Olympic Audiences are GREAT, Says Nielsen

Here's an excerpt of AdWeek's piece on the data:

According to Nielsen, NBCOlympics.com, which will stream over 2,200 hours of live competition, drew 4 million-plus unique users this past Saturday. That's up from the 2.7 million users who logged in the previous day.

Yahoo!'s Olympics site, which does not offer any live footage, attracted 3.3 million unique users on Aug. 9, bringing it within 684,000 of NBC's traffic. Third-place finisher AOL Olympics saw over 1 million users that day.

Meanwhile, NBC officials are reporting that its Olympics coverage is performing far better than during the summer games four years ago in Athens, Greece. NBC's site recorded 70 million page views on Aug. 8 (opening ceremonies), a whopping 10-fold increase versus the 7 million page views generated in 2004. In fact, those 70 million page views bested the Athens Games' strongest traffic day by almost 50 million, said NBC.

SeeThroo Knows...

SeeThroo is a powerful new take on BT. It's a technology "network" that analyzes anonymized content that people post in social media, then uses that info to help ad networks field PRECISELY targeted ads.



SeeThroo is, in my opinion, valuable for advertiser, publisher, network, and consumer. I add in the consumer because no one has entirely cracked the nut of social media monetization, and if that continues, the world of social media will get a lot thinner but quick. Quadrillions of page views are of no value if they constitute an expense to publishers instead of a revenue source.

What I particularly like about the model is the idea that it is analyzing comments rather than views -- comment would seem to indicate a much higher level of involvement and interest,which should make for more effective targeting.

Here's what I mean. If I make a comment about the new Smart Car on a blog or social media page, it's pretty apparent that I have an interest in the car. Contrast that with a "drive-by viewing" of a page on the car -- which I would expect millions of people have made over the past few months, and it's easy to see how their data could offer more predictive information.

By compensating social media sites for their traffic and helping ad networks target better, SeeThroo offers the potential to help lots of players make good money from the unbelievably high level of consumer interest in social.

Only thing I wonder about: since so much social media communication is so personal, how do they anonymize so that multiple points of anonymized data can't be cumed into PII? What I mean is, with enough non PII data points of a personal nature, identity can be deduced. Therefore, personal info has to be screened and shaped so that identity is not apparent. THAT'S serious engineering, so I applaud them in their efforts and results.

BTW, note the suffix, www.seethroo.US

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Can You Make It Loud3r, Please?

If you are really into a band, you always want the song to be louder. It's the same for a lot of content junkies now, because Loud3r has emerged on the scene.

Loud3r is built on the premise that if you are into something, you want a way to cull through the dreck to find the best content out there. And who better to decide what's news than you and the other junkies out that that share your passions? The "engine" for each of these specialty sites is a combination of semantic search and people. They start by defining a list of the most important sites and...well, let them explain it to you:

LOUD3R sites are created by assembling a source list of websites and a semantic glossary of terms that teach the content engine how to identify the best news stories, photos, videos, and other content from hundreds of Websites related to a particular topic. We use a combination of human editorial input combined with semantic software to assemble all the best content, from a web-wide perspective, for any given topic. The technology learns from user behavior, allowing the site to react to the community's interests and preferences. We sift through the bad, so you don't have to.

Loud3r isn't a website, it's loads of specialty content sites. In addition to their exhaustive approach to find content, users suggest links to the content on their passions -- links that they find most valuable. These links, coupled with watching what people click on, comment on, and refer to, help to improve their content and search over time.

Can't get enough politics (like me?) Head over to vot3r.com.

Want soccer news? Try strik3r.com



Oh, there's a blizzard of these specialty sites that offer advantages to content junkies in that they are singularly focused on a passion, and all the articles and content listed are vetted by other content junkies.



I perused some of the sites and found them to be excellent distillations of all the content out there -- I am not saying they catch everything but they do find great stuff, and put the best of what they find on top. Which is about all I can ask of them -- their products work.

Go ahead, find your passion among their exhaustive and growing list of properties. Then visit and start clicking. It won't take long b3fore you'r3 addict3d.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

With WEbook, Writers Need Never Be Alone Again

Writing is a solitary business. The dedicated writer sits at his PC or MacBook or Underwood and types and types and types, heaving blood sweat and tears onto a page in hopes that there will be genius in the words and pages.

But with WEbook, writers need never be alone again. WEbook is a collaborative writers community where the budding scribe can post content, share it with friends, offer critiques, take criticism, and potentially be selected as the next WEbook published writer.

I must admit, I never expected to see the community principle get adopted by writers. The people that I know who are serious writers treat their words like babies, and the idea of community criticism would seem rather challenging to such a style. But of course the people at WEbook aren't allowing any zhlub to comment -- the community offers the writer controls on who and how their words are shared. Some will share broadly, others sparingly, but with broad sharing comes notoriety and recognition in the community, and with it the opportunity to become published.



