Jeff Chausse
Digital Strategy + Design
Blogging Kills!
Part of me can’t believe that this article wasn’t written for The Onion and accidentally printed in the New York Times instead. But, on a serious note, the lesson to be learned by the supposed “blogging deaths” is that the economics of blogging just really don’t calculate unless it is at least partially done for personal enjoyment. Regardless of what you’re being paid, or how, a “blogger” is really someone who’s looking out 24 hours a day for relevant happenings – you just can’t live that way unless you actually enjoy what you’re blogging about.
This will always be the difference between bloggers and journalists. You can be a journalist, covering things you’re not especially interested in, and still be a reasonably happy (or extremely happy, for that matter) person. You have an assignment, you perform that assignment, and then you have personal time that’s all your own. There’s no down-time for a blogger. No matter how often you actually write, you’re always observing, thinking, analyzing. A true blogger is a blogger 24/7. If you don’t love what you’re blogging about, stop now. It’s not worth the stress.
Windows Live Writer and the Big and Small
Microsoft has a major Web 2.0 PR problem. I’m an avid blogger and I had never heard of Windows Live Writer (which has been in Beta for over a year) until now. It’s out of Beta and I’m using it to write this very post, and I have to say, this is a killer “desktop” blogging tool. I’ve tried out several, and this is by far the best I’ve ever used. Do get it if you’re a Windows-using blogger.
If this program were developed by a small “Web 2.0″ startup, the blogosphere would be all over it, raving and gushing. But it’s by Microsoft, so it’s gone practically unnoticed.
Microsoft is a purveyor of big, expensive software like Windows and Office. Any time they release a small, inexpensive/free, but totally useful program (the very essence of Web 2.0), it just automatically feels like a “throwaway” app. I’m wondering how they can shake this sort of bias. Clearly creating the “Live” brand is a step in the right direction, but I think they have a way to go.
Is Web 2.0 not only about what is developed but who develops it? Spend enough time in the blogosphere and you realize that the conversations around products are often as much about the creators as the products themselves. Cults of personality are built up around single developers or small teams, and people root for the success (or failure) of the product based on these perceptions. This generates significant buzz.
Can a truly successful Web 2.0 app be made by a small anonymous team in a small division of a giant corporation? Just putting that out there… I don’t know the answer.
My Problem with Twitter
I’ve really been trying to get into Twitter… And I’ve actually gotten into the habit of updating it. The problem I have though, is that, unlike with blogs, with Twitter, you know exactly who your audience is. On a blog, you’re putting your thoughts and comments out there into the ether, but there’s a permanence to them, so that even if no one’s reading your post now, they may stumble onto it in the future. You’re broadcasting to an unknown audience over an unlimited timeframe.
With Twitter, you know exactly who’s reading your feed (Hi, Dale), and you know that no one is going to find (or even care about) your posts from months or years ago. I have friends, I have acquaintances, I know people who have a vague interest in what I’m up to, but they don’t happen to use Twitter. So every time I post, I feel a little bit silly knowing that I’m theoretically broadcasting my activities to the world, but in reality, it’s just going out to Dale. (Hi, Dale).
So, if anyone wants to help me feel a little less solipsist, you can find me on Twitter here and start “following” me. And if anyone has advice for successful Twitter-whoring to build a decent follower list, please do let me know…
Jeff’s Mini-Manifesto on “Interactive Marketing”
Now about that manifesto I mentioned a few posts back. Um… writing a manifesto takes a lot of time… Something I definitely don’t have these days. So, I’ll just sum it up in one paragraph, yours for the taking:
If you think you’re doing “interactive marketing,” and what you’ve created doesn’t allow users to interact with one another, think again. Animation and clever interfaces are to 200X what plain HTML was to 199X. The Internet is now entirely about fostering human connections in innovative ways. Creating an interactive marketing site without a social dimension is like running a static text ad on television. Technically you’re using the medium, but you’re completely missing the point.
ShyCast.com – Social Networking for People and Brands
Shycast will be a social networking site specifically designed for brands to interact with individuals (via contests, etc.). Brands have been doing this on MySpace and FaceBook for a while now, but it’s always felt awkward and hackish. This looks like it has a lot of potential. Their #1 concern is getting enough brands – not individuals – to play along. This site fits in fantastically with the Hill, Holliday interactive team’s philosophy of moving brands into the realm of social media. If any big brands out there want someone to lead them into this brave new world, drop me a line. Also, if anyone from ShyCast is reading this, please contact me, I’d love to chat.
YouTube vs. Metacafe – Time to Pay The Piper
Metacafe is a video sharing site, like YouTube, but with a major difference. Content providers are (gasp!) actually paid for uploading popular videos. And we’re not talking chump change, either. They pay out $100 for every 20,000 views. That’s nothing for a video with even the slightest bit of traction. A while ago, I uploaded a funny video my mom sent me to YouTube (mainly just to “bookmark” it), and with zero publicity, it’s had over 6,000 views in less than a year.
Someone on MetaCafe uploaded a video of himself making a nifty origami bird. It’s had over half a million page views and earned “maverick99″ $2,848. If I ever start a video blog, it ain’t gonna be on YouTube.
