Like many people, I’ve become frustrated with Twitter’s downtime. The fact that “Fail Whale” has become part of the social media vernacular is proof-positive and certainly not the type of brand awareness that Twitter wants. Despite it’s unreliability, Twitter has become part of our daily life. What else is there?

You can’t swing a dead cat in the blogosphere these days without hitting a post touting the benefits of Friendfeed. Scoble’s been using it for months. Now Calacanis is pushing it almost as much as Mahalo. I decided to see what the fuss was about.

First, the interface is much cleaner than Twitter. The more people you follow on Twitter, the harder it becomes to actually make sense of the information coming through. The noise to signal ratio goes way up. Unless you use a service like Summize, you easily miss content aimed at you. Friendfeed has threaded conversations. The ability to reply and comment in an orderly, easy-to-read way is huge.

Next, the process of following people on Twitter is tedious and time-consuming. Friendfeed integrates with your facebook account so the people you are friends with on facebook automatically become part of your Friendfeed network. Friendfeed also integrates your blog, YouTube, SumbleUpon, and yes, even your Twitter account.

The final feather in Friendfeed’s cap is it’s reliability. By many estimates they have half the users and traffic that Twitter has, and so far, haven’t had any of the scalability problems that have plagued Twitter since their inception. I’m not an IT guy and have no idea what it takes to keep a site like Twitter stable. BUT, I do know that they are sitting on a goldmine. The only thing killing them is their crappy infrastructure. Why on earth wouldn’t you make this your top priority and hire the right tech team to fix this issue once and for all? I know these things don’t happen overnight, but in 3 or 4 months it’s only gotten worse, not better. What’s the deal?

I haven’t quite rang the death knell for Twitter yet. They were the pioneer in the micro-blogging movement and they have a great brand. That will keep their head above water for a short time, but if they don’t resolve their tech issues soon Friendfeed is going to continue to poach their user base. Then, it will be too late and whale will have permanently failed.

What’s one thing that advertisers and customers can agree on? Advertising Spend?

Some control shifts that are happening in this age of customer empowerment are being classified as Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), which is basically a movement to enable customers to have more control in managing their relationships with companies who are attempting to sell them products or services. The idea is very much tied to the data portability/ownership movement and is increasingly being tied to pay-for-performance marketing.  Harvard Law School is organizing initiatives to move VRM forward for a host of reasons including privacy, control and economics.  These are obvious benefits for customers.  Conversely, advertisers are reluctant to give up their control.  But there is one thing that both Customers and Advertisers can agree on – a better way to spend $1 billion of wasted money.  Here are some interesting views of the costs associated with ineffective advertising and the increasing role that pay-for-performance online marketing will play in the new world.

At least $1B of what’s spent on online advertising is completely wasted and is unsustainable. Advertisers are going to eventually wake up and recognize that unless it’s a highly visible placement, banners get you largely nowhere.

Some claim this number is actually as high as $100 billion throughout all channels.
 
The Cost-Per-Action/Pay-for-Performance business model of Affiliate Marketing is likely to continue to transform the ad industry, significantly reducing billions in unnecessary expenses, including the $1B wasted on unseen display ads in Rubel’s analysis.

Perhaps this money could be spent on adding value to a customer’s lives and on truly building win-win relationships. Well, customers and advertisers have long accepted advertiser money for funding enhancements to customer’s lives – so this isn’t a stretch.  The question is, how do we track it to a specific customer reward level in this fragmented media environment?  Just to think a bit out of the box — would there ever be a complete flip, where systems track what advertisers are doing for customers – all from a customer-centric POV?  What would that performance model look like – advertising and loyalty per enhancement?  How could customer-owned data models enable more effective advertising/loyalty programs and an exchange of what customers and companies both want in a relationship? Tracking is a unique feature of online media – but customers hold control over advertisers by limiting how and where they are tracked.  Customers owning their own tracking/data and embracing performance exchanges is potentially much more efficient for both companies and customers.

Just food for thought.  

Check out more on VRM on Harvard’s website.

Google announced today that they are launching the “Google Affiliate Network”. This further integrates and consolidates Performics after Google acquired DoubleClick Performics. Most importantly this is a significant validation of the effectiveness and viability of the affiliate marketing channel.

The integration marks the beginning of the next evolution in affiliate marketing through consolidation and innovation. The industry needs to evolve as performance marketing becomes a very important channel for advertisers and publishers. Additionally, current economic conditions have mandated the need for more effective spending. I think this will create a new round of industry consolidation as it moves from ad networks and exchanges into the affiliate marketing community. Accountability is king right now, and performance marketing offers the best ROI across multiple distribution channels such as email, search, display, mobile and social media.

