Best. RSS Reader. Ever.

I rarely pimp for a particular product or service except within the framework of a lengthy post on all kinds of other pointy-headed stuff. But every now and then ya just gotta show love.

I've tried about two dozen or so different RSS readers / aggregators. I am, I will admit, an information junkie. Or at least a headline junkie. I like to scan lots and lots of headlines and then pounce! like a mongoose on the ones that interest me. Until recently, I had been using MyYahoo. It integrated with other stuff I do at Yahoo, and I had high hopes that they'd pull del.icio.us (which I love, and which they bought) into the UI really well and interestingly. Not so much thusfar. Oh well.

So I've been trying on new RSS readers. In the process, I made a list of what features the perfect one, for me, would need to have:

• Separate panes for feeds, article headlines and article summaries/bodies


• An indication of how many articles are unread


• The ability to import/export OPML (as I am WAAAY tired of trying out new readers manually)


• The ability to share settings, feeds -- the whole mess, actually -- between multiple computers. I do lots of stuff at home and at work, and having to update or match two sets of feeds is a pain.


• Tagging of feeds and individual articles
  


• Bookmarking / saving of individual articles
  

After a bunch of unsatisfying experiences, I came upon Alesti. It's a free, web-based RSS reader / feed aggregator that does all of the above. Because it's web-based, you can log in from any computer and view your feeds. It's got the panes, the indication of unread articles, OPML export/import, tagging, etc. I'm thrilled. And it's still in beta, and looks like it's just getting started.

So help these guys out. Go join up and make sure it keeps on keeping on, because I like it and don't want it to go away.

New poem posted: "Not So Much"

Not So Much

If I could change color
would you love me forever?
If I could change color
would you love me like an angel,
like a hero, like a god?
Not "color" as in "ethnic,"
like Caucasian, Asian, African...
Not color like a tattoo,
or a sunburn or a tan.

[More...]

Virutal Ads: Calling All Soaps

The latest issue of Trendwatching is titled Youniversal Branding, and is about advertising in games, MMOs and virtual worlds (VWs). Trendwatching is often a fun, interesting read if you are OK with the language being a bit inflated, their tendency to invent "clever" (irritating) terms like "Youniversal," "Massclusivity," "Twinsumer" and "Tryvertising," and really long articles that often lump lots of stuff together that, when you're done, make you go... what were they talking about again? That being said... they often cover lots of ground, have many great links, and provide a viewpoint that isn't always available elsewhere. I recommend a subscription.

"Youniversal Branding" is basically about the current state of advertising in games/VWs. They report that in 2005, advertisers placed ad buys of $USD 56 million in games (up from $USD 34 million in 2004), and predict that that market will be $USD 732 million by 2010.

That sounds like a lot of money, but let's put it in perspective.

According to a report by TNS Media intelligence, total US advertising spending in 2005 was $USD 143.3 billion. That number does NOT include "paid search advertising." According to this article, Google and Yahoo! had ad revenue of about $USD 6.5 billion last year, and expect a combination of about $USD 10 billion for 2006. Let's assume AskJeeves and MSN got at least 200K, and I'll add 6.7 to that 143.3 number and get a nice, round 150 that I love so much.

So... games got around $USD 56 million compared to $USD 150 billion (that's US only). That's .04%. Let's be super clear. Not "four percent." Four one-hundredths-of-a-percent. Four percent of a percent. 0.000373333 to be exact.

According to the Trendwatching article, 100 million people worldwide play games every month. That is a pitiful amount of advertising for that size audience.

"But wait!" you cry. "People pay to play those games! They subscribe! We don't need advertising, because folks shell out $10 or $15 a month to play. What's your point?"

My point is "soap operas."

There has been a discussion on my favorite virtual world blog, Terra Nova, about how the use of a game in an insurance industry ad may or may not constitute mainstream acceptance of gaming or a change in the general gestalt of how games/gamers are viewed. My take is that the ad is bad, and that marginalized, cartoonish, even disturbingly inaccurate portrayals of sub-cultures have always been used in ads to make hay.

Games in ads does not cultural sway make. But ads in games does.

