DISQUS

@GoTRENDS: I have to respectfully disagree and caution this is very dangerous and emotional way of thinking. It's the kind of attitude that can lead a developer to lose a whole extra year on a product when they could have moved over to something that is a hit from almost the get-go.

Look back at the successful companies of the last 5 years. How many had products that were plodding along until one tweak changed everything. I can't think of any.

I can think of companies that realized that something new they were doing were much better than what they had started working on (Flickr out of Game Never Ending, Twitter out of Odeo, MyBlogLog out of blog stats) but they all left they unpopular idea altogether and started on the entirely new ones. Almost never is a great product or company just one small change from taking off.

Nice, thx Nick

Another good point.

Not one of the advertising agencies we have sold brand campaigns to in the last year have any idea what 'engagement metrics' are or why web folks are promoting them. Most every ad agency in the U.S. and Europe are still 100% attached to impressions and clicks. They are becoming less scared of non-traditional clicks (such as contests, Groups, virtual gifts, etc.) but that's only because they can still tie it to a user and a click.

I'm concerned that many web2 publisher models will fail because the ad industry isn't nearly as excited about engagement metrics as it's proponents are. Very few people in ad agencies are risk takers. Very few brands they represent are risk takers. Furthermore, ad agencies are very quick to pull the plug on anything they perceive is under performing. So though they may try out new methods, if they are not getting better reported results than highway billboards or all their other existing opportunities, they'll advise their teams to never do it again.

This is not to say the best companies won't (or aren't already) making advertisers very happy with non-traditional methods, but those are and will be the special companies with great sales teams and commitment to being an ad publisher. And I find most web companies are much more focused on their technology than being in the ad business.

We drink very deeply from the cup of Avinash around Dogster/Catster. Watch the interview then buy the book. Don't even think about it.

That ad showed up in our catster forums until we blocked it....

I'll just throw a reminder out there that email delivery rates are awful once an IP is sending out more than 5k emails a day. Hotmail and Yahoo don't care who you are or how pretty your site is or how clean your record was one second ago.

So if you expect a large customer base, you'll need to know just because you planned it and sent it, doesn't mean they'll see it.

Well said!

The "Cold Start" problem is one of the biggest start-up killers out there. It's also one of the hardest things to test during development, which entices many people to think it's okay to skip it.

Other causes I often see are:

* Most tech developers have only focused on tech and post-launch product release in their careers, and very rarely have done any brand development and original product releases.

* Many people think because they believe their product is better it will market itself (If you build it they will come)


* Many VCs are ready to believe marketing is just a matter of marketing headcount and retained PR.


* Many start-ups convince themselves they (or their mothers) are reliable market research pools.


* Many start-ups overconfidently think that since the marketspace is huge, just getting 1% adoption would be all it takes, and that since that is such a small adoption rate, it should be easy enough to achieve.

In my experience, The needles in traffic stats created by TechCruch and the like are almost never populated by target customers, it's by industry peers focused on their own projects.

To know you have a commercial success requires seeing active and consistent usage by a sizable customer base. You may get a different set of customers than you expected, but you need to know that there is at least one real customer base that wants to become long-term customers. And ideally, you want to have confirmed this customer base in advance before committing to the company.

[Thanks Andrew, for keeping it real out there ;]

This is a true Reeses Peanut Butter Cups partnerships. Is the social network in the travel site or is the travel site in the social network. The way they used thingfo, you'll never know for sure. The average destination site either tries to build inadequate community features on their own or push everyone off to a different white label site with only the sparsest of integration points. Both invariably fail no matter how much the company thinks they finally are able to meet the community interests of their users. I've seen it go wrong so many times.

Here the experience is embedded and seamless. Congrats to Mobissimo for waiting to do this until it could be done right and congrats to Thingfo for building their standalone service modularly so it can embed just as easily with another experience.

If there's one thing I realized doing Dogster and Catster is that pet people are far more voluminous than anyone actually expects. Look how many comments popped up here after the show, 2 days after the entry.

We took some time to explain the more profound implications of old and new media working together as Dogster and CBS are. By playing to each parties strength, we expect Old and New Media will become the hot couple for some years to come.

http://blog.dogster.com/2008/07/10/the-new-hot-...

Don't think about Plurk as compition to Twitter or you won't understand why it will be so popular. Twitter is about posting a note on your wall that fans see as they walk by. Plurk is about hanging out at the wall with your friends who happen to be there at that time.

Early on for Dogster and Catster we used the term user, but found it far to insincere. Since then we have used customer, even if they are merely a one-time site visitor.

When describing our customers we break them into visitors, members, and subscribers defined respectively by people we don't know, people that have registered, and people that are paying members.

Honestly I think every business-minded website would benefit by refering to people who use their website as customers reinforces who you are serving and why you do what you do. Without them you would have no business so use the most respectful term you can to never forget that.

I really like the idea. Could work well.

But the name needs to be improved. I'd be more trusting of a purely meaningless name such as 'zottle' than I would of zotfish.

Publishers will not make money from ads in RSS feeds. Text ads in RSS feeds has been attempted since 2005 and the reason so few offer it is there is so little money to be made.

