Michael Gracie

Facebook and MySpace are yesterday - Movable Type and Wordpress are today? The next question is: how many bloggers are going to take on the task of trying to build and manage a base of social network constituents? Maintaining an audience is hard enough - getting them to consistently engage at disparate locations (based on their disparate interests) and manage that engagement is going to require a staff (or a more lucrative business model for bloggers than mere advertising). Nevertheless, it seems the technology is on it’s way.

I have little experience with Movable Type (at least in the last couple of years - was once a licensee), but I played with Wordpress MU on several different occasions, and not too long ago. The development community was a bit lighter than the single user install base, but there were plenty of interesting things going on there, including OpenID, user profile management, etc. And I found the ease of use paralleled regular Wordpress (with just a few more kinks).

Further refinement and branding of the technologies should attract some favor, and I suspect there will be a ton of folks tinkering around with the first clean release. However, Drupal has had social capabilities for some time, although I think part of the problem with adoption there was the complexity of the platform (i.e. working around that byzantine API). Nevertheless, whether anyone can build a competitive brand with companies like Ning around is just going to require less hacking and more marketing.

End note: social networking and blogging process seems to be converging and diverging simultaneously. On one hand you have the developments above, yet at the same time you have ABC-list bloggers happily moving their conversations to places like Friendfeed and Twitter (and tiring of that too - funny how actual work can get in the way). And they’ve been allowing “second party” platforms such as Disqus and Intense Debate to collaborate from within on discussion.

At once too many players vying to control over a very limited core audience? Not sure. But I am fairly certain that the incremental benefit of using the myriad of tools (or is that toys?) is far smaller than the amount of time everyone spends on them. Unless you own the platform…or get very very lucky.

Facebook announced yesterday that all your friends are now your product recommendation specialists. Companies are going to set up shop inside the wonderous social network, and you (the users) are going to pitch their products for them. As the WSJ put it:

“As part of Facebook Ads, advertisers will be able to create profile pages for their brands, just as individuals create personal pages filled with their favorite photos, music, videos and hobbies. Consumers can then communicate and interact with companies and brands the ways they do with friends on Facebook.”

Life imitates art. Brands are now your friends. If you say so, dear.

The very nature of Facebook’s success until now has revolved around the ability to control your “inner circle” online. Sure, some folks are just attention whores who will let anyone befriend them in hopes of proving how popular they are (think public relations troops and jokers running for public office, while reminding yourself their popularity is what breeds their paychecks). But the majority hang around Facebook to gossip, get laid, and write on each others’ “Walls.”

Is Coca-Cola going to let Facebook users smear their brand page with poop? Find users a date, or just someone to go drinking with? I don’t think so - therefore users are NOT going to be interacting/communicating with the brands the way they do with their friends. Maybe the company will find you a job…but only if you’re already a word-of-mouth marketing expert.

Money, just not for you

Then there are the micro-economics of the matter, to which Henry Blodget cut to the chase with logical questions:

Will there be no money involved? In which case, people are just going to recommend businesses and brands because they feel like it? Will it be crystal clear what will happen when you sign up as a “fan” of a business? If not, why would you voluntarily risk bombarding your connections with “trusted referral” product pitches if your friends weren’t asking for the information and there was nothing in it for you?

Precisely. Users aren’t going to get paid for endorsing the products. And if they were, their friends would either get sick and tired of it and subsequently “de-friend,” or they would stick their hand out for a cut of the action. The process would become either instant alienation, or a multi-level marketing scheme. Instead, it’ll be boredom, followed by aggravation.

This could turn out bad for brands - maybe worse for their “friends”

The internet is already tough on the unprepared. Serve up a bad product or bad experience and there is a forum or blog someplace ready to pounce. It happens to a lot of companies, sooner or later, but up until now they’ve been relatively safe. Why? Obscurity. Unless the negative critique sits someplace with big search engine juice or gets picked up by a major blog, few hear about it. Not anymore. If you befriend Verizon, decide to buy their products/services, then subsequently rip them to shreds after getting the run around at one of their stores, your Facebook friends hear about it immediately and directly.

This instanteousness will be great for companies and brands that receive uniform thumbs ups from very popular people. Unfortunately, those companies and brands don’t exist, and not everyone on Facebook is Robert Scoble either.

Josh Catone doesn’t think the privacy concerns are a big deal, but his argument is centered on platform usability and stems from previous experience with the introduction of the mini-feeds. Personally, I think all this opt-in, open book interaction with companies could get downright ugly. If you are an everyday Jane or Joe and befriend a brand, get scorched via your wallet and react with the raw deal, you will likely be asked to remove that negative commentary or wait for the lawsuit. And guess what - the company you thought was your friend will know just where to find you. If you say a company wouldn’t do that, you were either born yesterday or you are clinically insane. I’ll even venture to guess that at the first court case, some attorney will try to use the very act of “accepting friendship” as implied approval of the brand - their argument will be you broke that contract.

What is the user community really getting?

Nicholas Carr is “the optimist” - users get “an animated Sprite Sips character to interact with.” That’s fantastic - where do I sign up? Mark Kingdon, CEO of Organic, does one better (without even realizing it):

“It’s a brilliant Trojan Horse.”

I received B’s in history, but I was able to recall this…

When a Trojan Horse arrives, it always has bad intentions.

UPDATE: Already there are legal questions regarding advertising and the use of third parties.

Let’s play a game - it’s called “How Much iPhone Buzz?” Click on this link, and then continually hit the refresh button. Blog chatter stats regarding the iPhone will fluctuate tremendously, but see how many articles you can actually get to come up. My best was +30 million:

A weakness with Google Blog Search? Or a reflection of what is actually going on regarding Apple’s latest product? It would be easy to say “who cares,” but that would be a cop-out - it is obvious a lot of people care. Fanboys care. Steve Jobs cares. Apple shareholders care. I’m firmly in the tactile keyboard (read: Blackberry) camp, and had better things to do than sit in front of an Apple store for a day waiting to buy a consumer product that would make me seem cooler than my friends. But alas, even I care.