The Trendwatching article is OK. It doesn't break any radical ground for any of us who are already immersed in MMOs/VWs. Refreshingly, it has the stones to admit as much right up front. What it does do, however, is gather unto itself many of the issues related to advertising in games. It is a good starting point for a discussion which harks back to the earliest days of the first really transformative, mass-market, captive-audience media in our history: radio.

Before radio, all mass media was, to a great degree, "pull." Yes, you had to wait for a newspaper or magazine to publish the next issue, but you could then read it at your leisure, and do so where you wanted to. It was consumed on your schedule, in your environment. You can read on the train, at work, at home, out loud. You can share the paper, save it, read it in any order you want. Same for books and magazines. And that hadn't changed, really, since Guttenberg.

Radio? Entirely different. When a radio show is broadcast, you must listen to it right then and there. It is immediate, and presumptive. It requires that you put down what you are doing and listen (or at least listen while doing something radio-friendly). It needs "radio space." You need to schedule time if you want to be sure to catch your favorite show. Before the advent of recording devices, if you missed Little Orphan Annie... you were SOL -- Sorely Ovaltine Lacking.

It was so different, in fact, that early audiences didn't get it. And early advertisers didn't, either. The first ads on radio were bought as 30 minute blocks of time where pitchmen simply read -- on and on -- about the benefits of their products or services. They were infomercials, essentially. But people didn't want to listen to that. Not then. Why would you schedule time away from family, work and friends to listen to a guy talk about Soapolio for 30 minutes? There just wasn't anything -- from an audience perspective -- worth listening to. And from an advertiser's perspective -- worth buying into.

Until soap operas. There were limited news, sports and music examples before the coming of the soaps, but I'd liken those numbers to what we've got in gaming ad revenue right now; percents of percents. At some point, though, a number of advertising agencies got very clever. They made the jump -- whether it was creative, intuitive or purely mercenary we don't know for sure -- that what was needed was a way to get folks coming back to their radio sets every day, at the same time. So they invented, wrote, directed and produced soap operas for their advertising clients. Originally soap manufacturers, hence the name.

Advertisers wanted to reach an audience. The audience didn't have an overwhelming, commercially viable interest in the current media. So the advertising agencies invented a reason for folks to "go to the watering hole." Voila. Radio advertising took off, more radio shows were produced, and within a decade, spending on that media eclipsed that of print advertising.

Gaming is still a relatively new media. I ain't saying it's in any way similar to radio, btw. But it's new. And VWs/MMOs are real new. Many of my gamer friends will decry the idea of blatant advertising in games/worlds. I will agree with them. As long as by "blatant" we mean "bad." I would point to the example of the early radio advertisers sitting at a mic and reading print copy for half-an-hour. That's just dumb. You can't take what worked in other, older media and make it work in a new one. What worked in TV didn't on the Web. What works in print doesn't work on radio. I'm not saying that we should look for advertising and marketing to be the same or even similar in games to what has come before.

The obvious has already been nailed to the wall. NASCAR games have NASCAR cars with NASCAR correct logos. NBA games have Nike sponsorships. VW's with fashion conscious avatars are getting some real-world design shop advertising/marketing. This is the tip-of-the-iceberg. The "read the print copy on the radio" stuff. It will get us the "percent of the percent."

Until someone figures out the "soap opera" for games/VW's, MMOs/VWs may be marginal from an economic standpoint, and probably a cultural one. The Trendwatching article blends info about MySpace into its talk of "other worlds," but I find that fallacious. Having a blog or MySpace page isn't gaming or being immersed in a VW. There are surface similarities, but it ends with some tool blending. And link ads from MySpace aren't "virtual ads" any more than banner ads on Gamespot are.

We are finding new ways to link the Web and our new virtual worlds back to our lives all the time. They are, indeed, relevant to our intellectual, emotional and creative selves. I have no argument with that. I loves 'em. As marketers, though, we need to get out of our print/radio/tv/web boxes and think about how to bring brand new economic, and probably advertising-type value to MMO/VW spaces. And as gamers, we should welcome new ideas (as long as they don't suck). Because without orders-of-magnitude more investment, we won't see the kind of growth that brings major growth and improvements to the industry.

