Disqus - Latest Comments for Scott Karp

Re: Scott Karp on “Developing Algorithms To Prevent Citizen Journalism From Being Gamed: Lessons From Google and Digg”

Scott Karp — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 11:30:08 -0000

Ian,

"What’s interesting is the language that Scott uses: “gaming the system”, “algorithms”, and so on. This is all the language of the computer, not the news room. What he’s really talking about is bias and lies - so can we call it what it is? And preventing it is not about algorithms, it’s about editorial judgement."

Look around you -- look at what's happening on the web. Newspapers no longer control the distribution of news and information. Google does. Algorithms do.

I used the language of computer not the newsroom on purpose -- because the computer is now in control. If newsrooms don't learn that language, they will become obsolete and irrelevant in a networked media world.

"But I’ve never met a publisher who wouldn’t sacrifice 10% quality for a 15% cost saving, and more than a few publishers will see the use of amateur journalists - which is what we’re talking about here - as just this kind of bargain. Heck, I’ve met more than a few publishers who’d throw their mother in as part of the deal."

Have you looked at a newspaper P&L lately? The situation is dire. Do you really think publishers could, if they were so nobly inclined, maintain staffing models the way they were in during the glory days of the newspaper business model?

Rather than impugn the integrity of every newspaper publisher, perhaps you have some constructive suggestions for how they should deal with the rapid decline of their businesses, beyond asking them to maintain things as they were in the past.

The car is heading for the cliff. And the brakes have failed. So you either turn the wheel and head in a new direction, or you complain about the break failure and sit and wait for it to go over the edge.

Re: Are media consumers mostly couch potatoes?

Scott Karp — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 22:21:04 -0000

Mathew, sorry about the skin problem. My point here is not so much about easy of use, but that these Web 2.0 media applications don't solve real problems with media. I don't think the problem is not enough choices -- we've got those by the boatload. The problem is overload, and I'm sorry, but Digg just makes that problem worse. I just went to Digg and found:

- New way to lose weight: stay in the dark!
- Police Computers Clash With Dunkin' Donuts System
- Iceland the First Country to Try Abandoning Gasoline

Now there's a killer app. I mean really, you can't seriously argue that this is useful. Cool, fun, sure. But is this really the best way to spend my limited media time?

Flickr and eBay are successful not based on ease of use, but because they give people an easier way to do something that was hard to do. How does reading Digg solve my information overload problem?

I'm not trying to push to the other extreme -- the Globe and Mail is a great example of middle ground -- I see news I can use presented in a user-friendly way, with the opportunity to comment if the spirit moves me.

Can't promise I won't get under your skin again, but I do enjoy the conversation (I'm geeky that way).

Re: No gatekeepers — just a bunch of turnstiles

Scott Karp — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 20:45:18 -0000

Thanks, Stuart, you took the words right out of my mouth -- much of the discussion around my post is quibbling over terms, because "gatekeeper" offends blogger's libertarian sensibilities.

But it's more than that -- forgive me for saying so, but the counterarguments I've heard, including Mathew's (with all due respect), are completely illogical. Unless the system of online content has devolved into a state of complete entropy, there are gatekeepers by definition. It makes no sense to say that because it's possible for some bloggers to make it through the gate easier than you might think, that proves there are no gatekeepers.

Mathew, you may have made it through the gate, but what about the other 20 million blogs that Technorati has tracked? That's 20 MILLION. They're not all getting attention -- why? Gatekeepers. You may have made it onto tech.memeorandum, but 99.9% of blogs never will. That's a gatekeeper by definition.

I'm not suggesting that the nature of media gatekeeping isn't rapidly changing. My question is what end state are we heading for, and is it a good thing?

If we're going to be clear-minded about the evolution of new media, we need to call a spade a spade.

Re: Google and Orwell? Come on, people

Scott Karp — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 00:09:26 -0000

Mathew, if this is such a "ridiculous" issue, then why are you posting about it? And why did Danny Sullivan post a 6-point "apology" for Google on my site?

It would indeed be inflammatory to suggest that Google is "totally corrupt" -- clearly, it's not, and I didn't say that -- I was "wondering," not declaring. Yes, Google doesn't have "total" power over search, but they do have total power over all the traffic they do control.

When I say that Google appears to be behaving in an Orwellian fashion, it is judgment about their tone, not about fairness, morality, or legality -- at least not yet.

I can only hope you are right in your separating Google's actions from "something really meaningful."

Orwell's lesson (I'm thinking here of Animal Farm, not 1984) is that the slippery slope doesn't begin with "a boot stamping on a human face." Each step in the descent can be written off as benign.

If you can sleep well on this, then sweet dreams. But it's still keeping me awake at night.

Re: Thou dost protest too much, Robert

Scott Karp — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 19:22:45 -0000

Rather than "old-media defender" I prefer "ghost of media past"

Re: Get off the A-list treadmill and just write

Scott Karp — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 10:49:15 -0000

Seth, you are the person I hear most often on the subject of not being heard, which makes you something of a paradox.

That said, I suggest thinking this in terms of media. According to Wikipedia, Media (the plural of medium) is a truncation of the term media of communication. If you're not communicating with anyone, it's not media. So if you don't have an audience, it's not media. Which means if you're blogging because you want to create media, then having an audience DOES matter.

The interesting question is how big an audience do you need?

Re: Some Scott Karps are better than others

Scott Karp — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:38:25 -0000

Mathew, I had intended to put the following disclaimer on my blog, but until now it has not been necessary:

I removed the name of my employer because I was too often being cited as the company's public representative, which I'm not -- it's not a secret where I work, but it's my hope that the views expressed on Publishing 2.0 can stand or fall entirely on their own, and not as a function of my resume. Whatever risk I assume in publishing my view should not be shared by my employer, who has no association with this site. While it may be useful to know that I work in publishing, if you're inclined to agree or disagree with me, you should do so regardless of what my day job is. (I'm no a lawyer, so that's my best shot at a disclaimer.)

So thank you, Mathew, for unnecessarily dragging the Atlantic into this. You of all people should have understood and respected the liabilities involved. Your failing to do so has lead me to lose a lot of respect for you. What's to be gained, really, in beating people with a stick -- even Dave Winer? You can debate without getting personal.

And it's a shame, because it did little to help you in completely misconstruing what I said (but I can always depend on you for that).

You are a master of selective reading and quoting, so let me add in a key piece of what I wrote that doesn't conveniently fit with your rant:

"Or if thatâ€™s too â€œhighbrowâ€? and â€œelitist,â€? Iâ€™d say that USA Todayâ€™s audience can probably generate more value through participation than the random users of some Web 2.0 apps. This is more true as you get more niche â€” Iâ€™d trust BusinessWeek readers on business and Vogue readers on fashion. And Iâ€™d trust the readers of New Media brands, including blogs, that have established a clearly defined audience by providing them with clearly defined value."

My point, which you entirely missed, was about having a clearly DEFINED audience, which Digg and Reddit do not have. It's about knowing who your audience is and how to create value for them. Each of the individual headlines on Digg or Reddit may be very interesting and worthwhile, but TOGETHER they have no coherence, and THAT'S what I was making fun of.

I also said "To be clear, Iâ€™m not saying that the people who RUN the New York Times, USA Today, BusinessWeek, Vogue or any Old Media brands are smarter â€” my critique points to a failing of BOTH Old Media and New Media."

So although it doesn't suit the purposes of your superficial rants to acknowledge it, I think Old Media is plenty wrong (although perhaps not as wrong as you are) and I have no reason to defend it.

So please, get off your egalitarian high-horse -- before someone knocks you off with a stick.

Re: Some Scott Karps are better than others

Scott Karp — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 16:02:17 -0000

Mathew, I wasn't offended, just annoyed because I'm trying to shield my employer from any association with my online activities -- and any potential liability. If you read my About, I do clearly state:

"Publishing 2.0 is published by Scott Karp, who is also the Managing Director of Research and Strategy for a publisher of print and online publications."

I think my place of employment is clouding your perception of me more than it is my thinking. And yes I'm interested in exploring how Old Media can avoid extinction. But that doesn't make me anti-New Media or an Old Media apologist.

In any case, I let me state clearly that I think the future of media is up for grabs -- Old Media has its advantages and New Media has its advantages (one of the main points of my post), but I don't think it has to be a zero sum game.

I'm all for empowering people to define their own niches, but the theme I keep coming back to is that people need do need HELP. You can't just say to people -- here's the power, now go figure it out. Life is difficult and complicated, and while I don't want someone to figure it out for me and shove it down my throat, I could also use some guidance from smart people.

I think there needs to be the right balance between hierarchy and empowerment -- everything I read (including here) seems to suggest that it needs to needs to be one or the other.

But I just don't subscribe to the black and white theory of the universe. There needs to be a BALANCE.

As an aside, I find it fascinating what a lightning rod the term "smart" can be, even among smart people :)

Re: Some Scott Karps are better than others

Scott Karp — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 16:10:31 -0000

Oh, and good job both Mathew and Pete on the "egalitarian high-horse" thing -- that was quite funny :)

Re: The Devil and Daniel Blogger

Scott Karp — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 09:56:49 -0000

Mathew,

How much do you think BusinessWeek got paid to write the article about PayPerPost so that they could use “As Seen in BusinessWeek” on their site. Was it $1,000 — or $10,000 — or $50,000?

Or perhaps Jon Fine received a personal payment — what was it Jon? Cash? A gold watch? A golfing trip?

Now of course I don’t really think BusinessWeek got paid. But the taint is everywhere.

As much as Murphy is entitled to run his business, I'm entitled to say that it's a major pain in the ass and just made the world of "media" a whole lot messier.

Re: The Devil and Daniel Blogger

Scott Karp — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 13:23:46 -0000

Mathew, I forgot to mention -- I think the phrase "knickers in a twist" has definitely jumped the shark.

Re: Fake Steve: Techmeme uber-troll

Scott Karp — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:19:16 -0000

Oh come now, Mathew, give him some credit for this masterful work. The fact that be played the blogosphere like a fiddle is just a sideshow. This is the ultimate satire of Apple and a scathing critique of the Think Secret shutdown. My gut still hurts from laughing so hard. And the Andy Kaufman references -- Swift himself couldn't have done it better.

Re: 2006/04/28/marketing-20-ask-a-ninja/

Scott Karp — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:24:22 -0000

Pete,

"how smart individuals are building global brands with zero marketing dollars, simply by leveraging existing social networks like MySpace, YouTube and the blogosphere itself"

Hmm, that meme sounds awfully familiar, wonder where I've heard that before?

Glad to see you running with it.

Re: 2006/04/28/marketing-20-ask-a-ninja/

Scott Karp — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:52:44 -0000

Pete,

I make no claim to being either the first or only to have said this: http://publishing2.com/2006/04/23/what-if-media...

I guess great minds think alike :)

More important though, your example is a great one -- the implications for the economics of 2.0 are HUGE.

Re: Bloggers Are So Wrong About Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:32:40 -0000

Alex, what is the value of technology adopters who don't know they've adopted the technology? When that 25% using RSS without knowing it come to a site and see an invitation to subscribe to RSS, they are unlikely to do so because they DON'T KNOW that it fits with what they are already doing. Can you think of another technology that was widely adopted without people knowing it?

With all due respect, too many defenses of RSS sound apologist.

Re: Bloggers Are So Wrong About Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 13:04:42 -0000

Alex, first, most sites -- blogs and mainstream media -- still use the term "RSS" -- as they long as they do, it matters a whole lot whether people know what that is!

If six or seven years ago someone handed you a mobile phone and told you it was a "peripatetic communications facilitator," you would have said, huh? Fortunately, the creators of the technology called it a phone. It doesn't matter how the technology works. But it sure matters whether people know what they are using and what it does.

As to the point I was trying to make, I'm suffering from RSS feed overload, and I'm sure many others are too. There has to be some filtering, not just a clarion call to subscribe. That's the risk of RSS' simplicity (which IE7 will only exacerbate) -- if people OD on RSS subscriptions, it will start to feel like clutter and they'll stop using it, much to the detriment of all.

And it's condescending to assume that the majority of people don't know what RSS is and don't care. People are smart enough to notice the term "RSS" on every site -- the Yahoo research proves they don't know what it means, but I bet most of them are wondering.

Re: Bloggers Are So Wrong About Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:24:43 -0000

Elliott, I am by no means advocating against the evolution of new models -- I'm using one right now. I completely agree that Old Media is too unilateral. I just think that as we ride the new media wave we need to be wary of the consequences for the average media consumer. I'm fully in favor of an open marketplace of content -- I just think New Media has not spent enough time thinking about the best way to help consumers navigate it. I'm actually not worried that New Media will find innovative ways to monetize their value -- I just hope the average person will come along for the ride.

Re: Media Should Start With Conversation, Then Synthesis

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:28:00 -0000

Elliott, how is it that BusinessWeek would pocket all the revenues? What about the traffic to all of the blogs participating in the discussion? And so what if BusinessWeek does pocket all the revenue for their synthesis -- as I stated above, "there can and should be intense competition for who does the best synthesis." I don't see the point in shooting down models because they don't seem "fair" -- let that great online free market decide.

Sure Wikipedia proves that New Media can do its own fact checking, but there are limits to that accountability, as we saw with the false biography of John Seigenthaler. Nobody was minding the store and someone's reputation was unfairly dragged through the mud. This was a significant blow to Wikipedia's credibility, and to the whole concept.

Here's a more minor, but still significant example -- you misspelled my name in your comments on one of my other posts, which you cut and pasted (with the same mistake) on another site:

"Seriously considering new models for distribution wouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t, as Scoot suggest, amount to Ã¢â‚¬Å“CommunismÃ¢â‚¬Â but rather create new revenue streams."

Who is going to fix that error? Maybe you don't care, but I do. And your not caring would be a slippery slope for New Media, since in the self-policing model, we're all accountable.

Old Media may be "bureaucratic," but at least they have the courtesy to issue a correction if they spell your name wrong (and are much less likely to do so in the first place).

UPDATE: After writing this I noticed that I had spelled Elliott's name wrong and fixed it.

Re: Bloggers Are So Wrong About Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 15:32:23 -0000

Frank, you may be privy to "the truth," but all I have is my opinion. That's how constructive debate works. You give your opinion. I give mine. And maybe, just maybe, we might get somewhere.

Re: Media Should Start With Conversation, Then Synthesis

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 23:01:23 -0000

Umair, you're right, I am talking about a different level of synthesis -- one that requires a human intelligence to create a narrative. (But tech.memorandum is linking to this post, so I can't complain.)

Elliott, corrections and retractions may not be sufficient accountability, but it's more than we're getting from Web 2.0. It's also about conscience -- as Steve points out, BW may make mistakes, but at least there's someone to feel accountable for the mistakes and to take responsibility for trying to make it better. It's possible that someone will find a way to make collective accountability work, but I worry that in our litigious society that may prove to be a messy prospect. (I hope for my sake you continue to break your resolution.)

I'm intrigued by Steve's notion that some story concepts might be more suited to open sourcing, which could take journalists in a different direction from where they might go if they were writing for print. But I don't think traditional print journalism would hesitate to take on any story idea, so I don't see why open-source journalism should be any different, i.e. more limited.

Re: Bloggers Should Explain Blogging Technology

Scott Karp — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 05:19:51 -0000

Jon, you're right that conversations are not guaranteed. I have had to work very hard to get conversations going here, mostly by doing my part to participate in conversations at other blogs. It's a give and take, but that's what's so enjoyable about it.

I went to the post at your blog, but didn't see an obvious way to post comments -- is that why you have a negative view of conversations?

Blogging technology may get explained, but I'd love to see some examples where the explanation was intended for the average person and not other members of the blogosphere. These may well exist, and I just haven't come across them yet.

Re: Media Should Start With Conversation, Then Synthesis

Scott Karp — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 11:07:45 -0000

I haven't seen Newsvine yet, although I've read the reviews (at some point they need to open it up, or the anticipation is going to turn into annoyance). It sounds like it has a lot of promise, but I still think that seeding the conversation with "traditional stories" is no substitute for a synthesis of an issue. So Newsvine may come to play a critical role in the news cycle, but it doesn't sound like it will be a place where people can come to get perspective.

I'll try to reframe my point about synthesis -- following an issue or news thread by reading across connected or related pieces of content still leaves the individual to figure out what it all means. It's great that we're empowering individuals, but we all have our limits -- we can all use help figuring out what it all means. I hesitate to use this phrase, but we need media entities that serve the function of connecting the dots -- what does it all add up to?

I still maintain that whoever figures that out will be the next Google. Google (search) is the killer app for finding discrete pieces. What's the killer app for finding useful "wholes"?

Re: Bloggers Should Explain Blogging Technology

Scott Karp — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:40:09 -0000

I find it fascinating that every time I've suggested we need to do a better job explaining New Media technology to the average person -- whether it be RSS or trackbacks -- the responses I get take this to mean explaining how the technology works at a highly technical level, i.e. how many lines of code it takes. It's probably my fault for not being clear -- I mean explaining what the technology does. Of course, the average person don't need to understand at a technical level how trackbacks work. But they should understand the difference between a comment and a trackback.

I'm all for having faith that as a "species we excel in creating mental models (be they acurate or not) from experience through pattern recognition" -- but that doesn't mean we can't use a glossary from time to time. Why make it hard for people? What's wrong with going the extra mile to make it easy?

And if putting forth a suggestion with the word "should" is fascist, we all might as well pack up and go home.

Re: New Media Should Distrust Nielsen

Scott Karp — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 05:44:30 -0000

Matt, you're right that mining consumer insights is different from measuring audience, and I'm all for consumer insights. But if the blogosphere and New media want their share of the BIG advertising dollars, then there will have to be some type of audience measurement, because BIG advertisers want ways to justify their spending (whether rational or not). And it's naive to think that VNU/Nielsen has no interest in being in the audience measurement business for New Media. I don't think by any means that Nielsen will impose some old model of audience measurement on Intelliseek/Buzzmetrics -- there may will be real innovation in how audience is measured in New Media. And I think this is a very smart move by Nielsen. My point (which I think you missed) is about control -- Nielsen/VNU has a strong profit motive to find ways to monopolize the data (it's worked well for them up to now). In Old Media, when one company monopolizes the data, the marketplace suffers. New Media may be "difference" -- but we need to work hard to make sure it is, and not just sit back and assume.

Re: Who Are the New Media Gatekeepers?

Scott Karp — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:55:09 -0000

Karsten, I think you hit the nail on the head -- it's all about trust. We choose media brands (blogs included, of course) to be our gatekeepers because we feel we can trust them. The citizen journalism phenomenon has provoked critical questions about how much we can trust Old Media gatekeepers, but the same questions will also apply to New Media. Can we be our own gatekeepers -- will we be able to filter out the trustworthy from the suspect?

(And your English is fantastic -- if you didn't mention it, I wouldn't have noticed.)

Re: How to Fix RSS

Scott Karp — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:26:28 -0000

Scott G, I agree, that is a problem with the word "subscribe." I guess "Subscribe with a Reader (for Free!)" is a little cheesy. Most email newsletters subscriptions are free, though, so maybe that will help. (I fixed the link to the study -- thanks.)

If you follow the link above to Randy Holloway's response, you'll see he dismisses these suggestions because they "sanitize the concept of RSS and remove references to the people and their ideas that have made RSS what it is today." Said like a true techie. The average person doesn't know who invented web browsers or email, but they are very much in their debt -- that's what happens when a technology is adopted by the masses. And is Randy suggesting that RSS remain "unsanitized"? That kind of attitude is what stymies adoption.

ALL - I tried putting some of this Ã¢â‚¬Å“theoryÃ¢â‚¬Â into practice on Publishing 2.0 Ã¢â‚¬â€ see the top of the sidebar. Would welcome any feedback.

Re: How to Fix RSS

Scott Karp — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 15:16:42 -0000

Danny, good points about toptensources and the copyright issues with remixes. I also agree that "Get a reader" is still asking people to change, but at least it tries to make it easier.

What really strikes me, though, is that I didn't say a word about there being a problem with the technology "under the bonnet," but every time I talk about technology, I get defensiveness from techies. I don't know enough to have an opinion on the current state of the underlying technology (RSS vs. Atom, etc.). I'm just trying to be a consumer advocate. The "call it what you like" attitude is precisely why RSS is such a world of confusion for most people.

Let's figure out the right user experience first, then adapt the technology

Re: How to Fix RSS

Scott Karp — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 18:45:37 -0000

Dr. Fran, if it's a such a non-issue, then why all the attention? I could rant about the hole in my sock, but I don't think anyone would care. Look at your blog name -- do you really think you're representative of the average person? We're deeply in Dave Winer's debt for the technology, but with all due respect, it's an open source technology, so the community will rename it whatever it darn well pleases to make it more useful.

Stowe (/Message), how can you say that it's not a "real problem" that no one knows what RSS is? I agree (if you read to the end), that the static nature of RSS is the real problem. But why not go after the low-hanging fruit in the meantime -- like getting all our sites to be more user-friendly?

Re: How to Fix RSS

Scott Karp — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 21:49:02 -0000

Thanks, Edward, I'm quite well aware that the comment feed is still raw XML. The main feed (if you tried it) goes through Feedburner. Once I figure out how to put the comment feed for individual posts through Feedburner or other stylesheet I will -- wasn't obvious how to do it in Feedburner, but would be great if someone could add to the conversation by explaining how.

Thanks for your helpful comment anyway.

Re: How to Fix RSS

Scott Karp — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 22:18:00 -0000

Change starts at home Ã¢â‚¬â€ kudos to Scott Francis for taking action rather than just making excuses. ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a lot of work to do, but why not start with the low-hanging fruit?

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 06:27:14 -0000

Seth, I suppose you could construe this article to be essentially sticking my head in the echo chamber and telling it to quiet down a bit. But I don't think this is an argument against shouting too loud -- I'm saying that whatever approach you take, at least try to make some sense. I realize that if you tell people to quiet down a bit, the response will be, hey, we're having a party here. So instead I tried an appeal to intellectual pride, which I think everyone in the blogosphere has, or else we wouldn't go to the trouble of publishing our thoughts.

And I disagree that you need to "suck up" to the blogger A-List -- I've disagreed openly with a number of those people and still attracted an audience. And sure I've been kicked around, but I haven't just "endured it" -- I've used the back and forth of commenting to try to clarify my position, as I'm doing with you. That doesn't mean I'll convince everyone, but that's not the objective. The objective is to have a real dialogue. And I have managed to change some minds. The blogosphere is no different than anywhere else -- getting your point across is hard work. It's the same in Old Media -- extreme voices get an audience, and the outlets that strive to be truly "fair and balanced" have to fight to maintain their audiences.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:42:53 -0000

Tish, first as to my blogroll, you're right that it is desperate need of revamping.

I'm struck by how this discussion has turned to the issue of getting attention in the blogosphere. I purposely removed references to Atlantic Media from my About page because I was too often being cited as the company's public representative, which I'm not.

That said, the affiliation did get out into the public sphere, but I don't think that's why Stowe linked to me. Most of the attention I've gotten has come from making it on to tech.memeorandum -- I don't really know why I've had a lot of success there, but somehow I doubt they have anything in their algorithm about professional affiliations.

(If anyone else links to this post we might all ride the elevator onto tech.memeorandum -- it's technology, so it doesn't take personally efforts to game it.)

I'm tempted to reduce your reaction and Seth's reaction to "Sloppy analysis? Yeah, it's all those damn A-listers." Perhaps that's unfair, but we should be careful not to let frustration cloud our thinking on an issue.

Re: The Technology Intelligence Gap

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 11:20:18 -0000

Karl, I don't see why we can't pursue the best of both world NOW (the product remix example I gave may not be the best idea, but it's one we could do right now).

And I disagree that Digg and Reddit are examples of the best of both worlds. They rely almost entirely on human intelligence, with a technology enabler -- and they display all the randomness of unfocused human intelligence.

A mashup of Digg and memeorandum -- now that would be interesting.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 13:26:35 -0000

Amy, you're right that the problem is by no means unique to blogging, although the problem does present uniquely in the blogosphere, which foots back to your 10 problems with blogging as a conversation medium.

I'm picking on consumer-created media because if it wants to be a true alternative to old media -- and eventually overtake it -- then it needs to hold itself to higher standards. We need to reward the sharp thinkers in the blogosphere as much as we reward the gossip hounds.

And you're right that all generalizations are straw men, but we need something to aim at.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 13:32:15 -0000

Amy, yeah, it's so like the blogosphere to take constructive criticism as hostile action. I did read your earlier article, which is also great. I think your 10 problems with blogging reads like a prescription for change, i.e. they show a clear path forward -- if only the blogosphere would be more interested in self-improvement.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 13:47:34 -0000

Amy and Tish, before Amy's comment, I had noted with dismay that the two of you may be the only female bloggers who I've crossed paths with.

Do you think there's something inherent to the ego-fest of blogging -- "my post is bigger than you post" -- that makes it so testosterone drenched?

My bias is that much of the "post without thinking" problem I describe above is a Y chromosome issue, as Tish also suggests in her coment.

I'm curious to know what you think.

And you should raise gender blogging issues wherever and whenever -- men need a sledgehammer to raise consciousness.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:48:01 -0000

Oy vey, Mathew, your comment, while welcome as always, is indeed an example of what I'm talking about.

"Think before you post," for example, is hardly an "arbitrary limit" -- I never suggested that you need to think for an hour -- just an extra 10 seconds would hugely improve the state of blogging discourse. Just because you don't have to get dressed to blog doesn't mean you shouldn't take a shower once in a while for the sake of personal cleanliness.

I've had a lot of sharp-edged conversations over beer, but once you get too drunk to make sense, it loses a lot of its appeal.

You're right that we shouldn't push my suggestions to the extreme, but that doesn't mean we should embrace the status quo either.

My kingdom (such as it is) for some middle ground!

I'd say you're trying to hard to be contrarian, but I've already discredited that riposte ;)

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:00:39 -0000

Amy, excellent points, all. I will definitely check out BlogHer. You're probably right that blogging overall skews female, and it's only the grandstanding type of blogging that gets more hyped attention which skews male.

I agree with you about the A-listers -- since I started getting attention through tech.memeorandum, I've spent much of my time learning about what those who responded to my posts are doing themselves on their blogs, which has been much more interesting

It can't be hard to find great blogs written by women since I found your blog easily enough :) Perhaps this is a good first step towards my breaking out of the A-list rut I started in and getting involved in more diverse conversations and heading down more interesting paths.

I give Tish credit for flagging this for me early on, and I will definitely spend more time on it.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:13:19 -0000

Wow, great conversation. Allow me to catch up.

