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Google now indexes Flash; rejoice or refrain?

Toby Ward — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:01:27 -0500

Flash is a wonderful and cool programming tool for any cool website. Flash can be used to present dynamic content such as video, other multimedia, and interactive tools.

The trouble with Flash, despite its flexible and dynamic presentation, is it has until now been unpopular with anyone looking to get indexed by Google, and virtually all search engines. Until now Google and the other search engines didn’t index Flash content. As of this summer Google is now able to index most Flash (.SWF) files. Web developers rejoice!

Though the celebration in the developer community has been forstalled…

Read the full column and the potential impact on your web development plans: Google now indexes Flash; rejoice or refrain?

No Facebook? No young workers

Julian Mills, VP, Prescient Digital Media — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:20:05 -0500

Aside from an entertaining observation that “French hotel clerks and young American women learn non-verbal communication at the same place,” Mike Schaffner’s recent article in Forbes.com, “Why Companies Need Web 2.0,” provides a brief but helpful overview of Web 2.0 technology and quick thoughts on how to utilize it. Schaffner, who directs IT for the Valve and Measurement Group of Cameron, suggests applications such as:

Have employees use a MySpace- or Facebook-type site to introduce themselves to the company. These can also be a resource to help employees find a potential car-pool mate, someone with a background in product design or specific experience on a product you are thinking about launching.

· Mashups can bring together production and operations data from a variety of sources, allowing a production manager to get a good overview of her operations.

· YouTube-style videos can be used for training or distributing important messages, such as the CEO announcing a new product launch or Joe, the IT help desk guy, receiving an award.

More significant than the “how” of Web 2.0, however, is Schaffner’s observation about the “why”:

The point in all this is that there is a new generation of potential employees and customers that are accustomed to a variety of technologies being available, and they expect to see and use them in the corporate world. Whether and how we deploy these technologies likely will have an impact on our ability to attract new talent to our companies and to find and retain customers.

Give me Facebook or give me a new job

His observation about the expectations of a new generation to have access to this technology is strongly reflected in Prescient Digital Media’s intranet consulting services. Executives, right up the CEO level, are showing increased interest in bringing Web 2.0 technology into their environment in order to meet demands from younger employees.

A recent survey of a 1,000 European office workers reveals that this concern is well founded. Conducted by IT services firm Telindus, the survey found that:

39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.
A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.
The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed

While the varying adoption rate of Web 2.0 technology between consumers and corporations is well documented, the Telindus survey reveals that this delta is becoming a business challenge that organizations must start to take seriously.

If you need to get started on your adoption, ideas from Schaffner and others will assist in planning your strategy, as will Prescient’s Social Media Adoption Checklist .

Content is still king

Toby Ward — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:24:08 -0500

Quick, what is the most read and used website on the planet? It’s not Google, it’s Yahoo!

What is the most read news website on the planet? It’s not Google News, it’s Yahoo! News.

Despite its position as media darling, Google trails is competitor (and advertising partner) Yahoo! in many respects. Not only does Yahoo! beat them on total aggregate traffic, but its news site has more than three times the traffic of Google News (35 million monthly, unique visitors compared to only 11 million). In fact, Google News sits in eighth spot, right behind the lowly Gannett Newspapers and flounders with the lowest growth of all the top 10 news sites.

Perhaps a key reason for Google’s fledgling traffic status when compared to Yahoo! (though they are often rated as the 2^nd most used website on the planet so they’re still doing fine thank you very much) may be the nature of its websites. In short, Google lacks original content. While Yahoo! not only compiles news from other sources, it also creates its own content with expert columnists.

Read my full column on Content Matters: Content is still king

Enterprise 2.0: A must have

Toby Ward — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:27:00 -0500

There are a number of reasons why a corporation or a not-for-profit should adopt Web 2.0 or Enterprise 2.0 tools. Enhancing communications and collaboration with customers and employees is the primary, over-arching driver for most. But there’s another more pressing need: snooze or lose.

“You really have no choice,” says Steve Krol, EVP of Professional Services with Lyons Consulting Group, which has worked with the likes of AON, Porsche and even Playboy. “Social media represents a full-fledge media /communication channel that will evolve with or without you. It’s another accepted form of communications that people want.

According to a web survey by the Software Information & Industry Association, only 41% of participants are using social media, but 35% plan to use it. While the survey is not scientifically significant for all organizations in all industries and is biased towards the audience that participated, the numbers are pretty close to the mark. As it relates to large organizations, the numbers echo other recent study findings from CIO and Forrester. However, the adoption numbers are far smaller in small and medium size organizations.

Read the complete article: Enterprise 2.0: A must have

Blogging case study: SYNNEX Canada

Toby Ward — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 15:55:49 -0500

“'Time Leadership' is my philosphies and musings on leading SYNNEX Canada, a billion dollar wholesaler of computer equipment,” says SYNNEX Canada CEO Jim Estill when describing his blog. “I call it CEO Blog - Time Leadership because of my keen interest in time.”

