to get the rules out, and now it’s all about education."

  • The Daily Deals Industry in 2011

    The Daily Deals Industry in 2011

    The daily deals industry is an exciting space to watch right now, as evidenced by Google’s recent $6 Billion offer to buy Groupon, Amazon’s $175 million investment in LivingSoical, Facebook’s recent launch of Facebook Deals, and all of the other competitors looking for a piece of the pie coming out of the woodwork.

    We had a conversation with Jere Doyle, President and CEO of Eversave, a company in this space that has been in business since 1999. He shared his thoughts on the current state of the industry and where it is headed. "There will be a natural consolidation in the industry over the next year or so, and winners will emerge," he said. "The winners will be those players who not only help local business with customer acquisition, but also help them build longer term relationships with customers."

    Jere Doyle, CEO of Eversave Talks Deals industryGoogle and Groupon

    Doyle would not offer much in the way of comment on Groupon turning down Google’s offer (he also did not say whether or not Eversave would’ve turned down the offer). "It’s hard to say and I don’t like to speculate on what Google or any of the players in this space will do. The growth is incredibly rapid with new sites launching and new industry developments every day," said Doyle. "Based on what transpired in the past few weeks, it’s clear that Google wants a place at the daily deal table. We’ll just have to wait and see how they get there."

    Facebook

    "Facebook is another phenomenal social media success and could be a huge player if they figure out how to build social shopping into the Facebook experience," Doyle added. "So far Facebook is still in the early stages of figuring that out. Their recently announced Facebook Deals platform has all of the key elements – mobile, social sharing, location-based search and targeting."  

    But one challenge, he noted, is that Facebook’s is a do-it-yourself platform. "Merchants have to conduct the campaigns themselves," he explained. "And they also have to have an established Facebook following or invest time in building a following if they don’t already have a strong Facebook presence. One thing we’ve learned is that the smaller merchants and business owners who run deals with Eversave don’t have a lot of time to think about planning and executing marketing campaigns, let alone building a strong email list."

    Amazon and LivingSocial

    Doyle wouldn’t comment much on Amazon’s investment in LivingSocial, but clearly sees it as a very significant move for the industry as a whole. "Amazon’s investment in Living Social – like the Google/Groupon speculations, Facebook’s entry into the market, Wal-Mart deals, eBay and PayPal, you name it – all of these developments validate the daily deal market space," Doyle said. "It’s too early to tell where it will all end up, but there’s no denying the opportunities for providers, merchants and consumers who can benefit from incredible savings."

    Each Player For Itself

    "Each player is trying to find the best approach to stay ahead and keep innovating," he added. "Acquisitions and funding are two approaches. In Eversave’s case, we’ve been in this business since 1999 and don’t currently rely on funding to expand and innovate our online couponing and daily deal offerings."  

    "There’s plenty of room for multiple players in this space, but there’s bound to be a shakeout at some point," Doyle reiterated. "The successful daily deal sites will be the ones that are able to juggle and balance what at times seem to be cross purposes. For example, you need to have geographical reach and a growing membership base of consumers, but you also need to make sure you maintain a quality database.  Ultimately, it comes down to quality, not just quantity.  The surviving daily deal providers must also offer something unique – for example, on the consumer side appealing to niche markets.  Eversave’s database has a strong emphasis on targeting females 25-54 years of age.  This demographic is the purchasing engine for U.S. households."

    "Right now there is a flood of new providers launching, and I expect the excitement about Google’s offer and Amazon’s funding of Living Social will spur on the daily deal gold rush. But the idea that this type of business is easy to launch, build and sustain success is a big mistake," he warned. "It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination, and those rushing in looking to turn a quick sale and make obscene amounts of money after only a few months are mistaken."

    Doyle claims that Eversave’s traffic puts it in the top three daily deal providers. It currently operates locally in over ten cities, but Doyle says it’s already everywhere with more local launches planned for 2011.

    Related: Groupon: We’re the Savior for Small Businesses

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  • Social Media Has Been Around for Centuries. It’s Not About the Tech.

    Connecting with people shouldn’t be about what social networks you’re using. It should be about connecting with people. Yes, you need to look at where your audience is at, but you shouldn’t be using Twitter just for the sake of using Twitter if you’re not using it to communicate to the right people. 

    In fact, we covered a report today indicating that only 6% of American adults are using Twitter. As Joshua Duncan noted, retweeting the article, "Don’t forget about the 94% that aren’t."

    WebProNews recently spoke with Ted Ulle, the Senior Search Analyst for social media consultancy firm Converseon, who had a lot of interesting things to say about information architecture, comparing it to social media. It’s engagement," he said. "It’s actually promoting engagement, and that’s a big deal."

    He had some other interesting things to say about social media itself as well. "The technology that allows you to connect to people in your marketplace should become invisible," he said. "It should get out of the way, and that is the evolution I see happening, and that’s one of the reasons that social media is so hot these days – because it’s people connecting with people."

    Ted Ulle Talks Social Media"You can use social media sites without being geeky," he added. "My mother could use social media. She appreciates that kind of thing. She likes to talk to people. That’s what it’s all about."