Seth, where to begin? First, I got 330 unique visitors last Saturday when one of my posts hit the top spot on tech.memeorandum, which dwarfed all other sources of traffic combined, so it feels a lot like a cause to me. I wrote about a topic on a lot of people's minds, the problem with RSS, picking up on a previous post by Paul Kedrosky, who then linked to my post after I emailed him (no mention of my affiliation!), and wham, there it was on tech.mememorandum, where it stayed for most of the day.

Maybe I've had an easier time getting attention because of my professional affiliation, but you seem to be suggesting that writing interesting posts that hit on key issues has little to do with it. The vast majority of the links to my site refer to me as Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 -- has the quality of what I've written done nothing to help build that brand? And these links were mostly from people I suspect couldn't care less where I work or have ever even heard of it (many were outside the US). Also, according to my site stats, most people don't check out my About page (which no longer lists my affiliation). So I don't think you've disproven the converse of your argument, which is that those who are not getting enough attention don't have good enough material (or professional looking sites, or a host of other factors) -- I DON'T believe that's true. As you may have gathered, I'm skeptical of any argument pushed to the extreme. As with so many things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle (although no one seems particularly satisfied when I conclude that).

Mathew, thank you for engaging in this debate, because you make it interesting :) I completely agree that taking my suggestions to the extreme would take all the spontaneity (and fun) out of blogging. I'm not suggesting "rigorous pressure testing" or overly rigorous anything -- I made it clear that my suggestions were aspirations, not limits to be stringently applied. Frankly, I'm surprised that there's been no response to my conclusion, which is that if blogging is to be a serious alternative to Old Media, then it needs to hold itself to higher standards -- if blogging is a just a hobby, then sure we can just be spontaneous. But if we're "media" then we have a certain degree of responsibility. I believe in the notion of citizen journalism, but "conversation" feels a little bit too casual as a paradigm for something so important. (Sorry to get so serious, but I think it's a serious issue.)

Tish, it's fascinating and enlightening to understand what's going on beyond my own experience, so thank you. One thing you said really jumped out at me, that you and Amy "are but a handful of women who are interested in this sort of commentary and debate (who arenÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t already in media and who are bloggers)" Why is this so?

All, thank you for this fascinating and multi-faceted discussion. I'm enjoying this tremendously.

Re: The Technology Intelligence Gap

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 21:35:21 -0000

Karl, I think there's huge promise in a technology-enhanced human editing function, which is where I was trying to go in the original post. I think that's one way that all of the editorial talent being laid off from Old Media can find a new outlet. And thanks for pointing out Dave Winer's site -- I hope someone hurries up and rolls out these reading lists and other cool apps before too many people tune out RSS. (Also loved his Browse. Search. Subscribe.)

David, thanks for pointing out feedblendr.com -- only problem is there's not enough hours in the day to experiment with all these new apps.

Re: Blogging to a Higher Standard

Scott Karp — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 06:59:54 -0000

Seth, are you thinking of the tech.memeorandum listing where your blog is listed as one of the commenters? I'm talking about when your blog post is the main listing: http://tech.memeorandum.com/060121/p22#a060121p22. Are you really dubious that this type of exposure can generate that much traffic? I'm surprised I didn't get more? Paul's site generated some traffic, but only a fraction of what I got from tech.memeorandum. The fact that you're trying to explain this away by suggesting I can't read my stats logs is telling.

And what do you mean that it's clear from my site that I'm a media person? Is it the appearance? Or that I sound on rare occasion like I might know what I'm talking about? Because I don't see why I have to work for a media company for my site to look like a media site -- I just have to know something about media. I made a conscious decision not to title my site Scott's Random Thoughts on Random Stuff (like so many sites I've seen). I purposely chose a clean, uncluttered layout. So much of this is how you come across -- if you want to be taken seriously you have to look the part. But I think there are many ways to do that.

You're absolutely right that accuracy is not enough -- who wants to read something that's unappealing. But given the blogosphere's ability to self-correct, I don't agree that appealing but inaccurate is going to be any more successful than accurate but unappealing. And I think you're being way too dismissive of the A-list, suggesting that much of what they do is just the "standard name-dropping conference-attending post." Sure, there's plenty of that, and while I don't think the A-list is MORE likely to be insightful than people on the Z-list, I don't think they are necessarily LESS likely.

I'm curious -- since you seem to think the system is flawed, how should it work?

Re: News 2.0 My Mother Can Use

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:03:31 -0000

My Mom responds:

Karl -
Philly Future www.phillyfuture.org is a very nice site. Easy on the eyes and very easy to understand. Good labels. Keep going. I have added it my Bloglines Feed so people won't accuse me of having favorites. What's a mother to do?

Information Architect Tokyo -
Even though we have only just met you seem to know an awful lot about me. Blogger Mom reads the Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Glove and sometimes the LA Times on-line on a daily basis.

It is not harder to keep up with change it is just that one has seen so much technology come and go very quickly that something has to really peak your interest. When you are young it is all so new and exciting.

Just like any age group us old guys come in many different sizes and shapes. Many businesses have old guys as decision makers.

Re: News 2.0 My Mother Can Use

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:10:43 -0000

Scott responds:

Information Architect Tokyo -
I agree that you should go after big audiences online -- but Boomers ARE a big audience online. Why let the Old Media brands keep them without any competition?

Paul -
That's why I keep pounding the table about brands. Right now, the Old Media brands dominate -- but that doesn't mean new brands can't rise up to take their place. There's an opportunity for different brands to go after different age groups with different offerings, since there is such a stark difference in their media habits and preferences.

Web 2.0 companies should be careful of one-size-fits-all solutions.

Re: Who Will Fund the Greater Good?

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:00:39 -0000

David, music is the extreme example, with Apple, satellite radio, and streaming music online stepping in to bust the cartel of record companies and Clear Channel.

But when it comes to news -- and especially journalism -- things get a lot more complicated.

Re: News 2.0 My Mother Can Use

Scott Karp — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:52:56 -0000

Karl, so you think the wisest move for Web 2.0 is to ignore everyone over thirty and let Microsoft and other Old brands have them without a fight? Why does it have to be a one-size-fits-all solution? Why canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t there be one set of solution providers for my mother and another set for my 20-year-old cousin? One group is actively Ã¢â‚¬Å“disgruntledÃ¢â‚¬Â with Old Media while the other group has spent too much of their life with it to give it up so easily.

Your comment here demonstrates that my post is not a straw man (one of the most widely misused terms in the blogosphere) but in fact the position you and many others hold Ã¢â‚¬â€œ youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re completely dismissing the notion that some Web 2.0 companies ought to focus on the needs of non-tech-savvy, non-digital demographics. ThereÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a huge branding opportunity for someone to woo the MSN, Web 1.0 crowd, but itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s still a completely green field.

ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s going to take a generation for those who grew up with digital media to become the majority of the media consuming population. Are you willing to wait that long?

Re: News 2.0 My Mother Can Use

Scott Karp — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 04:41:56 -0000

Karl, first a response from my Mom:

"Does Karl know the baby boomers have already turned off the 6:00 news and if he ever rode in the subway he would realize people do not read the newspaper any more either. How about all the activists who learned to use all the neat web tools the campaigns used. A lot of them were baby boomers."

Your straw man is to lump everybody into one two categories -- either a "a few million people who are looking for an alternative" or "Joe Sixpacks and technophobes." Isn't there anyone in the middle who is being underserved by both Old Media and Web 2.0?

My Mother, for example, is not a technophobe, but might be very interested in an alternative that doesn't push the envelope quite as much as News 2.0 is trying to right now. She like both Bayosphere and Phillyfuture.

The Baby Boom generation IS online. So if I was a VC, I would be salivating over how to steal them away from MSN and AOL.

Re: News 2.0 My Mother Can Use

Scott Karp — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 15:55:51 -0000

Karl, you're right about the dangers of extrapolating from our own experience -- but we're all representative of some group -- trick is knowing which one and how big it is.

I feel like we're missing a nuance here -- maybe it's that there's three groups:

1. People who are deeply entrenched in Old Media and won't change unless all of it goes out of business.

2. People who either grew up on digital media and/or are thirsty for alternatives (like you), who will adopt early and often.

3. People like my mother, who are somewhat on the fence -- she can be shaken loose from Old Media, but it requires some effort.

I think perhaps you may not know enough Boomers if you think being on "online" is still just limited to checking email. Where do you think these sites are getting all their unique visitors from?

As to VS investment, how much did Google have to advertise to convince everyone and their dog to change how they search online? If you build a solution the REALLY solves people's problems, it will sell itself.

Re: Bubble 2.0 Is a Bubble in Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 07:35:17 -0000

Paul -- Wow, I've heard a lot of "dismiss it out of hand" arguments, but saying that the difference between information overload today and that of 25 years ago only makes you yawn -- that really takes the cake. I'll be very curious to see how many takers you get on that one.

I think "attention" is exactly the right word. The difference between now and 25 years ago is that the geometric growth in media has fragmented attention to the point where its getting increasingly difficult to make money from it. Sure, there was info overload 25 years ago, but there were still sufficiently few choices that the economics worked.

I agree that Umair does some funky things with words -- but his analysis is spot on. Can you address the substance of his analysis other than by quibbling with his terms?

Re: Bubble 2.0 Is a Bubble in Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 09:51:03 -0000

See my response to Paul's comments and others in this discussion in the Update above.

Re: Bubble 2.0 Is a Bubble in Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 15:54:12 -0000

Anonymous, IF the bubble pops it will be because no one figures out how to "manage the overabundance of content," leading to "chaotic and haphazard" consumption. I can't quantify how big the risk is, but it's there. I'm hoping we'll dodge the bullet -- this is a call to action.

You're right, I did have a personal epiphany -- many others on the "edge" are having the same epiphany. There key issue, as I explained in the update above, is whether the virus will spread to the center.

Joakim, good point about the popularity of some music -- but the iTunes revolution is still in its early stages -- it still sells the same albums that line the shelves of Walmart. Time will tell whether blockbusters in music remain tenable -- Jon Fine has some interesting thoughts on this.

Re: A Challenge to Citizen Journalism

Scott Karp — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:08:33 -0000

Jim, if people will pay for the content itself -- that is the purest business model, which leaves you beholden to no one except your consumers. Much will depend on whether the "grassroots" approach can works as well for "cash on the barrel head" sales as it does for content creation and distribution.

Steve, thanks for the example of Chris Allbritton -- if anyone else has other examples, I'd love to learn more about them.

That Chris had to raise money through his blog to be able to risk his life in Iraq is exactly my concern -- "with no back-up, no bulletproof vest and no embedding." as Chris says on his blog -- independent voices need and deserve institutional support, whether we reform the old institutions and/or create new ones.

Re: A Challenge to Citizen Journalism

Scott Karp — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 08:13:03 -0000

Anyone reading this who has a blog Ã¢â‚¬â€ PLEASE shine your spotlight on the plight of PhillyFuture.org and show the power of the blogosphere!

Re: Too Much Media

Scott Karp — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:16:58 -0000

Ryan, you may be right according to one or more of the 1,000+ definitions of "Web 2.0" but the horse is already out of the barn. When the market hypes a notion like Web 2.0 without a clear definition, everything gets caught in the net.

Re: A Challenge to Citizen Journalism

Scott Karp — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:30:02 -0000

Mathew, first of all, I think the blogosphere should have a moratorium on the use of the term "straw man" as the set up every "here's why I disagree with you" post. It's way overused and misused as a rhetorical device. (But that's a separate issue.)

I don't attribute the "sledgehammer" approach to even a fraction of the citizen journalism movement. As I said in my update above, most everyone is on the same page.

With all due respect to Jeff -- I did say I thought he was half right -- he uses the term "dinosaur" to describe old media. Dinosaurs symbolize the path to extinction. If what he has in mind is "reinvigoration" and "extension," that's not something I've picked up in reading what he's written.

Perhaps I need to read him and others more carefully. And/or they need to choose their language more carefully.

Re: RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites” Feature

Scott Karp — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:15:04 -0000

BriaN, I didn't say RSS wasn't an improvement over favorites -- you make a good point that RSS cuts through clutter for each source -- it's just not all that exciting an improvement. It still doesn't solve the problem of 1,000 (or 1,000,000) sources.

And I don't think your weather and financial analogies hold up.

The reason weather works so well on a portal is you don't have to click to a new screen to see it. In IE7, each RSS feed is a new screen.

And RSS in IE7 is still like having to click on 5 separate tabs to see transactions by bank, rather than see them all on one spreadsheet. And I know that all of my bank transactions are relevant, while I don't know that every item in each of my 100 feeds is relevant.

Until I can get a single feed that has only exactly what I want, RSS will be nothing more than a slight incremental improvement in an overwhelming world of media.

(I have an RSS feed on this site because it's the best I can do at the moment -- if I'm critical of RSS, it doesn't mean all or nothing -- it's about striving for improvement, not refusing to work with what you have.)

Re: RSS Is a Glorified “Favorites” Feature

Scott Karp — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:32:21 -0000

J.D., great point about hosting. That's what I dislike about FeedDemon -- it's a powerful application, but I hate having to turn it on.

And then it dings at me, like Outlook -- that space at the bottom right of my screen is hyperactive enough from email. "What I want, when I want it" does not mean notifying me every time there's "something NEW." It's as if I should say "WOW! A new blog post -- let me drop everything and go see!"

Re: Focus on the User, Not the Technology

Scott Karp — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 06:17:44 -0000

Mathew, I think tagging is the key -- without tags there's no way to pull exactly what I want out of the mess of feeds, which is still just static packages. For all the talk of "liberation" with RSS, I still have to take the whole feed, even if 80% of it is useless to me.

Re: Google Orwellian

Scott Karp — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 23:01:16 -0000

Mathew, why does an entity have to be government to be Orwellian? Google is a private, company and it can do whatever it wants with its service (within the law), but it does so under the rubric of "righteous" search results -- it's Google's self-righteousness that bothers me more than anything else. The question of switching is completely missing the point -- of course Google's position is neither permanent nor guaranteed. But in the present moment, it is dominant, and when it cracks down on a BMW, it does real damage to their business. From a free market standpoint, there's nothing wrong with that -- but if you pretend to righteous, you will be judged by that standard. And the type of power that Google as a private company now wields over the business dynamics of other companies is, unless I'm missing something, unprecedented. So if we shy away from calling Google Orwellian, we close our eyes -- maybe there's nothing to see, but if we don't look, we'll never know.

I'm glad you sleep well at night confident that Google would not seek retribution against a website that expresses a dissenting opinion -- why would they do that? -- because they can -- that's how power corrupts. Maybe you're also confident that the government is only wiretapping conversations with terrorists -- it's only by trusting in power that we put ourselves at risk of subjugation. If that's over-the-top, it's only the because the particular circumstances pan out that way, not because the principle behind the inquiry is misguided.

Re: Google Orwellian

Scott Karp — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 23:28:06 -0000

Danny, my response to you as the same as to Mathew -- I'm not suggesting there is anything immoral or illegal or unfair about what Google did to BMW -- as long as they comply with the law, they can do whatever they please, and people can switch search engines if they don't like it.

What raises my red flag is the tone that Google takes in justifying their actions. (Maybe it's the tone that I took that prompted you to write a 6+ point apology for Google -- if I was so off the mark with this post, it would hardly be worth your time -- and it's my blog, so I can say whatever I want, right? At least I don't turn of my comments to block the flood of people telling me I'm wrong.)

We may both agree that what BMW did was an "unfair" practice, but Google's ability to arbitrate "fair practices" with such impact is a new phenomenon in the history of information flow and marketing activities, and I don't think it can be given too much scrutiny.

That Yahoo and MSN have competing search engines has no bearing on an assessment of Google's behavior or on the current measure of their power. If I decided to block BMW from AdSense and all Chinese IP addresses from accessing my website, do you think anyone would care? No, and why -- because my site doesn't matter -- it's insignificant in the grand scheme of information flow on the Internet. But the same is not true of Google.

What Google does matters a lot -- which is not to say we should regulate it or make it illegal -- they may not have crossed that line yet. But if our default posture is to give them a free pass, what's to stop them from crossing that line?

Orwell's lesson is that you slide down the slope faster than you think.

Re: Google Orwellian

Scott Karp — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:55:39 -0000

Danny, most important -- I wasn't referring to you turning off comments, I was referring to Matt Cutts on his blog post about BMW.

As for my suggestion that you were being apologist, it strikes me that all this flap is about tone and appearance -- all of your points were both valid and informative. And I appreciate your "let me try to shed light on the issue" response vs. Jeremy Zawodny "You're stupid, shut up" response.

I understand the problem of bait and switch that Google is battling, but to compare what BMW did to purveyors of child pornography is stretching it a bit.

I would love to learn more about the history of this debate -- you're right that I'm obligated to do so, having waded in.

If raising hackles leads more people like you to shed light, I can't see how that's not a good thing.

Re: How Powerful Does Google Want to Be?

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 06:37:19 -0000

Chris, "total global domination" -- your words, not mine -- had I used those words I'm sure I would agree with your characterization of "paranoid." You may well be right the Google will be displaced by a new techology -- I'm observing the trend, NOT jumping to conclusions about where it will end (although it makes it much easier for people to rant when they charicature the argument that way.)

Speaking of which, Seth, I think "paradoy" is the operative word in your comment -- it takes so much less intellect to make fun than it does to engage and discuss, doesn't it?

Eric, thank you for the substantive response. You're right that Google hasn't taken any of Microsoft's hostile and anti-competitive practices, but that may not be the only effective path. And you're right that it's very possible to imagine Google as a has been -- -again, it not a "propechy," just some qualitative observations on a trend.

Re: Google Chases the Declining Print Ad Business

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 15:25:45 -0000

Nathan, if you get the ad for $30, there will be plenty of "loss" but not a whole lot of "luck" -- I can't imagine that a print ad would be an efficient or effective means of driving traffic to your blog or any online destination -- or that it would be efficient or effective in any of the ways that Google's online ads are both efficient and effective.

That said, I think you're experiment is certainly worthwhile for keeping an eye on this whole thing -- what I found comical is that I could imagine you getting the ad for $30 -- and that it still wouldn't be worth it! I'd tell your readers to save their money. You've probably "overbid" for the media value as it is.

Re: Blogger Defensiveness

Scott Karp — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 19:24:03 -0000

Brian, I did get your email and checked out your site -- I thought the "heck" in your What the Heck Is RSS was a little abrasive -- and I see now from your comment that it fits with a pattern. I was going to respond to your email, but I guess now I don't have to. Really, what do you gain from nastiness? The world is nasty enough.

Re: Blogger Defensiveness

Scott Karp — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 19:54:02 -0000

Brian, I will post here the email I just sent you:

No, I really would have linked to it -- and I would have responded to your email -- I injured myself a couple of days ago (that do you emailed me, actually), so I've fallen behind. Do people only get 2 days before you assume they have ignored you?

And yes, I personally find "heck" off-putting -- if that makes me an outlier online, then so be it.

I have struggled with the whole attention thing, but I've never resorted to nastiness. That said, I have a number of online friendships that started out rocky -- life is too short to hold grudges.

That last part was an olive branch, in case you didn' recognize it. I guess you're more interested in venting frustration than in making friends -- were you just setting me up with your email?

If I was so craven as you paint me, I would have just deleted your comment -- although I don't see how anyone can gain anything from reading this exchange, other than lessons in what not to do.

Re: Blogger Defensiveness

Scott Karp — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 21:16:16 -0000

Okay, Brian, let's call a truce. I should have responded to your email sooner (even after falling down a flight of stairs -- we all trip on occasion). As I've said before, I blog about my aspirations, not what I'm always able to achieve. But we have to keep striving.

I'll quote from one of your posts:

...some people are trying to be Ã¢â‚¬Å“blog snarkyÃ¢â‚¬Â when itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s not really who they are offline.

TheyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re not naturally sarcastic and cynical, theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re just pretending to be. So they end up saying things online they would never say to a personÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s face, thereby dragging down the level of discourse just a bit more.

Had we met first in person, I'm sure we both would have been much nicer to each other. So when we meet again, let's be nice and have an interesting conversation.

Re: Is the Long Tail a Lit Fuse?

Scott Karp — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:09:40 -0000

Matt,

Thank you for taking the time to pull out your calculator and drill down into the numbers -- I find this kind of disciplined analysis all too rare.

I like your terms "Peak of Inflated Expectation" and "Trough of Dissolutionment" (or perhaps it's the Trough of Disillusionment). I see potentially two tiers of bloggers -- the handful who find a way to do it professionally (i.e. make a living at it) and then the second who find a way to rationalize the time either as a hobby or as an adjunct to their day job.

And yes, it will be very interesting to watch how it all plays out.

Re: Is the Long Tail a Lit Fuse?

Scott Karp — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:46:34 -0000

Ted, I don't think the publishing revolution is dead -- quite the contrary. I think the shrinking of the "amateur crap" end of the tail (I might have chosen kinder words) will only increase the value of the "millions of words of good writing being produced."

And I don't think My Space has anything to do with blogs -- at least not blogs that see themselves as publishers. My Space is about socializing online.

Re: Bloggers Need a “Chinese Wall”

Scott Karp — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 08:02:11 -0000

Nick - you're right that the AdSense algorithm doesn't care what you write -- but the truth is most advertisers in any medium don't care what you. Sure, if you write something about a company that appears unfair, that company may raise hackles, but few companies will use their advertising spending as a pressure mechanism.

The issue is perceived conflict -- I could say that your choice of Google AdSense over Yahoo's Publisher's Network or BlogAds or any other advertiser shows a "preference" for Google. Of course, I know that's not true. But the issue is there.

So you're right that AdSense feels like an exception -- but we need to give some thought to the rule.

Re: Blogging and the Elusive Mass Audience

Scott Karp — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:58:47 -0000

Brian, so you think the blog readership stats are being artificially suppressed because people don't know they're reading blogs? I'd give people a little more credit than that -- same as I would users of My Yahoo.

When this phase of the revolution passes, do you plan to change the name of your blog?

Re: Rebooting My Brain

Scott Karp — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:22:15 -0000

Paul and Seth, I'd respond to you, but I'm determined not to fall off the wagon.

Re: Battle of the Media Brands

Scott Karp — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:07:11 -0000

Seth, don't you think that's overly reductive, overly cynical, or both? Which isn't to say there's no truth to what you say, but it's rather limiting.

Re: In Media, Only Ideas Matter

Scott Karp — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 10:07:55 -0000

Oh, come on, Mathew, how many times have you told me I had my head screwed on upside down and backwards. When you're being facile, I'll tell you so, and I know you won't hesitate to do the same :)

The reason I said your analysis was facile is that Andrew Keen and Nick Carr have some intriguing food for thought, even if you end up completely disagreeing with it. To disagree on the level of being offended, which is largely what you did, is facile. I found too much substance in their arguments to dismiss it out of hand. In the final analysis, I don't agree with their apocalyptic conclusions, but only after a lot of thought (and I'm still thinking about it).

I think this whole issue is way to complicated to cast it in black and white.

Re: Idea Filter

Scott Karp — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 06:56:07 -0000

Michal, I'm not looking for randomness for randomness sake. I'm looking for ideas and insight, which may come from unexpected places, but they are not defined by "randomness." By subscribing to the feeds of Alex Barnett, Noah Brier, and Nick Carr, I am likely to find ideas, but everything they post does not rise to that level.

You are right that what I want absolutely requires a human intelligence -- I am highly skeptical that technology alone can provide a truly effective filter. That said, I with the immense volume of content now being produced, I think technology is essential for a "first cut." What I envision is a technology-driven filter that spits out 5,000 (or even 10,000) items a day, and a human editorial team that sends me the 50 items that are worth my time.

This is the true convergence of media and technology. Old Media still thinks it can be all human, and Web 2.0 advocates think it can be all technology. I'm looking for middle ground.

Re: Idea Filter

Scott Karp — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 19:40:32 -0000

Michal, here's what makes it scalable -- this is not a recipe for personalized media, so it doesn't require a personal assistant. I'm sure my taste in "ideas" is not unique -- an idea filter could be syndicated -- that's the opportunity for media brands, old and new.

You are right about one thing -- I would be willing to pay for it.

Re: Bloggers Drink the PR Koolaid

Scott Karp — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:05:25 -0000

Seth, you may not be at the top of tech.memeorandum everyday, but I have seen you quoted ALL OVER the place -- I saw your post wishing your numbers were higher -- don't we all.

You have ideas, and people are recognizing you for it. Maybe not at the rate you wish, but really, think about it -- in pre-blogging days, would you and I even be having this conversation?

The TechCrunch folks are making a lot more noise than you are, but you ARE being heard.

Re: Blogs Will NOT Save Old Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 13:56:51 -0000

Pete,

I agree that Mike's over-enthusiasm for some ideas does not mean TechCrunch isn't a net value-add for Web 2.0. In the case of BlogBurst, the content of his post was perfectly useful and objective -- it was only the title that screamed hype -- but that is what attacts attention.

And I think BlogBurst has all the appearances of a step in the right direction, which is why it's a shame to over-hype it. I'm sure the BlogBurst folks didn't ask Mike to use that post title, and I tried to make it clear in the post above that while I have some questions about their value proposition, I look forward to evaluating their service.

And of course it's fine for Edgeio to get good press -- it's just that the measured assessment of potential, as in your comment, often don't appear in headlines or posts. Web 2.0 would have more credibility in my mind if the discussions was more "Interesting, let's check it out" and less "WOW! Check this out!"

Oh, and Quicktags is a Wordpress plug-in: http://aboutme.lmbbox.com/lmbbox-plugins/lmbbox...

Re: Think Before You Blog

Scott Karp — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 16:33:33 -0000

Mathew, if by "most true" you mean most likely to be a true reflection of raw emotion, then I would agree with you. What I write the fastest is most likely to reflect what I really feel, not necessarily what I really mean (or think).

And who cares whether Michael Wolff is pompous or whatever -- doesn't mean he's incapable of saying something interesting. If a source is unreliable, I might not trust their facts, but if it's an interesting observation that makes me think, I'll quote it.

Re: The Art of Not Taking Yourself Too Seriously

Scott Karp — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 01:42:27 -0000

Mark, I'm in complete agreement with you -- I was putting that statement in the mouth of the "A-Lister" I've taken much flack for insisting that there ARE gatekeepers: http://publishing2.com/2006/02/12/theres-nothin...

Re: Audiences Are NOT Created Equal

Scott Karp — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 10:29:43 -0000

Pete, MySpace solved a problem for young people -- it helped them to socilaize in broader and more diverse ways, at a time when many don't have their own space - the name says it all! MySpace may have been fortunately timed, but it addressed a real need that a defined group of people have. And that has little to do with technology.