The most important aspect of this announcement is that it moves the industry away from the “network” and closer to being platform-centric. We firmly believe the next evolution of performance marketing is about open, modular and multi dimensional platforms as we move away from one dimensional networks.

Here is the announcement from Chris Henger, group product manager for the Google Affiliate Network.

We are pleased to introduce Google Affiliate Network . Effective Monday, June 30, 2008, DoubleClick Performics Affiliate will operate as Google Affiliate Network. The integration with Google’s brand is a reflection of efforts to quickly assimilate our business and teams, as well as reinforce Google’s commitment to the Affiliate channel. Together with our new colleagues at Google we are creating new opportunities for monetization, expansion and innovation in Affiliate Marketing.

Within the next couple of weeks you will see some exciting changes to the user interface reflecting the new brand. The platform will continue to be hosted at www.ConnectCommerce.com, but will eventually migrate to a google.com product url.

As noted in earlier communications, DoubleClick Performics’ Search operations are being spun off and sold to a third party. While many advertisers have relationships with both DoubleClick Performics’ Affiliate and Search, there have always been separate account teams and product-specific specialists servicing clients’ search and affiliate programs. These teams remain intact. While the formal separation will occur when the Search business is sold, the businesses are functionally separate today.

We are proud of what we achieved as Performics and this name change signals a new milestone. Google provides world-class resources and enables us to continue to attract the best talent to support our advertisers and publishers. Now as part of Google we have an exciting and unprecedented opportunity to advance our industry. We remain committed to ensuring you receive the quality service you have come to expect from us.

We appreciate your business and look forward to doing great things together.

Sincerely,

Chris Henger

Group Product Manager
Google Affiliate Network

Robert Scoble is talking about how YouTube is going long-form and why it will be more profitable for them and more attractive to advertisers. His argument is that if someone is willing to sit through a 30-minute video online, then they are more engaged and will more likely be customers for advertisers:

Someone who’ll watch a 30-minute video is HIGHLY ENGAGED. They are far more likely to become a customer than someone who just watches a two-minute entertaining video.

Here’s why: long videos are a filter. Only the most passionate and most interested people online will watch such a video. Those who aren’t interested wouldn’t even consider watching a long video.

It’s a nice theory, but I don’t buy it. First, I believe that a large chunk of people that consume online video do so at work. That environment allows you to watch a 2-5 minute video and then get back to what you are doing. It also allows for more interruptions, while still being able to finish the video. How many times are you going to tolerate being interrupted at work by co-workers, phone calls, or email before you throw in the towel on a 30-minute video?

People just don’t watch long-form video on their computer. My own video work has fallen victim to this as well. I’ve done many videos that were 15 minutes long and after watching them with colleagues or with an objective eye, it was clear that people get antsy after 7 or 8 minutes. It made me cut deeper during the editing process and really get to the meat of the content. My productions are better for it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that it is impossible for a long-form video to find an audience online. After all, Scoble does just fine with viewership of his pieces - although it doesn’t hurt to have his brand name and the weight of Fast Company behind him. Additionally, sites like Hulu that archive complete TV shows and movies will find an audience because they are serving up content that already has a traditional media audience of millions. It’s hard enough for unknown prosumer / UGC / pro content to find an audience with short, well-paced pieces. I believe that becomes an even bigger challenge when the content starts getting into the 30-minute range.

The other side effect I see of YouTube allowing video longer than 10 minutes is increased piracy. They can barely police their network efficiently now with a 10-minute limit. This opens up their network to people adding complete TV shows or movies. That means their copyright department is going to be working lots of overtime.

Advertisers want engagement. We know that. To me, that is better measured by how many people comment on a video or link to it, rather than making the assumption that committing to watching a longer video makes them a better potential customer.

Who has business partners that they can’t contact and build relationships with? How many people get financial statements with the understanding that they are only 90% accurate? How many marketers want to build campaigns in one channel and not be able to leverage them in another? How many companies want to be forced into paying fees for services that ineffectively bridge gaps that are actually created by the service provider? How many companies want to be forced into silos and high switching costs as the result of a vendor’s strategy? Who wants redundancy and inefficiency due to a lack of standards?

Well, at this point – thousands of advertisers and publishers in the current affiliate marketing models. Or, at least, they are made to accept these compromises.

Why? – I think there are basically two reasons:

1. Affiliate marketing is relatively narrow and under served. It has not gotten the attention that other online channels have had in terms of standardization, technology advancement and channel integration.

2. Vendors and networks that control the market have not needed to evolve because of their clout. They’ve used this clout to create closed networks, proprietary standards and high switching costs. Some changes toward what clients are asking for now, could result in loss of control and revenue.