    Ulle’s not the first to suggest that social media’s always been around, but he brought up an interesting tidbit about the history of print. "Many newspapers around the Philadelphia area, even before the independence of the United States, used to print their newspaper with blank pages and blank space in it," he explained. "The idea was that you would buy a newspaper, read an article, write down your comments about the article and pass the newspaper onto somebody else. You had social media. It was print…it didn’t matter. It was exactly the same principle."

    An article from Slate.com talks about this in more detail. 

    "What you have is a return to humanity plus a whole new empowerment of the average person," he added. "There’s no question that any brand who thinks they can just push a message out and fool everybody is going to have to wake up pretty fast, because that’s not happening so much anymore."

    "The techniques are evolving, but the principle was always engagement," he concluded. "Always, always, always."

    His words echo another recent conversation we had with Patrick O’Keefe of the iFroggy Network, who suggests simply treating your followers like people.

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  • What Google Acquiring Groupon Would Mean For Both Companies

    Update:  Groupon has reportedly rejected Google’s offer.

    Everybody’s waiting to find out if Google will really buy Groupon. We may find out very soon, as Groupon’s board is supposed to be meeting today to come up with an answer. Groupon is all about local, and that’s something Chris Tolles, CEO of local news powerhouse Topix knows a bit about. He offered some of his insights on a possible Google Groupon acquisition to WebProNews today. 

    First off, Tolles has some thoughts on Google’s larger local strategy. "This is the largest area of online advertising growth, and expansion here is one of the few areas that’s fragmented and still rife for disruption," Tolles tells us. "They are going to need to expand local sales efforts and staffing, as well as create products and partner for local inventory."

    On why Google is looking to buy Groupon rather than build this type of product internally, Tolles says, "It’s pretty clear from the hundreds of unsuccessful Groupon clones that building one of these things is not as easy as all that." 

    Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix talks Google Groupon acquisition"Plus, Groupon has a $600M local sales run rate," he adds. "It’s not obvious that Google is making that much from local advertisers. Plus, Google has always been about the algorithm and when they need to build outside of their core experience, they have done a great job in acquiring companies to help them in products like maps, Android, YouTube etc.  While they’ve not succeeded in everything, they’re successes are pretty impressive."

    Tolles says Google could help Groupon reduce its operating costs. "Groupon’s growth depends on their building out email lists, and they use Adwords from Google for a big portion of that," he explains. "Presumably getting the wholesale rate on that kind of advertising, or creating new ways of integrating Groupon signups into search results, Gmail or Places would be a potential huge economy of scale for Groupon to tap into."

    There’s no question that Google could greatly help Groupon expand internationally, although the company has gradually been doing this on its own. "Groupon is going to have to expand internationally to continue the kind of growth that we’ve been seeing from them, and being able to leverage Google’s existing international infrastructure is a potentially game changing time to market advantage," says Tolles. 

    "While I’m sure Groupon could soldier into countries where they have no presence, having native speaking staff on the ground in as many companies as Google is operating in would be a big asset," he notes.

    Google is doing all it can to own local and that will continue for the foreseeable future as long as Marissa Mayer is in charge no doubt. The company’s been doing some interesting things in the local space, from adding a great deal of emphasis on local to its regular search results, and introducing a social recommendation engine (Hotpot). All of that said, local is too large a space for any one company to dominate, according to Tolles.

    "Local advertising is a $100B year business – 2/3 of the ad spending in the US," he says. "You’d have to control billboards, TV, radio, online, mobile and email lists to be able to ‘dominate local’. While I think Google is on a path to have a major part of that ecosystem, I don’t see them dominating local advertising anytime soon."

    To me, there are clear advantages for Google if they acquire Groupon (particularly as it battles with Facebook, which recently encroached on Groupon’s model). Some think the acquisition would be a mistake on Google’s part, however. We’ll see what happens. We should find out soon whether it’s going to even go through or not.

    Meanwhile, Groupon has been making acquisitions of its own. TechCrunch reports the company has acquired Ludic Labs, the local marketing services startup behind offerfoundry.com and diddit.com. The company has also acquired Asian sites uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost. In addition to all of this, Groupon just announced some major features for local businesses.

    Do you think Google should acquire Groupon? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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  • How and Why Remarketing Can Gain Back Lost Customers

    Late last year, Advertise.com and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) shared some interesting findings from a survey on ad technology, and found that remarketing (sometimes called retargeting) was considered the most under-utilized online marketing technology by nearly half or respondents. 

    Since then, Google has launched remarketing capabilities for AdWords, and I’m guessing the technology has been taken advantage of by more advertisers since. Daniel Yomtobian, CEO of Advertise.com, which offers its own remarketing services, tells us, "As many as 96 percent of the people who visit a website leave without completing the actions marketers would like them to take, like making a purchase. Remarketing targets previous site visitors and brings them back with highly customized ads that maximize conversions and return on advertisers’ interactive spend. Remarketing has been shown to improve ad response up to 400 percent compared to traditional display marketing."