For a more a disturbing view on MySpace, see the comment by Jim Gilliam on Umair's post: http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/02/why-yah...

Your observation about the self-reinforcing nature of networks is intriguing -- if it's true, it should be deliberately harnessed.

Re: What You NEED vs. What You WANT

Scott Karp — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 17:45:48 -0000

Joanie, are you suggesting that with the freedom of media choice, participation and empowerment comes some level of responsibility? Shocking! Don't we maintain the right to blame (even sue) Web 2.0 and Media 2.0 if it doesn't provide us what we want/need -- even when it delivers exactly what we asked for? :)

sbw, I like that taxonomy of news -- it's a sad reflection of the current state of affairs that the categories are not mutually exclusive.

Re: Do We Need Professionalism In Media?

Scott Karp — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 11:03:11 -0000

Seth, there's a big difference between leveraging the value of LawWiki and Democracy 2.0 (hugely worthwhile) and saying that we don't need professional laywers and lawmakers.

sbw, you're right that professionalism is earned and titles don't matter. There are plenty of bloggers who are acting as consummate professionals (and outdoing their Old Media counterparts). The path to professionalism is rapidly changing -- but that's a separate issue. The fact is that I still trust INDIVIDUAL bloggers acting in a de facto professional capacity to point me at what I should know more than I do the collective or technology intelligence of memetrackers, Digg, etc.

Rex/Phil, you're right that the system IS effectively evolving, and most people take a balanced view. I'm responding here to some more extreme views that I here from various quarters -- but these are by NO means universally held views.

Re: Do We Need Professionalism In Media?

Scott Karp — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:04:16 -0000

Mathew:

Journalism may not have a licensing process but it DOES have standards -- yes, some of them are hard to uphold (like objectivity), and there are plenty of bad journalists (just like there are bad lawyers and doctors), but that does NOT mean these standard don't serve a real purpose...

I don't think you want to suggest that a failure to uphold journalistic standards can't get people killed -- one word: IRAQ.

Much of this boils down to whether you believe that media has real and significant consequences -- I think it's deeply naive to suggest that it doesn't.

Re: Buying More Snow

Scott Karp — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 14:13:47 -0000

Ted, I think Old Media can stay one step ahead of the "new ways of consumer media," but it's moving faster than most think and faster than many can readily respond. Regardless of the rate, the fact is that the "snow" IS melting.

Re: Postcards from the Edgeio

Scott Karp — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 13:28:56 -0000

Ted, I think tapping into geeks first is a great strategy, but if your ultimate goal is mainstream success then it makes no sense to brand the geek appeal. Of course, if your goal is to flip...

Re: Web 2.0 And Media 2.0 Are Still In the 1.1 Phase

Scott Karp — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 12:28:52 -0000

Alex, it's fixed. But I do think you're very 2.0 :)

Re: Web 2.0 And Media 2.0 Are Still In the 1.1 Phase

Scott Karp — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 13:19:24 -0000

Pete, yours is fixed too. (And I also think you're very 2.0)

You'd think I purposely did this to demonstrate the need for copy editors. :)

Re: Web 2.0 And Media 2.0 Are Still In the 1.1 Phase

Scott Karp — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 09:49:28 -0000

Jeff,

I'm not rejecting these steps -- they ARE good steps -- but I think there's a risk of confusing the steps with the destination.

And I do expect more of a major keynote speech -- to present a vision of where we might be going instead of a description of where we pretty much already are.

Re: Web 2.0 And Media 2.0 Are Still In the 1.1 Phase

Scott Karp — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 20:48:48 -0000

Jeff,

If Publishing 2.0 is a glass house, I will gladly smash all the walls -- I didn't build it to worship in it. You can drag my day job into it, but I'd much prefer have a debate on the substance and the merits. And regardless, I speak for myself and myself alone. (I don't own a media company -- just a blog.)

And speaking of glass houses, I would point out that you tote one of the biggest snark guns around when it comes to criticizing media companies who are struggling to figure it out. Part of what bothered me about your post, as constructive as it was, is it that it was so dissonant along side some of your ripping and tearing posts. But what I admire about those sharp edged posts of yours is that you're pushing and challenging and dragging forward -- it's tough love.

Look, I have nothing against Reuters and nothing critical to say about where they are in the learning cycle. As you well know, there are some deeply entrenched economics that make it much harder to actually do what you can envision.

My beef is with the vision thing -- I just don't see it yet. And I certainly don't have an answer myself.

It's such a messy, tangled web at this point (no pun). I think I would respect more a media leader who doesn't claim to have it boiled down to three easy steps, but instead gets up and says -- We just don't know yet. Here are some baby steps we're taking, but like everyone else, we're feeling our way in the dark.

Re: Web 2.0 And Media 2.0 Are Still In the 1.1 Phase

Scott Karp — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 15:20:34 -0000

Jeff,

You appoint yourself the arbiter of who "gets it" and who "doesn't get it" -- I said I think you're wrong, that Glocer doesn't "get it" as much as you give him credit for. And you're insulted by that? Talk about glass houses.

If I thought you were a "fool" or an "idiot," I'd say "Jeff Jarvis is a fool and an idiot." But I DIDN'T say that, because I DON'T think that. Perhaps I would have done a better job walking on eggshells if I used the more polite "I believe Mr. Jarvis in this instance was incorrect in his analysis of the speech by Mr. Glocer." Give me a break -- you throw rocks day in and day out -- I hit you with a pebble and you're insulted?

I've inadvertently insulted people before, and I've always felt terribly about it and immediately apologized. But in this instance, you're putting words in my mouth, and I'm offended by your righteousness.

And let's be clear -- I critiqued what Glocer said. I didn't critique Reuters or its actions. This blog is open -- he's free to come and debate ME if he wants.

Since you seem convinced of your moral high ground regarding disclosure, why don't you help me out with this. I had originally intended to put the following in my About, but chose not to. Was that a mistake?

NOTE: I removed the name of my employer because I was too often being cited as the company's public representative, which I'm not -- it's not a secret where I work, but it's my hope that the views expressed on Publishing 2.0 can stand or fall entirely on their own, and not as a function of my resume. Whatever risk I assume in publishing my view should not be shared by my employer, who has no association with this site. While it may be useful to know that I work in publishing, if you're inclined to agree or disagree with me, you should do so regardless of what my day job is. (I'm no a lawyer, so that's my best shot at a disclaimer.)

I take comfort in what I found in your About: "Now he is working as editor of a new news startup, still in stealth." I'm sure it would help your readers to know all about your startup, but I guess you just have to protect those corporate interests.

Re: Conversation is NOT Enough

Scott Karp — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 06:07:08 -0000

David, good point, but that's the problem with the "one person band" approach to independent publishing, i.e. blogging. There's no one "on staff" to sort through all those comments -- maybe the media institution is still good for something.

Anne, BW is one of the only magazines I still pick up in print, even though I only read a handful of the articles, i.e. it's as much Old Media inefficient as any other print pub. But I still pick it up to keep an eye out for innovations like this.

Since you brought up The Atlantic, I'll say two things. First, you shouldn't indict the entire magazine just because you dislike Caitlin Flanagan. Second, the Atlantic's Letters to the Editor section is one of the most popular in the magazine because it embraces a robust dialogue with readers -- and it did so decades before anyone imagined blogging or participatory media.

Re: Conversation is NOT Enough

Scott Karp — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 13:41:40 -0000

David, sounds like the "cult of personality" theory of media -- and as many blogging A-Listers know, one individual can only carry so much. Would you be disappointed if you got a response from Publishing 2.0? Or do blog brands not really matter? (And if so, tell that to Wonkette or The Blog Herald.)

Seth, what metaphor WOULD be constructive to describe to potential to create value through interactivity -- or do you not believe there's value to be created?

Re: Missing the Point on AOL/Time Warner

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:36:25 -0000

This is a test comment

Re: The Coming Search Advertising Crash

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:20:28 -0000

Dave,

I'm well aware of the basic rationale for search advertising. But this approach to marketing is similar in some ways to the "zero percent financing" approach to car sales. It drives sales in the short term but does little to build brand or create sustainable advantages over the long term.

If you're selling SUVs, for example, you of course want to focus on people currently in the market for SUVs. But what about the people who will be in the market for SUVs next year? Do you wait to try and grab their attention in the close-to-transaction moment? Or do you try to build brand and awareness now that might deliver some advantage downstream.

Try Googling SUV -- how far down that list of undifferentiated Sponsored Links do you think most people will look?

There are A LOT of marketing dollars tied to products and services that people aren't just "clicking through and purchasing" in the moment.

Attention is the currency -- and there is A LOT of attention online that is currently being undervalued. And the market WILL correct this eventually.

Re: The Coming Search Advertising Crash

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:27:22 -0000

Interesting points and questions being raised -- see my response in the Update above.

Re: The Coming Search Advertising Crash

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 13:13:58 -0000

Elle, some advertisers are indeed very smart, but many do operate on faith (and there is some significant overlap between these groups). Traditional TV, radio, and print advertising, with the exception of some direct response, is faith-based marketing. AOL, MSN, and Yahoo will continue to get the non-search online ad dollars until someone comes up with better ways to deliver customized, niched content to mainstream online media consumers -- new models of content customization will lead to new models for deriving marketing value from that attention.

When mass portal advertising is your best non-search option, of course search looks great.

Gopi, what is GSOFT MEDIA's theory of long-term brand building online?

Re: The Coming Search Advertising Crash

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 13:44:44 -0000

Jakob,

The eyetracking plot is fascinating. But just because current advertising formats (including AdWords) do not attract attention on non-search sites, that does NOT mean it's not possible to find ways to redirect that attention for marketing purposes.

With all due respect, this huge faith in the status quo that is evident in all the comments here strikes me as a lack of imagination. It's the same lack of imagination that kept online advertising in the doghouse until the Google AdWords revolution reinvented the rules of the game.

Why should we just walk away from the challenge of discovering a new way to effectively monetize the 95% of non-search attention?

When someone figures out a way to do this, THAT'S when the correction will happen.

Re: The Coming Search Advertising Crash

Scott Karp — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:12:41 -0000

My goodness, this sure struck a nerve. Which is great, because that's when I learn the most, and when blogging actually lives up to the hype.

Surely Ã¢â‚¬Å“brand buildingÃ¢â‚¬Â is itself part of the Ã¢â‚¬Å“good old fashionedÃ¢â‚¬Â status quo assumptions about advertising? ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s what ad-sellers claim is happening when they canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t measure anything else.

Just because ad-sellers use the notion of brand-building as an ROI avoidance tactic, that doesn't mean that brands have no value -- and it doesn't mean you don't need to build them!

The query says, Ã¢â‚¬Å“IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m interested in an SUV or French chocolates or whatever.Ã¢â‚¬Â

There's a big difference between the buying cycles for an SUV and chocolate!

If marketing has been reduced to nothing more than trying to hook people after they have ALREADY decided to look for or buy something, that is a SAD state of affairs.

I'm tempted to say that the measurability of search advertising has lead to a fair amount of complacency with what marketing can achieve.

One of the things the internet does best is to get people communicating with each other. And along those lines, the most powerful brand-building activities I can think of are the ones that get people to tell other people about a company or its products.

Instead of advertising on things, some brands will have to become destinations in their on right.

This is where marketing is headed. Marketing that fully leverages the interactivity of Web 2.0 will create value propositions for brands that extend much further back in the buying cycle than the moment of searching for something you want to buy. People weren't "searching" for a place to buy a chicken sandwich when they came across subservient chicken and ended up hanging out a Burger King.

Re: Blogs Are Institutions, Just Like Old Media Companies

Scott Karp — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:30:02 -0000

Billg,

Scripting News is not just Dave's commentary. It's a filter -- it points to other information that readers might find valuable. Even if Dave's commentary went away, the filter could remain -- and someone with a similiar perspective on technology could, in theory, take his place.

Re: It’s All About the FILTER

Scott Karp — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 08:10:23 -0000

met, what's the difference if Seth "called" for "restraint" or predicted that restrained would win:

Blogs with restraint, selectivity, cogency and brevity (okay, that's a long way of saying "making every word count") will use attention more efficiently and ought to win.

He may very well be describing qualities of "winning" content, but I still think he's wrong about his problem analysis and why this type of content will win.

SethF, you never fail to impress me with your ability to wind your way back to the same "futility" theme, regardless of the topic.

Mathew, what can I tell you? We all wish we could be more like Umair.

Re: MySpace Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Scott Karp — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 17:45:11 -0000

Phil, like I said, I'm not passing moral judgment on teenage behavior. (And I'm not so old that I don't remember being a teenager.)

My point is that I don't think News Corp is going to be successful selling advertising alongside teenage behavior in the raw.

And even if they can, how about selling ads alongside sexual predators?

Re: MySpace Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Scott Karp — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 18:25:43 -0000

Kevin, thanks for the name-calling, that's always a constructive way to disagree.

As for Danah's blog, I suppose she's not a "hack" because she's a PhD student who happens to share your view. Here's what she has to say:

More and more cases are failing to pan out. Yet, there are more kids on MySpace than in any single state. I wish i knew how to reach out to parents and say, "It's OK... your kids will be OK... just teach them trust and love." In statistical terms, MySpace is safer than going to school. It is safer than being in a car with your parents. It is safer than going to the mall. And yet, we are more scared because we don't understand it and we're afraid. This makes me so sad because this kind of fear is anxiety producing and culturally dangerous. :-(

Despite this being a swiftly moving phenomenon with no reliable quantification, Danah seems to have all the "statistics" locked down.

The point of my post was not to make parents afraid, but to make investors in News Corps afraid.

I'm sure that MySpace is being used as a scapegoat in many instances, and that there is there's a lot of fear of the unknown at work here.

But the "It's OK" approach at the extreme is no more constructive than the "Oh my god let's panic" approach.

Also, are you suggesting that local media outlets are skewing their coverage of MySpace for advertising purposes? (You're comment was hard to scan, so I'm not sure I understand.) Perhaps you'd like to put forth your "academic study" of this type of yellow journalism -- or was that just a "hack's" accusation?

Re: Does Blog Marketing Work for B2B?

Scott Karp — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 21:32:08 -0000

Mathew, that makes no sense on so many levels.

First, who makes the B2B purchase decisions for a company? A bunch of machines? And do you think that $500 million in advertising is aimed at some non-human entity? Do "companies" read the Wall Street Journal?

No, PEOPLE do these things. If corporate buyers don't read blogs, that's a problem with blogs, not with the people who buy stuff for companies.

Re: MySpace Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Scott Karp — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 22:28:12 -0000

Cynthia, first, there's weird and then there's pornographic. But I'm not passing judgment on that. And I'm not passing judgment on the "weird" stuff that these essentially good kids pass among themselves.

My concern as a parent is not about what the teenagers are doing among themselves, but about what predatory adults are doing in that space. Because it's not really your child's space. It's a public space. Whatever children do on MySpace they might as well be doing in the middle of the street.

But again, that wasn't my point. It's about the business, and as we know with all things Internet, just because the ad revenue is going up fast, doesn't mean it can't come down fast.

Re: The Web 2.0 Blinders Phenomenon

Scott Karp — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 20:25:41 -0000

Kathy,

I have no doubt that my blinders are firmly attached, which is why I keep flailing around trying to find my way -- you're right about the local media -- nobody is above reproach.

I apologize if I mistakenly stuck you in the camp that appears unconcerned about what kids are doing in MySpace -- that's the problem with virtual conversations -- there's no tone and only as much context as people publish. I've been misconstrued all over the web. That's what happens when we put ourselves out there -- we become symbols, not people with complex thoughts.

But I guess the positive evolution is that you can come here and set the record straight, and I'm very glad that you did.

I think the concern over MySpace is not the understanding gap between parents and teenagers -- that's been around since the beginning of time. It's that no one really knows where this technology is taking us, which creates a whole new layer of uncertainty for parents.

Re: Web 2.0 vs. Privacy

Scott Karp — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 15:09:13 -0000

To everyone who used blogging as an example (Karl, Pete), you should know better than anyone the huge effort it takes to manage the risks of putting yourself out there through blogging. It's a huge calculated risk we take in blogging. We are complete outliers, not examples of what most people are willing to do for the return of feedback.

The real questions is, given the choice between privacy and "feedback" (or however else you couch the value of participation), what percentage of the mainstream will choose privacy in most cases?

Re: Web 2.0 vs. Privacy

Scott Karp — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:34:45 -0000

Jeff,

Read the announcement on the Delicious blog -- they sound more than a bit wary:

This is a big step for del.icio.us, but one that I hope will make it more useful. Because del.icio.us is all about sharing and we donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t want to discourage that, we will be watching how this feature impacts the community and will also be experimenting a bit with the UI over the next few weeks.

So if youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re one of those antisocial types who doesnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t like to share their toys, this oneÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s for you. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.

And even if I did overuse it as a springboard, I stand behind the privacy questions I raised.

Also, I don't have to tag anything "diet" to find what others have tagged "diet" -- it's possible to take and not give, which creates the risk that not enough people will give.

Re: MySpace Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Scott Karp — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:20:39 -0000

Tom, that's all very lyrical, and as a parent I can appreciate the sentiment, but this not just a matter of self-expression. Until recently teenage self-expression did not take place in a "super public" space, to use Danah Boyd's phrase, and it didn't have a permanent digital record. We're only beginning to fathom the long-term consequences. How can you make a judgment to trust what your kids are doing if the risks are still unknown?

Re: Morality 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:26:46 -0000

Let's take teenagers as an audience -- I'm sure virtually all teenage MySpace pages would comply with big brand advertiser standards (or would be close enough), but what about the handful that don't?

It's not about disliking the audience or its content, it's about managing the risk posed by some percentage of the audience's content.

The BW article gives a nice taste of the corporate risk management sensibility. Perhaps that sensibility needs to change -- but in an age of (at least the attempt at) corporate accountability, it's a hard road.

And, char, where is your evidence that advertisers aren't complaining about MySpace? They're not going to issue press releases -- and neither is MySpace -- unless somebody catches it and writes about it, as BW did.

Re: Morality 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 11:46:04 -0000

Karl, that CNET article is the one I cited above, which shows that big brand advertisers are HORRIFIED by appearing next to "red-light" content and have specific guidelines AGAINST it. The article completely refutes your point!

Re: Morality 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 13:21:16 -0000

Brian,

Since both you and I pointed to the "what's new" debate on chartreuse, I'm not going to repeat what's there.

What I will take issue with is your characterizing my continuing to disagree with you as somehow not playing by the rules. You think there are no new elements in the MySpace phenomenon. I think there are. You think I lack historical perspective. I think you lack the ability to perceive what's new. All two sides of the same coin.

But you're accusing me of being intellectually dishonest essentially because I won't just agree with you and concede that I don't know what I'm talking about.

It's entirely possible that I DON'T know what I'm talking about, and I'm ready to admit mistakes.

But you haven't convinced me yet, and I'm not going to let you bully me into it, as you tried to bully me when you first commented on my blog.

That said, I have NEVER said that you, Brian Clark, don't understand the morality issue. NOR have I said that liberals want their kids to see porn. But I won't take you to task for mischaracterizing, which is inevitable in these forum.

If anybody could take issue with whether I'm characterizing them accurately it's chartreuse, but he was "man" enough to continue debating it on the merits rather than descend into ad hominem.

Re: Morality 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:36:47 -0000

Brian,

I don't know why I'm letting you suck me into it, but here's what I said about the comments on chartreuse:

(You can see some of the Ã¢â‚¬Å“moralityÃ¢â‚¬Â debate in the comments on NickÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s post and in comments on the multiple posts that Chartreuse did.)

If you actually READ through the comments, you'll see that there was a lot of debate BEFORE you showed up AND I DID respond to you explaining what I thought was new.

But, please, do go pick your fights elsewhere and/or take Scott Baradell's advice.

Re: Morality 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:06:28 -0000

Brian, if you ever come back here for an honest debate, I will gladly engage you. If you ever come back to pick a fight, I will ignore you.

If you read this blog, you'll find plenty of examples of my admitting when I'm wrong, particularly when I've been unfair to other people.

But I don't think I've been unfair to you -- twice now I have allowed you to hijack what might otherwise have been an interesting conversation. I'm not going to do that again.

If you want to view everything in terms of winning and losing, that's your choice. It's such a waste, I don't see how anybody wins.

Re: Corporate Blogging Reality Check

Scott Karp — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:33:23 -0000

Jason, thanks for the comment.

In case I didn't make it clear enough, I have nothing but admiration for you and other practitioners of corporate blogging. Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it's not worth doing--and it's clear that you are reaping the rewards despite the learning curve.

My beef is with boosters of corporate blogging (consultants, etc.), some of whom don't spend a lot of time talking about the challenges and pitfalls and don't t demonstrate a deep understanding of big corporations and how they operate.

I wish discussions of corporate blogging would spend more time facing the pitfalls and how to overcome them (as you have) and less time making it seem like it's all flowers and sunshine.

Re: More MySpace (and Web 2.0) Skepticism

Scott Karp — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 10:38:04 -0000

I'm sure there's huge value in the data, but if they knew how to unlock that value, why would Peter Chernin be out there hyping up the advertising?

Re: More MySpace (and Web 2.0) Skepticism

Scott Karp — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:09:57 -0000

Robert, thanks for stopping by -- I have enjoyed your writing on Om's blog.

About the morality thing, I empathize with the management of MySpace as well, and I definitely don't think they should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But I don't think that MySpace/News Corp has given the appearance of moving aggressively enough to do something about the problem -- the mention in the Fortune article of 280 employees policing the site was the first I've seen, and that's after a lot of pressure.

What I find most striking is that no one wants to occupy the middle ground between arguing there's not a problem and calling for censorship. I guess it's not a headline-grabbing place to be.

So much if it stinks of hypocrisy, including the absence of the usual moral outrage at Fox, as you point out.

Re: More MySpace (and Web 2.0) Skepticism

Scott Karp — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 13:16:00 -0000

Well, MySpace was successful because it *refrained* from interfering with the community - heavy-handedness may actually harm it.

Pete, first of all, MySpace is very much interfering with the community:
MySpace Censors Content To Lure Marketers

Second, define "success." Traffic is NOT success. Making money off of that traffic is success.

I agree that there are profitable ways to leverage the community itself, but so far it's just been a whole lot of theory and not much money.

Re: Marketing 2.0 Can’t Fix Bad Products

Scott Karp — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 10:39:45 -0000

Most of GM's products ARE inferior -- they are poor quality compared to Toyotas and Hondas and/or they are gas guzzlers that are turning off more and more people as the price of gas goes up and environmental consciousness spreads.

I live in the DC area, which is certainly not representative of a lot of the country, but you don't see ANY GM vehicles here -- this market has basically abandoned them, and a brand/image makeover is NOT going to change that. Only a complete overhaul of their product line and product quality has a prayer of saving them.

Re: Marketing 2.0 Can’t Fix Bad Products

Scott Karp — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 22:46:14 -0000

By empowering the people GM can show that they listen, that theyÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re responsive, etc. And this will enable them to sell.

Fraser, with all due respect, that is so much Web 2.0 huey. People buy because they want the product, not because the company "listens" and empowers them to muck with their ads.

If GM really wants to show that they're responsive, they don't need 2.0 publicity stunts, they need to make BETTER CARS!

Re: Exploitation 2.0: Web 2.0 Wants to USE You

Scott Karp — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 14:02:42 -0000

Mark, I agree that there may not be any new business models under the sun, just like there are no new narratives in literature. But then who could have imagined that Google could make $5 billion with their twist on the old theme.

On the other hand, your deconstruction of my semi-satirical riff jives with my distaste for the hype eminating from many corners of the Web2.0sphere.

Pete, good for you, Josh, and Alex, but tell it to Doc Searls. The idealism of Web 2.0 altruism is still pervasive despite sobreity and realism from some corners.

Re: Exploitation 2.0: Web 2.0 Wants to USE You

Scott Karp — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:20:59 -0000

Wikipedia is a nonprofit. People feel good about themselves when they donate to a good cause. But that doesn't mean we're going to work for for-profit enterprises for free.

Re: New MySpace Security Measures

Scott Karp — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:12:15 -0000

Skid, there are about 10,000 articles/posts written about MySpace everyday. The hype is like a thick fog pervading everything 2.0 -- consider this an anti-fixation.

Re: Digg and Calacanis Bush-whack Critics

Scott Karp — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 19:04:24 -0000

Jason, your post suffered a bit from multiple personality disorder -- I agreed with the spirit of the last part, that embracing criticism and fixing mistakes makes the product stronger, and that smart early players benefit from the learning curve. But the first part sound like you were attacking people like Forever Geek, who is hardly I don't think fits your profile of "freaks."

I also agree with the mob behavior problem of 2.0 sites -- but it's hardly surprising that this is what happens when you let the masses take the reigns.

Re: Digg and Calacanis Bush-whack Critics

Scott Karp — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 21:23:53 -0000

Jason, freak as in highly eccentric weirdo, sure, but freak as in recklessly smearing righteous startups, I don't think so -- Macgyver's ForeverGeek posts are like court briefs -- see his response to Kevin's "response." Speculative, sure, but a hell of a lot more well reasoned and thorough than most of what you see in the blogosphere.

Re: What If Media 2.0 Is Less Profitable Than Media 1.0?

Scott Karp — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 07:18:28 -0000

Eyal, indeed, you are correct -- I was off by a decimal place. Unfortunately, it's going to take several more decimal places to make MySpace the hot property everyone assumes it will be.

Re: Appearances and the Law in the Lance Dutson Lawsuit

Scott Karp — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 11:00:59 -0000

Stanley,

I think this is much more complicated than your black-and-white characterization suggests. Just because Dutson had an overt self-interested agenda, doesn't mean he has no entitlement to the term "journalism." Many an opinion column has railed against the "perceived" evils of Walmart, but that doesn't make them either legally libelous or beneath the standards of a journalistic organization to print.

We are in uncharted territory here, and citing an ethics code that was conceived before the advent of technology that made possible a mode of individually communication that can be characterized as "citizen journalism" is to oversimplify the issue.

If you're going to go referencing ethics codes, it would be good journalistic practice to cite SPECIFICALLY what actions on the site are in violation of that code.

Re: Yahoo Tech Is Tech For the Rest of Us

Scott Karp — Tue, 02 May 2006 14:11:16 -0000

Mathew, just as users accept the "ugly" in the "ugly but useful," I think Yahoo Tech users will accept the cheesy if Yahoo proves to be more useful than CNET, which I think it will.

Sally (or whoever you are), you're creating a false polarization with "geeks" at one end and "technophobes" at the other. 80% of people are in the middle -- they want and need technology, and want to make smart purchase decisions, but are more down-to-earth in their approach -- Yahoo is aiming to steal them away from CNET. All of your other critique are pot shots at beta kinks to be worked out.

