The unstoppable power of online communities
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on March 26th, 2007
Tagged as: Gab Gab Gab, Internet Marketing, Long Tail, Social Media
My last post spoke about not going back.
I wrote it very late at night (for me anyway) and it was a groggy description of where my world was heading.
Two days and as many nights have passed and if anything the weight of change described in that post is even heavier today. An old saying goes: When the student is ready, the teacher will come. I like to think of it as the moment your mind is open, clarity comes.
I am beginning to see the power of long tail communities.
I’m not speaking of empty forums set up to discuss the pro’s and con’s of a single idea but communities where the collective knowledge, emotions and feelings of millions of users is shared. In his book “The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand
Wikipedia is of course the flag bearer for this medium, but there is an increasing amount of interest in this means. Take Imagine, a site that infuses the mechanism for people to self-organize get togethers such as the one’s introduced by Meetup.com with the passion of idealistic activists around the world.
Imagine’s vision is deceptively simple:
We want to live in a world where all people can live free and dignified lives, where any person who wants to help another can do so, and where no opportunities for action and collaboration are missed or wasted.
The strength of purpose of this kind of initiative is phenominal, with thousands of people worldwide dreaming, planning, doing what they want for their own communities, shifting power from institutions to people at the edges.
Or even the Personal Democracy Forum 2007 coming soon to New York, starring some of the online world’s biggest movers and shakers that aims to address:
- How is voter-generated content changing election campaigns?
- Why should advocacy groups adapt to the connected age?
- What new technology tools and practices are on the horizon?
- How are new technologies democratizing the political process?
- Which political leaders “get it”?
OK, political motivations aside, what do communities like this offer for business and marketers in particular. The possibilities are endless, once the insights and mindsets of your target audience has been fully understood. Once you accept that the many can be smarter than the few (The Wisdom of Crowds
Look at what happened over on Dell’s Ideastorm site, which uses a combination of blog user interaction with a Digg-style voting mechanism to give public weight to the unthinkable.
Going back to Wikipedia, and to one of my projects in particular, what would happen if you focused the probabilistic systems used to build an unstoppable collection of online reference material on a “massive-scale” towards instruction? Could the web be left in charge of its own education? Could its millions of users teach themselves?
Like the guys at TTeach, I believe they could and am working on a means to prove it.
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Can Adsense really work?
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on March 19th, 2007
Tagged as: Asides, Copywriting, Gab Gab Gab, Internet Marketing, Long Tail, Search Engine Marketing
The thing about Internet Marketing, and by that I mean businesses set up to take advantage of the Internet’s vast, cash-spending audience is that the only ones that actually seem to make any serious money out of it are the ones selling the dream to others.
Like a 21st Century Ponzi scheme on a mass scale, Internet Marketing fuels the promise of easy money by creating 2nd and even 3rd tier affiliate programs, each getting a “cut†out of the diminishing sales that pass their way.
The problem is that if you work at it (and leave your morals at home) you can actually make affiliate marketing turn a handsome profit. Want to know why those “free†pornography picture sites pop up whenever your 9-year old daughter uses Google for her geography project? Affiliate marketing.
It might not be ethical, but I know a man who knows a man that spends all day putting TGP codes into his various sites, generating an effortless $10,000 a month for himself in the process. No brainer that one.
Apart from subscriptions (we’ll get to that) there are times when I can’t help thinking that info products are the only thing outside the adult industry that actually “workâ€.
Take this article from the New York Times. It’s a fascinating piece about the earnings potential of Adsense sites that really puts things into perspective.
The article asks the question:
Let’s say you wanted to build an advertising-supported online media business that took in $50 million a year in revenue. How many users would you have to attract to get there?
To make $50 million with a big staff-produced content-rich guitar site, sponsored by, say, Fender and Gibson, a site would have to generate more than 200 million page views a month, Mr. Liew estimated.
A site aimed at a specific demographic, like teenagers or Asian-Americans, would need to generate 800 million page views a month, by Mr. Liew’s reckoning.
And for a general-interest site, the ad rates go even lower, so traffic would need to be much higher to generate $50 million — about four billion page views a month, which would put it in the top 10 of all the sites on the Web.
I just had a quick look at B5Media’s (falling) Alexa ratings. Remember this is a project based on advertising revenue with, according to its home page: more than 170 blogs, 14 vertical channels and 2.5 million unique visitors a month.