[Thanks to George at IAG for the pointer to Trendwatching. I usually get around to reading it eventually, but his link came in within a day of the TN post on the insurance ad, sparking this train of thought.]

Social Share Part 2: Share of Participation

I'm changing my mind. Go figure.

I've been thinking about my definition of "Social Share" for the last two weeks or so. What I put down in my last post:

Social Share: the relative importance of participation in a group to a member of that group — or association of one group to another group — as measured by activities that involve resources or influence.

is still something that really resonates well in my great, huge haid. But I'm changing what I call it. Yes, I know... changing the new term right away is a bad idea. But I don't get that many readers, and it's only two weeks, so calm down. I'll get it right this time, and then call the nice people at the OED.

Compared to various economic terms, the above definition seems more akin to "share of wallet" to me; that is, how much of a person or company's total finances are spent on a partiular resource or brand. So if, in 1970, companies spent 10% of their operating expenses on IT infrastucture, but in 2000, they spent 15%, we'd say that IT infrastructure experienced a "50% growth in share-of-wallet." Therefore, with slight changes only...

Share of Participation: the relative value of participation in a particular type or brand of social activity by an individual or a group as measured by resource or influence.

 I, myself, regard "influence" to be a measureable resource... but I don't think that that is a widely held belief. So I'm putting it in there explicity. Share of Participation, therefore, measures the personal side of the equation, which is what I was trying to get at -- how important a particular social activity or tool is to an individual or group.

What, then of "Social Share?" That should have been the "market lookin' at itself" measurement from the get-go. My bad. Because "market share," in economic terms, looks at how much of the market "belongs" to a particular brand or segment, not the other way around; object focus, not subject focus. So here we go.

Social Share: how much of the total participation in social activities of a desired audience is aggregated to a particular brand or segment.

There we go. All better.

But, clearly, I have not been long-winded enough yet today. Nor have I given an example (which the teacher in me says I must). Nor have I explained why it’s important to have two terms. Sooo….

Lorcan Dempsey is the VP of Research and Chief Strategist for OCLC, where I work. In a recent blog entry, he discusses some of the implications of which photo sharing sites are most popular and used by MySpace (and, I would make the implication, other social sites). The blog report — Hitwise Intelligence — he sites uses the term "market share" and measures this in terms of site visits and hits to the various photo sharing sites.

The particular report entry talks about how Photobucket basically kicks Flickr’s bahooky in terms of marketshare (again, measured in hits… which we assume will translate into ad revenue). Graph looks like:

Some of the comments on the report make part of the point I’m about to — that there is a qualitative difference between a site for hosting your media files (such as Photobucket) and a site that is for the storing, tagging, organizing, and sharing of "photographs;" i.e., Flickr. The basic point being that Flickr is a more "social" site — a destination — and Photobucket is a "pass through" kind of utility thingamabob platform where you put up photos, anime, illustrations, movies, etc., that will actually "live" on your blog, site, MySpace space, etc.

You can guess what’s coming, right?

Using my new terminology, what I would argue is that although Photobucket has a greater market share, Flickr may have greater Social Share to the entire photo sharing community/sector, and, in the case of individual users, may occupy a much greater Share of Participation on a case-by-case basis. I have no idea if this is true, can’t measure it, and won’t defend it… but it makes for a good "vacuum example."

What does this mean and who cares? Well, as I said below, in the "old, old days," nobody cared much about "mind share." Market share was the only real measure of worth. How much of the dollars being spent came to your product or segment? Now, in fact, we are so used to treating mind share as a stand-in for market share — we grok that "mind" leads to "market" — that we assume it’s true. In the above example, for instance, the folks at Hitwise are using Website hits as a measure of market share. Well…. technically, "market share" is only concerned with sales. Not traffic. The number of people who comes into your store, looks into your window, sees your ad, reads your flyer, visits your counter, remembers your name… all that stuff is something that can be used to measure mind share, and can be assumed/hoped to lead to market share. See? We "feel" that the two are inextricably linked.