Re: 2.0 Business Model Doomsday Scenario

Scott Karp — Thu, 04 May 2006 17:27:02 -0000

Jim, first of all the viral effects of the network are, in the purest sense, free. What you need is engaging experience and content -- brands will pay a lot to create that, but they will NOT have to pay media companies to distribute it. In other words, there will be lots of money spent, but not in the form of traditional paid media advertising.

Re: MySpace Still Ticking

Scott Karp — Thu, 04 May 2006 20:26:57 -0000

Seth, first of all, things in fact have NOT ended well for AOL. Second, MySpace isn't even aspiring to be a "family system" -- it's the open wilderness.

Re: What If No One Will Pay For Content?

Scott Karp — Sun, 07 May 2006 21:13:56 -0000

Jim, more power to you.

Seth, don't you know that I wring my hands just to yank your chain? But seriously, do you really think there are enough dollars in product placement to fund the TV content engine as we know it? The only reason content licensing works is because the ad supported audience for that content gives it value -- take away the ad-supported audience, and you'll have just as good a chance licensing amateur content from YouTube. ABC's iTunes experiment is far mare significant than their online ad-based experiment -- if people won't pay for thing itself, then there will be no economic rationale for producing it.

Re: What If No One Will Pay For Content?

Scott Karp — Mon, 08 May 2006 21:35:57 -0000

Liz, if marketers create their own advertising worth watching, then they are creating "content" -- you're maintaining a distinction without a difference. The marketer's advertising becomes a destination unto itself, thus obviating the need for other content to act as a medium for the advertising to piggyback on, and thus destroying that business model

Re: The Death of the Intermediary

Scott Karp — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:50:40 -0000

Sally,

Social networks that function through live interactions are to the horse and buggy what online social networks are to the jet airplane. Technology has turbo-charged this phenomenon, so things have changed just a bit since the dawn of capitalism.

I think your giving a bit too much credit to "professional" marketers in understanding what resonates with consumers -- you would think the consumers themselves know best.

The history of marketing is littered with failed campaigns dreamed up by professionals -- Yo Quiero Taco Bell, Pets.com Sock Puppet, the list goes on forever.

You're seeing business as usual, but I see the potential for a total sea change.

Re: Blogging and Journalism at Mesh

Scott Karp — Sat, 13 May 2006 20:24:28 -0000

Seth, nobody has ever gotten rich being a journalist, so the compensation issue is a bit of a red herring. None of the "bloggers are journalists" advocates has ever had to make a living as a blogger. Blogging certainly plays a key role in giving wide voice to partisanship, but there are plenty of blogging advocates who are not part of that project. And to use your favorite argument, "it's not a new issue." Go back and look at "journalism" in the early 20th century. Read Jay Rosen -- he's got a very sober perspective on the whole thing.

Liz, everybody needs to be looking at themselves in the mirror -- "the other guys is the problem" is no more constructive coming from bloggers than it is coming from institutions.

Re: Live Blogging at Mesh

Scott Karp — Tue, 16 May 2006 13:09:35 -0000

Ethan, thanks for the feedback. I'm waiting for Guinness to call first to confirm that this is the world's longest blog post.

Re: “Mediocrity Is Finished”

Scott Karp — Thu, 18 May 2006 15:57:03 -0000

Chas,

Is content that is "personal" exempt from being "well told"? Are there no standards for content that users generate "out of real life"? Or is the entire huge sloshing vat of user generated content all of equal value?

I guess if "professionals" want their content to be automatically valued, all they need to do is pass themselves off as "users."

This pure hype factor -- just like everything with a dot com appended was automatically good back in 1999.

Re: Has the MySpace Downturn Begun?

Scott Karp — Fri, 26 May 2006 12:37:00 -0000

That's right, Sebastian, every hype machine needs an anti-hype machine -- and granted, it's a whole lot easier to be iconoclastic than to keep the statue from falling off the pedestal.

Re: Has the MySpace Downturn Begun?

Scott Karp — Fri, 26 May 2006 13:09:25 -0000

Max, right on about Alexa. The impetus for the post was the teen focus group -- I just threw in the Alexa chart for fun -- but of course you know how it is with pictures.

You'll notice that most of the MySpace defenders focused on the chart and explanations about seasonality, etc. But no one's denying the substantive issues that point to MySpace's vulnerabilities.

Re: The Long Tail of Revenue 2.0

Scott Karp — Mon, 29 May 2006 14:16:27 -0000

Bennett -- I'm with you up to the point where the trickle down of profits becomes a river -- the long tail phenomenon suggests that, structurally, it will always be a trickle.

Unless of course you're a believer in supply-side economics.

Re: The Democratic Web Has Always Been An Illusion

Scott Karp — Mon, 29 May 2006 15:15:17 -0000

Ted, who pays to widen the road when traffice exceeds the road's capacity? To your second point, when increasing usage (i.e. video) is pushing the network's capacity to the point where traffic starts to slow down, isn't paying to ensure visitors reach your website quickly essentially paying for additional usage? If there was enough bandwidth to go around, it wouldn't be an issue because the ISP's wouldn't be able to charge for special treatment -- the fact that they COULD get away with it barring legislation is evidence of fundamental problems with the infrastructure. So who's going to pay to fix it?

Re: The Long Tail of Revenue 2.0

Scott Karp — Mon, 29 May 2006 17:07:57 -0000

Mathew, a "decent living" is fine if you're just looking to quit your day job and aren't particularly ambition. But I'm guessing that's no much consolation to the armies of Web 2.0 entrepreneurs looking to grow a business, not to mention the Old Media companies hoping to salvage their businesses by moving online.

Re: Show Me the BUSINESS MODEL!

Scott Karp — Tue, 30 May 2006 17:14:35 -0000

Kareem,

I'm all for developing new business models by learning and doing...lot's of people are doing...so where's the learning? Where are the dollars? What is there beyond Adsense -- is everybody mortgaging their future to Google?

And didn't we try the whole build it first and figure out how to make money later thing already in the late 90s?

Re: Show Me the BUSINESS MODEL!

Scott Karp — Wed, 31 May 2006 11:36:10 -0000

Stuart -- "The potential to turn us into advocates - reduced marketing cost." In other words, less paid media. More Skype. Less Vonage. Less paid media business.

Dhyana -- "Targeted advertising around good content is the future." Really? How is that working for you at Designorati.com? Looks like you're currently letting Google extract most of the value from your good content. I realize that you only recently launched, but I'm curious whether you've found companies who would rather spend money to advertise with you directly rather than through AdWords.

Re: Show Me the BUSINESS MODEL!

Scott Karp — Wed, 31 May 2006 11:48:39 -0000

Dhyana -- Do you know what percentage of the ad revenue that Google receives for those targeted ads actually gets shared with Designorati? Not much. (They won't disclose the percentage, and there's a good reason for it.)

There's plenty of ad revenue -- but brokers like Google are going to take the lion's share of it, leaving only crumbs for the niche sites in their network

Re: Show Me the BUSINESS MODEL!

Scott Karp — Wed, 31 May 2006 11:58:59 -0000

Traditional media companies' sites are at Google's mercy to the degree that advertisers decide to advertise through Google rather than through the companies' sites directly. It's a problem of scale -- traditional media companies are making 10s or at best a couple $100 million. Which is good. But Google made $6 BILLION in 2005.

Re: Show Me the BUSINESS MODEL!

Scott Karp — Wed, 31 May 2006 13:08:09 -0000

Pete, where's the evidence of Google sharing that much? -- I'd love to see it.

I'm not suggesting that just going out and trying isn't the right thing to do. I just wish there as much free discussion of business models as there is of hot new apps.

Re: Google Reality Check

Scott Karp — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 15:49:41 -0000

Tom, your blog's sponsorships (congrats, BTW) represent the real threat to Google -- those kind of branding sponsorships will continue to command dollars that Google can't tap into. So the way you run your site is more than a symbolic protest -- it's the threat to Google fully realized.

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Scott Karp — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 16:05:44 -0000

Ron, why does it have to be one extreme or the other -- all authority or all collective?

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Scott Karp — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 16:17:27 -0000

Seth, if "triangulating" a "third way" worked in politics, in can work here -- neither side is going to be happy about compromising their ideals and principles, but that's the only way to avoid an ideological (partisan) death spiral.

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Scott Karp — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 21:11:34 -0000

Kate, the iPod of books will obviate the need for print on demand -- until then, yeah it's a no-brainer.

Ron, if you read too quickly it's easy to confuse satire with some of the more extreme ideological views out there.

Seth, remember that history is written by the victor -- in this case, the "people."

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Scott Karp — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 23:43:47 -0000

Clyde,

1. Really? Pick up any book on the Internet or technology from 1999. Or, less extreme, pick up John Battelle's Search -- his history of Google is certainly still very valuable, but the story of Google is evolving every day -- Google is still rewriting the rules of business and transforming our culture. Stuff I wrote on this blog a few months ago is outdated. I don't know if you misread "outdated" to mean that everything in books is quickly rendered worthless -- that's certainly not what I meant. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that many books are soon in need of updating.

2. Huh? Lots of books are republished with new editions -- I just glanced over at my bookshelf and saw McKinsey's Valuation, 4th edition -- it was first published in 1990 -- don't you think after the stock market history of the last 6 years it was in need of updating? Of course not ALL books with long-term value are republished in editions. But some are -- perhaps you did an extreme reading of this again.

Now, before you proceed further down the standard blog path of inflating a conflicting view into an impugning of credibility, why don't you put forth some counterexamples -- with all due respect, I don't find your blanket statements particularly credible either.

Re: Book Publishing 2.0: Books As Continuously Updated Idea Platforms

Scott Karp — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 23:07:58 -0000

Clyde,

Thanks for adding all of the great thinking and observations in fleshing out your comments. A few thoughts in response:

Fiction and nonfiction are definitely apples and oranges -- I was thinking strictly of nonfiction and should have made that clear.

You're take on editions is right -- I think it would have been more accurate for me to observe that the convention of republishing new editions is familiar, if not widely enough used.

As for Serres, that's really philosophy, which fits with fiction/poetry in terms of timelessness.

And you're certainly right that hype about electronic books has been around for a long time, much to ill effect. But I do believe that the iPod of books really is on the horizon -- it's not going to destroy paper, anymore than the iPod has destroyed albums (yet) -- but it is going to change the game completely.

Jay,

One possible answer to the rights management problem is to look to a subscription model rather than the one-time purchase model -- you're buying the right to continue to drink from the well.

Tech and textbook will be the leading edge, and the rest of nonfiction will follow. Fiction will follow next for the mass market paperback crowd. The ability to have dozens (if not more) of content choices on hand in one device, as happened with the iPod, will overwhelm the habit of paper for most (but certainly not all) people.

Back when portable DVD players first came out, no one could have imagined to the iPod. The iPod of books will be the same quantum leap from your old RCA eBook.

Re: The Ideological Polarization of 2.0

Scott Karp — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 20:33:39 -0000

Mathew, you are far from the only guilty party here, unfortunately, and if I wanted to single you out I would have -- so don't take it personally.

You still haven't explained what exactly is the harm in trolling -- such as when someone baits Dave Winer, for example?

Re: Those Who Pay More Will Get an Enhanced Experience

Scott Karp — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:41:32 -0000

But Paul, we're living in a market economy for goodness sakes! If I pay for T-bone and get meatloaf, then I won't eat at that restaurant anymore. And if there are no other restaurants in town, well then someone is missing a huge market opportunity.

I just don't understand why of the thousands of instances where people don't get what they pay for, this one should require government regulation.

And the supply issues are real. Maybe the ISPs are hyping it up and have more supply than they let on, but bandwidth is NOT infinite. Supply and demand does kick in legitimately at some point.

We're just shocked because we never had video before to push the demand envelope.

Re: Those Who Pay More Will Get an Enhanced Experience

Scott Karp — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:30:38 -0000

billg/TDavid, see my response above.

And Tdavid, if you mean "devil's advocate" as in disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing simply to get attention (what others call "trolling"), that accusation is too often use in Swift-Boating manner -- a smear that you just can't get out from under even if it's really not true. I stand by what I say here and will admit when I'm wrong when convinced of such. So believe and insinuate whatever you like.

Re: Those Who Pay More Will Get an Enhanced Experience

Scott Karp — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:53:46 -0000

Ted, I complete agree on the greater good of the network, enabling innovation, etc. I'm questioning the best route to get there.

The fact that public money was used to build the infrastructure is key, but the bigger problem is that the entire system was built out, no surprisingly, without any foresight. Nobody thought about the fact that we were building a network that creates value through its open and unfettered interactivity and that we left for-profit companies in charge of access to the network.

I go back to what I said in a previous post, which is that we need to go all the way and declare that internet access is a public utility, continue to finance it with public money, and then we can regulate it to our heart's content for the good of the network.

Re: Those Who Pay More Will Get an Enhanced Experience

Scott Karp — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 17:57:30 -0000

billg,

As I said, if lack of competition is the problem, then the focus of legislation should be to enable competitors to enter the market.

Telling the monopoly companies how they have to operate does not fix the underlying root cause problem -- and if we don't fix the root cause, then there will be more problems down the road from monopoly control.

Re: Those Who Pay More Will Get an Enhanced Experience

Scott Karp — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 08:54:28 -0000

Paul, did you actually read everything I wrote before you decided to engage in an ad hominem?

I go back to what I said in a previous post, which is that we need to go all the way and declare that internet access is a public utility, continue to finance it with public money, and then we can regulate it to our heartÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s content for the good of the network.

Does that sound like laissez-faire? I support a government solution to the situation -- what I question is whether the approach proposed by net neutrality will fix the root cause problem and whether it won't in fact leave the door open to further shenanigans by the entrenched telecom monopolies.

Re: Technorati Is Having A Little Spam Problem

Scott Karp — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 12:22:57 -0000

Chris, no doubt it's temporary, but amusing nonetheless.

Re: MySpace Is The Most Expensive Data Mining Project Ever

Scott Karp — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 20:39:29 -0000

Jack -- I haven't seen that $350 million revenue projection -- what is your source? Can you provide a link?

Re: Why the Social Networking Backlash WILL Happen

Scott Karp — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 00:30:48 -0000

Nathan, I don't think people are going to abandon online social networking -- but they may very well abandon PUBLIC social networking, which is the essence of MySpace. We're only beginning to see how this drama unfolds. This was a key observation from the piece:

This is really the first time that we've seen that stage of life captured in a kind of time capsule and in a public way

The pendulum can swing both ways.

Jenny, I think they will log off of those public sites and find more private ways to socialize. It will still be cool to socialize online, but not with the entire world watching.

Re: Why the Social Networking Backlash WILL Happen

Scott Karp — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 19:44:27 -0000

Derek, 10 years is a long time at this rapid pace of change. 10 years from now anyone dumb enough to let it all hang out in public won't be considered for a job by those who are making that mistake now and who will consider it rank amateurish in the future.

Re: LostCherry Takes Aim at MySpace

Scott Karp — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 13:40:19 -0000

Ted, be careful before somebody accuses you of being an old man railing against Elvis (happens to me all the time). I did have a similar reaction to the name -- the bet is that this kind of (perhaps over the) edginess is an asset rather than a liability. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Steve, "features" is one of the theories as to why MySpace beat Friendster -- features are not an end unto themselves, of course, sbut rather a way to enhance the socializing that is the objective of users. Again, the name is part of the bet. I would argue that MySpace has itself become uch an outsized universally recognizable brand that it detracts from the tabula raza feel. Also, socializing on LostCherry has elements of a game, and gaming is, well, quite hot.

Us old folks can speculate all we want -- the kids will ultimately decide.

Re: Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg

Scott Karp — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:02:30 -0000

Mike, I have no idea who is responsible for my perception (and that's all it is) of "foul play" burying. With the ForeverGeek incident, their were accusations against Digg staff -- I have no evidence that Digg staff were involved, and I make no such accusations -- but then I don't have evidence that they weren't involved.

But that's besides the point because the way Digg works is a reflection of their staff, which is why I addressed the question to Kevin. Unless shown otherwise, though, I can only assume that Digg staff are still facing a challenge with managing the system and not that they are acting in bad faith.

You're absolutely right that it's very difficult to set up mechanisms to prevent the abuse of self-policing systems by the community -- but given the community ideal that Digg is supposed to represent, I think they're on the hook to make it work better.

My perception here is that the burying of the story went beyond healthy self-policing to a handful of users overriding what the majority of the community found valuable.

The real question, as I posed it to Kevin, is whether Digg is a true democracy or has de facto "hierarchical editorial control."

Re: How Long Will It Take to Monetize MySpace?

Scott Karp — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 06:35:40 -0000

Karl, you're absolutely right that low overhead will allow them to avoid the profit problems that Amazon has. But the challenge still remains that topline revenue is nowhere near proportional to the magnitude of usage and hype.

Kurt, I don't think that corporate "resources" convey any advantage in this new media landscape -- the playing field has been leveled. And as Karl pointed out, low overhead means that it's a lot easier to keep the lights on without draining a large corporate bank account.

Re: Google Is Killing the Economics of Content

Scott Karp — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:41:17 -0000

Dave, perhaps it was your referring to Old Media economics as a "horrible system" that led me to infer the converse, which is that the passing of the old system is "good news."

And it's rather blase to suggest that, good or bad, the unwinding of an industry's decades-old economics is "much ado about not very much." I would argue that the consequences for companies, employees of those companies, consumers of information, and Democracy with a big D, again whether good or bad, are indeed quite significant.

Re: Buried Story Shenanigans At Digg

Scott Karp — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:29:56 -0000

Steve, you know that's not an unfair and inaccurate reading -- I raised a flag here because it appeared that the burying of the story did not reflect the wishes of the majority of the collective but rather that of a powerful few -- i.e. it was NOT "collective" intelligence in the ideal sense. And let me be clear that my interest here has nothing to do with the short-term traffic bump I got from being on Digg but rather the opportunity to read more of the effusive comments in support of LostCherry, which are very useful in understanding the evolution of the social networking space.

In short, I got annoyed because they shut down the conversation, not because they shut down my traffic.

Re: Google Is Killing the Economics of Content

Scott Karp — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:00:41 -0000

Danny, that's a lot to digest (including your always useful correction of my misuse of terms), but let me go to the key issue: the economics of search.

When I say the economics of search, I don't mean the utility of search results, I mean how Google (as the principal example) maximizes revenue.

Is it not true that the objective of AdWords is to maximize the amount of revenue Google receives for each click, as a function of both the amount bid and the likelihood that someone will actually click? If so, isn't true then that this revenue maximizing strategy means that the ads that work best for Google do not necessarily deliver to consumers the products that best fit their needs? There is a some correlation between the utility of the ads to consumers, but the objective is not to maximize utility of the ads because the amount bid is a key variable.

Re: Increasing Advertising’s Low Return on Consumer Attention

Scott Karp — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 17:17:37 -0000

Jim, I don't think "a coupon only easier" really captures it, but that would certainly be an improvement over the current system.

Michal, I think "Google would receive less" is a key element. The costs of advertising are already passed on to the consumer -- right now the advantage goes to the company that allocates the most money from the value chain to the intermediary, e.g. Google. Shouldn't the advantage go to the company that allocates the greatest value to the consumer?

Cleaning out useless garbage is an entirely separate although very real issue. This is about creating more return on intention for consumers considering competing offers that are all more or less relevant.

I personally would love to have a piece of Google's dime -- it's a BIG dime.

Re: Increasing Advertising’s Low Return on Consumer Attention

Scott Karp — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 15:33:52 -0000

Brian, you're right about the potential for abuse -- just look at AdWords -- but what the guys at Jellyfish have cooked up is not a "pay per view" system based on demographics as you describe.

As for concluding through "analysis" that such systems can't work, that's a sticky wicket -- a lot of people at Google thought AdWords/AdSense wouldn't work. You never know until you try.

Re: Increasing Advertising’s Low Return on Consumer Attention

Scott Karp — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:47:44 -0000

Mark,

First, I wasn't profiling the Jellyfish so much as their philosophy, which is why quoted from their blog -- I think their ideas and their philosophy have merit on their own, regardless of how well they execute. Much of what I do on this blog is talk about ideas. Besides, ever TechCrunch sometimes does posts without specifics, such as the profile of Yahoo's Hack Day -- it's Yahoo's philosophy of quick innovation that was being profiled, not the specific ideas.

Second, as to your economic analysis, you're assuming that the traditional advertising model, where all of the economic value accrues to the intermediary, and where there is a huge amount of waste in irrelevant message delivery, is in fact the most efficient way to drive sales. You're also assuming that plowing profits into more advertising is the most efficient way to create more value for customers, which is what ultimately drives sales. I can't comment on your last paragraph because I don't really understand what you're saying there.

Re: Increasing Advertising’s Low Return on Consumer Attention

Scott Karp — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 23:25:28 -0000

Mark,

When you do a search on Google, how is competition among advertisers that appear on the results page driving down prices for consumers? Prices typically aren't even listed in AdWords ads.

How can you possible argue that all of the irrelevant advertising message I'm being bombarded with all day long is actually saving me time? It's a massive waste of time. Even AdWords with all its claim to "relevancy" still bombards me with irrelevant messages.

How about some concrete examples of how this works?

Re: MySpace Sued For Failing to Protect Children from Sexual Predators

Scott Karp — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:41:31 -0000

SueMe (or comment spammer, or MySpace representative or whoever you anonymously are):

This doesn't provide any legal justification for the suit, but to use your bar analogy, don't you think there would be some community outrage if a bar routinely let in 14-year-old girls with fake IDs to socialize with adult men?

Re: Media Should Evolve Into Marketing Services

Scott Karp — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 16:03:21 -0000

Brian (not Clark):

Sure they are creating content, but it is not for the purposes of journalism, but for soliciting business and organizing conferences.

Uh, yeah, isn't that what "marketing services" is?

Re: Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands

Scott Karp — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 06:31:15 -0000

Danny, I didn't say that Google is going to be "weak" if it doesn't offer brand advertising, or that search ads are going to "die" -- nor, Ted, was this a critique of the effectiveness of search advertising for the purpose it serves as a direct response medium (which is not to say it isn't critique-able).

I said it's going to hit a wall -- or perhaps better to say plateau. Google, Yahoo, etc. have already sopped up the existing search advertising demand -- the obvious money for this approach to marketing is already online. Sure there will be growth, but not the kind that I'm sure Google is looking for, hence pay-per-click video, etc.

And to be fair, Ted, Prada is an extreme example -- perhaps it's more accurate to say that search advertising does not build "premium" brands -- although Coke is another ready example. I'm sure search advertising is building a brand for Sentiments.com, but its a purely transactional, dollars-and-cents-driven brand. Ebay is a great brand built online, but against it's purely transactional and utilitarian.

Danny, to hit some of your other points:

- First, I wasn't "sitting around and poking" -- I read what actual "brand holders" were saying at Cannes and what Google and Yahoo said in response. Sure, my "demonstration" is not statistically significant -- I'm just thinking about it, since I don't have a mult-million dollar ad budget to experiment with.

- I didn't say it was bad for Prada to buy search advertising -- I'm saying that search advertising never would have made them what they are -- search advertising I'm sure does work for Prada in terms of boosting it's brand presence and driving sales, but only because people already know Prada, and can know that's what they want.

- If your first brand exposure is in the search ads, my point is precisely that you're more likely to be swayed to transactional/discounting messages, since those are effectively conveyed in search ads. Hence my conclusion that the Sentiments ad does MUCH better than the Neiman Marcus ad. Having a "brand impact" is not building a brand.

- You're right that agencies are terribly behind the curve in using all the new media now at their disposal, including search. Again, not the point.

The point is that search does not do the kind of brand-building work that visual advertising has done. To say that there is brand building done by the company once someone clicks through does NOT mean that the search ad did that branding.

And that leaves a lot of dollars out of Google's reach for now. I'm not saying it's going to put them out of business. I'm saying it will limit the kind of growth that they and Google shareholders wish will go on forever but likely won't unless Google has access to ALL ad dollars and not just those allocated to search.

Re: Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands

Scott Karp — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 06:39:09 -0000

Oh, and Danny, if you're so sure this is not an issue, then you should probably call Eric Schmidt and let him know, because here's what he said:

Ã¢â‚¬Å“ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a question of whether our system, which is so highly measurable, can really handle that . . . We have not yet come up with an approach that meets the kind of measurable . . . based advertising that weÃ¢â‚¬â„¢d really like to put our brand and our name behind.Ã¢â‚¬Â

Re: Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands

Scott Karp — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:58:51 -0000

David,

What I might say is that you will find it very difficult building a brand just with Ã¢â‚¬Å“searchÃ¢â‚¬Â. Increasingly, however, you will also find it very difficuly building a brand without it.

Very elegantly stated -- I definitely agree.

Re: Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands

Scott Karp — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 18:10:16 -0000

Danny,

And since you donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t, sitting back and drawing a conclusion based on this single poking example probably wasnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t wise. I mean, the headline is Ã¢â‚¬Å“search advertising does NOT build brands,Ã¢â‚¬Â and youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve proven that how? By picking one example from afar to support that headline statement?

Oh give me a break! Are we doing controlled, double-blind scientific experiments here? It was a thought piece intended to spur exactly this kind of debate, which I find very valuable for learning. If you need 50 examples, I could give you 50 examples, but my intent was not to write a doctoral thesis.

And for the record (and with all due respect), how big of a search advertising and/or brand marketing budget do you personally control that gives you license to have a view? You have spent vastly more time on search than I have, which is one thing, but to suggest that you actually have to BE a brand holder to think through the issue of brand advertising is ridiculous. The fact is that I have talked to many Fortune 500 brand marketers, and I've heard many perspectives on branding -- polling these companies would provide a valuable perspective, but that's not the end of the analysis.

True Ã¢â‚¬â€ and what do you think made Zappos a brand name when it comes to buying shoes online? Those magazine ads you saw for them? That TV spot? Wait Ã¢â‚¬â€ I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t think they do that stuff. What they do is a lot of spending to show up in search engines when you search for Ã¢â‚¬Å“shoesÃ¢â‚¬Â and related terms. You did a generic search, you keep seeing a particular provider, and you learn about that brand.

Hey, need an espresso machine? I learned an entire new brand, Whole Latte Love, simply because when I was doing searches, I kept coming across their site. J&Rs; in New York? If youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re in Manhattan, you know that brand as well as I knew FryÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s living in California. But J&R; was a mystery to me until I kept seeing them in some shopping search results before making a trip to New York. Now that brand is rooted in my mind, not because I saw some offline ad but because I saw them first in search. That brand did build in my mind, to me.