And of course the spirit of writers is changing rapidly, and the idea of collaboration is really engrained in the next generation. And that, after all, is what WEbook is about.

Check out this from their web site:

WEbook is about you and User Generated Books

Let's face it: The traditional process for publishing a book is a lot like ivy-league school admission. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself brownnosing a guy with elbow patches. And then there's the endless waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

That is, until recently. What changed? Well, now there's WEbook, a ground-breaking online resource for aspiring authors, which lets you take charge of your own destiny. This avant-garde book publishing company applies an interactive approach to the process - in every sense of the word - by using the Internet as a platform to connect truly brilliant writers to print publication. Think of us as a virtual studio lounge for writers, where self-professed literati like you can wax poetic about the finer points of writing and online book publishing, collaborate on project work, and provide valuable feedback to one another - all in real time through the power of the Internet. Best of all, if your contribution makes the cut, you won't have to spend a nickel to see your name in real, live print. Instead WEbook funds publication of the best books as printed books, eBooks, and other customized downloads. You and your collaborators share in royalties on book sales.

I poked around on the site and was impressed by both the functionality and the quality of interactions and commentary. This is a POSITIVE and helpful community, and by and large the writers accept the commentary in the same positive spirit in which it is given.

A winning idea. I like it a lot.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

In Search of Billing Agreement

I’ve sat through one too many discussions about billing lately – specifically what numbers to use when determining how to bill for media. Recently I sat in a room quietly as a publisher waxed on about how agencies and clients don’t get it – that because pubs and ad servers count differently, the numbers will nevber jibe with one another. After awhile I had to say tsomething, and unfortunately I said it in a way that will all but ensure that that publisher will never be a client of C:SF. What I said was:

“You are missing the point. The question is, “Why do pubs count differently?” Target never decided to demand that a dollar be 102 cents, so why do publishers think that the way they count can differ from the way an ad server counts.”

The real issue, as I understand it, is that many pubs count ad views by the number of pages they load and ad calls those pages made, while servers count how many ad calls are answered in the form of a complete display.Hmm. As an advertiser, would I want to pay for impressions based upon how many…impressions the consumer saw, or how many a publisher requested, regardless of whether the consumer was “impressed.” As shocking as it may sound, it just isn’t a tough call for me. ;-)
It’s my understanding that the numbers in an ad server can differ from whether you use the advertiser product versus the publisher product, and that again this is related to calls versus deploys. That seems absurd to me. An advertiser deserves an unbiased third party count, just as does a publisher. No one should have to base their revenue or expense upon unverified internal numbers.

In this case, publishers just need to quit the whining and bill on the third party numbers. The difference in revenue will surely be more than counterbalanced by the time savings from the monthly bickering.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

What role should online play for an offline pub?

I had an interesting discussion with a woman working on defining the mission for a magazine website. She asked not to be named in a post. What I found intriguing about her assignment was her conviction that the site and the pub needed to play truly complementary roles. The mag, long known for long edit stories and in-depth pieces, had never fared well online, and her theory was that fundamentally digital is not conducive to pleasant long form reading. I totally agree with that – I personally find articles that extend onto 7 or eight pages of a website very offputting.

But her dilemma, which has since almost haunted me, was how to ensure that the distinctiveness of the pub be preserved given that long edit was such a hallmark of their “brand.” Well, that’s not quite correct. Depth is part of the brand, and you can’t do depth shallowly. Arr arr.

The initial idea was to make as much of the info in an article visual rather than verbal, but that caused a variety of logistical challenges – it’s a lot of work to visually design information. Writers are also cheaper than designers, apparently, and, in her view,better than designers at investigative journalism.

She is still working on a solution, but I’ve been pondering this challenge for several days and have come up with the possibility of nonlinear presentation of large amounts of content dso people could browse the info in long pieces on their own terms. Not an original idea, and one that would require compartmentalized writing.

But what it really brought to the fore for me is that the standard digital disgust for the slowness of some offline publishers to really embrace online oversimplifies the challenges, to say nothing of the revenue loss in moving from selling pages to X number of thousand impressions of 728s. Inasmuch as I have been one of those people tut-tutting at magazines and newspapers, I apologize. Certainly some new media models seem to be highly effective at attracting and holding an audience, while also delivering on the promise of investigativeness and thorough coverage. I think HuffPost is a great example here.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

eduFire: It's time to democratize learning!