UPDATE: Jeremy Wright from B5Media correctly pointed out that this graph only describes the visitors to theB5Media homepage and doesn’t reflect page views across all their blogs which are of course hosted on separate domains. Mea culpa.
Even with 2.5 million unique visitors per month, how the hell is B5Media making any money? Even if these “unique†visitors subscribe to more than one of B5Media’s blogs, we’re still a long way off that 200 million per month target. I must be missing something somewhere…
So where does that put me and my opinion? Nowhere new really. I have always been a little suspect of single income channels for online businesses as the numbers just don’t add up. But Jeremy Liew’s results certainly illustrate the daunting battle to remain financially viable faced by content-dependent Long Tail businesses.
I personally think that Adsense only works if combined with other sources of income, for example combining advertisements and affiliate programs within a paid subscription product. Sounds far fetched and you’d have to tone it down to avoid being slapped constantly by Google, but there are plenty of successful marketers doing this already. That way there is subscription revenue from one product and advertising and affiliate revenue from another that is seamlessly integrated into the first. What’s more, as the reader base actually wants to be there, integrating the two might also increase advertising CTR.
Just a thought, or at least it was as it’s the model I am developing for Web-Teach, but I’ll write more on this as I go along.
UPDATE 2: Jeremy also mentions that B5Media is planning to abandon Adsense as it isn’t a business model and I can’t say I blame them. Even with an average RPM like theirs you’re always going to need to be stretching it a bit too far to make any sense (sic) out of Adsense.
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Social Linking sparks Adaptive Learning
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on March 18th, 2007
Tagged as: Long Tail, Projects, Shel Israel, Social Media
I am going to be absorbed by two things this week:
The first is something I caught off of Jack Humphrey’s fabulous Friday Traffic Report blog.
Called social power linking, in essence the theory is that Search Engines do not have the monopoly on surfers. By that I mean that surfers don’t start at a SE, visit a site, go back to the SE, visit the next site and so on. Once they’re surfing, they’re probably bouncing from one site straight to the next. I know that’s true for me - I use a non-personalized Google page as my homepage (to get off it ASAP), and only ever go back there as a starting point when my personal search conversation changes.
In between, I’m clicking around a lot, using one site’s links to head off to another, that I probably wouldn’t have found in in SE’s.
Here’s where the “social” aspect comes in and it’s particularly important in blogs, after all we bloggers will link to anyone!
Just like in SEO, Social Power Linking gets you in the way of passing traffic but not just SE traffic generated by a few, carefully guarded keywords. It’s about giving and getting. Being part of communities, throwing up and promoting your feeds within them and getting much more efficient and effective in what Jack describes as “marking your turf”.
There’s quite a lot to pick up on here so I’m going to spread it out over the week ahead and share a little of the experience online every day.
The other thing I’m involved in this week is getting my Web-Teach project into first gear. This is one of those ideas I’ve had in the back of my mind for longer than my pride will allow me to admit, and the reason it’s surfaced now is thanks in no small part to a recommendation by Shel Israel when replying to Tom Shelley of the Economist.
The idea of paying bloggers part of the Adsense (or similar) revenue from their particular page is as simple (and obvious) as it is pure genius and exactly what my Web-Teach project is looking for.
Web-Teach (not its final name BTW) is essentially an adaptive online language teaching project, designed to offer language students access to relevant content (personalized fields of interest) that is also didactically in line with their linguistic needs. A way of giving what they want AND what they need. A kind of B5Media for language-learners if you will.
Trouble is, this idea is so far down the Long Tail it’s mind-bogglingly complex to undertake alone and that’s where Shel’s revenue-sharing idea steps in (if you’re reading this Shel, thanks for that).
So Web-Teach is now almost viable. It’ll have an unglamorous launch but maybe, thanks to the power of social media, a bright future.
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Blogs in the “real” world
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on March 12th, 2007
Tagged as: IT Blogs, Long Tail, Shel Israel
I read an interesting article over on Shel Israel’s blog about how Tom Shelley of the Economist had started mailing him asking for ideas on the direction the Economist should take while developing its own blog.
The post immediately after was one from Shel asking the public how his new book was shaping up.
This product/public interaction got me thinking about how one could or should adopt social media to create and market a new product and whether the need to satisfy public demand stifles brand identity by outsourcing it to the world at large.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m already a self-declared fan of Dell’s IdeaStorm and firmly believe that direct public interaction in shaping a company’s products and strategies is a fascinating development of this new medium.