Zappos is as purely transactional brand which fits perfectly with search. J&R; and Whole Latte Love are the same thing -- they built up in your mind as a PLACE to buy stuff, not as a choice of WHAT to buy. These examples don't address the issue of building the brand for Prada, Coke, or Apple.

I think few people will likely BUILD brand using search alone.

That's my entire point, so I'm not quite sure what we're debating.

Re: Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands

Scott Karp — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 22:33:12 -0000

Danny,

Headline was pretty straight-forward Ã¢â‚¬â€ "Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands."

Something I do have experience with is blogging -- and headlines like this are a great way to get people like you to show up, engage in a debate, and flesh out the issue. I don't blog to make wishy-washy statements that anyone can agree with. I try to push my thinking and my reader's. Sure the headline is a bit sensational, but it works. What I'm interested in is the conversation that takes place down here in the comments -- kind of like writing good effective copy for your search ads to get people to click.

At the very least, you might want to think about the issue a bit more.

That's precisely what I'm doing -- blogging is how I learn. I'm not out to win a popularity contest by being part of the echo chamber and embracing conventional wisdom. Nor am I out to win an argument if that argument is not winnable. When commenters pile on and tell me that I'm wrong, I learn, and people who read the conversation also learn. Another blogger linked here and encouraged readers to come here and see how you "ripped me a new one." I'm fine with that. It's part of the industry learning process.

But I try very, very hard to qualify if I'm saying something from my own personal views, that I could be off the mark, etc.

How do I represent what I do here as anything OTHER than my personal viws? This isn't a peer-reviewed journal, and it isn't an in-depth research study. The comment section is here so people can disagree -- and when they do, sometimes I critique their arguements, but I "try very, very hard" not to impugn their credibility.

But they might not grow as much as those who view them as an ad company might like, as much as their shareholders might like.

A more appropriately precise articulation of what I meant by "hit a wall."

But just for fun, I just did a search for wireless headsets on Google. Yep, plenty of people selling the Plantronics brand. But there's also GN Netcom selling its own headsets. I've never heard of them before, honestly. And look, Palm's advertising its own wireless headses. I didn't even know they did their own.

The top ad on the "wireless headsets" search is for headsets.com -- if you're doing such a generic search, you likely don't know what you're looking for, so it's a good bet that gets a lot of clicks. And when you click through to headsets.com, what do you see?

<img src="http://publishing2.com/images/Plantronics Headset.jpg" alt="Plantronics Headset">

An IMAGE of a Plantronics headset. That's brand engagement. Not the search ad. The word "Plantronics" means nothing and carries no brand value until there is something to EXPERIENCE.

If you had never heard of Palm, would it mean anything to you that they were advertising wireless headsets. A bit of text is not the greatest way to introduce someone to an experience. Sure it can lead you to something that does brand-building work, which is why I didn't say that search advertising has no value. But the ad itself does not build the brand.</img>

Re: Digg vs. The New York Times

Scott Karp — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:34:18 -0000

Stephen,

First of all, I'm not "the press." This blog is my personal view -- nowhere have I represented otherwise.

Well, from that perspective, the Times editor is a leech on the same sources.

But the Times is actually paying people to gather news from all over the world.

And for that matter, the Times reporters are leeches on the wars and other events of human suffering they report on, living in relative comfort while those around them agonize and die.

Tell that to Nicholas Kristof or any of the other journalists who have made it their mission to raise awareness about ""human suffering." I knew Michael Kelly, who was the first journalist to die in Iraq, and I can tell you he was NOT a "leech" -- and I can assure he was not doing it for his personal enrichment. Many other journalists have died and risked their lives to report from war zones.

Frankly, I find this comment EXTREMELY offensive and twisted.

What we have seen is that in fact more accurate and more gripping accounts are coming from these trouble areas from the residents themselves.

I'm all for providing platforms for "citizen journalism" or whatever you want to call it -- that type of reporting by the people living the "news" exists rightfully alongside news gathering by people who are paid to gather news.

But that does not make valid the conclusion that all institutional news gathering is morally corrupt.

Re: Digg vs. The New York Times

Scott Karp — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:22:37 -0000

Michal,

The Times, in and of itself, doesn't need Digg to fix the buried story problem because the problem doesn't exist any more. The Times has "Most Emailed" and "Most Blogged" stories listed on the front page, where the community of readers are already surfacing what's important.

That aside, sure Digg ads value to the Times, just like Google does. My point is that the whole system depends on somebody being willing to fund the gathering of all the types of news that the Times covers. If not then we are limited to content people are willing to produce for free and or content that drives contextual ad revenue (to Seth's point). The gathering of news from war zones and destablizing democracies will no longer be economically viable unless independently funded.

Re: Digg vs. The New York Times

Scott Karp — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:10:17 -0000

Mr. K, I'm not convinced it's necessary to take sides, which is why the Netscape experiment with masses + editor is so interesting. With Digg, you can make the case that any individual story is worthwile, but the whole of the Digg front page is rather incoherent. There's no context, no organization. The masses may be smart enough to spot what's interesting or important, but when acting a collective they've got some ADHD issues. Information by large committee, as with any effort by a large committee, is likely to be lacking in coherence.

Somaking, I didn't choose the comparison, TechCrunch did -- see first sentence of this post. I thought that the comparison, already on the table, was worth exploring. So your assumption that my choice was guided by ideology reflects your own "ideological haze" -- it's generally the ideologues who want to cast everything in terms of ideology.

Marshall, thanks for flagging Blogswana -- very interesting.

Re: Search Advertising Does NOT Build Brands

Scott Karp — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 07:45:05 -0000

Bill,

I don't now, nor have I ever censored comments. I apologize for the delay in posting your comment. Two things for you to keep in mind before you jump to conclusions:

1. I'm not a 24 hour operation
2. I get deludged by comment spam -- occasionally, a legitimate comment gets lost in the shuffle

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 02:13:21 -0000

Seth, with all due respect, your eyes are always glazed over.

It's the vision thing, remember?

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:06:14 -0000

Mark, ad hominem attacks are cheap, and you only do yourself discredit by engaging in them. If you'd like to engage in a substantive discussion of Jellyfish's strengths and weaknesses, I'd be happy to do so. Otherwise please take you slime and go play elsewhere.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 10:46:16 -0000

Mark,

They hooked you with an exclusive look at their unreleased site

I never actually saw the site before it launched -- you have no facts.

your desire for attention and your vanity

You know nothing about my desires -- again, ad hominem attack.

craftily avoiding negative comments about the product

I gave due credit to Root, which is taking a competing approach. And I ended with "I will be watching closely as Jellyfish grows and enriches its market with data through utilization to see whether they are able to continue down the path to realizing this vision." I said they were on a path, not that they've arrived anywhere yet.

Rather than objectively trying to understand why people think Jellyfish will not work as planned

The focus on "liquid markets," is my analysis, not theirs. It's precisely why I think everyone comparing the site to Ebates and Fatwallet is missing the bigger picture.

FYI, an ad hominem is an attack on the person presenting the argument rather than the argument itself. In this case my argument is that you have acted as a patsy for Jellyfish. Your behaviour is the issue in this case, so it is not an ad hominem.

This is self-contradictory sophistry.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:32:46 -0000

Pete, indeed we may very well be delusional, and I am completely open to being convinced of that -- but in the meantime, if I am delusional, it is a principled delusion.

Al, you are absolutely right that the game is just getting start, and Google has as much chance of winning as anyone else. If Jellyfish pushes Google and other players to innovate further, they will have created real value separate from the larger question of whether they prove to be a viable challenger over the long term.

Brian, you're right that this is a risk. I'll expand on what Mark said by addressing the risk that a merchant will falsely advertise a lower base price before the discount -- when consumers click through to the site and see a higher price, they will simply go back and try another merchant -- that's where the market, in theory, steps in to correct the gaming of the system. And you're right that rebates have traditionally been a headache -- Jellyfish's success depends on a large degree on consumers doing a lot of their shopping through Jellyfish, so in that regard it is a big bet. The success of everything in Web 2.0 is partly of function of whether people will come if you build it.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:49:51 -0000

Mark, what is your agenda here? Do you own a lot of Google stock or a stake in a competitor? Or are you bitter that I never talked about your Crisscross News site on my blog? -- Perhaps that's something that you ought to disclose in the midst of your mud-slinging.

In case you haven't noticed, despite your efforts, a substantive conversation about the strengths and weakness of Jellyfish has emerged -- you are still invited to participate.

Giving a supported argument for you being a patsy for Jellyfish simply cannot be considered an ad hominem.

In this post, I made an argument that Jellyfish is "potentially revolutionary" based on a theory of creating a liquid market for e-commerce (read Umair if you want another take) -- you have not said one word to substantively address or counter this argument. All you have done is attacked my motives and credibility -- hence, ad hominem.

You are not the first to come here to engage in personal attacks, but I would advise you for the sake of your own reputation, if you value it at all, to consider how it has ended for others who have taken the same low road:

http://publishing2.com/2006/03/03/web-20-and-me...
http://publishing2.com/2006/02/10/blogger-defen...

There are other bloggers who have a policy of deleting comments that descend into personal attacks. For my part, if you want to roll around in mud in public view, more power to you. I'm done with you.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:02:48 -0000

CT, you're right that Jellyfish's success depends on user adoption. But this isn't just about who can accept the lowest margin -- it's (in part) about reallocating dollars that would have otherwise gone to advertising directly into lower prices -- and the lower prices act like advertising in garnering more attention. Also, many merchants like Best Buy and Circuit City have to maintain price consistency across channels, which on the shopping sites makes them less able to compete with low margin merchants -- now they can use ad dollars to drive down prices through Jellyfish in the form of cash back without changing their underlying list price. You are right also that the excitement you see here less in response to what has been rolled out in the beta and more in response to the thinking on where this is going -- it's very much about the ideas, but given the shortage of new ideas, I think ideas are worthy of the attention, even short of execution.

Rajan, what I mean by "liquidity" is the dynamic interaction of all of the elements I listed above, where the likelihood of transaction to take place with a particular merchant for a particular item is a function of relevance, price, rating, reputation, etc. all interacting "without friction." AdWords is a liquid market for key words, but it is not about transactions and does not factor in all of the elements that determine transactions, e.g. aspects of consumer benefit beyond relevance.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:17:45 -0000

CT,

The end result is that the merchant that is willing to accept the least (combination of product price and cashback) for their product will have the lowest price (on jellyfish).

You're leaving out of this equation the reallocation of advertising/marketing dollars -- there is a big pot of money most companies have to drive sales, which are factored into the cost per sale. Paying for attention, i.e. advertising, and competing on price through discounting, have traditionally been managed separately -- with Jellyfish, in theory, they can now be managed together.

End result is that I donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t see shoppers getting better deals out of it.

They will if there is sufficient adoption by both buyers and sellers for Jellyfish to become a big, liquid market, which will enable market forces to adjust prices down -- it also depends on this market being able to drive the reallocation of advertising/marketing dollars into lower prices. But that's the beauty of the market theory -- if it works, this will all take care of itself.

Eventually someone will take the time to build a little app that scrapes all these shopping comparison engines and gives presents the true low price to the user - that would make price comparison easy.

That's true if you're still taking about static offerings and not a dynamic market -- and such a scraper site couldn't deliver the Jellyfish discount which requires participating in the Jellyfish market.

The liquid market is the key.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 17:18:01 -0000

Ted, those are precisely the right questions -- and that is Jellyfish's challenge.

Re: Jellyfish’s Liquid E-Commerce Market

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 23:20:33 -0000

Mark, I don't know why I always let myself get sucked into these things, but here's my last word on this.

You have absolutely no substantiation for your claim that I was "manipulated." My interest in what Jellyfish is doing predates my ever having heard of them:

Imagine a Robin-Hood-like application that could somehow take a percentage of the revenue that we generate through our attention and redistribute it to us. Imagine if Google had to pay YOU for the attention that you give each AdWords advertiser when you click.

If you take the time to read the conversation on this post (which flourished despite your efforts to sabatoge) you'll notice a few things. First, you're an army of one on this issue. Second, and more importantly, this post has served as a forum where Jellyfish's model has been openly challenged and debated. Rather than addressing the substance of what I or anyone else has said about Jellyfish, all you have done is make baseless accusations.

Your use of words like "vanity" and "manipulation" (suggesting that I'm sufficiently weak-minded and attention-hungry to be manipulated by cheap PR tactics) are a personal attack, as much as you want to spin it otherwise.

Has it ever occurred to you that there's a lot of excitement around Jellyfish because what they are doing is acutally really SMART? This view has plenty of support, from Pete Cashmore to WSJ to Umair Haque to InformationWeek -- do you think they are all "patsies" -- a conspiracy, perhaps?

I laid out a clear argument in this post as to why I think what Jellyfish is doing is smart and potentially game changing. Some people stepped forward above to disagree and the open debate that resulted is, to me, what blogging is all about.

If you'd read this blog, you know that I have often been pessimistic of late on business models and innovations. Jellyfish genuinely got me excited, by their ideas as much as their beta. Will they succeed? Who knows?! But the way they are thinking is definitely on the path to the "next Google," something I've been writing about ever since I started this blog. I stand by my statement that a failure to understand what Jellyfish is aiming at is a failure of imagination -- by saying that, I make no claim that they are guaranteed to hit that target. It's the target that fundamentally interests me, and that's what I was trying to explain in this post.

I get approached multiple times a day with invitations to have inside looks at new products, and if I were as easily manipulated as you suggest, this blog would be nothing but posts about companies. But the substance of my analysis of what Jellyfish is doing speaks for itself, and I feel no need to defend it or do anything differently in the future, i.e. I won't be manipulated by you or anyone else using cheap ad hominem attacks.

The reason I accused you of having an agenda is that I don't see you making the rounds to other blogs who have written positively about Jellyfish -- the vitriol in your attack felt personal, which leaves your motive beyond my comprehension. All I could do was speculate.

In any case, if you don't like what you read here, there are 45 million other blogs for you to choose from. It's a free and open media world, and that's a beautiful thing.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:26:56 -0000

Craig -- I think you're missing my point. I'm not suggesting that Google wants to be the store. They want to be the way you find the store -- or the product -- and for that, it's a very inefficient system. They dominate the market not because they offer consumers the best value proposition as a place to begin shopping, but because the utility of Google search for finding them information generally has made them a de facto way to start shopping. The utility of the wallet is not the issue -- it's the assumption that they will continue to dominate the "front end" where the real value is created. The inefficiency of the system is ripe for disruption.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:37:24 -0000

Um, no Paul -- you still get this laundry list of results with the only differentiation being price across apples, oranges, and bananas. Look at the first result -- coffee from CompUSA -- give me a break! No wonder Froogle was a total dud. Check out the reviews of CompUSA -- yeah, that will help me buy coffee.

The current crop of shopping comparison engines is also very 1.0 -- no leveraging of the network.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 06:06:39 -0000

Jim, I agree about Amazon -- the problem with Google's strategy is that Amazon's reviews are far more central to its dominance than one-click shopping. Typical of Google, they focus on the technology-enabled value proposition -- which is essentially a commodity -- rather than the community-enabled value proposition -- Amazon's huge database of reviews is gold for smart shoppers and not easily reproduced.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:04:59 -0000

Karl, you're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that Google doesn't get Web 2.0 -- I said that their model does not leverage its full potential. Read the Umair post I referenced.

And I'm not selling anything Karl. I will defend my analysis point by point, so bring it on.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:14:55 -0000

Mike, see comments #3 and #4 above.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 13:54:51 -0000

Cyril, you're right that Google is deeply entrenched, making it a huge challenge for Jellyfish or any other competing model to gain adoption -- but then remember how Google got where it is. Some long forgotten players used to dominate search, but then Google came a long and it exploited the shortcomings of the incumbents. The same could happen to Google.

CT, you're right that Google serves many purposes beyond shopping, but just look at the heading of their blog post on Google Checkout -- "Find it with Google. Buy it with Google Checkout" They want people to start thinking of them as a shopping engine. But the fact that Google can't tell whether you're shopping when you search for something is one reason why its ads are so inefficient. I'm using Jellyfish simply as a convenient touchstone for the as yet untapped 2.0 potential that could significantly disrupt Google.

Jim/Karl -- This is Google's Achilles heel. MySpace and YouTube have shown that people are in fact NOT lazy -- peer production is a force of nature that has yet to be harnessed for commerce.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 16:20:39 -0000

Karl, my fault for not more clearly articulating -- Google is indeed leveraging "participation," but in a very mechanical way. To channel Umair, they only indirectly leverage the social and cultural dynamics that drive everything we do. When I link to something, it says a lot, but on the other hand, it is only a fragment of information. Here's a partially useful analogy -- a social anthropologist can learn a lot about family dynamics by watching families like a fly on the wall -- but she can only learn so much without actually talking to the family and developing a personal relationship. MySpace and YouTube are built on direct personal connections, not just observed behavior.

Is Google the end, all be all? No. Will there one day be something better? Sure.

Google wouldn't be Google with that kind of blase attitude -- and no one can challenge Google with that attitude either.

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:10:33 -0000

Karl, just because they can see all of these connections, doesn't mean they can fully understand them or interpret them -- they are still trying to play the omniscient force that observes what you are doing and in a 1.0 patriarchal way delivers to you what the algorithms, in their wisdom, have deemed most relevant. YouTube is so powerful because it is people helping EACH OTHER determine what is relevant.

And, yes, Google is indexing our conversation as we speak -- but do you think IT understands that you annoyed me with the tone I inferred in your comment, which led me to somewhat unfairly pull and editorialize your quote, which in turn annoyed you? And if we make amends (which I'm doing now), do you think Google is following along?

Human interactions are infinitely complex. Google is not god -- as much as it may want to be. Why do you think economics as science has so much trouble predicting human behavior?

Re: Google Is A Very 1.0 Shopping Engine

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:13:17 -0000

Lukas, I didn't say that Google is stupid -- they are masters of their algorithm-driven domain, and are doing the best they can for their users. My point is that what they can do for their users is fundamentally limited because it is so purely technology driven -- the new 2.0 paradigm is technology-enabled-peopled-driven (if that makes any sense).

Re: PayPerPost Will Taint Us All

Scott Karp — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:26:47 -0000

Mike, I'm saying this based on personal experience. I talked positively about a company. They didn't pay me a dime. Hell, they didn't even buy me lunch. And still I got slimed. There's a reason why publishers formed organizations like the American Society of Magazine Editors to set standards -- perhaps bloggers should do the same.

Jim, my skin is sufficiently thick after 6 months of blogging. It's not that it makes me feel bad -- it's a massive distraction. Instead of engaging in substantive debate, I have to waste time dealing with the slime. And it keeps away other people who want to have a debate, because it casts a shadow. Celebrities learn to deal with the distraction, but now bloggers will be distracted as well.

Stephen, if only this blog were a way to make money. But you see, you are already drawing unfair conclusions -- the ads on this site buy me a cup of coffee to drink while I blog. The reason I run them is to learn about online advertising by actually doing it. People too often draw conclusions from superficial evidence -- it's all about appearances. If you WERE a regular reader of this blog, you'd know that more often than not I get myself in trouble for voicing unpopular opinions, which is distinctly UNcommercial.

Re: PayPerPost Will Taint Us All

Scott Karp — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 07:16:20 -0000

Karl, everything you've ever said here has been most welcome -- disagreement is great, because it leads to debate, and as I've said many times, that is why I blog. You can call me an idiot. I don't care.

But to suggest that I'm doing anything here other than express my honest, personal opinion -- that I will object to ever time.

Mark Devlin is of course back to reiterate that I was unduly influenced to by Jellyfish, suggesting that I am weak-mindedly susceptible to "Free invitations, bonds of friendship, pre-release looks, and a host of PR tricks are all ways to gain the favor of the media." Now I have to decide whether to waste time AGAIN in a futile effort to counter this Swift-Boating, or just ignore it.

I suppose the only tenable position that will maintain my sanity and enjoyment of blogging is to ignore it.

Paul, payola may not be new in the blogosphere, but PayPerPost puts it over the edge by institutionalizing it in public and giving everyone a branded focal point.

J. Jeffryes,

I kind of doubt a live human is even checking every single post, so even if they did try to enforce the tone of the post, it wouldnÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t work. And if youÃ¢â‚¬â„¢re not enforcing tone, then how is this ultimately different than being paid to review movies, cars, or anything else for a magazine or newspaper, when those same things are featured in the ads that pay your salary?

This is the key question, isn't it -- it's all about control. Will companies pay money and cede control? I doubt it. I they find they can't effectively control the message, then they're not going to continue to pay for the service.

Re: PayPerPost Will Taint Us All

Scott Karp — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 09:44:22 -0000

Mark,

What's the difference between a blog that runs off of PayPerPost and advertising as it has traditionally been defined -- it's all paid messaging.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The problem arises when it becomes impossible to separate out the paid content from the non paid content. The whole thing becomes a whole stew laced with marketing. It's fine if people want to make blogs that are pure advertisements. But it will now be very difficult for the average person to separate the advertisement from the non-advertisement.

By Mark Devlin's definition, just TALKING to a ANY commercial interest automatically turns you into an advertisement.

I'm not suggesting that the walls can or should stay up -- this is inevitable. My point here is that the world just got a whole lot messier and difficult to navigate.

Re: Paying for Bad PR

Scott Karp — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 14:59:46 -0000

J,

You have very nice blog, so don't take this the wrong way, but the fact that you got the offer before me shows the gross inefficiency of the system. Based solely on reach, the money would have been better spend here:

<img src="http://publishing2.com/images/JJeffryes vs Publishing2.png" alt="JJeffryes vs Publishing 2.0">

Although, given my attitude towards PayPerPost, perhaps not.</img>

Re: Life-Changing Applications Don’t Come Along Very Often

Scott Karp — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:23:20 -0000

Aneil,

I wonder whether there in fact hidden costs to releasing tons of applications to see which one will stick -- specifically, the bad PR among early adopters that we're witnessing in conversations like this. Google is a very strong brand, but it's not indestructible.

Re: What Will Replace Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Scott Karp — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 23:49:07 -0000

Brian, it's almost axiomatic at this point that PPC makes traditional offline advertising look like flushing money down the toilet -- at least the advantage of the old model is that you didn't know how much you were flushing, ignorance, bliss, etc. Now we got the dollars and cents measurements of waste, fraud, and abuse -- the sword cuts both ways thing.

Click fraud obviously needs to be fixed (especially for Google stockholders), but the question is -- can it be fixed? As long as the system is vulnerable to abuse, people will find a way to abuse it.

Click fraud was a revolutionary step forward, but why should the path end there?

Re: What Will Replace Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Scott Karp — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 18:54:05 -0000

CT, you're right that click fraud is a "spectrum disorder" to borrow a medial phrase. Maybe we need a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being a pretty crappy click and a 10 being a totally fraudulent bot click.

Markus, from the post on your site:

As both an advertiser and adsense user iÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve noticed a LARGE percentage of users will use your ad as a bookmark.

Do you have to pay for each of these Ã¢â‚¬Å“bookmarkÃ¢â‚¬Â clicks since they pass through Google? If you do, thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s insane.

Michael/Peter,

How can Google maximize efficiency if it doesn't control the middle piece, i.e. what happens on the advertiser's site after the click on the ad but before the purchase in Google Checkout?

Re: What Will Replace Pay-Per-Click Advertising?

Scott Karp — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:33:48 -0000

Danny, what a surprise, so glad you could join us :)

ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s like me wondering how much air escaped from a carÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s tires over a month. I ask 400 people to give me their estimates. 200 of them donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t bother getting out the pressure gauge each month and actually checking. They just shout out whatever they think is right. And from that, you make some scientific conclusion on air loss?

If after a couple of months you've got a flat tire, the rate of air escape isn't really the issue. You know you've got a problem with your tires.

IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢m not saying it canÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t happen, but even despite click fraud (in whatever degree it is out there), search overall remains an extremely efficient advertising medium. ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s why people are spending with it and pulling away from other areas to fund it (other areas that never, ever come under near as much examination about true circulation, wasted impressions and so on, because compared to search, you can hardly measure them at all).

It will happen because new models will come along (soon) that will exceed PPC in efficiency the same way that PPC exceeded the old models in effciency.

I should make the distinction that you taught me, which is that "search" advertising is a seperate issue from PPC. I don't think annyone questions that a search results page a is a great place to deliver ads related to search terms. But how those ads function won't remain PPC forever.

Finally, the report had 63 percent at Google extremely satisified or somewhat satisified with the response they got on click fraud complaints. ThatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s a pretty high figure. Google should make it 90 to 99 percent, of course. But thatÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s not a figure that underlines a death spiral to me. And the other key figure, the fact that practically no one follows up with the search engines on complaints is important. The perception of click fraud is clearly strong. The actions advertisers take, according to this survey, is to sit back and do little except maybe reduce spending. More proactive moves on the part of the search engines might reverse that.

With all due respect, this really sounds like spin. Which is why I labeled your post predictable. This survey marks a point on a trend line -- what's your basis for concluding that the trend won't continue in a negative direction? "Death spiral" doesn't mean it's "dead" NOW, it means that things seem to be getting worse over time, so there is reason to expect that they will continue to get worse if the trend continues in the same direction.

Re: Google Search Ad Spam

Scott Karp — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 13:36:34 -0000

Ted, thanks for pointing that out -- it makes perfect sense.

But it's still curious to me -- what are the chances that someone looking for Karp access panels or Scott mortgage is going to search for those items with just those key words alone? The result, while targeted on the one hand, is quite odd-looking on the other hand as far as ad copy goes.

I would guess the results from such a keyword strategy requires prospective customers to have the same sophisticated understanding of how AdWords works in order grok the ads.

I don't question that this is state-of-the-art. It's just that the "art," being algorithm-driven, is capable of producing results that look odd to humans -- even if they do work.

Re: Dell’s Corporate Blogging and the Problem of Risk Management

Scott Karp — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 18:39:20 -0000

Dave,

I think you and Jeff are conflating Dell's past mistakes with an evaluations with their current efforts to fix them.

If you tell Dell they need to have a conversation with their unhappy customers, I don't see how it's constructive to punch them in the nose the minute they open their mouth.

Re: Dell’s Corporate Blogging and the Problem of Risk Management

Scott Karp — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 21:44:54 -0000

Oy vey, Dave -- I didn't meant "you" as in you, Dave Wine, I meant "you" rhetorically, since there are many people who have in fact said this to Dell. So yes, my bad for not being more clear.

And "punching in the nose" is a metaphor for what happened to Dell when they launched their blog. With so much well-deserved anger at Dell, the punch should probably not have come as a surprise. Perhaps they might have hoped for the blogosphere to take the high rode -- but then it wouldn't be the blogosphere we all know and love.