It’s no secret that YouTube caught on mainly because it was an easy way to find illegally copied copyrighted videos. At that point, the no-payback model was perfectly appropriate. People shouldn’t get paid for piracy. But now that people are actually using YouTube for its intended purpose – distribution of self-made videos, it’s downright exploitative not to start paying the community back (the fact that, Pre-Google, YouTube was earning less than 10 percent of their bandwidth costs alone is not OUR problem).
In today’s entertainment world, small is the new big. Amateurs are the new professionals. PAID consumer generated media is the way of the future. Google had better take heed. YouTube is not invincible. No website is, especially when you don’t respect your community. Just ask Friendster.
Dunkin’ Morning People
Hill, Holliday just launched a quirky little online campaign for our friends at Dunkin’ Donuts called “Morning People”.
Here’s one video:
You can join the fun, too, if you have an an old bassinet & doll to destroy. Just upload your own version to YouTube and tag it “dunkinmorningpeople”.
Blenders, YouTube, and what “new media” really means
Blendtec makes blenders – REALLY POWERFUL blenders. To give people the idea of just how powerful the blenders are, they created a series of clips entitled “Will it Blend?“, and have uploaded them to YouTube. Check out the one where they turn a bag of marbles into a cloud of glass dust.
Many companies like to create online advertising campaigns in virtual walled gardens – keeping all content within their own web site. The assumption being that, by having full control over the “experience”, the marketer can fully absorb you into the carefully crafted aesthetic world of their brand, thus building a stronger connection with you.
This is entirely wrongheaded. You need to bring your advertising to where the people are. Even as the web fragments into more and more millions of web sites, the vast majority of users spend the vast majority of their time on a handful of web sites. “The web” can no longer be treated as a single medium – individual web communities such as YouTube need to be treated as distinct media in and of themselves.
Your own web site is the virtual equivalent of a real-world boutique. Sometimes a boutique is exactly what you want. That’s where people go to buy your stuff. But if what you’re selling is a message, you don’t hang ads up all over the walls of your own little boutique – where people only come in randomly or via expensive promotional efforts – you plaster the walls of the subway, the billboards on the highway – where the people are. Subways are loaded with unpleasant imagery – yet Apple, one of the most image-conscious brands on the planet, has no problem slathering the walls of subway stations with iPod posters.
Refusing to advertise via sites like YouTube and MySpace because you don’t have full control over the experience is as ignorant as not advertising in subways because they are filled with vagrants and overflowing trash barrels, or not advertising on highway billboards because there are smelly smokestacks nearby. You need to advertise where people actually are, even if you don’t fully “own the experience”. People don’t hang out “on the web”, they hang out on specific sites. Be there.
The Essence of YouTube Fully Explained in One Screenshot
Yup, that about sums it up.
The Non-Story of Taxing Virtual Economies
Stories keep cropping up lately about whether or not the government will start somehow taxing “virtual economies” such as those found in Second Life or World of Warcraft.
I think the media is making up a story where there is none, presumably as an excuse to throw around words like “cyberspace” – to impress that segment of the population who still finds such concepts incredibly sexy. To me, this is a completely cut and dried issue, with an obvious answer.
First off, what happens in an imaginary world is just that – imaginary. You’re not taxed on fictional income made playing Monopoly, so being taxed for making imaginary money in World of Warcraft is simply ludicrous.
But what about when real money is exchanged for virtual money? What then? Surely this is an incredibly complicated transaction which bends all rules of economics and tax laws, if not those of space-time itself!
Nonsense.
The person selling virtual goods for real money is a contractor. They have performed a task, for which you are willing to pay money. The seller should get taxed on the income they received, just like any other independent contractor. Period. End of story.
But, you say, they’re paying for “virtual goods”, surely this is a brave new world of completely uncharted territory!
Again, this is utter nonsense. What is a website but a “virtual good”? If I’m paid to design a web site, in the end, my “labor” has merely rearranged electrons on a hard drive somewhere. This is exactly the same service performed by a “loot farmer”.
Now you say, “But a web site has real world value – you can use it to make money!”
Well, not necessarily, but nonetheless, people frequently pay for services which create no “value” in the economic sense. If I hire someone to paint a mural on my wall, have they created “value”? If I pay someone to cut my hair, have they created value? In both of these cases (and in countless others), a person is being paid for performing a service with no intrisic value. They’re simply performing a service that I find worthwhile, even though it generates no obvious real world financial benefit to me.
The only truly unique wrinkle I can find in the world of the “virtual economy” is the incredibly specific case of the virtual worlds’ software developers who can, conceivably, instantly generate in-game resources, and then sell them for real world cash. This would truly be a case of unfair real-world wealth generation. But the game developers don’t do that – to do so would be to devalue the in-game currency (just like in the real world) and make the game less challenging and interesting to players – resulting in fewer players and less bread-and-butter income.
This type of cheat would only be of value to a rogue programmer within a company, not acting for the benefit of the company as a whole, who would presumably face termination for this type of activity. This extremely specific situation hardly makes for a brave new world. Otherwise, if you’re loot farming, or otherwise getting paid to perform a task in a game (just as if you were paid to perform a task using Excel or Powerpoint), you are quite simply an independent contractor, and should be taxed as such. End of story.