I think it surprises most people to learn that Twitter (and Facebook for that matter) are not profitable enterprises. It takes more than extreme growth and steady usage to make money, as explained in this post urging us not to forget lessons learned from the dot-com bubble bursting. Personally I feel that there are opportunities to monetize Twitter than haven’t been full explored. There is money to be made in the spin-off apps such as Twitterrific, which syndicates ads from The Deck in order to provide a free version.

The problem is an antiquated method of procuring profit from eyeballs. Many of the tactics that used to work simply don’t fly in the social media world. I’m not against making money, trust me, but we need to get more creative about it. Word of mouth marketing exists on Twitter. I have purchased a few items that I can trace to friendly tweets. But no one from those companies knows it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web

And it’s a good thing. Since the newspaper industry, much like the music industry, resisted the Internet rather than embracing it, they shot themselves in the foot. Rather than proactively identifying opportunities they missed the boat entirely and are now suffering badly. Reminds me a bit of how Kodak could have OWNED digital photography if they had a bit of vision a few years ago. Instead they are playing catch-up, too.

In the newspaper’s race to play catch-up, they started giving it all away for free since that was the culture. We all grew up on a free Internet (I even remember when we used to think there would be no ads. HA) and that is being threatened in various ways.

The opportunity now is for newspaper’s to collectively demonstrate their worth by asking people to pay for the content they provide. Everything business has to do this, they have just been around so long they took their status and distribution model for granted.

I’ve been a little hard on mainstream media and probably sound like I want social media (blogs, etc.) to replace it. That’s not quite right. I believe they are complementary and both necessary. We need in-depth reporting and someone who can afford to put a correspondent in Iraq. We also need citizen journalists who are not influenced as directly by big business.

Here is a good explanation of why media must charge for web content. I think the key to pricing lies in micropayments, which use new technology to charge a very small amount of money (cents not dollars) for each piece of material you consume rather than paying full price for a newspaper you only read part of anyway. We just need to find a way to make it work on a small, local level.

Read this great article describing some real world ramifications of a future without mainstream journalism from The Atlantic. Kinda scary.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

A particularly great game this year, though I felt that the commercials were lacking. The word “sleazy” was used by some party-goers to describe the GoDaddy ads, but the ends have always seemed to justify the means for Bob Parsons. The Doritos snow globe ad was entertaining and Audi was fun.

What makes the ads really fun is dollar betting. At the beginning of each commercial break, we’ll each throw down a buck and guess what type of ad will come up first (soda, beer, car, etc.). Side bets are common, and at one point someone started betting that there would or wouldn’t be a web site listed in the ad. I was intrigued and took a few of these bets.

I wasn’t as sensitive to it before, but this revealed quite plainly how many large non-dotcom companies didn’t list their web site on the final “info screen” of the commercial. Three that stood out were Toyota, Budweiser, Audi, and Heineken. I’m not alone. Regarding the Audi ad, Michael Lebowitz of Forbes said, “Jason Statham is a good choice. Funny, but doesn’t rely completely on gags. A solid spot, but where’s the URL? Am I going to be asking that all night long? It’s 2009, right?”

My interpretation of this is optimistically to believe that it wasn’t simply a gross oversight from these companies, but that they have determined that people find them through search engines. Certainly with well-known brands like these, the appropriate web site comes up immediately through a Google search.

But at the end of the day, putting your web site URL on as much of your marketing material as possible is the best bet. People have come to expect it, and to an extent are comforted by it. Every ad has a final page of info to leave a lingering impression, or reinforce existing impressions. So why not take up a small piece of this valuable real estate to point people to your web site? Even if they are right about people using search engines to find them (or I’m right about giving them the benefit of the doubt), is it ever worth losing the minority of people who aren’t?

Consider especially that these ads will be posts to thousands, if not millions, of web sites as embedded YouTube videos. The more info about your company that you can put in the video itself the better since all the other pieces might not make their way to the viewed web site.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web

I just had a scary thought. Some day the social networks will be used to mine friend groups for advertising opportunities. Who hangs out with who, where, what they did, what was said. Maybe even what they wore in the photos or videos that are posted. What they were drinking, eating, etc. Facial recognition can be used to tie people to places, let alone the popularity of GPS devices and phones.

We tend to think of advertising as direct and in our face. The good thing about this is that it often makes it easy to discern and ignore. If technology advances to the point of allowing advertisers access to all the private details of our social lives, creative marketers will use this information to target us more directly. While in many cases targeted advertising is good in a consumer culture as it offers services we need, often we find ourselves fending off services we don’t want or need. Worse still is the likelihood of giving into to services that we are convinced in an instant to want but really don’t need at all.