Anyone watching, even cursorily, should care. Not about the iPhone, but about the buzz. What lessons can be learned from that?

UPDATE: Besides developing the perfect formula for generating such enormous marketing hype, there might be an opportunity for the contrarian…teaching consumers how to contain their enthusiasm until after the kinks are worked out. Nevertheless, I think the powers that be could have been more transparent regarding service subscribers on small business plans, as well as notifying folks that if they had a fraud alert on their credit report that the online activation process was a no-go.

UPDATE 2: Of course some ran out and bought the iPhone just so they could take it apart for the world. Traffic stats are bound to hit the ceiling there - is that what you call being part of a product launch marketing hype ecosystem? Maybe so.

The Bloglines and Yahoo Groups creator has some strong opinions on dealing with marketing types. I think I’ve made every mistake along those lines, and wish Fletcher had posted this stuff years ago.

My favorite tidbits within:

Do these commandments apply to “public relations” efforts outside of tech company promotion?

Mike Arrington noted that a new Ask.com/Crispin Porter ad campaign billboard is offensive. Unabomber…right.

The whole concept of “messaging” is offensive, IMHO. The assumption is that the consumer is not very smart. That might have been true a few decades ago, but it is changing as fast as the information flow is. Throw in the newspapers and television, and it is pretty easy to be skeptical about almost everything.

PS: I am not going to change what search engine I use because Ted Kazinsky’s name is mentioned along with it. It is about results, and a PR campaign isn’t going to change the results. The “messengers” need to realize that if the results aren’t good the moment you see them, you’re forever a lost customer.

I.e. the glaring gap between January and May of this year…

Shut down one company

The victim was Tot Jot. Be as it may, it was a good learning experience. The biggest lesson…you can’t ignore the “feet on the ground” marketing needed by a business, even if the company is entirely virtual.

I certainly want to thank the potential investors I spoke with, even if they didn’t wind up writing any checks. Good insight can always be had from conversing with professional stakeholders. You may not think that way when they are telling you to stick your concept in the “FU bin” (yes, one actually said that), but reflection will make the message a lot clearer. I’ll also thank several close friends who supported me in the endeavor, as well as those that advised me to pull the plug.

Prepped another company for financing

A great job some folks I know did building something really fantastic. They aren’t really part of the local club, operations are spread all over the place, and they were missing a solid financial arm. We pulled together a years worth of books and records in under a week, and spent the rest of the time sculpting a set of financial projections that, for the couple of months I was involved, were mirroring actuals within a couple of percent of gross revenue and even a bit closer below the margin line. The Excel model was a bit of a pain to share, as it was over 2mb, but heck, it worked.

Now let’s just keep our fingers crossed that they get their cash.

Technology Use

I had a Powerbook on the desk for more than two years. But in my infinite wisdom, I thought I needed an Intel-based MacBook Pro so I’d have easy access to Windows and Linux (through virtualization). Now, I’d be hard pressed to think of a computer I’ve had more problems with - I think Apple has quality control issues resulting from new-found popularity and an obsession with earbuds and living rooms. They’ve jumped though hoops trying and set things straight - things are still not quite right, and I’ve given up. Sad.

Recreation

I missed out on more recreational activities than any one person should in a lifetime while working on Tot Jot. While it was a great mental exercise, a person shouldn’t have to leave a dozen fly rods sitting in their tubes for an entire season. It’s almost inhumane. I promise it won’t happen again.

Stringing together something new

Yes, but I’m not all that keen to start popping off about it. It’s kind of the in-thing to “pre-market” your “pre-alpha” product or service, and by invite-only to boot! Doing this has two effects: 1) it essentially cuts you out of any more worthwhile opportunities that might arise before your idea really gels; and 2) it almost guarantees that if you go down, it’ll be in flames. There used to be a term for this…vaporware, and proliferation of it is usually a pretty good sign that the pot is ‘a boiling over.

What ever happened to the element of surprise? Or do I mean humility?

UPDATE: I’ve got a lot of handwritten notes from the past few months - I’ll use them to fill in some of the blanks, as time permits.

Techdirt points out that security firms have a real predicament on their hands - trying to balance the fear of security issues with the need to sell more software. The problem gets even bigger once software firms cry wolf too many times, then computer users quit worrying about the problems. That ignorance is just begging for a real disaster scenario.

But, are those that project an air of indifference to safety in their own little environs (i.e. Linux and OS X users) part of the lethargic crowd, or do they know something everyone else doesn’t?

Folks are debating whether spammers’ methods are stagnating, so I have to throw my uninformed two-cents in. They are changing, that much is clear, but I think it is a mearly a shift based on market forces.

Spam filters are tightening up everywhere, so:

- You are seeing more plain text messages. And that plain text may be obfuscated, jumbled, or otherwise arranged to look like even more simple text like the alphabet, separated by carriage returns to keep dirty words like “pharma” from getting caught.

- Less use of HTML forms, and any semblance of scripts is disappearing.

- Botnets are being used, and since authorities and ISPs are catching on quickly, why bother with falsifying headers. Just use the email address of the poor infected sucker. The spammer’s tool will get cleaned up soon anyway, and why leave a trace of your method.

I see a return to the simple life for everyday spammers. It is a multi-level marketing game, and the top agents have bigger fish to fry. The kingpins can spend their time constructing sophisticated looking phishing emails tagged with real digital certificates, while the little guy pushes p3nis pills.