But they ain’t necessarily. There are all kinds of products (Mac anyone?) that have much greater mind share than marketshare. And who have dormant mind share that eventually (iPod) translates into market share in another way. And other examples of products (Levis) that for years, didn’t have anywhere near as much mind share in terms of buzz, but who were in the constant top spots in market share. Quiet leaders.

So there is often, but not always, a connection between mind share and market share. What about Social Share and Share of Participation? My argument is that businesses and organizations looking to make their sites/offerings "social" should be considering the same kinds of connections between the "social qualities" of what they’re doing and the end results they are looking for. In the photo sharing example given, as a marketing guy, for instance, I’d ask these questions beyond the "hit stats" that show market (ahem… mind) share:

• How many items do individual users on average store on each site?


• How often do users add new materials?


• How many comments are left? Aggregate and per item?


• What is the average length of tenure of users?


• What is the ratio of paid users to free accounts?


• Is the API open and mashable?


• What kind of PR does the site get? Is the service itself being "socialized?"


• How many users are using advanced features? Mashing the API?


• How many new accounts come from referrals vs. advertising?


• How much traffic is from other social sites vs. more "static" usage?

Measuring this stuff would not be easy, no. But going bankrupt isn’t easy either. If the whole point of Everything 2.0 is that "socialness with provide the engine of continued growth/value" for the next phase of the Web economy, then we need to be discussing socialness in business terms that relate sensibly to the ones we already have. Terms that I made up in the shower.

The marketing world is littered with cases of flash-in-the-pan stories of products that were "Hot! Hot! Hot!" in the public mind for a day, week or month… but inevitably cost their users, employees and shareholders lots of money. Using mind share in an overbalanced way to gague the value of a property can be foolish. Similarly, simply saying something is "2.0" or "social" without a framework in which to evaluate "how social" it is, or whether or not those particular social aspects make it a good long-term competitor is also foolish. Maybe having some terms with which to start the discussion will be helpful.

Social share

OK. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to coin a new term. If it's not exactly the right one, somebody can come up with a better one, but I've started to need it and I can't find another one that means exactly what I'm trying to say.

Social share: the relative importance of participation in a group to a member of that group -- or association of one group to another group -- as measured by activities that involve resources or influence.

OK. I know it sounds a little pointy-headed and beardy, but I wanted to get a couple things in there for a reason. Let's run down the parts, and then I'll go into my thinking as to why we need this term.

Explain the definition

• It's got to be relative importance because I firmly believe that both people and organizations only have a certain amount of "social share" to manage. You cannot belong to an infinite number of groups. You cannot have 312 "best friends." You cannot have 78 favorite foods. Blogs with blogrolls that list more than 30 or so recommended blogs or sites to visit... I just ignore. Especially when they're not categorized. That's linkspam, kids. I don't want to know your Top 200 picks of what movie I should rent tonight. I want 10 choices, tops.  So, when we're measuring what social groups have the most influence on me, it's got to add up to 100%. When someone new comes along and pulls you one way... you're pulled away from something else.

• It's got to be about participation. That's the differentiator between the whole "2.0" overkill and "old school" communications. If you are reading a blog, you are not part of the group. You're part of the audience. If you are commenting regularly... you're a part. If you buy from Amazon, not. If you write reviews... yes. If you read the Wikipedia, not. If you edit it, yes. A bystander is not a member.
  

• It can be about a person's role in one group, or about how a group decides to interact with another group. Social networking is often about "networks of networks." And that is about some critical mass of members making a "social share" conclusion about the group-effects of the benefit of association with another group. That is to say, "Our group will do better as a group if we stop hanging out with Group A, and start hanging out with Group B." You might still decide to associate personally with Group A -- your personal social share may involve them -- but the group social share may have a different weight.
  

• The participation noted above has to consume or create resources or influence for it to be a genuine indicator of social share, I believe. If you just log onto a bulletin board and fire off a hot, fiery rant once in awhile, five minutes here or there in your "spare time," that's not really consuming any of your real resources, and it's not creating any influence, probably not convincing anyone of anything, etc. Just because an act of participation is social, doesn't mean it creates social share for others, or qualifies as consuming social share for you. I may go to a carnival once a year... That may qualify as a "social" activity, because I do it with other people. But it is probably almost 100% entertainment related. If it does not influence how I will do anything else (besides whether or not I will attend next year's carnival), it's not a measureable social share activity.