Is nothing sacred? I hope not. Apparently education isn't, at least any longer. The idea behind eduFire is that citizen experts can monetize their knowledge as they teach others eager to learn from the best. Not the best as defined by Berlitz or whomever but rather the best as defined by the eduFire community.

It works like this. Cam to cam live learning. Nuff said. An expert posts his credentials and availability online, and people who need to learn the skills that that citizen expert can pay for live video learning. Naturally there is a ratings system that allows people who avail themselves of an expert’s services to rate their creds and style.

Currently focused exclusively on language learning, eduFire plans to expand their offerings over time to include a broad range of skills – methinks the model will grow based upon what the community actually wants. What a novel approach, eeh?

Anyway, this seems like a pretty cool idea to me. The cam 2 cam aspect means that learning would be available on the users’ terms. eduFire actually has a well defined revenue model as well – they get a cut of the learning fees. Here’s an example of a teacher’s page:



I learned about eduFire on Tech Crunch. Here's their 60 second video pitch:



Anyway, I like this concept -- the idea that the web gives people the opp to share knowledge and make a little dough in the process. Surf on offer and check it out!

Performics Leaves the Goo

Last week Google sold Performics to Publicis the media giant -- which puts Publicis just a bit closer to its stated goal of 25% digital revenue by 2012. I don't think anyone was surprised they sold it -- I mean how could they NOT sell it? But I am sure there are a bunch of companies that are glad they finally sold it on.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to write.

Connect faster to Hyderabad with Fonolo!

Quick. Tell me a three letter acronym that begins and ends with pure evil.

Give up?

It's IVR, or Interactive Voice Response. This is that fabulous technology that lets Air Greyhound and Cattle Car Express, among thousands of other companies, ask you to press or say eight to talk to someone about something. Is there anything more exasperating? No, there isn't.

But the Robin Hoods at Fonolo have created a way to stick it to BancEverywhere and every other company that appreciates your business and asks you to wade through six phone tree levels before it puts you on hold for 18 minutes before it connects you to someone in Hyderabad who has adopted an Anglo Saxon name to make Middle America comfortable with this form of outsourcing.

Hey, it's not "Trevor" or "Brittany"'s fault -- they're just making a living. And there are absolutely excellent Indian and Pakistani and Eastern European customer service companies with sharp as a tack people to answer your questions, when you finally get to talk to them.

Hey, I get it, phone calls are expensive, so companies would prefer to answer your questions with tapes rather than Indian nationals.

But that doesn't make it right.

Fonolo automates the process of navigating phone trees so you get to talk to Hyderabad just that much faster. By transcribing the phone trees of large companies, Fonolo gets you where you need to be in the system faster. Rather than waiting for Brenda or Will to tell you "To speak with an agent, dial 37" in their neutral Midwestern accents, you can just look at the transcribed tree and click to get there but quick.

The system is organized into visual menus that let you deep dial a system instantly.



By using Fonolo, you can also record notes and bring them up if you have to make follow up calls.

From their site:

How does it work?
So how do we do this? We've built revolutionary technology that "spiders" the phone system, much like a web search engine spiders the web. Our system dials companies, navigates their menus and uses a combination of speech recognition, signal processing and human editing to maintain a map of “phone space”.

Since phone menus can change at any time, we continually spider each company to keep the database current. This is a very challenging technical problem (that we've protected with patents) and it yields a data set that has never been built before.

Every time a user requests a “Deep Dial”, we validate the entire path through the phone menu using this same technology. In real-time, we listen to audio from the call and use speech recognition to determine if it’s a match to the information we have stored in our database. Our approach of “node validation” ensures that we always route customers to exactly the right spot in a company’s phone menu.

Big hugs all around for the Robin Hoods and Maid Marians at Fonolo. They deserve the Nobel prize for stickin' it to the man.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Russia Attacking Georgia Internet, Cell Networks!

Wired has reported that Google and Estonia are helping Georgia get out the turth about the Russian invasion, in answer to Russia's permanent cyberattack of Georgian media outlets.

Specifically, Georgia has moved their official communications to Google Blogger. Says the piece:

"In a sense," notes Jim Stogdill, "they must be saying 'we can't keep our sites up, but we don't think [Russian hackers] can take down Blogspot, given Google's much better infrastructure and ability to defend it.'"

...

Meanwhile, Estonia (once the victim of Russian-based hackers) is now hosting Georgia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. And "in a historic first, Estonia is sending cyberdefense advisors to Georgia," Network World observes.

Apparently, Georgian cell networks are also under attack.

Teo Azerbaijani media outlets friendly to Georgia are reporting that they are under attack as well, and there are reports that hackers friendly to the Georgian cause are attacking Russian sites in retaliation.

Wow. The war of the 1s and 0s. It's here. We'll see if Putin can shut down OLDMTA!



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.