Text ads don't work in video post roll either. They only work when someone is trying to find out more about something they are actively seeking.

A person perusing their RSS feed is already swamped with too much related and pre-qualified information and will not be of a mind-set to trust the content behind an add vs. the next item in their feedreader.

Just to add there's a long term trend also at play here. Most brand advertisers are getting much better returns doing target direct campings in those medium and small sites than they get doing giant bulk campaigns on massive sites.

It's very likely this down-trending of spending on remnant and direct call to action campaigng would be downtrending regardless of the U.S. economy.

Brand advertising is so much more effective when done in a targeted manner, assuming your company doesn't make money by getting people to punch a monkey or refinancing their home because someone is doing a funny dance in an ad...

Great list, and all true!

I'd just add that the new person should strive to add something. When you meet influencers and people important to you, bring something to the conversation. It doesn't have to be amazing, it could just be being more passionate than anyone else about something, but add something and people will remember you for and appreciate your presence. Just showing up will not have the same affect.

San Francisco is a great town to arrive and hit the ground running. I've lived here 15 years and see it happen over and over again. This is the kind of town where someone is an old timer come their 2 or 3rd year. But the consistent trait in all people I've seen do this is they are running when they hit the ground and they keep charging ahead into what they are most engaged by.

Hi Andrew,

Great entry. Realism is very much good advice right about now.

I can still recall our early heady days when we forecast revenue based upon our (over-calculated) pageviews and our expect (also over-calculated) network CPM. You can imagine our frustration when the network CPM was half what we hoped and they could only server us a fraction of the impressions we requested. Note to anyone: only sites with massive page serves can run a business on direct response ads.

You are also spot-on in regards to brand advertising. I'm speaking for younger start-up (not the Youtubes or Facebooks) but no matter what the plan says, you don't need a sales teams until a core team member is maxed out selling ads. Another big mistake I see a lot on the West Coast is not doing any sales st all. If your rev model is brand advertising and you are publishing, it's really important that at least one person is selling. This person should really be able to cover their salary - or you really are in trouble - yet even if they aren't closing they will be making dozens of relationships at all the agencies and companies you'll be working with for years to come.

Far too many companies think that advertising is like a spigot you can turn on when you are ready. Hardly. Brand advertising is a relationship business and you want to get over the cold-start as early as possible.

Hiring an ad team with the ability for all of them to be closing right away is putting the cart first and burning through your cash. For young companies, if whoever is doing sales first is doing well, then hire a second. If they are both doing well hire a third or build the team. The nice thing about sales people is if they aren't selling they don't want to be there either so after three months if they aren't closing deals you can just let them go, they'll be happy to find greener pastures.

Thanks. Great details. Most appreciated.

As someone who built a viral app (pre-Facebook) I primarily nurtured and grew it for many more months than another entrepreneur might simply to make sure if I was going to commit to it that the users were sticking around.

Of course I tried to get as much easy revenue as I could early on (gotta get the low hanging fruit ;), but I didn't invest heavily into it until I confirmed it offered long-term value to the users and the long-term reward would match the long-term effort.

I've really been appreciating you posting these formulas and calculations. Where as in the early days it was fine to throw stuff on the wall and see what sticked, we really like to make sure if we put focus and effort into something it's not just going to stick, but climb up to the ceiling ;>

Thx

Sounds neat...

However, if I was looking for a good pet groomer in LA, I'd search Dogster Local. Here's a bunch that have been user reviewed.

http://tinyurl.com/3cgpar

(Off topic, I know, I couldn't resist. But somewhat pertinent on the topic of using verticals to your advantage, instead of limiting yourself to your own horizontal group)

I also hear that a lot of the mothers' sites do this on their mailing lists.

Thanks for taking these amazing notes. Great talking as always. Hope your travels back went well.

Brilliant. Makes me think a lot of Jeremy Liew's thoughts on knowing the gates in the widget adoption process and maximizing users' passage thru them.

I'm very regretful that we did not get to meet at CommunityNext. If you'd ever like to stop in the Dogster & Catster offices we'd love to have you.

Most respectfully,

Uh, I think an organized twittermob is an oxymoron.

David Neeleman was on a JFK->OAK flight I took once. He put on an apron and served snacks all the way down the place. He stopped to answer every question along the way and there were many of them. It seemed like that was something he did with great frequency.

When I saw this happen, I had only the vaguest idea of who and what it was all about. After years of considering existentialism something one read about in books written by dead people, or discussed in cafes, I had my first realization that instead of living with itÂ’s weight, some people weÂ’re people embracing the existential burn full on and finding great strength from doing so.

It's a shame, really, mean it.

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And this may be the link to the USPTO filing info:
http://tinyurl.com/t8ekd
or a different view of similar data

Wowzers! Look at this outpouring of support for all these sites. This is why we use the term 'passion-centric communities' instead of 'niche networks'. I think more people have voted in this category than all others combined!

I'm pretty sure in the near future there will be more people actively involved in a passion-centric online community than in topic-agnostic communities ... if there aren't already ;> They're just more meaningful.