The only way to fight this is to leverage the power of social media and community feedback to establish some safety in numbers. It’s a consumer culture, after all, and as consumers we have the ability to dictate how companies market to us, especially if they’re using our social networks to do it.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web

I must have signed up for Reunion.com years ago, but it was so long ago that they didn’t even have a current email address in my account. I never really used it and recently I’ve discovered why. I received an email from an ex-girlfriend who wanted to connect on the service. No big deal, no hard feelings there, so I clicked the link. When I got into my old account, I found three old letters from about 8 months ago from my piano teacher from high school. Nice to reconnect.

I have to say that the commerce model is indiduous. Nearly every time I click on a link, the site sends me to a page trying to sell me some subscription of additional service. To make it worse, a timer at the top of the page tells you exactly how long you have before this “great deal” expires. I feel sorry for the people who can’t see through that. I probably saw the same “exclusive limited time deal” three times in one session on the site.

With 50 million or so users, they must be doing something right. I wonder how many of those are paying. Considering even the great Facebook doesn’t really have a sustainable revenue model, my criticism here could be off, but I’ll certainly not be using the service voluntarily any time soon.

Even better, when I try to close this window in Safari (or I assume any browser) I get a pop-up window that begs me to try a free premium membership for a year. How desperate are these guys?

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Andy Swindler Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Web

I’ve always found GoDaddy’s marketing tactics to be rather insidious, especially for paying customers. The site is tedious in trying to squeeze in as many ads for additional services as functions, making it typically hard to get around and unintuitive. I just transferred a client domain from them and received the transfer confirmation below. Two things stick out to me. 1) Though it tells me I can approve this transfer immediately, it doesn’t offer any recommendation as to how I might go about that, which will inevitably lead to digging through the web site one more time. 2) In this administrative document I count no fewer than three advertisements in this email alone, trying desperately to hang on to me as a customer. Hats off to Bob Parsons for the obvious success of this business model, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Email message from GoDaddy:

GoDaddy.com, Inc. received notification on 12/8/2008 that you have requested a transfer to another domain name registrar. If you want to proceed with this transfer, you may accept it immediately or do nothing. If you wish to cancel the transfer prior to the auto-complete date, you must do so before 12-Dec-08.

==================================================
If you did NOT request this transfer, you must
log in to your account and cancel it immediately.
==================================================

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for being a GoDaddy.com, Inc. customer — and encourage you to reconsider transferring your domain away. We’re dedicated to providing you with the best value on the Web with a GUARANTEED RENEWAL PRICE, FREE VALUE-ADDED SERVICES, INDUSTRY-BEST 24/7 SUPPORT AND MUCH MORE.

================================================================
WARNING: YOUR FREE SERVICES WILL BE LOST!
Please note that when you transfer, you lose any free services Go Daddy provided with your domain(s). Your free Hosting, Blog, Personalized Email, domain forwarding and masking, email forwarding, etc., will be cancelled upon transfer.
================================================================

To CANCEL the transfer you may be asked to log in to your account. To safely log in:

    1. Go to the GoDaddy.com home page and log in with your username or customer number and password.

    2. In the My Account section, select “Pending Domain Transfers.”

    3. Select the transfer you wish to cancel from the “Pending Domain Transfers” list, and click “Cancel.”

To retrieve your customer number or password hint or to reset your password, click the “Forgot Your Password?” hyperlink in the login area on the home page.

———————————————————–
Special Offer: 10%* OFF! We hope that you’ll keep your domain name with us. But to show you that you’re always welcome as a Go Daddy customer, even if you do transfer your name, we’re offering you 10%* OFF YOUR NEXT ORDER FROM GODADDY.COM. Just use source code gdbb36 in your cart when you check out.
———————————————————–

If you have any questions regarding this issue, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re here 24×7 at:
    - Email: support@godaddy.com
    - Phone: (480) 505-8877
    - Online: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/support.asp?prog_id=GoDaddy&isc=gdbb36

If we do not hear from you by 12-Dec-08, the transfer will proceed.

Sincerely,
Bob Parsons
CEO and Founder
GoDaddy.com

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Web

I noticed today on Facebook that you can now rate ads with a thumbs up/down or just click forward to the next ad. Ostensibly this is feeding the contextual ad machine with even more pointed data about what you and your demographic like to see. For those who are click happy and have the time to contribute, I say why not? At least then you can have some hope of screening out intrusive, annoying, or irrelevant ads from your life.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web