We have a 19 year old intern from UCLA in our company this summer. He is pretty interesting because he’s got some great film making skills already under his belt. In discussing how to get us some great consumer video, he thought up the idea (the night before) to go to the iPhone opening in NYC. He got some great footage, edited it and put it up on the same day. Because he was in a self-professed “good mood” he left out the two “criticisms” that he heard that day about the iPhone (the whole thing about not being able to connect because of the problems Apple was having with their system). He even put together his own music.
His presence in the company is a fun reminder that fearlessness will always be a big part of entrepreneurialism. I hope you enjoy his creativeness to real consumer reviewing the iPhone!
We put out a research piece yesterday. Got good enough buzz…ClickZ’s Kate Kaye started talking to us about a related story…I got an email citing our study that flew around a big CPG conglomerate that ended up in the emailbox of one of our advisors…even Forrester cited it as insightful marketing findings…etc. I have been thinking about how we can use research to establish our company’s credibility, and extend our awareness. What I found is that not only do you need to think about what topic you’re going to address, but more importantly, whose purpose does it serve? As a social network, you have the ability to find more out about your members…not just about how much they need your site. By understanding the limits of the kind of research your members are willing to contribute on your platform, you can generate a new income stream, as well as help partners achieve their needs.
Here’s an anecdote that put it into perspective for me: We called up a non-profit trade org in the commerce space to see if they would like to partner with us on any research initiatives. We did our little pitch…unbiased video product reviews uploaded by thousands of people, blah blah blah. Their response: “We are already partnered with [text review company] and have done a ton of research on the power of text reviews. We really don’t need to do any more.”
Fair enough. We knew about that research…we’d actually used it ourselves! But what struck us is that we weren’t thinking about doing research on text reviews, video reviews, or any reviews. We found that research so self-serving that it was unpalatable even to attempt to bring in a third party to help legitimize it. What we wanted to do was ask our community to provide research to benefit other organizations (that are obviously within context of what we do). What we realized was that as a social network, we had a *platform* for research, as opposed to a need to produce research to prove our own point.
So, we just went ahead and asked some questions we thought this organization might be interested in. We asked things like: What impact is the economy having on where and how often you shop? What impact are gas prices having on your summer travel?
We’ve gotten over 300 *video* responses to our few questions. We are creating reels that help amalgamate the thoughts of our members. The trade org we approached loved them, and totally sees us as someone to help them achieve their goals – and not just when they overlap directly with our own interests. Our members love the diversity, and love being asked their opinion on being a consumer. We are able to fulfill needs where everyone involved feels like they’re benefiting.
How can social networks expand beyond advertising as a revenue stream? When the collective or individual knowledge within the network becomes a workable asset that can be tapped into. With the ready participation of the members, there is a ton of value still waiting to get unlocked on social networks that will remain out of the reach of technology and distribution tools.
Dealing with a large, unexpected drop in Google Organic Traffic is a very philosophical time. You go through six of the seven stages of grief: Shock, Denial, Bargaining (with any authority you still believe in who’s higher than Google), Guilt, Anger, Depression are all part of the scene. But as a business person you have to stop just short of the last one – Acceptance.
In March/April, there seemed to have been a reverberation of a Google algorithm change affecting commerce related sites. We identified a number of product/commerce sites that were materially hit…some were scrapers, some were amalgamators, some were creators of original content. They ranged in size to the oldest/biggest to the newest/innovative. We know of sites who lost up to 90% of their Google organic traffic, including this post I found on webmasterworld.
The best we can tell, there have been and continues to be changes that seem to take a stronger position in devaluing duplicate, widely distributed shopping content. Two thoughts on why the algorithm might have changed: 1) Google is trying to surface commerce innovation better by weighing unique content much heavier than before on commerce sites. Sites that use widely affiliated shopping feeds, content amalgamation or scraping other sites may need to work harder to distinguish their value-added service to the bots. 2) Google is trying to provide the best search experience for product price on Google Product Search, so could de-weight other providers whose price algorithms are based on being paid by retailers. (This, of course, only is a greater good if GPS doesn’t rank retailers by getting paid.)
Of the few we’ve spoken to directly, we believe all regained their traffic. In one case it was within a week, in other cases a few weeks. The changes in those sites were basically to: 1) ensure that the bots see, very clearly, any original content that you create 2) that you use minimize your page dependence on content that is duplicated throughout the web, whether it be from API feed partners, or from other methods 3) you keep a closer eye on the bots and how often they are crawling you, lest they find that some of your content is duplicate and not worth looking at 4) you follow Matt Cutts… even his old stuff. Plus he just opened up his Twitter feed. (oh, and so did i!)
So, yes, it was ‘throwing my money away’ as one of my friends said. But I took my mom, my daughter and myself to the Sheraton fundraiser yesterday in the city to see Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton together. I told my daughter that Hillary will not win the nomination, but my daughter said we should support her for trying. That’s the whole reason I’m in love with what Hillary was brave enough to do. She is one of the people who lets my daughter grow up in a world where it’s okay for women to try, and fail, on a grand national scale. That people will still look up to you, thank you, value you, and support you.
We learned another unexpected lesson. My immigrant mother, who is 68, lived in Korea until she moved to Canada at 23 for an arranged marriage to a perfect stranger. Politics and activism is not something she grew up with, especially having lived with Japanese occupation. While slightly intrigued with going to the rally — it seemed only to the extent you’re excited when you see a Law & Order TV star on the New York street. It’s not that special, but adds a unique kind of texture to your day.