Recently the author of a book and audio CD called Time Leadership Audio, Estill writes about many subjects as it relates to his work and days. Personal subjects are not taboo on his blog and he in fact talks very little talking about his company (a home page disclaimer reads: “This blog represents my personal views and not those of SYNNEX or any other company”).

Estill’s most recent postings include:

Though he clearly is not a shy leader and communicator Estill decided he needed to communicate more with his constituency – including staff, customers and vendors. Authoring a blog is but one tool Estill has seized in enhancing these communications. Today, he communicates with all of those constituencies and more through his CEO blog that he’s authored since the Spring of 2005 (he presents this case study at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008).

Broken down by percentages, Estill’s CEO blog audience is comprised of:

25% staff
50% suppliers/customers/industry
15% personal development/bloggers
10% friends/contacts

Though the blog is an external one on the public Internet (at http://www.jimestill.com), a principal audience of the blog are SYNNEX employees (up to 25% of the readers). Estill says that the blog is of interest to employees because it “humanizes” him as CEO and provides a forum for 2-way communications (that isn’t always possible given the demands on the time and schedule of a busy CEO).

At the ripe age of 19, Estill started a computer distribution company - EMJ Data “from the trunk of his car” in 1979. The company grew to $350,000,000 in sales and then sold to SYNNEX in Sept 2004. Estill remains as CEO of the company that now sells about a $1 billion in computer products in Canada.

“We sell all the brands you would recognize like HP, Apple, Intel, Lexmark, Acer, Sony, Microsoft etc through computer resellers and retailers from Future shop and Zellers to Bob's computer store.”

Among the reasons Estill cites for starting a blog:

To keep in touch with:
Staff
Vendors
Customers
It will get read by your staff
It helps personalize you
It adds to your influence
Good for laying out strategy
To dispel mystery
To share opinion

Estill dedicates about 2 hours per week to blogging and admits, “It requires commitment and thought.” Though he points to his own success and recommends blogging to others, he does suggest that blogging is not for everyone and shouldn’t be undertaken “if you do not like to write.”

Estill offers a number of tips for blogging:

Have a few “in the can”
Use other people’s material
Use guest bloggers
“Not perfect is good”
“Careful of being too safe, but legal is real”
Keep a paper archive
Learn how to write an article in 20 minutes
Use or cite book reports
Re-use your past material including your blog material
Post by email
Keep posts short (400-500 words) or even a paragraph
Avoid politics, religion and ghost-written articles

Learn more about this case study and other social media / Web 2.0 case studies at the upcoming 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference (hosted by the Advanced Learning Institute) in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008). Three days of Web 2.0 best practices, case studies and learnings for which you can Register Online.

REALATED READING:

The business value of blogs

Blogs waste trillions$$$!!!

Blogging flexes its killer muscles

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Content is the focus of new Academy of Digital Signage

Toby Ward — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:47:12 -0600

It is said that our ability to create Web content vastly outstrips our ability to digest it. Consistency in how content is structured, catalogued and managed is consistently inconsistent, to say the least. The problem also persists in the world of digital signage.

Digital signs are the electronic or digital signs that you find in elevators, in lobby kiosks, or even the billboards in Time Square. It is believed that China already has more than 100,000 of these digital signs.

Cisco® today announced the development of a new qualification program for those creating content for digital signage. The Cisco Academy of Digital Signage (ADS) will offer a specialized curriculum focusing on the three vital areas of digital signage:

• content creation
• content management
• content distribution

Continue reading "Content is the focus of new Academy of Digital Signage" »

Facebook spoof leads to jail and beating

Toby Ward — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 14:47:16 -0600

Setting-up a spoof Facebook site in the name of a celebrity, athlete or politician is a popular past time. For a Moroccan computer engineer and father, his spoof has delivered him to jail -- three years in jail for setting up a Facebook site in the name of a member of the royal Moroccan family.

Fouad Mourtada was sentenced this week on suspicion of stealing the identity of Moroccan King Mohammed VI’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid (see Jail for Facebook spoof Moroccan, BBC).

The prosecution had urged the court to impose a sentence which set an example for others. Mr Mourtada was convicted of "villainous practices linked to the alleged theft of the [prince's] identity".

In his defence, he said he admired the prince, and that the Facebook entry was just intended to be a bit of fun.

A website supporting him published a letter addressed to the prince apologising for the incident.

Earlier this week some Moroccan bloggers went "on strike", suspending their regular blog entries for 24 hours in protest at Mr. Mourtada's detention.

According to the website, he told family members who visited him in jail that he had been blindfolded and beaten unconscious at the time of his arrest.