If blogs are the doyen of long tail social dialogue, then why is it their creators feel they need to satisfy short-tail philosophies to make sure they are accepted?
I think there is a danger of getting wires crossed here.
Blogs, however, live in an entirely different medium. Sure, Technorati has its own Top 10, but this is principally about frequency, not authority. So asking the public how a blog should be isn’t so much helping a blog’s rankings as an attempt to make it an instant, popular hit rather than building it and shaping its inherent values over time.
I think companies should do everything in their power to ensure that their soul is the driving force behind projects as niche-rich as blogs, and champion this above anything else from the outset, no matter what happens.
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Umbria and the long tail of tourism
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on October 16th, 2006
Tagged as: Long Tail, Tuscany, Umbria
Shel gets his baggage sent to Azerbaijan, we get to bask in the fabulous Italian Indian Summer in Umbria.
Umbria is just south of Tuscany, and shares quite a bit with its famous neighbour.
Yet as it isn’t Tuscany, there are far, far fewer tourists (although we did have to wade through thousands of American and German faithful in Assisi).
Which got us thinking. OR me at any rate. If I were looking for somewhere to escape to, somewhere to take my wife when we’ve had enough, I would choose the long tail of Italian tourism every time. It worked this week-end, why wouldn’t it work again?
But as there isn’t an aggregator, a collective, personal view of long tail tourism for runaway parents, maybe we just stumbled on an idea…
Anything to get out of Milan really 
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Common Sense - Everything Never Changes
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on October 8th, 2006
Tagged as: Copywriter, Copywriting, Long Tail, Naked Conversations, Shel Israel, Thomas Paine
In 1776, just months before the signing of The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a strong defence of American Independence from England.
Being English, anti-monarchist writings like this weren’t exactly on my school literature’s top 10 list, meaning that I have only just discovered it’s existence (thanks Nicholas Cage ;-)) .
I find manifestoes , essays or writings like this truly fascinating. In a world sullied by tales of Anthony Hilder’s list of the “Brotherhood of Death”, the thoughts and feelings of historical intellectuals, journalists and religious thinkers is downright purifying.
Being English, anti-monarchist writings like this weren’t exactly on my school literature’s top 10 list, meaning that I have only just discovered it’s existence (thanks Nicholas Cage ;-)) .
I find manifestoes , essays or writings like this truly fascinating. In a world sullied by tales of Anthony Hilder’s list of the “Brotherhood of Death”, the thoughts and feelings of historical intellectuals, journalists and religious thinkers is downright purifying.
Right on the second page of the introduction, the raison d’être of governments is laid out clearly and succinctly, confirming the point I made in my last post:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. (source: ushistory.org)
This pre-dates the Declaration of Independence… I find the contrast between the goals of man to better his own standing and the controls imposed by necessity simply astounding, even more so as these same contrasts exist today.
Modern-day conspiracy theories aside, I still think that blogs are the voice of a new population, the one that has been promised yet never realized ever since the arrival of the Internet.
It is a new ground, populated by pioneers and formed through an overwhelming desire to speak out, declare our individal worth and be heard by others.
Paine continues:
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supercede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue. (source: ushistory.org)
In Naked Conversations, Shel Israel tells of how he shared drinks with John Naisbitt who hit him with the declaration “Everything Never Changes”. As I’m inclined to agree with this concept, it seems to me only a matter of time before the blogosphere evolves to such a degree that colonies will form controlled by regulating bodies.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.
But as the Colony encreases, the public concerns will encrease likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue encreasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number: and that the ELECTED might never form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often: because as the ELECTED might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the ELECTORS in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this, (not on the unmeaning name of king,) depends the STRENGTH OF GOVERNMENT, AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOVERNED. (source: ushistory.org)
Witness b5media. Is this the future of blogging already in the making? Large communities of bloggers all regulated under one “colonized” roof? I can’t wait to see how b5media develops and whether it spearheads
a “controlled revolution” of a “revolutionary media”.
If nothing else I can’t wait to see what’s left for us outsiders once the new powers have signed their own constitution.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, ’tis right. (source: ushistory.org)
Perhaps, though, when the dust settles, there will indeed be a long tail left over for the rest of us. After all if powerful colonoies of self-regulated organizations form, they will more than likely be listed enterprises with a responsability to their shareholders and financial backers to produce profit. That alone must surely limit their scope.
Everything never changes, you say? That won’t stop some people from trying.
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