At this rally, though, mild curiosity gave way to a unique understanding of the power of American politics. There was an “Ask Hillary” Q&A bowl left out just before the entrance. I asked my daughter what she would like to ask, and she filled out a card that said, “Hannah Hildebolt, Age 9. If you were elected president, what would be the first thing you would change?”
It was a good question…”first” was important, “change” was important, and of course, “if” was the most important. I hoped Hannah felt empowered by the simple act of asking a question as well, since that was most likely as far as it would get.
The Q&A came at the end. Chelsea pulled questions out of the bowl, and the first question was about adoption. But on the second question, Chelsea reached in to the bowl, grabbed a card and read, “This one is from Hannah, age 9….” As the crowd “aww”ed when the age was read, Hannah and my mom went into mild shock. For the next few moments, three generations of women were an intimate part of a US presidential race. A candidate listened to us, and responded to us. To us! To a nine year old! To a 68 year old immigrant who is losing her English because she is watching too much Korean television on cable! It was a microcosm of why our system works, as three generations thirty years apart were swept up into politics, presidents and pride in an instant. All the other citizens around us patted Hannah on the back and congratulated her. It was a powerful experience, partially preserved as a user-gen moment.
So, VCs actually CAN add value! Last night, my cofounder Bill and I attended another DFJ Gotham dinner at Sparks. It may be because we’re now on the ‘inside’ as a portfolio company, but these dinners keep getting better. There were a ton of great friends and connections — I heard over 100 entrepreneurs showed up. Some highlights: Kevin Ryan of AlleyCorp spoke. He always is wildly pro-New York, but last night was especially engaging, articulate and funny. The best line was about how he caved and finally just started telling people that mobile was going to be HUGE (even though he doesn’t believe it) just so people would stop debating him and instead say things like “That Kevin, he GETS it!” I ran into Elizabeth Kressel of CollectorsQuest.com at the coat check. She has a big launch coming up this week. Very excited for her and her team! Our good friend John Foley from Pronto.com was there. We bonded over the new trends in commerce and the economy. One sharp, nice, genuine guy. Ran into Jeffrey Stier of Sector 64 (J Walter Thompson). Always good to have advertising money in the room. But even better when that money is smart and commissioned to try new things. I also saw Steve Rosenbaum, a new friend and visionary of Magnify.net. He told me he was going to be at Digital Hollywood next week at this panel. (Expo’s president Bill Hildebolt will be there, too at a panel called Internet Video, Advertising & Marketing: The Next Generation of Consumer Reach.) There were a lot more folks, but I’ll just let you have to come to the next one to see who’s there. Thanks to Jed, Danny, Ross (my friend from my banking life), Thatcher, Mark, JoAnn and Nadine!
I’m more thrilled to be in the company of these other contributors, but Bill and I got published in the NY Times Freakonomics blog!
The topic is measuring innovation. We both were fans of the Freakonomics book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner when it came out. There was a very personal story attached to the economist Levitt’s motivations that was made it very authentic. It’s along the lines of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point in that they both present digestible, real world examples of very important socio-economic concepts.
Hope you have a chance to check it out. Seth Grodin of Squidoo and The Purple Cow is also a contributor to the blog.
So, we have always gotten little pings from valued advisors…about how our name ExpoTV may be holding us back. Here are some comments: 1) “Expo” doesn’t connote anything 2) “Expo” connotes a B2B 3) “Expo” connotes the world’s fair 4) “TV” anything is bad
My comeback has always been…Amazon was once a rainforest region. Back in ‘the day’, I worked for Oxygen Media, the women’s programming network. The name Oxygen came to Gerry Laybourne in a dream…it was meant to connote a breath of fresh air for women viewers, and a refreshing place to create for show producers. An exec in the marketing group who had the daunting task of owning the word Oxygen for American TV viewers once said to me, “If I could name it ‘Cable-network-for-women-18-to-49′ I would have done that.”
Expo came to my co-founder and me one day while traveling. It meant to us a place where like-minded enthusiasts gather to exchange ideas, see new things, and get to interact — all with stuff, products, things — in an atmosphere of no high-pressured sales people. Like the MacWorld Expo, Web 2.0 Expo, here is even the Waste Expo 2008. These are all people who share a passion for something — mostly products — and feel this is the place they can express themselves and be valued for their enthusiasm.
So, yes, Web 2.0 convention is to have a nonsensical (read: copyrightable) name with two of the following: 1) “Z” sound, which can be an X or a Z 2) end in a vowel 3) have a double o “oo” That includes squidoo, kaboodle, xobni, zoho
So, ExpoTV doesn’t really fit. But we did get the copyright.
clean out your email box. this unbelievably fast simple program will list the largest files on your computer. You will be surprised how much you (vs Microsoft) junks up your hard drive with useless videos/pictures/files, that you might not even know you had. Click here: http://www.delphiforfun.org/Programs/Utilities/list_large_files.htm
Select “Download Executable” even though every fiber in your body feels that you should never click something that says Download Executable.
If you do not know what a file is, DO NOT DELETE IT. I disown you and your kin if you delete files and you don’t know what they are.
Here’s a video from a guy that shows how to use it.
Co-founder and CEO of Expo, video commerce solution based in New York City. Former CFO of Oxygen Media and member of founding team. Entrepreneur, wife, mom.