Apparently using Facebook is dangerous after all. While I can’t imagine such severe punishment in the Western World, there undoubtedly will be some price to pay in severe cases of liable and slander when misusing Facebook and other social media that make it easy to spoof people.

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Web 2.0 fails the grade, according to executives

Toby Ward — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:23:17 -0600

“Collaborative tools are overloading employees and killing productivity—to the tune of $588 billion a year, according to a January study by Basex, a collaboration technologies consulting firm,” writes Brian Watson of CIO Magazine (see Web 2.0: Too Good to Be True?). “It’s the money-saving argument that’s getting pushback lately.”

Web 2.0 does not deliver the ROI, does not live up the hype, and is not even close to being a top priority for senior management (not all, but most).

A CIO Magazines study, Top Technology Priorities for 2008 finds that even techies don’t consider Web 2.0 as a priority. A survey of 250 “top IT executives” from a collection of small, medium and large organizations doesn’t even touch on the issue of Web 2.0.

Continue reading "Web 2.0 fails the grade, according to executives" » (on Content Matters)

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Delivering on the social advertising promise

Julian Mills — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 16:57:23 -0600

I didn’t immediately see the promise of Facebook’s advertising. I don’t just mean the value proposition to Facebook users, I also mean what I saw when looking at Facebook.

At first, I was presented with ads to enroll in online programs at the University of Phoenix and to subject myself to cosmetic surgery. Hard to see how they are customized to my preferences, but maybe there is some trend discernible in the posts to my Funwall that suggest I’m receptive to such offers.

More puzzling was the online poll asking which team is better: the Patriots or the Cowboys. The question of who is the best football team was definitively answered when the Saskatchewan Roughriders won the Grey Cup, a hot topic for many of my friends who—regardless of whether they were living in Ireland, Saskatoon, South Korea or Toronto—made their allegiance very apparent on Facebook.

In other words, lots of discussion about the CFL in my social network, no mention of the NFL. Not exposing me to an NFL poll should have been a no-brainer for a media channel that is supposed to be obviously different to the untargeted ads and pop-ups that intercept a visit to the New York Times and CIO, or the offers that appear beside Premiership fantasy teams.

I came around on the value proposition after reading eMarketer’s recent article “The Promise of Social Network Advertising” . It reports that:

37% of the US adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011.
Currently, 70% of all US teens visit social network sites on a monthly basis.
By 2011, one-half of all online adults and 84% of online teens in the US will use social networking each month.

The value proposition right now is not social network based targeting, it’s eyeballs, which deliver sufficient value that eMarketer projects that worldwide online social network ad spending will grow from $1.2 billion in 2007 to $2.2 billion in 2008, 82%.

And the organization predicts that “if social network marketing delivers on its promise of peer recommendations the flow of advertising dollars will turn into a flood.”

Further reiteration of the value to advertisers of social network advertising came from one of our clients, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. An ad for their excellent blood pressure action tool appeared beside my Funwall one day, which prompted a conversation with our client about the effectiveness of the spend.

It delivered excellent value, she reported. Not only could HSFO target demographics based on user profiles (which is why I saw it, given my plus-35 age and residency in Ontario) they could spend a surprisingly small amount of money to reach me.

The last story made a very positive impression on the London, ON chapter of IABC in a presentation I delivered last week on “Managing Social Media.”

You can download the presentation by following the link below.

Hey! Stop socializing and pay attention to my ad

Julian Mills — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:51:29 -0600

The estimates of how many advertising messages we are exposed to in a day varies considerably, from 400 to over 5,400.

They key phrase here is “exposed to,” not “pay attention to.”

In fact, one-third of the American population between the ages of 17 and 35 say they do just the opposite, according to CRM Magazine, and avoid ads altogether.

The promise of capturing the attention of this highly prized demographic is an important motivator for News Corp’s recent announcement that it will allow advertisers to deliver precision-targeted banner ads based on user-created data through the expansion of MySpace’s advertising platform.

The move offers a clear value proposition to New Corp., which requires a return on its massive investment in MySpace. It will also be appealing to advertisers, who invest an estimated $500 billion on advertising annually, and don’t wish to see that spend reach closed eyeballs.

With the new move from MySpace, advertisers can now pinpoint exactly who they want to reach, based on data collected from users' personal profiles, the groups they join and the messages they post for their friends.

While the value to News Corp. and the advertisers is obvious, it may be a more dubious proposition for the users, suggest some commentators, such as Kathryn Montgomery, a professor at American University and author of the book “Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.”

Montgomery told the New York Times that: “Despite all of the assurances that the industry gave to regulators and the public, it sounds as if their business plans sort of fly in the face of the promises to operate without exploiting young people.