But just to be clear, Dave, I give you full credit for the civility of the statements I've seen you make on this issue -- even if I happen in this instance to disagree :)

Re: Distributed Revenue-Sharing Ad Platforms Are the Paradigm For Monetizing Social Media

Scott Karp — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:37:34 -0000

Jim -- you're still thinking in old media terms. It would be focused on sharing with your friends products and services that you use, enjoy, and that help define your identity. There is a huge word-of-mouth, peer-to-peer network that is already selling products this way -- this just gives people a piece of the action. And the key here is "action," as in cost-per-action -- so, no, you don't charge for putting up the "poster," but you do charge if that poster leads one of your friends to buy the product.

Re: Distributed Revenue-Sharing Ad Platforms Are the Paradigm For Monetizing Social Media

Scott Karp — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:58:56 -0000

Lawrence,

Great points.

Think of it terms of CPM -- right now, most user pages on MySpace have a very low CPM because advertisers are afraid to run their ads and there is effectively a glut of inventory.

Individual users can and should have the ability to drive up the net effective CPM for each of the page views they generate because they know much better than MySpace does how to market/recommend products and services to their friends -- because they are already doing it.

This is what is necessary to full embrace the social media model -- you need to relinquish control not only of the content but of the advertising as well, because peer production is far more efficient at driving up the net effective CPM by operating at the peer-to-peer level rather than the old media "shove the marketing message down everyone's throat" model.

So MySpace could make this work by keeping page views the same but increasing CPM five fold and sharing half of the incremental revenue with users.

Re: Distributed Revenue-Sharing Ad Platforms Are the Paradigm For Monetizing Social Media

Scott Karp — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:26:31 -0000

Lawrence,

All very well said.

Here's my question -- if MySpace's CPM is as low as it's rumored to be, would it really be that hard to increase it dramatically? MySpace is indeed wildly successful based on traffic, but I haven't seen any good data on how successful it is from a revenue standpoint (if you know of any data, please share!).

2.0 economics are fundamentally counterintuitive -- it's almost a Zen thing. If you would have described the dynamics and economics of Google's business back in 1998, everyone would have scratched their heads.

It's not easy to let go -- you have use the Force, make a leap of faith (choose your metaphor).

I do agree with your point that the "self-earning infrastructure" may not be there yet -- it certainly represents a huge opportunity, though.

Re: Distributed Revenue-Sharing Ad Platforms Are the Paradigm For Monetizing Social Media

Scott Karp — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 21:14:37 -0000

Mark, same as I said to Jim, you're thinking in old media terms. If you had an affiliate model with a 5% revenue share, then someone who could drive $1000 worth of product sales would get $50 -- or part to the profile owner and part to the ad network (i.e. not necessarily MySpace). This is not a function of page views but rather peer networking and peer-to-peer influence, which is what social networking is all about.

Re: Distributed Revenue-Sharing Ad Platforms Are the Paradigm For Monetizing Social Media

Scott Karp — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:22:53 -0000

Mark -- now you are at the hard part. As Lawrence pointed out above, the "self-earning infrastructure" may not be there yet. But I think the answer will be found by following the principle of empowering users to drive up the net effective CPM by leveraging their social networks. I do know that a lot of folks are working on this.

Re: Making Sense of the 2.0 Ideological Polemic

Scott Karp — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 07:00:07 -0000

Charles,
I think understand the difference between hype and communication -- what's your point exactly?

Bohsnews,
It is more accurate to say that mass media/marketing are certainly not dead yet, but are in steady decline -- I disagree that there is anything "persistent" about the current realities. Perhaps you need to check your vision.

As to correlation between buzzwords and hype, I suppose there is one, and you're never going to be hype, but the mere use of buzzwords doesn't prove anything. And without generalization, it's hard to talk about trends.

"Anit-ismism" -- interesting coinage.

Re: Netscape Could Beat Digg By Focusing on Average People

Scott Karp — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 08:55:52 -0000

Seamus,

Undoubtedly you're right that many people will choose cake over broccoli -- and many people do have a "terrible" diet intellectually. But I think we need to give people more credit regarding their desire to "eat" right.

Re: Netscape Could Beat Digg By Focusing on Average People

Scott Karp — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 14:52:11 -0000

Joseph, at first blush I'm inclined to agree, but when you think about it, what exactly is the difference between matching up my interests and those of people like me from Digg and its original core technology audience?

Re: 3 Million Bloggers Looking to Make Money

Scott Karp — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 15:20:41 -0000

Michael,

Sorry I didn't make that clear -- I did sign up for BlogBurst to see what it was all about, so I did absolutely agree to their terms. But it wasn't until I saw my content like this that I started to feel like they had stolen it -- even though I agreed to the terms. And yes I likely will quit if they don't change the terms. My point is that models that don't share the wealth don't seem particularly viable.

Re: The Transition of Online Advertising From Clicks to Conversion

Scott Karp — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 16:09:48 -0000

Brian, yes indeed -- problem for Google is that the payment for the click doesn't represent a big enough piece of the action -- especially given that the "action" is likely to grow.

Re: 3 Million Bloggers Looking to Make Money

Scott Karp — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 21:08:16 -0000

Joseph,

I told the folks at BlogBurst that I would stay in the network to see what they come up with. I don't fault the terms of their beta or their need to experiment to find the right model -- it just really struck me when I saw my full text content running next to ads.

As to the right revenue share, I don't think that there is a one-size-fits-all formula. I think it needs to be proportional to performance metrics, whether traffic, click-throughs, or conversions (although I think conversions is the future).

Re: 3 Million Bloggers Looking to Make Money

Scott Karp — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:16:02 -0000

Tish,

Thanks for the great observations.

I agree that most bloggers don't want to (nor would they if they did) make a living at blogging. But making a living and make some money are two separate things, and Google has made a fortune off of the latter. And you're right, off of splogs, etc., and that's a big problem for Google.

But I think the "gift-economy" is not an either/or. I blog for those long term returns. But why not get some cash in the short term? And that's where there is a huge opportunity for ad networks and the like.

Re: Netscape Could Beat Digg By Focusing on Average People

Scott Karp — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:48:52 -0000

FromDigg -- or should I say P9 -- or whoever you are,

Why did you see fit to call me an "asshat" over at Digg but not here? Is it easier to be rude and obnoxious amongst your frat boys? But then it's easy to call people names hiding behind anonymity, isn't it? And you question my integrity?

As to your point about "hybrid mix of story genres that are all rolled up into a major category," I stated clearly that the headlines I cited came from Digg's "World & Business" section, and I provided a link. What more did you want? Shouldn't the category make sense to people on the face of it without a detailed explanation of how it is actually a roll up of other categories?

Perhaps the expectations for such a "rolled up" category is one of the key issues here.

Re: Netscape Could Beat Digg By Focusing on Average People

Scott Karp — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 13:22:25 -0000

Gabe,

Then why create a category like "World & Business" that sounds an awful lot like what the New York Times does? The issue here is not about what Digg OUGHT to be -- in that instance, you (and the mob at Digg) are absolutely right that Digg serves a very different and indeed useful purpose. The issue here is what Digg WANTS to be -- I guess that's a question for Kevin Rose.

Dave,

Of course I'm slightly biased. This blog represents my personal views, which many people choose to disagree with. That's what makes it interesting.

Re: Web 2.0 Puts Users in Control of Everything Except Profits

Scott Karp — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 10:19:36 -0000

James,

I am believer in the future of the attention economy, and that form of payment is real. But the fact is we're still living in the cash economy -- I can't pay my mortgage with "attention" -- at least not directly.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 22:40:36 -0000

Sal,

Of course it's about conversion! And more than conversions, it's about who controls the revenue for those conversions. But I wasn't trying to compare conversions -- that's not what "user expeirence" is about. My point is that Google is being completely disingenuous saying iit's efforts to improve and control conversions is actually about improving user experience.

Jarred,

Perhaps you and I have a different definition of good user experience. 100% CTR has nothing to do with the quality of user experience. If someone lands on a page full of ads and has nothing else to click on when searching for content but an ad, OF COURSE you're going to get a 100% CTR! To call a page full of ads, designed to look like content, "relevant" really pushes the limits of the term.

Let's get real here -- the game is all about getting the user to click -- the user is treated like a pawn. Both of your comments show just how much the whole notion of good user experience has been twisted in service of the click game.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 23:10:41 -0000

Sal,

Again, I don't dispute at all your analysis of what drives conversions -- but if that's what Google has in mind by good user experience, they sure don't make it clear. Have you read their Google AdWords Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines? It has the following categories of recommendations:

Provide relevant and substantial content.

Treat a userÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s personal information responsibly

Develop an easily navigable site.

Now maybe you can interpret this all to mean don't let anything get in between the user and the purchase (or whatever the conversion is), but it sure feels like they are trying to hide the ball.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 23:37:12 -0000

Sal, indeed that is click arbitrage. But that's not all that's getting caught in Google's "quality score" net. Check out this tale of woe from Graywold, who was working a successful affiliate program. He specifically says:

The landing page is not an arbitrage page, it's a single product with descrption and a buy now button. The buy now button goes through a redirect page (for my tracking) and then onto the merchant. Since it's an affiliate product getting them to put the google conversion tracking code is not an option, and to be perfectly honest shouldn't enter into the equation.

As I said before, this isn't all about good user experience and improving conversions -- it's about Google's ability to control the value chain, from click to Google Checkout.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 09:54:57 -0000

Jarred,

I don't question for a moment the profitability of a site like webmortgage.net, but from a user standpoint, it's a total scam. It exists to display ads and to give people no choice but to click on an ad. The "content" is an afterthought -- and is this the best "content" available to users on mortgages? Please! If somebody wants to do serious shopping for a mortgage online, these parked domains are serving them about as well as the local supermarket coupon flier helps me learn about nutrition or the credit card offer in the mail helps me learn about managing my credit. These sites are preying on people who don't know how to find the truly useful information online.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 15:49:54 -0000

Sal,

You persist in conflating issues here. It's not about what's legal, ethical, or profitable. It's about what's in the consumers' best interest -- it's about what creates the most value for the consumer. And you're right that traditional advertising like what you find on CNN has NOT been in consumers' best interest, i.e. it has not created a lot of value. Parked domains create a lot of value for you the owner in the form of increased profits, but I still don't see how it creates a lot of value for the unsuspecting consumer.

I for one would find it hugely helpful if you could give some examples of your domains that you keep referencing -- you seem very proud of what you've accomplished with them, so I don't see the harm in disclosing them. It would make this debate (which is totally fascinating and worthwhile) a little less hypothetical.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 15:17:47 -0000

Michelle,

First, when you advertise in a "network" like AdSense, you give up a large degree of control -- that's the nature of the game.

Second, why should advertisers be upset about these parked domains IF in fact they generate "quality" traffic? The question is whether the end justifies the means.

As to purging underperforming sites, why should parked domains be any more of a liability than any other site -- unless the "user experience" is an issue.

In the previous age of fuzzy math advertising, you could pretend that context matters -- in this age of measurability, pure conversion results may fly in the face of PERCEIVED poor quality context.

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 17:13:42 -0000

Michelle,

Are you saying that AdWords advertisers are showing up on these parked domains even when they have opted out of running ads through the AdSense network, i.e. they only want to appear on Google search results pages?

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 18:24:28 -0000

This is what I see in my AdWords account:

<img src="http://publishing2.com/images/AdWords Network Options.jpg" alt="AdWords Network Options">

If you opt out of the Content Network, doesn't that opt you out of all "contextual ads," whether on parked domains, blogs, or the New York Times?

Or are parked domains in the Search Network? And if so, why are they in the "Search Network" -- that would seem to be "search" by a pretty narrow definition.</img>

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:37:26 -0000

Sal, can you point to where in AdWords' help pages it explains that the search network contains sites that are not actually search engines -- at least, I would argue, not by the average person's definition of what a search engine is?

Re: The Hypocrisy of Google’s User Experience Policies

Scott Karp — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:32:43 -0000

Sal,

I can see a shopping comparison engine as a form of search, because you type in keywords to search for products. But how can these parked domains be defined as "search"? Don't you think most AdWords advertisers understand the "search" in "Search Network" to mean typing keywords into a box and pressing "search," not landing on a site, clicking on a link, and getting a bunch of ads?

Re: The Fundamental Problem of Invalid (Fraudulent) Clicks

Scott Karp — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:36:16 -0000

Mark,

Maybe, unless you're Google and you have unrivaled reach chaining advertisers to your network, and the revenue from fraud may exceed lost revenue from lost advertisers.

Re: Print Publishing’s Point of No Return

Scott Karp — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:52:35 -0000

Dhyana, I agree -- those variables will determine how long it takes print publications to reach the point of no return -- but most of them will get there eventually.

Re: Journalism Should Be Nonprofit

Scott Karp — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:14:29 -0000

Dhyana/Graham/Mark,

I can understand why you recoil at these ideas. Maybe Jay's open-source vision is far-fetched. Maybe you do need an NPR with "professionals" stearing the ship.

But I maintain my view that publishing serious journalism as a for-profit business is a tough business.

In a fragmented world some journalists may be able to find funding independently but in the main journalism will continue to be subsidised by publishers who are aware that investigative and quality journalism has its place in the media mix.

The subsidy is precisely the problem. I think the days when for-profit publishers can afford to subsidize "investigative and quality journalism" may be coming to an end.

Whether it's taxpayer subsidies, donations to centralized or decentralized nonprofits, or even publishers setting up nonprofit foundations, the mission of serious journalism may best be achieved the same as all other public services.

Re: MySpace’s Business Model Conundrum

Scott Karp — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 19:53:38 -0000

Frank, thanks for the clarification. What you are aiming to do is provide what MySpace and others don't currently provide, which is user control over the commercial messsages.

Re: Customers Lose Faith When Technology Doesn’t Work

Scott Karp — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:08:43 -0000

Dave,

Your comment here is much to your credit and to the credit of the Technorati brand. Unlike my web hosting service, it's clear that you care about these issues, which is why I included that quote for your blog post. And you're consistent in your concern, because I've seen you comment like this on other blogs.

And I'll say yet again that I can only imagine the enormity of the data you're wresting with. Being "comprehensive" is much easier in theory than it is in practice.

If it's any consolation, the hosting service I'm switching to suffered a power outage last week, but they made it clear to their customers that they felt their pain, and the CEO was personally fielding customer inquiries.

Technology is never infallible, and when it does get out of control, it's the people that keep the brand alive.

Re: Who Will Make Money with User-Generated Online Video?

Scott Karp — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:39:32 -0000

Mark, I too am skeptical of Lulu.tv's model -- there's a Ponzie scheme aspect too it, and there are too many other options with no cost of entry.

John -- many thanks, I'm honored -- you're not the first to think I'm a slob.

Brian, I don't know if YouTube will adopt the exact same model as Revver, but I do think that they need to create a revenue sharing platform if they want to keep the content that actually has the potential to generate revenue. I agree that Red Swoosh's that the viewer install software is a tough proposition -- it all depends on how much the viewer WANTS to view the content.

Re: It’s the Users Calling…They Want Their Money

Scott Karp — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:49:41 -0000

Jeff, it was too messy to fix the mistake with strikethroughs, so I'll have to let your comment and mine stand as the record of my mistake in attributing the original observation to you rather than The Guardian. That said, it's a very telling mistake, don't you think -- assuming that the blogger was the original source and that the newspaper just picked it up?

In any case, thanks for the correction.

Re: It’s the Users Calling…They Want Their Money

Scott Karp — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:55:49 -0000

Tony, you've got to start somewhere.

Re: Lack of Transparency in Pay-Per-Click Ads and TV Ads: A Tale of Two Ad Councils

Scott Karp — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 14:51:26 -0000

David, I'm curious how well advertisers are REALLY able to measure the ROI of PPC, or whether they are still using some of the guesswork of the old CPM model? When someone clicks on an ad, and then buys three weeks later, how is the factored into most advertisers' PPC ROI models? What is the industry standard control factor for click fraud? The idea of "perfect" ROI measurement with PPC has been bandied about so much, it's now taken as an article of faith.

Tony, I'm intrigued by the multiple click/bookmarking the ad issue -- you don't see it discussed much. The data here is so thin, that the guesswork feels parallel to the guesswork of TV advertising, even if PPC has an order of magnitude more data -- it's still not all the data that is needed to know for sure the ROI of the ad spending.

Re: Lawyers, Priests, and AOL’s Data Release

Scott Karp — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 22:14:47 -0000

Seth -- really, how would you parse "how to kill your wife"?

Tony -- I think we're going to need a more perverse metaphor than "skeletons in the closet" to describe this situation -- the bodies come to life and tell all.

Re: Lawyers, Priests, and AOL’s Data Release

Scott Karp — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 12:43:10 -0000

Michal, indeed I was referring to legislation governing companies' handling of use data.

Seth, you're right that we shouldn't be alarmist, and you're probably right in your interpretation of this particular example. But it's entirely plausible that hard evidence of homicidal or suicidal exists in search data.

Re: Google Local Coupons: A Limited Offer for Consumers

Scott Karp — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 15:14:23 -0000

Jim, agreed, it is definitely progress, as I acknowledged. And it is certainly a great move by Google.

itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ll make a lot of money for Google and help local business too.

My point is -- what about helping consumers? They always seem to be left out of the analysis.

At some point that's going to start to matter.

Re: Google Local Coupons: A Limited Offer for Consumers

Scott Karp — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:33:53 -0000

Brian,

As you point out regarding Jellyfish, it's not a choice of keeping all the money at one extreme or giving it all to consumers like a charity at the other extreme. Google, like all the other players, needs to make money -- my point is that they are leaving consumers out of the economic value equation.

Shopping search (like all search) is still in its early stages -- it will get better over time. As with local search, consumers will start to realize there are better search apps for shopping that create more value for them than Google's general search app. There are also opportunity to create category-specific shopping apps that could create even more value for consumers.

Re: Google Local Coupons: A Limited Offer for Consumers

Scott Karp — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:33:15 -0000

Vlad,

First, thank you for helpfully putting this in the context of my "missing the point, once again."

The rebate or contest amount are meaningless compared to the marketing effort around the said rebate. Efficiently measuring profitability and efficiency of marketing initiatives is what what allows companies to reduce prices.

With all due respect, I think you are missing the point. Coupon amounts are relatively "meaningless" only because the marketing effort necessary to promote them is so wildly inefficient, and thus disproportionately expensive. If marketing were more efficient, that cost savings could be passed on to consumers in the form of coupons or other price reductions. The whole point of coupons is to market, i.e. make consumers aware of the price reduction. If there were a more efficient way to make consumers aware of lower prices, the prices could be lowered even more, i.e. companies would have more money available to lower prices and still achieve target profitability.

In other words, my point is entirely about efficiency and profitability.

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Scott Karp — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:00:45 -0000

Sid, I think the Camille Paglia comparison is right on -- not sure how much of the blogging/Web 2.0 crowd is familiar with her, though.

Rex, maybe I've got blinders on, but I don't see that Nick's principal intent is to "belittle and ridicule." And I didn't get the sense that he was saying "don't blog." I think his principal intent is hype-busting, in this case, "don't have a illusions about blogging based on the hype."

Of course, there's a fine line between being contrarian and iconoclastic, and unnecessarily rubbing people the wrong way -- I've crossed it myself enough times.

Maybe Nick's "allegory" was too harsh a way to discuss the issue -- but that doesn't mean the issue shouldn't be discussed. I don't think he was so far off to apply the concept of "innocent fraud" to perceptions among bloggers of how the blogosphere works. But many of the responses to his post were as much (if not more) a response to his attitude than his analysis -- which is not to say he doesn't bear responsibility for that outcome -- I guess I just find personally that there are other attitudes in the blogosphere that put me off more than Nick's.

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Scott Karp — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:48:51 -0000

Mathew,

Perhaps you should do a post titled "Nick, Why Do You Blog?"

Re: Blogging Is the New Novel/Screenplay Writing

Scott Karp — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:38:37 -0000

Rex,

Intent is never easy to determine, even by the principal actor. My principal intent with this post was not to generate incoming links (at least I don't think it was), but sure enough that's what happened.

If Nick's analysis is cogent and thought-provoking, then I'm not sure if I really care what his principal intent was, because I get value out of reading it.

If he stops being interesting, then people will stop linking to him -- so I really don't have a problem with him link baiting or getting links. Isn't that what's so great about a free and open blogosphere?

Re: Everything Is Media: The Online Retailer Edition

Scott Karp — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 11:51:54 -0000

Brian,

Good point about Buy.com. But then most people had given up on the over-hyped promise of accountable online advertising until Overture and Google figured it out, so "didn't work the first time" doesn't necessarily equate with "can't ever work."

I don't know that branding is the opportunity here -- I think it's more akin to search marketing, i.e. bringing consumers targeted, relevant messages when they are likely to be shopping for something. And I'm intrigued by Amazon's claim that they use ad revenue to lower prices -- some transparency might go a long way to making that compelling.

Re: Advice to Blog Media: Get Better Metrics!

Scott Karp — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:28:04 -0000

Jeff,

I love "meme-starting" -- more tangible than the fuzzy notion of "influence." That said, cracking the code on quantifying influence is a holy grail for blog media. This has a long history, from Roper's old civic activities definition to Gladwell's Tipping Point (where he claimed that his four categories of influencers couldn't be identified through demographics) -- effort was put in during the first boom to figure this out. One could argue that blogs are tangible records of Influence -- but, indeed, it's all about figuring out the metrics.

Let's say it again: IT'S ALL ABOUT THE METRICS.

Re: Everything Is Media: The Online Retailer Edition

Scott Karp — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:21:07 -0000

Mike,

You're right, it's just like point of purchase advertising -- the difference is that online it came be more relevant, contextual, dynamic -- and have the efficiency of a financial market rather than a supermarket.

Re: When Will Google Be Honest About Its Enterprise Ambitions?

Scott Karp — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 15:00:56 -0000

Max, software/technology as media is at the heart of Google's business innovation -- you're right that the opportunity has been there for years, and it took the information aggregation function of a search application to finally bridge the gap. But now that Google has crossed the river, the possibilities for software/technology as media are endless. That's why I reframed Publishing 2.0 as the convergence of media and technology -- software companies are the new publishing companies.

Brian, I think you're right that Google is trying to lock-up it's half of the Microsoft-Google axis, as Nick Carr put it. Although they've had trouble translating their search brand strength into other applications, they have a huge advantage in trying to be a competing "household" name for enterprise software -- and small business is the right place for them to start, especially with the siren song of "free" applications.

Re: When Will Google Be Honest About Its Enterprise Ambitions?

Scott Karp — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 15:21:23 -0000

Liam, that's a sound argument -- although it cuts both ways. Most small businesses didn't advertiser nationally until search marketing made it efficient to do so -- and AdWords pretty much spread virally. So the lack of meaningful adoption curves of SaaS enterprise could mean they just haven't reached the tipping point yet. Didn't work in Web 1.0 has been used as a frequent argument for why something won't work in Web 2.0 -- as an argument, it only holds up on a case by case basis.

Re: The Zen of 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:15:49 -0000

Sam, explaining Zen -- explaining 2.0 -- explaining the Zen parallel to 2.0 -- all the same problem. Maybe a koan would help:

Question: What is the meaning of the network effect?
Answer: A broken link.

Meditate on it. Enlightenment will come -- either that, or something more interesting will come along.

Re: Google’s Vertical Search Problem and the Law of Average Users

Scott Karp — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:09:46 -0000

Max -- that's precisely the issue -- people can take greater control, but they don't. Adopting Google search in the first place as a better way to find stuff on the web was a big enough leap for most people -- and they significantly improved their results. And now its: But wait, improve your results EVEN MORE by using the right Google search for the job -- it's just more than most people have the cognitive energy to handle. We should all eat more fruits and vegetables, but mostly we just eat whatever is on hand.

Seamus -- that's fascinating. Google is in a sense a theistic phenomenon. And most Americans (and other Westerners) are wired for monotheism. Using Google's vertical search applications is like believing in more than one God.

Re: The Zen of 2.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 21:47:41 -0000

John,

Zen philosophy is about experiencing now-ness and simplicity and understanding the real nature of things, which may lie under the surface reality.

Since you are apparently a devoted student of Zen, I wonder if you wouldn't mind explaining what exactly is the "real nature of things" and why it has nothing to do with Web 2.0?

I know what web 2.0 is intuitively. I experience web 2.0 by being able to participate in an online space.

Is that an example of what you mean by "explanatory without explaining"?

And donÃ¢â‚¬â„¢t tell me that Eastern is more simple, or more connected, or more social.

I didn't tell you that at all. Those are your words.

explanatory without explaining

Tell me again, what is Zen?

Sorry, but I think this post is a lot of hot air

A willow tree swaying in the wind.

Re: This Is What the Social Networking Privacy Backlash Looks Like

Scott Karp — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 20:29:07 -0000

Lawrence/Max,

There is a sense of being under attack -- the combination of private data with networks vulnerable to fraud and abuse -- not a good combination.

Re: Will Content Quality Still Be a Driver of Advertising Online?

Scott Karp — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 17:30:49 -0000

CPCcurmudgeon,

Howard Stern has also been a legal lighten rod and an expensive, albeit lucrative, pain in the ass to manage. There's a reason why he's one of kind. I'm not sure it's feasible to follow the Howard Stern model at the micro-content level -- it requires an awful lot of dedication. Being Howard Stern is not as easy as it looks.

Re: Will Content Quality Still Be a Driver of Advertising Online?

Scott Karp — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 23:34:02 -0000

Max,

The title of the post is a question for a reason -- I honestly don't know the answer. Certainly there are deeply entrenched interests that want the answer to be Yes. I've argued many times that the answer is no -- the solution to these riddles is typically somewhere in the middle.

I do think there's some there there to looking at search result relevancy as a measure of content quality.

Interesting to noodle over, isn't it?

Re: Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Scott Karp — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 05:59:12 -0000

Noah,

I'm sure you're right, which only makes it worse -- if the agency makes as much as they normally would have, but doesn't have to do any of the production work...and the final cut on the ad is going to be done by consumer voting...it's really a great scam.

Brian,

For now what Madison Avenue does is offload the work onto the backs of "the smart and most creative" consumers and then take credit for the whole thing...nice work while it lasts.

Re: Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Scott Karp — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 13:58:21 -0000

Michael,

Did you see this in the article?

To get posted at Yahoo and compete for the game, they'll have to work from a "creative brief" by ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners. It lays out the required theme: the passion Doritos eaters feel about the flavors.

Creating thirty second videos about why Cool Ranch Doritos are so great based on an agency bried is hardly "something they would have been doing anyway." It's contract work. They're just paying people with attention. Why? Because they can get away with it.