Are there better ways? – of course! Many networks, vendors and clients are talking about the changes that need to be made, but the industry has still not truly moved toward more accurate tracking, open communication, universal standards, more sophisticated ‘action’ metrics or integrated channel/partner models.

I think that in any industry, customer compromises flag areas from which the next generation of innovators emerge. And that’s where we need to focus as an industry ready for that next evolutionary stage.

Today, our pay for performance division, Advaliant, jumps into the arena of social networking. This move is long overdue, but we wanted to make sure we did our homework and positioned ourself in a way that made sense to our affiliates and our advertisers.

Our rollout centers around the idea of micro-blogging; short updates about new offers, news in the affiliate marketing space, and our perspective on the state of the industry. In addition to our presence on larger platforms like Twitter, MySpace, and facebook, we’ll also be participating in communities like Hi5, Bebo, Tumblr, Plurk, Xanga, Mashable, and Pownce. We believe that Advaliant’s journey into social media is more comprehensive than any other pay for performance network’s is to date.

Over the next few months you’ll see lots of great content coming from the Advaliant camp. In addition to our social networking activities across the web, we’ll also be doing some great stuff on our internal web properties including affiliate marketing podcast episodes (see our recent interview with David Taber) and the launch of the Advaliant blog.

We have some of the top minds in the pay for performance space working at Advaliant. Over the next few months I think you’ll come to see that in a big way. The first person I’d like to introduce you to is Larry Markovitz who works in Business Development. He’ll be the voice of Advaliant through our micro-blogging activities and will help steer you towards interesting content in our space. We know you’ll get to appreciate his intelligence, charm, passion, and wit - just like we have here at MediaTrust. If you’d like to start by following him at Twitter, you can do so HERE.

Nine Inch Nails are giving away their newest album titled, The Slip, on their website. There is no gimmick. There are no strings attached. Simply go to their website and download the album free and clear. Hell, you even get to choose the quality and the format you want it in (i.e. mp3, m4a lossless, FLAC, and hi-definition WAVE 24/96).

Why would a band like NIN do this? First, they got rid of their record label. You don’t think Universal, their previous label owner, would allow this do you? Second, NIN understands that selling records is now a very tiny piece of the puzzle. Instead of trying to futilely retain control by cracking down on file-sharing and preventing your music from being played in online radio and podcasts (like most majors do), NIN has embraced the shifting technological paradigm.

Other major artists are doing like-minded things like this. Madonna recently left her longtime record contract with Warner Bros. in favor of signing with Live Nation - a concert promoter. Why would she do that? More on that in a minute. Coldplay is also testing the free-song-download model this week by offering their new single called “Violet Hill” from their website. Better move fast - after this week it goes away.

We’re looking at a fundamental shift in the music business. The recorded product is now the bait and not the fish. By giving away the product for free, artists are doing two things. First, they get to collect your email address. This is very valuable because they now have a way to interact with their fans and tell you about other things you maybe interested in. That leads me to number two: Concerts and merchandise. I get emails all the time from my favorite artists telling me about when they’re playing near me and about new fan items they have available. So, instead of getting $10 out of me for a digital download on iTunes, they potentially get $100 or $150 out of me in the form of concert tickets and merchandise. Plus, the goodwill generated by an artist giving away their latest recording (as opposed to getting a lawsuit notice from their record company) doesn’t hurt their public image any.

This brings me back to Madonna and the deal with Live Nation. She’s essentially brought her career under one roof. Live Nation already promotes your shows and sells your merchandise, why not have them facilitate the release of your music? At this point what does a record company really bring to the table?

Need another example? Bret Michaels has been all over your TV lately as the star of the VH1 show, Rock of Love. His band, Poison, once 80’s superstars have been seen a nostalgia act for the last 10 years. I would argue that they are doing as well as ever. Sure, they haven’t had a radio hit in more than 15 years, but does that really matter anymore? Each summer for the last few years they embark on a 40-city tour. They play to venues that average about 5000 people - and they sell them out. Let’s say the average ticket price is $50 - that’s $250,000 per show, or $10 million for 40 cities. I know that some of that goes towards paying for touring costs, staffing, venues and such, but still, it’s not a bad summer’s work. Considering the average recording artist makes a paltry $1 for every unit sold, there’s no reason for Poison to release a new album when the lion’s share of their income comes from merchandising and live performance, not new releases.

My guess is that record companies will continue to kick and scream over new technology. They’ll continue to bemoan their declining revenues and blame it on piracy. But, if artists as big as Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, and Coldplay are testing these waters, clearly there is a change in the tide.