“If you are hanging out with your friends and talking about who you are, what rock stars you like, and so on, you don’t assume that someone is sitting there and taking down every word you’re saying and putting it into some kind algorithm,” she said.

Citing performance increases of more than 300 per cent in terms of things like click-throughs versus ads that are targeted through demographics, Travis Katz, international marketing director for MySpace, tells the Globe & Mail that his company is simply applying the user-generated principles of social media to its advertising approach, especially for smaller advertisers. “It's really the idea of empowering all of these users – small business, independent film makers, musicians – to leverage social networks and do advertising in a way that is efficient, smart and easy to use.”

That’s an extremely valuable proposition for the advertiser. Now let’s see if users agree.

iGoogle vs My Yahoo!

Toby Ward — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:29:43 -0500

Although both leading personalized user portals have been around for years, the two search turned portal turned Augustus Caesars have been upping the ante for your eyeballs.

The ongoing war is being fought with content and Web 2.0 as the delivery mechanism. Both My Yahoo! and iGoogle are personalized portals that allow the users to choose the type of content, layout, design, and tools that appear on the home page.

This spring iGoogle was redesigned and enhanced with new tools including Google gadgets (Google gadgets are interactive mini-applications like personalized, weather, etc. for your desktop – the same gadgets that inspired the gruesome Windows Vista gadgets).

Read teh full article iGoogle vs My Yahoo! (Content Matters).

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The Facebook Revolution

Toby Ward — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 12:32:14 -0500

“A do-everything site with the potential to devour the whole Internet,” according to Christopher Beam of Slate magazine (see How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google).

Facebook started as a college alternative to MySpace, but has exploded in popularity and will soon overtake MySpace as the most visited social networking site. According the ubiquitously accepted Alexa.com website rankings, Facebook is now the 10th most visited site on the Internet – up 6 places since the rankings were last updated (MySpace is unchanged in the 6th spot).

“MySpace, if you ask me, is a spam-infested state of nature,” writes Beam. “The average user page comes with a crapload of embedded music and video players, some seizure-inducing wallpaper, and a bunch of friend requests from "models" who want to "get to know you." Facebook, on the other hand, is much less customizable but also a lot more reassuring. The interface is comfy, sturdy, and attractive without being showy—the kind of social network you'd bring home to Mom.”

Read the complete article The Facebook Revolution (Content Matters).

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Google extending value proposition to health

Julian Mills — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:53:43 -0500

For the increasing number of healthcare consumers who appreciate the value of finding relevant health content, a recent article in the New York Times, Google and Microsoft look to change healthcare, offers hopeful insights into how the tech giants plan to enable people to make smarter choices about their health habits and medical care.

The article also provides helpful insights for those who must construct online strategies for their organizations, especially when bringing an established value proposition to a new market.

Controlling health content

Steve Lohr, the Time reporter, writes that:

The Google and Microsoft initiatives would give much more control to individuals, a trend many health experts see as inevitable. “Patients will ultimately be the stewards of their own information,” said John D. Halamka, a doctor and the chief information officer of the Harvard Medical School.

Already the Web is allowing people to take a more activist approach to health. According to the Harris survey, 58 percent of people who look online for health information discussed what they found with their doctors in the last year.

It is common these days, Dr. Halamka said, for a patient to come in carrying a pile of Web page printouts. “The doctor is becoming a knowledge navigator,” he said. “In the future, health care will be a much more collaborative process between patients and doctors.”

Microsoft and Google are hoping this will lead people to seek more control over their own health records, using tools the companies will provide. Neither company will discuss their plans in detail. But Microsoft’s consumer-oriented effort is scheduled to be announced this fall, while Google’s has been delayed and will probably not be introduced until next year, according to people who have been briefed on the companies’ plans.

A user defined value proposition

While we can only speculate at this stage on Google’s health plans, it’s a safe bet that the company will continue to extend its well established value proposition.

Google’s breakthrough was PageRank, a method of using the link structure of the web, rather than just the characteristics of documents, to provide better search results. Google’s databases maintain billions of pages and employ a proprietary alogorithm to "score" the relevancy of websites for each search query. The highest ranking, or "most relevant" websites for a specific query are listed first in the search results.

But Google does not define its value proposition in terms of technical functionality, it expresses it in terms of user experience, according to Tim Armstrong, its VP of Advertising: “Our search index is the value proposition that we offer to our users. The reason people come back to Google every day … is that we offer them non-paid, relevant information, both quickly and totally objectively.” That simple message, based on a clear understanding of customer experience, has provided the company with its growth opportunities in advertising, he adds.

The Time article also demonstrates that its value proposition is leading the company into health, because Google is the default starting point for most health searches. “And people are increasingly turning to their computers and the Web for health information and advice. A Harris poll, published last month, found that 52 percent of adults sometimes or frequently go to the Web for health information, up from 29 percent in 2001.”