Is it evil? No. My point is that they probably won't be able to get away with it for very long because the top talent is going to realize that they can and should get paid.

Re: Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Scott Karp — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 00:56:11 -0000

Michal, first can you please define "troll headline" for me? Second, "sucker" was Seth Finkelstein's term, not mine. Third, where did I imply that Frito Lay is hoping to switch to an all contest ad model?

To everyone, Michael Goldhaber argues that we are moving towards an attention economy, where money will no longer be necessary. Maybe so, but we're not there yet.

Re: Are “Users” Who “Generate Content” Receiving Equal Pay for Equal Work?

Scott Karp — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 14:38:20 -0000

Michal,

Do you not find the discussion that has ensued here interesting and instructive? I sure have. Same with Nick's posts. When I write a bland post that echoes what everyone else is saying, no one shows up to discuss and I learn nothing. Apparently enough people, including you, found the question I posed in the post title sufficiently interesting to weigh in. Were you aware of the information that Adam Elend added to this discussion? -- I sure wasn't, but I'm really glad he stopped by. Call it trolling or whatever you like -- I find it hard to believe that a topic that elicited this kind of response is a "non-story." Personally, I think Nick Carr is one of the most interesting and provocative thinkers in the blogosphere, and that when people call him a troll they really mean stop writing things I disagree with all the time -- that kind of ad hominem smacks of Bush/Rove administration smear tactics, and I think it's a load of horse hockey. And I am trying to get a rise out of readers -- what the heck is the point of having a comment section if all you do is strive for echo chamber blandness? I've found blogging to be most worthwhile in instances like this where 100% of the post's value ends up being in the comments.

Re: The Fuzzy Middle Between Branding and Direct Response

Scott Karp — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:22:03 -0000

KJTK, your quibbling over terms is a perfect example of the fuzziness I'm talking about. All commercial communication, including text ads, has a branding element to it. So why the distinction between branding and direct response? It comes down to the issue of measurement -- should online "brand advertising" be measured by direct responses, i.e. clicks, conversions?

Re: Engagement Is a Euphemism For Measuring the ROI of Brand Advertising

Scott Karp — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 07:43:18 -0000

Max, competitive differentiation, relative performance within a category, loyalty and preference are all drivers of financial performance. I'm not suggesting these measures are not a necessary stepping stones. But reach and frequency dominated for so many years because advertising was not held accountable for the final destination. If we lose sight of the destination, we won't be able to connect the dots, and again will confuse a midpoint along the way with the destination.

Re: Google’s Eric Schmidt Admits to Polluting Online Content

Scott Karp — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:07:17 -0000

tclimb, Eric Schmidt said that AdSense is leading to the production of "a lot" of content, and he wishes it were "better," i.e. it's not good content. So the web is getting filled with "a lot" of content that could be "better."

Pollution, n. the act of contaminating or polluting; including (either intentionally or accidentally) unwanted substances or factors

We can quibble over terms, or we can just call a spade a spade.

Re: More Evidence That Media 2.0 May Be Less Profitable Than Media 1.0

Scott Karp — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 06:47:45 -0000

Paul,

advertisers get better tools to track ROI from their advertisements

Therefore advertisers can spend more efficiently, and so don't need to spend as much.

the audience only see the ads that are relevant to their interests

Fewer ads delivered means fewer advertising fees collected.

That is because it is only less profitable per unit of advertising. The model which can support every advertiser from the hits down the last thousandth-percentile on the long tail can make up in volume what the 1.0 model had to do with a smaller hits-based advertiser base.

Search is already getting $10+ Billion from the long tail. How much do you really think the long tail has left in it to spend? Do you really think it can it could make up for the loss of the crazy billions of spending from the big advertisers?

Re: Edelman, Wal-Mart and the Loss of Control in Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 06:38:51 -0000

Max,

Indeed -- perhaps the answer is to shut down the advertising department and give all the money to the product and customer service department. Or maybe you have one "brand steward" who also blogs and then spends the rest of the time flogging product and customer service folks to do right by the customers (and prospective customers).

Seth,

Itâ€™s got nothing to do with â€œcontrol-based mediumâ€, which is a backhanded way of setting up an unfalsifiable argument (anyone who gets caught, proves that bloggers are just so gosh darn smart and clever theyâ€™ll catch fakers - but the uncaught fakers donâ€™t get noticed!).

Let me put it another way -- I don't see any way that Wal-Mart could make effective use of corproate blogging, because no one is going to be interested in reading an honest and transparent blog -- and they have no control mechanisms to force people to do so -- and any effort to manufacture an intersting voice rings false.
Kareem,
I'm sure Edelman and Wal-Mart thought they were just "experimenting" -- there's a lot of shareholder value to be destroyed with failed experiments. I agree that there is no option other than to experiment, because the control infrastructure is unwinding -- but so much of the hype around "conversation" and ceding control makes it sound easy, when in fact doing it in a way that achieves business objectives is actually really hard.
Charlie,
An interesting analysis.

Re: Edelman, Wal-Mart and the Loss of Control in Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:05:16 -0000

Seth,
How large, do you estimate, is the universe of successful "faked" blogs (assuming it's possible to arrive at a meaningful definition of "faked")?

Re: Brands Matter More Than Ever In Media and Technology

Scott Karp — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 12:38:01 -0000

J, I like the metaphor.

Kurt, you're right, the inability to control brands through mass media communications means that the product/service itself is the only thing you can control. This is true now for all brands, not just media brands. I think the larger observation for media is that in the absence of control over distribution channels ("pipe"), media brands are where all of the value now accrues.

Re: How Has Google Changed the Software Industry?

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:27:39 -0000

Goran, the rise of the API only demonsrates the point -- rather than have that application designer build in the features FOR you, now you have to build any feature that you want yourself. But even that's not really true -- "power users" are not all developers. And the purpose of the API is more about allowing NEW applications to tap into the data, not tweaking the functionaity of the original application.

Sebastian, the whole idea that the simple search box is "enough" represents a sea change. And I don't think Google is pleased with the lack of adoption of its vertical search -- see here. As for Gmail, I guess the beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the fact remains that Gmail does not allow much customization.

David, I thought Microsoft already took Apple's approach to computing -- twenty years ago. Never really worked out though ;)

Re: How Has Google Changed the Software Industry?

Scott Karp — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 12:04:38 -0000

Eric, yes, but if I want to use the Gmail interface to manage my corporate email and access my corporate address book, I'm SOL. Forwarding my other email to Gmail just doesn't cut the mustard. And yet still I use Gmail.

Re: Does All Advertising Want to Be Free?

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 12:49:25 -0000

Jay, yeah, the media as marketing services model breaks down if companies learn how to do it themselves as part of a core competency (like customer service).

Max, yes, and the great thing about word of mouth, leveraging social networks through MySpace, etc. is that it's FREE. It would seem that a great "agency" business in that case is helping companies understand how to leverage the consumer network directly ;)

Re: Does All Advertising Want to Be Free?

Scott Karp — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:11:53 -0000

Max, indeed, it's free as to media/connection costs. Customer service departments could talk to consumers live over Skype for free, but they still need to know what to say.

Re: Does All Advertising Want to Be Free?

Scott Karp — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 11:37:05 -0000

John, you're right that advertising is still a necessary "accelerant" for most companies -- the network is not efficient enough yet. But give it time. The network effects are growing and accelerating everyday -- at some point, the network will be more efficient than media for enabling companies to widely and rapidly connect with people.

Christopher, that's exactly my point -- the online network enables advertising to be propogated for free.

Re: New Media Frets Over “Engagement” and Audience Measurement, Sounds A Lot Like Old Media

Scott Karp — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:34:38 -0000

somaking, if new media is so good at tracking media is used, then why is there a dispute over Rocketboom's "use"? Or Digg? What is the right defininition of "use." I think the technology side is just as befuddled as the business side.

Re: Does All Advertising Want to Be Free?

Scott Karp — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:36:51 -0000

Sam, would you want the job of policing MySpace for non-paying small businesses with active communities and telling them that they need to pay up or shut down? That would be a great way to foster community on MySpace.

I think the horse is already out of the barn.

Re: Is Audience Measurement Still Relevant?

Scott Karp — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 11:34:42 -0000

Jim,

Search audience metrics may help advertisers keep track of search engine scale, but that's not how search advertising is bought. Google wins on scale, but the proof is in the clicks, not some third party metrics. And I'm sure the long tale of small buisnesses and affiliate marketers that generate most of Google's revenue don't subscribe to comScore.

I agree that Fortune 1000 brand advertisers are still going to want old fashioned metrics -- but I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of ostensible brand advertisers obsessing over click rates. As long as brand advertisers' goals remain ill-defined, they will want to buy based on old audience measures. But I suspect a sea change is coming.

Re: Can I Please Blog Your Private Meeting?

Scott Karp — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:12:55 -0000

Charles, the event was exactly as it was billed -- a client user group. It was 98% BuzzMetrics clients.

Re: Can I Please Blog Your Private Meeting?

Scott Karp — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:44:45 -0000

Hung Le Duong, when I see the blogosphere in the midst of a pile-on, and I happen to disagree, yes I suppose I do push back pretty hard. In any case, thanks for your salient observations on the topic at hand.

Re: If You Can’t Tell Whether Something Is An Ad, That’s Deception

Scott Karp — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:39:55 -0000

Drew, this is not a New Media/Old Media issue. It has been around for 100 years, and there have been publishers operating on the wrong side of deception for 100 years. That people have been doing it for a long time doesn't make it a good thing.

VC Dan, I think you've got a tough sell making DisclosurePolicy the locus of this debate given PayPerPost's vested interest in the outcome.

Re: A Lot of User-Generated Content Is Really User-Appropriated Content

Scott Karp — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 17:15:40 -0000

Mathew, indeed, fair use laws are about to be put under a microscope. But let's face it -- the bad lip synching videos are in the minority of appropriated content -- I'm talking about the wholesale appropriation.

Re: A Lot of User-Generated Content Is Really User-Appropriated Content

Scott Karp — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 11:52:13 -0000

Stephen, Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

When YouTube cleared the infringing content off its service, it only amounted to a small fraction of the overall total.

Your source on that? Or do you practice "lazy, shoddy and misleading" commenting?

It's a holiday, so I'm not going to spend all day piling up evidence for you, but here's a sample. I went to iTunes and found that Beyonce has the #1 song download. So I went to YouTube and searched for Beyonce. 6120 results. Here's one that was added back in January, with 679,790 views. You do the math.

Now over to MySpace. Click Browse and choose the first profile at random. "Sweetness" by Jimmy Eats World. Is that "Miss Angelique's" band? I don't think so. Perhaps that's the reason for the big Universal Music lawsuit. I think it might be.

I never said "all," I said "much" -- perhaps I could have made a better word choice, but I certainly never made the extreme statement you seem to be attributing to me. I never mentioned Blogger, Flickr, or Live Journal. If you "make up" what I said, sure it makes for a much better rant, but a publishable letter to the editor this ain't.

Re: Content Businesses Don’t Scale Anymore

Scott Karp — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 15:19:39 -0000

Nick, yes, perhaps I should have been more specific -- a for-profit business producing original content that has scaled?

Re: Content Businesses Don’t Scale Anymore

Scott Karp — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 16:40:02 -0000

Scaler -- first, why not take credit for your insights? Second, I said those content businesses are successful at their scale, i.e. at their current scale, meaning they are all profitable today. I profitable content business is far from "trivial."

There are a few out there now pumping out a ton of video and audio original content.

Can you be a bit more specific?

Re: Content Businesses Don’t Scale Anymore

Scott Karp — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 23:04:00 -0000

Howard, I agree that content creation is scaling like crazy due to an abundance of newly empowered talent -- but that's precisely why it's so hard to scale the audience for any given content effort -- and that's why the content platforms are what scales.

Re: A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless

Scott Karp — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 14:40:15 -0000

Aaron, thanks for the clarification. Nonetheless, the value of one Digg for getting a story to the homepage -- without which it would never receive the volume of Diggs that drive the long-term rankings -- still remains unknown.

Re: A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless

Scott Karp — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:26:25 -0000

GreenLantern,

None of those stories would have made the long-term popular lists without having made the front page first -- cracking the front page is when the Diggs really "count," if you will. Check your stats for your recent experience with Digg -- where did most of the referrals come from, the front page or the long-term popular lists?

Re: A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless

Scott Karp — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:00:01 -0000

GreenLantern,

Yes, but the frontpage is the seperation between all stories and the best stories (according to digg users).

Yes, and the value of one Digg for crossing that dividing between "all" and "best" is unknown -- I'm not saying the Digg algorithm is not effective for surfacing stories that users value, because it clearly is for a lot of people. I'm saying that displaying the number of Diggs as if they all counted the same for is misleading and that displaying then at all is perhaps unecessary.

Re: A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless

Scott Karp — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 17:58:08 -0000

Michal,

This is not a critique of Digg but rather a musing on whether elements of Digg are necessary for this kind of social media model. Once you get beyond the young male techie demographic that Digg has captured to, say, your average AOL or Yahoo news user, I think the inscrutability of the system is very much an issue.

Re: Collateral Wii Damage and The Law of Unintended Technology Consequences

Scott Karp — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:44:19 -0000

Jim, Nintendo obviously anticipated the risk, but they probably underestimated the degree of risk -- and that the straps might break:

<img src="http://publishing2.com/images/Wii Broken Strap.jpg" alt="Wii Broken Strap"></img>

Re: A Digg On Digg Has Become Meaningless

Scott Karp — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:48:20 -0000

Sandra, yes, exactly, you said it much better than I did.

Re: Let’s Try This Again: If It’s Not CRYSTAL CLEAR That Something Is An Ad, It’s DECEPTION

Scott Karp — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 08:25:28 -0000

Brian, I think it's a pretty safe bet that PayPerPost is highlighting the issue with affiliate marketing for less than altruistic reasons.

Re: Let’s Try This Again: If It’s Not CRYSTAL CLEAR That Something Is An Ad, It’s DECEPTION

Scott Karp — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 07:16:51 -0000

Matt, I put up your original image -- while the shadding for the ads above the organic results is certainly helpful, I don't think a lightly colored, one pixel line makes up for the loss of the shaded boxes on the right -- especially since the ads are now formated to look EXACTLY the same as the organic results.

Re: What Kind of Publisher Are You?

Scott Karp — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:42:52 -0000

Michael,

The difference is that Chris Anderson is talking about opening up the entire process of creating the content that appears in the magazine as well as online, which is fundamentally disruptive to traditional print magazine editorial process. It's not an "ancillary digital product" -- it's a product that could become the primary product, thus making the print product a secondary consideration.

Re: Silicon Valley vs. Madison Avenue

Scott Karp — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:32:47 -0000

Matt, it's a MyBlogLog plugin for Wordpress. And thanks for the first comment -- see my response in the update above.

Re: Transparent Ads Are Better Than Fake “Conversations”

Scott Karp — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:49:00 -0000

Brian, the problem is that "listening and responding" is a product issue, not a marketing issue. If the market tells you that your product sucks, then you should listen to the criticism and make it better rather than trying to shove your crappy product down the market's throat. Instead, "conversation" was turned into a marketing tactic that is almost inherently dishonest.

Rex -- community, conversation, and social are my top three ICKY words for 2006.

Re: Transparent Ads Are Better Than Fake “Conversations”

Scott Karp — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:38:06 -0000

but theyâ€™ve been appropriated by marketers, politicians, entrepreneurs - anyone who wants to wield influence or sell something.

Something we should have seen coming a mile away. Nick Carr was right that the web is ammoral -- there's nothing inherently good or bad about the Web -- it all depends who is using it and for what purpose.

Re: 2007 Predictions

Scott Karp — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 08:44:44 -0000

Brad, I think that email, for all its shortcomings and lack of use among the youngest generation, remains a killer app.

Re: Blogs Have A Big Problem With Small CPMs

Scott Karp — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:33:49 -0000

Aaron, you're absolutely right, particularly about AdSense. But it's telling that a smart guy like Guy couldn't get it right his first year out.

Re: Blogs Have A Big Problem With Small CPMs

Scott Karp — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:53:00 -0000

Rafat, thanks for the clarification -- even though you sell by flat rate, which has proven a best practice for niche sites, I'm guessing that many if not most advertisers do the math and know that they are paying high CPMs.

Re: The Print WSJ Is Only A Shadow Of Its Former Self

Scott Karp — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:54:08 -0000

John, I'm sure you're right about the improvement -- what struck me is how hard it was to get past the visceral impact of the size change to actually evaluate the substance.

Re: Blogs Have A Big Problem With Small CPMs

Scott Karp — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 19:03:15 -0000

Jim,

CPM is just a reference point, i.e. PaidContent's flat rate sponsorships all have a net effective CPM if you just do the math. I think the key issues is that there's still a meaningful distinction between branding objectives and transactional direct response objectives. Take PaidContent advertisers, for example -- how are Jordan Edmiston or DeSilva Philips going to do affiliate marketing? The affiliate gets paid every time they do an M&A; deal? It just does work for that kind of business -- sure, they could have some form of CPA through a registration for downloading information, but really they just want exposure for their brand.

Re: Success on Digg Is Just Like Success In Old Media

Scott Karp — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:02:08 -0000

Michal,

remaining 95% of the site?

The front page of Digg is only 5% of the site? How did you arrive at that conclusion? With what data or evidence?

I keep writing about it because people keep hyping it and misconstruing what it actually is -- anti-hype is much of what I've been doing on this blog since I started it. Why are you so surpirsed?

Thatâ€™s not an apt analogy at all - the letters page of a newspaper has limited space, publishes only â€œon topicâ€ material, and only at the discretion of the editor.

You're got to be kidding -- try getting something that's not "on topic" from the perspective of the Digg community on the homepage of Digg. And the homepage of Digg is not "limited space" -- go count the number of stories you see each day and explain how that's not a limited number.

This is completely different from a site that lets anyone post whatever they want, guaranteeing only a permanent URL and the potential for votes.

Anyone can write a letter to the editor, just like anyone can submit a story to Digg. Your chances of getting your letter to the editor printed are probably better at this point than getting your story to the homepage of digg. Whether it's at the discretion of newspaper editors or top Diggers, what's the difference really?

the front page only matters to those people who try to reach it or complain about who doesnâ€™t.

The front page of Digg doesn't matter to the Digg community?!?! Then why does it drive so much freakin' traffic?

Re: Success on Digg Is Just Like Success In Old Media

Scott Karp — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:10:26 -0000

Michal,

Basically, what Iâ€™m hearing you argue is that any system which rewards sustained effort is elitist, which is insane.

Digg is an "elitist" system -- the algorithm gives more weight to the actions of top users. This is the definition of elitistm -- "The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority"

I think the term "elitist" is distracting from the issue -- the "sustained effort" is my point. You have to earn your way into an influential editorial role on Digg, just like in old media

If you actually look at the usage patterns (I have, Digg is a client, conflict-of-interest disclaimer, blah blah blah) youâ€™ll find that the site is composed largely of â€œdark matterâ€ that doesnâ€™t necessarily find its way up the promotion stovepipe, but has value to niches of users.

Can you back that up with some data? Where can you point to any evidence that Digg users value the "dark matter" more than the front page?

you describe the â€œtop diggersâ€ as an unassailable elite, rather than just insanely heavy long-time submitters who are remarkably talented at writing head-turning headlines.

I NEVER said that the top diggers are "unassailable" -- that's YOUR straw man. Anyone can earn their way up, IF they work hard at it and are good at it.

Your percentages assume that all of Diggâ€™s 700K users are â€œin the raceâ€ to hit the homepage by submitting stories, which is off the mark by at least an order of magnitude.

"in the race" -- again, your spin. Are you suggesting that most Digg users aren't interested in getting their submissions to the homepage? Again, what what evidence?

Re: Apple’s iPhone And The Head Rush Of REAL Innovation

Scott Karp — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 21:01:24 -0000

Michal/Zone, Google is a money making machine because it sells other people's stuff, and there's unlimited demand and supply.

Re: Platforms Vs. Experiences

Scott Karp — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 22:56:22 -0000

Oh, come on, Mathew, I don't just want to change the look, I want to move everything around, maybe move it to a different blogging platform :)

Re: Platforms Vs. Experiences

Scott Karp — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 09:13:37 -0000

Rob, the topic itself is just like Apple design - a classic.

Michael M., it's not an issue of whether third party developers COULD make improvements, it's an issue of whether Apple wants to devote resources to facilitating that dynamic -- supporting developers requires resources and attention, you don't just set it to autopilot. It's a strategic tradeoff -- if Apple wants to focus energy on optimizing the user experience themselves, that's their choice, and they will either succeed or fail. But developers shouldn't take it personally.

Re: Platforms Vs. Experiences

Scott Karp — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 10:17:35 -0000

Tim,

Apple will only open the iPhone up as the market requires them to, and that just sucks for us users, who are stuck with products that are less useful until the rest of the market catches up.

Apple knows that "us users" are a tiny minority -- and they know damn well that they are selling a better product than everyone else. Hard to see how having a better product than what the market had been offering sucks for most users -- because it's not the absolute superlative best that every backseat hacker can imagine it? Please!

Most users owe Apple a debt of gratitude for leapfrogging the entire market and dragging it along into the future -- from a business standpoint, why shouldn't they squeeze all the advantage they can out of it?

If another company, say Microsoft, thinks they can out-innovate Apple by openly embracing the developer community, well, they are welcome to try.

Re: Platforms Vs. Experiences

Scott Karp — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 15:49:19 -0000

Rex, I may be able to read Dave Winer's blog in Google Reader, but I can't actually hack either the content of Dave's posts or the Google Reader app -- those are utterly controlled experiences. Even in kneeling in front of the altar of openness, there are still immutable objects -- for Apple, it happens to be their device OS.

Re: Record Profit for Apple’s Closed System

Scott Karp — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:10:29 -0000

Loren,

Thanks for the comment, nice to meet you as well. I don't think I'm in a position to bestow praise that should lead anyone to be humbled -- I should be thanking you for making me laugh my ass off -- while you were simultaneously being insightful -- very few people can pull that.

Scott

Re: Demented And Sad, But Social

Scott Karp — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 08:32:46 -0000

Brian, great video, thanks. Seeing all of those Breakfast Club clips reminds me just how great YouTube is for finding media company generated content.

Eric, it's amazing how much "finally understanding this Internet thing" is still going on.

Re: What Is The Check On Wikipedia’s Power?

Scott Karp — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:17:19 -0000

Mathew, my friend, your comment is rife with assumptions.

he still tried to get around the process

I've seen nothing that would instill any confidence in any corporate entity that there is a "process" that would treat them fairly, i.e. you're assuming that Microsoft went around a perfectly good and fair process. Just look at Michael Rubin's comment above yours for evidence to the contrary.

there are ways of doing so that donâ€™t involve astroturfing

According to the Wikipedia definition of "astroturfing," you need to be deceptive in your approach, and Microsoft specifically did NOT ask Jelliffe to hide the ball. I think the "astroturf" label is becoming a bit of a red herring.

All in all, I think it's a LOT more complicated than you and others are making it out to be.

Re: What Is The Check On Wikipedia’s Power?

Scott Karp — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:32:17 -0000

Mathew,

Iâ€™m not saying the Wikipedia process is completely without flaws

But that is PRECISELY the issue. It's easy to write off what Mahugh did as "stupid" or "foolish" or "not getting it" or "acting irrationally," but I think the reality is more likely that his actions were a response to processes that are in fact BROKEN.

Most people don't act with malicious intent -- they make the best judgment they can under the circumstances. If Mahugh made the wrong judgment, the question is why? Again, I'm guessing it's not because he's some devious corporate type that we'd all love to demonize.

Re: What Is The Check On Wikipedia’s Power?

Scott Karp — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:33:29 -0000

I think he may have been acting completely rationally â€” and thought what he was doing was the right thing. Thatâ€™s irrelevant.

No, that's entirely relevant -- if the official process can really enable a corproate entity like Microsoft to achieve its legitimate objectives, then his circumventing the process would have be entirely IRRATIONAL.

paying someone to change a Wikipedia entry is somehow justified because Wikipedia is â€œbroken.â€

No, the core issue is whether Wikipedia is, in fact, broken. I think it is.

And on PayPerPost -- not even close. PPP allows advertisers to REQUIRE a positive post, have approval over the post, AND it does NOT require disclosure. Microsoft did not require anything specific of Jelliffe other than that he use his professional judgment, they did not ask him for approval, AND they asked him to disclose everything on his blog!

Re: What Is The Check On Wikipedia’s Power?

Scott Karp — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:49:33 -0000

Oh, and Mathew

Just to be clear, I didnâ€™t say he was stupid

Oh really?

Re: What Is The Check On Wikipedia’s Power?

Scott Karp — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 10:43:59 -0000

Mathew,

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Scott Karp — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 17:28:55 -0000

HMTKSteve,

If your advertising model is based on a per-impression model (CPM), Digg is good for you.

Only if your advetisers want to reach young, male (94%), geeks.

gz,

Just basic demographics is a big variable.

Re: Not All Traffic Is Created Equal

Scott Karp — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 09:21:26 -0000

Lawrence, do you have examples of Dugg articles that have received lots of links from Digg users?

Prof. Daga, you can see Digg's demographics here.

HMTKSteve, good for you but not good for your advertisers is a market imperfection and it won't last.

Re: Forbes.com Proofreads And Fact Checks Like A Blogger

Scott Karp — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 12:14:45 -0000

Ian, never underestimate American provincialism.

Re: Bad News For The Business Of Online And Offline Video

Scott Karp — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:05:27 -0000

Rex, you're absolutely right -- not all ads are percecived as bad -- there is the other 27% in the survey who wouldn't hold it against YouTube. And you're right about the downside speculations. Net-net, it's hard to imagine how this doesn't have a downward pull of some kind.

Re: Bad News For The Business Of Online And Offline Video

Scott Karp — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 13:17:34 -0000

Mike,

consumers are almost completely unaware of the consequences of advertising on their lives, from a consumer influence standpoint or a â€œtoleranceâ€ standpoint

At some point we're going to have to decide whether things have changed or they haven't. Are consumers now really in control, or are they still just the same docile sheep of the mass media era? If it's the former, then it would seem that conventional wisdom from the mass media era will apply less and less.

Re: Blog Herald Column: Should Bloggers Create Commercial Content?

Scott Karp — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:40:28 -0000

Dan, what's clunky about the Yahoo ads?

As I said in my response to your comment over at the Blog Herald, PPP tainted itself by not requiring disclosure out of the gate, and those negative perceptions still persist despite changes in policy. Given the risks, trying to show how it can be done right is a non-trival commitment of time and energy, which I'm probably not prepared to commit to right now. And the risks to reputation are considerable -- my reputation is all I've got.