I received beta codes for both socialthing! and Ping.fm through the social web, yet both experiences couldn’t have been more different, and yet so similar at the same, again proving that the social web is about interactions that are platform agnostic in intention, but directly tied to the platform or forum that becomes the channel. We met Matt Galligan, founder and C-E-Oh! of socialthing! at SXSW for an interview about the launch of the beta, and how they see themselves in the social media space. After the interview, he gave us a few beta invite codes as well as an invitation to the socialthing! party later that next evening (which we greatly enjoy Matt, thanks!). I received my invite code to Ping.fm from reading my twitter feeds, and although I wasn’t fast enough to get the codes that @chrisbrogan provided, Sean at Ping.fm was kind enough to shoot me off one and I am stoked that he did.

After only a couple of days on both, I am really excited about what I see. To me this is the closest combination to my killer social app that I have used. It is the Pushmi-Pullyu of the social web.

Ping.fm was very easy to hook up. After acquiring my credentials, It was a very simple process to associate my variety of “channels” into my Ping account. I am especially happy that they have added an AIM component as well, so that I can use iChat as my broadcaster. Ping.fm solves attempts to solve the problem of multiple social applications by allowing me to “ping” all of them from one interface, and an interface of my choice. I can text or email into my ping account and have it distributed to my many social footprints.

socialthing! approaches the problem from the other direction. After signing into socialthing! one of the first things i notices was the clever UI that they have used to associate my Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts. Once connected, socialthing! provides for me a Lifestream, an aggregated view of the services I have identified, and allows for a display order that is either time based or user based. A side benefit of socialthing! was that I quickly saw how many “friends” I had collected on Flickr that now, unintentionally, were clogging up my Lifestream. A quick run through of my Flickr friends will clean out those that no longer participated in an active conversation with me, or were no longer of particular interest.

I was recently having a conversation with Brooke, a banker friend of ours, and explaining to her  my perspective on social media applications like socialthing! and Ping.fm. The combination of these two applications fit neatly into her “moment of clarity” when she proclaimed social applications to be a social GPS of sorts. The push distribution of Ping.fm and the pull of socialthing! combined with the triangulation of the content and context of the messages provide for a time, a place, and a perspective based on your knowledge of the author. It tells you exactly “where they are” in a near real-time fashion.

I am clearly going to continue using these services, and will speak with both companies to see if we can acquire a group of invite codes for our readers. Are you using either platform? What are your thoughts? We would love to read your comments. 

Richard McManus of ReadWriteWeb put together a great presentation about how he defined the Web 3.0. 

I highly recommmend taking the time to look at the deck linked to below. In his presentation he characterizes two things VERY nicely.

1. He defines the term Web 2.0 as an era, like the dotcom era, that graduated the web from ‘read only’ to ‘read/write’ (slide 3). This is a key developmental ‘era’ as it leverages the crowd to load the web with valuable information that can later be translated, analyzed and made more consummable by v. 3.0.
2. He makes the distinction that in Web 3.o, web sites will become web services as sites become less important. He emphasizes that the data behind them (if structured) becomes the critical element. When this data becomes structured and machine-readable, the semantic or thinking web kicks in to make this data smarter as the transactions between people and computers are recorded and analyzed with the purpose of delivering user or scenario centric information.

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Do you share his perspective on the New New Web? Wed love to hear your thoughts.

LESS Silos = MORE Relevance

Our interactive lives started with random behavior thru surfing the web.The random disconnected web then led us to the second major behavioral change which allowed us to search the organized web. We are now entering the third behavioral shift in our interactive behavior pattern, which breaks down the silos of the internet and connects the thread of relevance to us and everything that we do. Now that we have searched and found. We now want our interests to find us thru more relevance and less clutter. Silobreaker is a new tool that follows these foot steps heading into the new dawn of the age of relevance.

From the mouths of SiloBreaker:

“Silobreaker is one of next generation of online search services for news and current events that delivers meaning and relevance beyond traditional search and aggregation engines. Its relational analysis and explanatory graphics provide users with unparalleled contextual insight into the news stories of the day.More than a news aggregator, Silobreaker provides relevance by looking at the data it finds like a person does. It recognises people, companies, topics, places and keywords; understands how they relate to each other in the news flow, and puts them in context for the user. The graphical search results enables users to quickly and easily understand connections, trends and topics or navigate deeper into the most relevant stories for them. No other news search service provides such an extensive suite of contextual tools in the industry today.Silobreaker pulls content on global issues, science, technology and business from approximately 10,000 news, blog, research and multimedia sources. With the engine’s focus on finding and connecting related data in the information flow, Silobreaker’s user tools and visualisations are ideal for bringing meaning to content from either today’s Web or the evolving Semantic Web, or both.”

This is an interesting tool to use and a great example of the silo “less” interactive world we are heading into. A world of open, modular and interconnected platforms. Let us know what you think of Silobreaker.