    Remarketing, simply put, targets customers who have been to the advertiser’s site before, but didn’t convert, and tries go gain their interest again, maybe with a different offer or a different spin on the ad. 

    Daniel Yomtobian"These visitors are tagged when they leave the site then later are shown ads with specific discounts and specials on items previously browsed as they surf elsewhere on the web," explains Yomtobian. 

    "First, the advertiser is given a line of code from the Remarketing network to include into their website," he continues. "Once implemented, upon visiting the site, users are tagged anonymously and later recognized by banner ads spaces on other websites within the Remarketing network. Advertisers later follow-up with these users as they surf other websites with an advertising message." 

    "It is important for both consumers and advertisers to understand that remarketing does not pull any other information from the visitor other than that he or she has viewed that particular site," he notes. "The visitor is ‘tagged’ anonymously and this allows advertisers to serve a relevant ad later in the visitor’s Internet surfing.

    Increasing Traffic and Conversions

    "Remarketing provides marketers with a vehicle to bring lost visitors back to convert, a solution that did not previously exist," says Yomtobian. "Remarketing reminds those consumers who didn’t convert the first time about the original offers as well as new opportunities, and seeks to bring them back for conversion."

    "Most remarketing models are based on identifying consumers who expressed initial interest in a product or service on a web site or landing page or website but didn’t convert," he adds. "With Remarketing, advertisers can reach out to these past visitors with an ad relevant to their interests before they left the website.  Matching these banners to users who are most likely to respond to them increases brand awareness, site visitations and conversions."

    Remarketing might be particularly effective around the holidays. Customers that showed some interest in products might need a little extra encouragement to go through with a gift purchase. For that matter, products browsed around the holidays may be retargeted later as potential birthday gifts.

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  • Location-Based Services Too New to Know How They’ll Be Abused

    Last week, Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence Sr. Analyst Paul Wood shared some predictions for online threats in the coming year with us. With the increasing emergence of location-based services, we wondered what kind of threats (beyond the obvious) come with this new territory. 

    "One attack that may be predicted is for malware faking location information in order to boost ranking or prominence of the spoofed location," Wood told us. "This type of information will be of value in the reconnaissance stage prior to a targeted attack, or perhaps prior to burgling someone’s house – the robber can know the owner is elsewhere." 

    We asked Wood to elaborate this a bit. "Most attacks are conducted for profit," he says. "Therefore for a new service to be utilized as a source of attacks the methods by which the attack can be used to make money need to be clear. In the case of location sharing, it’s not clear how this information can be used to make money for the legitimate provider of the service, and equally unclear how this can be subverted by criminals for their profit, unless it’s part of a surveillance or reconnaissance process prior to an attack."

    Paul Wood Talks Security Threats in 2011"One way that location sharing may be expected to raise revenue for the provider is by offering services by which the most popular ‘X’ in location ‘Y’, according to the number of people registering their location, can be promoted," he explains. "This could be by allowing a service provider to promote themselves as the most popular ‘coffee shop’ in ‘New York’ according to location sharing. In this case, there is a motive for less popular and less scrupulous service providers to artificially boost their popularity according to location sharing by buying fake location sharing registrations from criminals who have illegal access to mobile devices or location sharing accounts."

    If it can be done, I’m sure it will be. 

    "If location sharing is used to boost rankings in any system then this gives criminals a motivation to subvert the system," he adds. "However, at the moment, location sharing is very new, it’s not clear how it will be used by the companies providing the service and so not clear how it may be abused either."

    On the topic of "boosting ranking or prominence", when asked if search engines are capable of detecting fake location sharing entries, he admits he has no idea. He also says he’s not familiar with any such instances in the past. 

    If location-based services continue to pick up steam, and Google continues its trend of delivering location-based results, I’m betting we will start go see more integration between the two (not unlike what we’ve seen with real-time search). This will be something to keep an eye on to say the least. 

    When asked if this kind of thing could occur within Facebook and/or Twitter with their respective location-based offerings, Wood says, "We cannot comment on specific services. However, humans are social creatures that always take advantage of efficient methods for indulging their hunger for communication with their friends, family and contacts."

    "My guess is that ever since the first language was invented, there have been liars and con men who have found ways to subvert the new means of communication to their own ends," he continues. "If an attacker is able to identify the individual concerned and then use public services to track them, this may be a concern – do you want everyone and anyone to know your location or the location of your mobile device at all times? This is where privacy controls come in to play – parents may wish to benefit from this technology for their children, but privacy is important when publishing this type of data – if that information were to fall into the wrong hands, the consequences could be disastrous; for example, cyber bullying and cyber stalking are already increasingly becoming a concern for many individuals."

    The United States Air Force is apparently concerned. A recent report says the Air Force has warned its troops about using location-based services for fear that they can jeopardize missions. While it’s unclear whether other branches of the military have issued similar warnings, the Army’s Chief of Strategic Communications recently told WebProNews that the Army doesn’t have many social media restrictions, as long as lives aren’t being put in danger, meaning communications don’t violate "operational security" – they don’t reveal anything involving upcoming missions. He didn’t talk specifically about location-based services, however, but they are becoming very much part of social media.

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