Re: Blog Herald Column: Should Bloggers Create Commercial Content?

Scott Karp — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 15:37:38 -0000

Dan,

How much money would be required to invest the time and effort necessary to figure this out is one thing. How much money is required to overcome my misgivings is quite another. I like to think the latter can't be bought. Which gets back to the perception issue -- it doesn't matter if I make this distinction if members of my blogging community don't.

Re: How To Get Free Advertising By Trying To Buy Votes On Digg

Scott Karp — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:02:37 -0000

Of course he would have done better getting Dugg. But when that's out of reach for most sites, why not go for the consolation prize gambit?

(He may well just be stupid, it's just fun to speculate.)

Re: The Radically Changing Video-Based Media Industry

Scott Karp — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 20:10:57 -0000

Howard,

And just who said YT was all UGC?

Did you miss Time's "user" of the year cover? The culmination of year's worth of hype?

Furthermore, DMCA, Viacom doesnâ€™t have a pot to piss in regarding YT.

Viacom may not be able to sue YouTube for having it up, but per DCMA, YouTube darn well has to take it all down when Viacom asks.

Re: What If Google Never Succeeds With Offline Advertising?

Scott Karp — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 21:35:07 -0000

Mathew, what's the source, link, etc.?

Re: Top Ten Things That Suck About Google Docs

Scott Karp — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 21:01:30 -0000

Eric,

Offline access means using the same application on the same document. Remembering to save it as a Microsoft Word document before you head to the airport is NOT offline access. I don't have to remember to do anything with my Word files to access them offline.

I agree that it's a "handy" product, but it's got a ways to go.

Re: The Rapid Transformation Of Publishing Economics

Scott Karp — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:08:43 -0000

Ryan,

"Feigned horror"? How horrible.

What is the big deal about Google not doing so well in offline advertising if papers are losing ground as fast as you claim here?

Ask Google investors who need Goog to hit its aggressive growth targets?

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 12:58:50 -0000

Natasha,

Great detective work, but your archive example is from 2003 -- where do you get that the site expired last year?

The "Why am I seeing this site?" link on the domain parking page is a mailto link to Who-Is help -- no information there that I can see about the site expiring.

Perhaps I'm not seeing what you're seeing, but I don't see evidence that this isn't SEO manipulation.

If you want to explain further, I'm happy to look further.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:22:19 -0000

Sorry, Natasha, I'm still not following you. According to the Who-Is record, the domain was renewed on Feb 7, 2007, good until March 9, 2008. A search on GoDaddy shows that the domain is not available. The last record of the old site in the Wayback Machine is January 2006. Google doesn't show any links to the domain, nor does you MSN link search for that matter. The Yahoo link search turns up links, yet it's not ranking high in Yahoo, and 177 links isn't that much in any case.

You still haven't convinced me that there isn't something very odd about this.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:07:10 -0000

Natasha, thanks for the education. As I pointed out in my last post on SEO, part of the image problem that SEO has is that there is so much that even a reasonably informed non-SEO doesn't know, which leads to many, often negative misperceptions. But just think how perplexed the average Google user would be by that onlinepublishingnews.com result?

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:38:32 -0000

Natasha,

I'm afraid your mechanic analogy doesn't hold up, because one bad SEO can affect how everyone's car runs, i.e. bad search results.

And thanks your offer to answer my questions for free, but after reading your Threadwatch post, I think I'll pass.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:25:11 -0000

Natasha,

If I was really that sensitive, do you think I'd still be blogging, much less writing posts like this? :)

I made an issue out of your tone because SEO has a relationship management problem, and in that context tone matters.

I think it was a fortunate coincidence that the instance I highlighted is of ambigous origin, rather than a clear cut example of SEO manipulation -- the discussion here has been much more informative and constructive for SEO as a result.

The key question is this -- if SEO gets falsely blamed for a crappy Google search result, whose fault is it? Figure that out, and you'll have insight into how to fix SEO's reputation problem. (Hint: See Aaron's comment about the real source of this bad SEO karma.)

Drew, I never linked to the offending site.

Dave, thanks, you deconstructed the mechanic analogy much better than I did.

Aaron, interesting that using WordPress' default category set up could drag down your search engine ranking. But what's really interesting is that I have this category list on every page to help human users with site navigation, but what you're telling me is that it confuses Google, so I basically have to choose between optimizing for people and optimizing for machines. What a great system!

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:51:48 -0000

Bill,

I appreciate that. The goodwill goes a long way.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:15:18 -0000

Aaron, great advice, thanks!

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:16:23 -0000

Graywolf, if we use the principle that all traffic is good traffic, then sure, SEOs stopping by to check out my cluelessness is still good traffic. I do, however, believe that all conversation is good conversation, so for that -- and for all the good tips -- I am thankful for Natasha's efforts.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:44:37 -0000

John,

You show little deference to several experienced people who are benevolently offering you free SEO advice, despite your obvious negative bias.

Huh?

Aaron, great advice, thanks!

Bill,

I appreciate that. The goodwill goes a long way.

I do, however, believe that all conversation is good conversation, so for that â€” and for all the good tips â€” I am thankful for Natashaâ€™s efforts.

Where exactly do you see the lack of deference? And in any case, the word "deference" is pretty darn condescending -- am I supposed to bow down and kiss everybody's ring? It's that sort of "we know everything" and "you know nothing" attitude that gets SEO in so much trouble.

You highlight how Natasha posts from a different perspective in different communities, as if it were distasteful (it is actually quite tasteful, and respectful to you).

"Different persepctive"? Nice spin.

but your expressed opinion that, because you donâ€™t get it and write misleading, uninformed posts about SEO, we SEOs should work hard for free to educate you?

The point I've been trying to make, which some such as yourself seem to miss entirely, is that SEO's has an imagine problem because there is much that APPEARS to reflect poorly on SEOs -- such as my example above -- which in fact is not SEO's fault at all. But appearances have a big impact.

You seem to suggest that I wrote this post as PURPOSELY misleading. I didn't. It was an honest mistake. And MANY other people in the online world make the same honest mistakes about SEO -- and that is SEO's problem, not ours. It's people like you, who take "misunderstanding" and smear it as "misleading," that make people suspicious of SEOs. You can write me off as "uninformed," but there are many thousands more like me, and we are all YOUR potential clients.

Fortunately, you are the exception, not the rule. The comment section here is filled with goodwill and good information, and that's a very GOOD thing for SEO.

Re: What Gives SEO A Bad Name

Scott Karp — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:18:31 -0000

Aaron,

I added an update as you suggested because I very much respect your view -- and how you approach things -- and because you are absolutely right that this requires a correction.

Re: Digg Is The Apotheosis Of Niche Media

Scott Karp — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:47:40 -0000

Marshall, conservative leaning stories are often Dugg so that they can be ripped to shreads -- I was just inferring this when I looked at the stories on the list. I went to check out the comments of those stories to see if that was the case, but of course I couldn't find them because Digg has the worst search engine on the web.

Re: Digg Is The Apotheosis Of Niche Media

Scott Karp — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:39:48 -0000

1389, thanks for the observation -- I think you're right that politics aspect is more complex and probably includes at least one other distinct niche -- it's a good bet that any politics-focused niche overlapps closely, if not entirely with a political blog niche.

And yes, it's notable that AdSense has not been sufficient to bring Digg to profitability (at least as of a podcast that Kevin and Jay did with Mike Arrington last December).

Re: The Great Media Industry Schism

Scott Karp — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 09:20:23 -0000

Rob,

What about syndicated content providers in that model? Arenâ€™t they content providers to the content aggregators?

Yes, but it was a very limited and highly controlled system, only a shadow of what is possible and already being done now.

Now itâ€™s purer technology, so it scales better still. But this is a difference of degree only.

Itâ€™s always been possible / practical to separate those functions. Itâ€™s just cheaper now to be either.

Technically, you are correct, but I think you are understating the case by several orders of magnitude, which, with all due respect, is often a flaw in the "it's nothing new" argument, which is often proffered in the comments of this blog. It's precisely the speed and magnitude of the change in "degrees" that has turned the industry on its head.

But this isnâ€™t a schism - it seems to me itâ€™s just the atomization of creation and distribution,

That's a bit of a semantic quibble, don't you think? The fact that content creators can no longer seek to profit from their content by controlling the distribution channel for that content is a massive shift. Why do you think YouTube has everyone up in arms? Why do you think so many newspapers are on the verge of going out of business? How is it that a company like Google can be so MASSIVELY profitable without creating any content? Google itself is emblematic of the schism.

Re: The Great Media Industry Schism

Scott Karp — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 10:43:38 -0000

Rob,

Interesting question on the commoditization of aggregation. Yes, search may in the end commoditize everything. But I think you're actually pointing to the commoditization of distribution, not aggregation. You go to search to look for something when you know what you want, but what about when you don't know what you want?

Perhaps the traditional notion of "channel" is useful here. Channels, whether newpapers or cable channels or whatever, were in the past owned by the entities who created most of the content for those channels. Sure, they bought some content from syndicators, but to a very limited extend.

Digital media has blow up the traditional channel model. Search is one component of that, but aggregation is the other. The foundation of YouTube's base (or so Google hopes) are the users who go there for the channels and communities. The people like you who go there to search are only losely tethered.

Or maybe search is just a form of aggregation, driven by user keywords rather than some third party editorial control.

In any case, the schism is evident in the standoff between GoogTube and the big media companies, i.e. the aggregator/distributor over here and the content creators over there. Perhaps what is more precisely radical in this divide is that GoogTube has an advertising model. Sure, cable companies have been in the dedicated distribution business, but it has always been fee-based, while the channels controlled all of the advertising. Now, GoogTube, the aggregator/distrubtor, threatens to steal advertising away from the the content creators. Hence, the divide.

Re: Blog Herald Column: Can Brands Really Compete As Content Creators?

Scott Karp — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 20:31:28 -0000

Craig,

There are plenty of all non-stop cheerleading sites, so all-skeptical all the time fills a niche. Besides, it's more fun.

You're right that this is custom publishing and branded entertainment, which certainly have a long history, but in the case of the Lexus short fiction, a Lexus car was actually a staring character. If I'm not mistaken, nobody on the Original Amateur Hour was asked to take a dose of Geritol on the show.

There's a difference between a brand SPONSORING the creation of content that stands on its own merits separate from the brand and sponosoring the creation of content in which the brand plays a staring role. In some cases, like the Smirnoff video, you can get away with it, but with so many advertising-free content choice, I think this is going to be a tough road.

Re: A Challenge To The Well-Intentioned SEO Industry

Scott Karp — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:08:11 -0000

Mark, not to validate Alexa, but if that's the case, why isn't GigaOm, for example, which has linked to me many times, the #2 result? It's not even on the first page of results. The whole thing makes no sense! Which is why so many people distrust Google and SEO. It's all a black box.

Re: A Challenge To The Well-Intentioned SEO Industry

Scott Karp — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 23:16:46 -0000

Nathan, so let me get this straight. You're saying this ranks high in part because it's more recent? Everything else on the first couple of pages is weeks or months old. Again, makes NO SENSE. And again I'll raise the example of GigaOm, which has a PR of 8 vs. Threadwatch's 6 (I know PR isn't everything, but it does mean something). Where are those posts? And, regarding my name in the title of post, that might lead me to think that Natasha did it that way with Google search results for my name in mind. That would lead me to conclude the "messing" with some people is in fact much worse than messing with others. But, again, I'm waiting to be proven wrong.

Re: A Challenge To The Well-Intentioned SEO Industry

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:33:17 -0000

Natasha,

Oh, come on, that's like being a firearms expert and saying I didn't know the gun was loaded. I see it as a matter of online ettiquete. It's one thing to write a post openly disagreeing with someone. But doing so in such a way where you knowingly rank that post in someone's search reputation is, regardless of intentions, an escalation. Which is why I reacted so differently to your comments here than I did to your post on Threadwatch. The substance was exactly the same -- a very valid observation that I was factually incorrect incorrect in my post. But the tone was different. Just as there's a difference between saying, with all due respect, Natasha, I disagree, and saying, Natasha, you're a total idiot, you're so wrong it hurts. Disagree is disagreeing, but how you say it makes a big difference.

That all said, YES, your advice (and that of many others), to start talking to SEOs by phone and stop inciting riots in public is VERY sound, and I intend to pursue that route. See my most recent post.

Re: A Challenge To The Well-Intentioned SEO Industry

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:02:41 -0000

No, Natasha, not at all. I believe the principal intent of your post was the same as your comments here, i.e. to correct the public record. But your actual intent is, in fact, irrelevant. What I'm saying is that the Google consequences of your post makes it come across differently, even if that wasn't your intent. For example, in our present dialogue, I mights say, Natasha, why do you have to be such a complete moron? Or I might put a big flashing gif on my blog that says "Natasha is a Moron." My intent may to be simply to further disagree with you, but you would naturally interpret my actions to be an escalation, i.e. making it personal. Since my intent is not to make it personal, I would never address you disresepctfully like that or put flashing gifs on my blog. But the reality is that you chose a route that not only publicly disagreed with me, but also had the consequence, even if unintended, of putting a post in my Google results that says "Scott Karp Get a Clue." You could have publicly disagreed with me without doing that, so I don't think wondering about your intent is necessarily a poor reflection of my character, any more than your wondering about my intent if I called you a moron would be a poor reflection on yours. (To be clear, I'm NOT calling you a moron, but I do think this issue is important.)

Re: What I’ve Learned About SEO

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 13:10:27 -0000

Brian,

Looks like I've opened a very interesting can of worms here. See my response to Natasha here.

I agree with you that I'm appropriating a term beyond its previous use. But I believe I've latched on to a real issue of online ettiquete here, and I'm not backing down, just yet.

Here's the gist of it again: To effectively disagree with someone publicly, it is NOT necessary to put their name in the title of the post with a phrase like "Scott Karp Doesn't Have a Clue." Just like it's not necessary for me to disagree with you by calling you an idiot. I can say, more politely, Brian, I respectfully disagree. SO, if somone chooses to diagree with such a post title, knowing that they will have done more than publicly disagree, but also ensure that the post title shows up in someone's Google result, THAT action, like calling someone an idiot, comes across as an escalation, i.e. making it personal.

So, Brian, with all due respect, it's not that I didn't understand the concept of "Google bombing," it's that I believe I have identified another aspect to this issue that many have failed to take in to consideration. And I think they should.

Re: What I’ve Learned About SEO

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:21:40 -0000

Brian,

It's a matterof degrees. What seperates a group effort to take over someone's search results page and a one-time post that will rank for someone's name is a matter of degrees. It's also a matter of intentions, but the result is the same.

When other people have attacked me personally in comments here or outside of the title of the post, of course I react differently. Ad hominem is ad hominem. I'm also reacting differently now because I'm dealing with people who understand how the system works, and thus understand the consequences of how they post.

Gerry,

The difference is transparency. If you ask a librarian to explain the Dewey Decimal System, they would explain it in excuriating detail, if you so desire. If I asked Google to explain in detail how it organizes information, I'd be told, sorry, that's proprietary. Lack of transparency is not inherently evil, and I never suggested that was. BUT, it does leave you to wonder what is going on behind the curtain.

Re: A Challenge To The Well-Intentioned SEO Industry

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:28:22 -0000

Natasha,

Sort of, but with a few important, if nuanced, distinctions. First, my post is not going to rank on any Google search results page, so it's confined to my current readers, and will quickly fade into history. Second, I have a way of correcting the outcome -- at Aaron's prompting, I posted a bold correction to the post, which through RSS was again pushed out to my readers. So if I decide I was too confrontational in the title, I can admit my mistake and take it back. In my most recent post, I have further admitted that mistake and promised not to do it again. Your post, on the other hand, will forever live in my Google search results.

Aaron,

No worries, I will update the post.

Re: Blog Herald Column: How SEO Confronts Its PR Challenge In The Blogosphere

Scott Karp — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:32:04 -0000

BostonScott,

Matt Cutts, a very high-profile Google representative, did in fact take responsibility for the probelm -- see his comment here.

Re: What I’ve Learned About SEO

Scott Karp — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 06:56:55 -0000

Matthew,

Of course Google has to be opaque. But again, it's a perceptions game. Is Google being more opaque than it has to be. Is it colluding with SEOs to keep the system more opaque. Probably not, especially the latter, but in an opaque system you just have to take everyone's word for it. So no evil by default. Just the inherent suspicion of what you can't fully comprehend.

Re: Google Apps’ Achilles’ Heel

Scott Karp — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:08:12 -0000

Erin, I had the same experience, so it wasn't the loss of data so much as the loss of trust. Just because there wasn't a large data loss this time, doesn't mean that there won't be one next time.

Re: Google Apps’ Achilles’ Heel

Scott Karp — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:55:07 -0000

Peter,

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke

Re: It Matters Who Diggs You

Scott Karp — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 19:37:39 -0000

Stephen, in reality, I'm more than happy that you dugg my post -- while your efforts to lift Digg out of adolescence might well be in vain, you have do have my support.

Re: It Matters Who Diggs You

Scott Karp — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 14:10:06 -0000

Rons,

Thanks for your comments. I'm afraid I cannot accept your challenge. Ever since I started this blog there have been topics that have captured my imagination, e.g. MySpace, Google, YouTube, Digg -- these are at the center of the transformation of media that has always been the topic of this blog.

As for writing about Digg, when I look at my stats, it hasn't really been much of a traffic boost, except for the one time that a post I did about Digg got to the homepage of Digg, but that was a while back. Writing about SEO has done more for my traffic lately. But my guiding principle has always been to blog my convictions -- sometimes that brings traffic, sometimes not.

In any case, if you find that this blog no longer suits your needs, that is unfortunate, but I'm sure you'll find that there are many extremely high quality blogs on media and technology that might well suit you better.

Re: Who’s Right About The Social Media Revolution — The People Or The Revolutionaries?

Scott Karp — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 15:22:26 -0000

Rex, amen, amen.

Re: Media Meditation: What Is The Value Of YouTube In 2007?

Scott Karp — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:02:29 -0000

Brian, lol! I was going to fix it, but then I decided it was part of the koan.

Re: Can Google Transform The Entire Web Into A Direct Marketing Machine?

Scott Karp — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:58:43 -0000

Shamik,

The approach to consumer manipulation is indeed very different for CPA than CPC. But affliate marketing is an entire industry that has been built up around "publishers" who drive traffic to sites they don't always control where they only get paid if someone buys, signs up, etc. What's new here is Google muscling into the game, and the incredible network effects that Google can bring to bear.

Re: Can Google Transform The Entire Web Into A Direct Marketing Machine?

Scott Karp — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 11:48:26 -0000

Jim, indeed. And, there's a spectrum that ranges from outright fraud at the extreme to more subtle forms of manipulation.

Hashim, you're right that AdSense has definitely been a positive force. I'm focusing more on the (largely) intended consequences of these systems.

Re: Is Content Still A Business?

Scott Karp — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:29:01 -0000

tree hugger,

Content filtering is a HUGE value creation opportunity -- Google and search are only the tip of the iceberg.

Overseer,

You raise a good question. But you're assuming that quality content needs to be produced by BIG businesses. It doesn't. Take Gigaom.com, for example. Om Malik is a smart, principled journalist who hired a small team of smart, principled journalists to create great content. I don't know how big Om's business will get, but I'd hardly call his output "spin." As for who's going to do the Fourth Estate work, like investigative journalism, in a disaggregated media world, that may become a nonprofit endeavor. Look at what NPR does, investigative stories, reporting from war zones, etc.

Ben,

how to monetize disaggregations on a large scale

But that's the rub, isn't it, especially with an advertising model. How does a content producer seperately monetize thousands of discrete content items? Oh, that's right -- with Google AdSense.

I agree that without content you have nothing -- good thing a lot of people are willing to great content without ambition to create a BIG business out of it (or even a business at all).

Eric,

Yes, content business will still exist, but they will either be small or in support of other businesses, like aggregation.

Re: NBC Universal/News Corp Online Video Deal Demonstrates That The Content Creation Business Is Dying

Scott Karp — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 22:46:42 -0000

Sahar,

If you donâ€™t own the content you cannot monetize it.

How much content does Google own?

Re: NBC Universal/News Corp Online Video Deal Demonstrates That The Content Creation Business Is Dying

Scott Karp — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 11:27:17 -0000

Sahar,

The problem with YouTube is less about content ownership and more about the systemic struggle with online video advertising format (i.e. it's not pre-roll, but that's all we've figured out), as well as the problem of trust. The NYT can run YouTube-like low-production-value videos and still get advertising because advertisers trust the brand. Google gets so much advertising on its platform, without owning or controlling any content, because advertisers trust that Google properly manage the context.

The content creation business dying, shrinking, whatever is about increasing competition around high quality content. You'll notice how much emphasis was made by NBC and News Corp around PREMIUM content -- the problem is, cats flushing toilets aside, these companies no longer have a monopoly on high quality content.

Re: Is Content Still A Business?

Scott Karp — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:40:23 -0000

Rob,

That's a fantastic observation, which has significant ramifications for how this all plays out.

There's a novel by the Itallian novelist Italo Calvino called If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. I contains the opening chapters to ten different novels, all of which make you believe that there is an entire novel behind them, even though the rest of each novel was never actually written. But's it clear that Calvino had to have thought through the entire plot and character for each of the ten novels to make the first chaper of each work.

It's a work of heroic art. But an effort, as you point out, that we're not likely to see reproduced in Hollywood.

Re: Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination

Scott Karp — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 15:35:39 -0000

Bennet,

I agree that government involvement has a very low chance of either happening or helping. But this administrations abdication of responsiblity towards the environment has not prevented the acceleration of environmentalism in this country. In think the environmental movement is a better model than NPR or PBS, which I agree has its big problems.

Yes, kids may not value newspapers, but the real issue is valuing journalism, regardless of the medium. And even if kids don't value that, most people over 30 still have a few years left to live and make a difference.

What strikes me is that with all talk of community being the driver of new media, in debates like this their seems to be very little faith in the notion of community.

Mike,

Great idea -- if only ideas like this could get some brainstorming traction in newspaper boardrooms.

Re: Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination

Scott Karp — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:03:03 -0000

Howard,

Fantastic idea. Imagine how many people you could get to participate if every newspaper devoted a full-page ad to the campaign.

Re: Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination

Scott Karp — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:31:31 -0000

Howard, why choose when you can do both? Nothing like a good old fashioned monopoly channel to introduce more people into the network. Ask Google how well the original distriubtion deal with AOL worked for them.

Re: Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination

Scott Karp — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:53:41 -0000

Hashim, an excellent observation, shamefully left out of these debates. But do you really think preventing the demise of print newspapers, against the will of the market, is the answer? Why not take the subsidy that implies and put it towards efforts to end the digital divide so that web access is as available to all as print newspapers are now? People without web accessed and computer literacy are disadvantaged in ever increasing ways, beyond just access to news.

Re: Reinventing The News Business Requires A Little Imagination

Scott Karp — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:55:35 -0000

Hashim, don't you think any available federal subsidies would have more long-term value for the underclass by helping to close the digital divide (e.g., more public Internet access, more computer literacy education) rather than keeping them chained to a dying medium while the rest of the world moves on? Isn't that equivalent of putting them in an information ghetto? I would agree that paper-based access to information is better than no access to information, but at some point soon, the inability of to use the web is going to become like illiteracy -- a fundamental barrier that keeps people down.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 14:15:53 -0000

Thank you all for your extremely thoughtful comments. Please see my update above.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 22:43:08 -0000

Tom, the link you posted is not functioning.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:41:31 -0000

Wow, Tom, television pandering? There's a first. As I already said:

I am NOT saying that journalism is without faults and that journalists donâ€™t make mistakes.

Iâ€™m not even saying that journalists didnâ€™t make any of the same mistakes that bloggers did in covering this story.

It's not about "faith" -- much less blind faith. It's about having a set of guing principles, even if everyone who claims to follow them doesn't actually do so.

What bloggers have as guiding principles typically boils down to: 1) All MSM sucks, and 2) bloggers are independent. Perhaps necessary, but not sufficient.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 06:51:50 -0000

Tom, that you could never boil down the principles of 150 million people wielding of the power of the press is indeed the problem. Assigning the notion of an "agenda" to a viewpoint you disagree with is a familiar rhetorical tactic, although usually one that distinguishes political parties, not media -- your "agenda" vs. my "agenda" -- that is indeed a tiresome art form.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 08:29:41 -0000

Tom, my bottom line is this. 150 million people wielding the power of the press is net a good thing, because it breaks the monopolies. But presently, the blogosphere is too unaware of the responsiblities and liabilities that come with being a publisher.

Do you disagree that the structure and modality of the textworld of blog/commentary and the â€œall the news that fits into the economics of this commodityâ€ are profoundly different in ways that could be analyzed constructively and usefully?

Not entirely sure I undersatnd your question, but let's just say that if three network broadcast world of the mid-20th-centry is one extreme, and the unrestrained blogosphere free-for-all is the other extreme, than what we need is somewhere in the middle.

The pretense that one can represent reality without a perspective, which involves perspective and underlying ideological positions, is the lie that makes USian journalism possible.

Of course pure objectivity is a fiction, and has been taken to harmful extremes, BUT as you back off from that ideal to find the right balance you have to be very careful that you don't slide down the slippery slope into the extremes of pure partisan ideology.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 09:52:15 -0000

Tom,

restless process of hypothesis and falsifiability (a la, e.g., Popper,), interpretation and revision, that considerably complicates the corporate project of branding and commodifying the truth

Indeed the best journalism, to which I remain "faithful," is precisely that. See, for example, Murray Waas' relentless hammering away at the CIA leak case and its broader implications over a period of months and years. This type of journalism is sadly in the minority, and requires the kind of discipline and patience (and resources) that most news organizations as well as most bloggers do not possess.

I make no assumptions about the ideal mode being "static" -- the blogosphere's dynamism is perhaps it's biggest advantage -- my argument is essentially that this dynamism could yield a lot more value with even a modicum of discipline and structure. The resistance to this argument is invariably framed around criticizing the excesses at the other extreme, is if that were justification to run full tilt in the other direction.

Re: Why Journalism Matters

Scott Karp — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:54:19 -0000

Tom, that is a compelling vision, and you're right that "journalism" on TV in particular has been overly productized. Which gets to the BIG problem -- who is going to pay for this kind of "agent of change" journalism? Newspapers used to do it with investigative reporting, but that journalism essentially got a free ride with the rest of the paper and never had to stand on its own.

I think that people WOULD pay for this kind of journalism, through one business model or another -- but the media companies need to be convinced of it.