Explain why we need the term

Because the whole root of Everybody's-Gone-Ga-Ga-2.0 is that Everything 2.0 on Web 2.0 is Wicked Social 2.0. It's all "two way." The Web originally "did stuff at you." Then it let you "do stuff." Now it lets us "do stuff together." We've been empowered to join hands, sing kumbaya and get jiggy wid-it. We can blog, comment on blogs, multi-blog, group blog, mososo, mash-up, link, tag, group tag, group find and all kinds of stuff that involve being parts of groups and interacting with those groups on some level. Which is great. Call it "Post Modern Tribalism" or whatever. It's fun to join groups, it's fun to be with other people (virtually or in real life), it's fun to leverage our knowledge in a community of peers, it's fun to "be around" like-minded (or contraray) folks. There are many, many reasons why social software is good stuff.

But if it's good, we need ways of evaluating how good. And we need some language to talk about why we're doing this stuff, and not just because "it's good." In marketing, that which is not measured is not repeatable and is probably based on luck, family connections or the whims of Japanese schoolgirls. If you failed and you don't know why, you have learned nothing, and you're not just a failure, but a moron. If you know why you failed, you at least have gained knowledge. If you succeeded and you don't know why, you're a success, but you're still a moron, because it's not reproducible.

So... Social! Social! Social! Let's build six-degrees-of-separation for everyone! Let's make everything group-able! Let's let everybody drive the bus!

OK. Fine. Answer me the question, "Why?" And then answer me the questions about how you're going to measure how social your service is. And how social it is compared to other similar services? And is it more social from a qualitative or quantitative standpoint? Does it have lots of members who spend no time? Or a smaller customer base who are fanatically loyal and spend 2 hours a day? Or is it lots of people and lots of time... but no influence. And no money spent. And what's the end goal of the whole she-bang-a-bang anyway? Are you driving advertising revneue? Trying to influence other product sales? Market share? Mind share? What activities do you want this group to engage in? What influence do you want them to create?

In short... what the heck are you up to?

Where's the bathroom, Kevin Costner?

"If you build it, they will come..." That's what the mysterious voice said in "Field of Dreams." A neat movie. I liked it a bunch. But at the end, when you see that whole line of cars all queued up to experience the mystery and drama of the baseball field in the middle of the corn... my only thought was, "Where are they going to go to the bathroom?" Once you get to a social destination... what do you do there?

I regularly comment on a couple of blogs, the purpose of which is clearly just... to be blogs. One of them, Terra Nova, a blog about MMOs and virtual worlds, has no advertising, no commercial links, no nuthin'. It's a space for discussion about online games and VWs. Period. Fantastico. From a social share standpoint, you'd have to factor that into your calculations when evaluating my participation in various groups. "Andy is spending a decent amount of time in an area that generates no commercial effects." That's like, from an entertainment market share analysis standpoint, watching the same movie on VHS over-and-over. Or, from the point-of-view of the cola companies, drinking tap water. Some chunk of my social share is being "wasted" by that evaluation.

I'm not saying that's a "correct" viewpoint. Just that you have to consider it. If another venue in the MMO/VW sphere wanted a chunk of my social share -- i.e., wanted me to join in their discussion group, wiki, blog, etc. -- they'd probably have to drag some of it over from Terra Nova. If they wanted to do it for commercial reasons, they'd need to evaluate what I bring to the table. Am I willing to pay directly for a membership? Am I going to contribute to click-through advertising revenue? Is my influence as a contributing member great enough to bring in others who will have more economic value than I posess, or even offset any economic drain I make on the system? In short, is my social share worthwhile? Is it valuable to them?

Let's have an example, eh?

OK.  Robert Scoble worked, until very recently, for Microsoft. He was a blog evangelist and people read his blog for a couple reasons. One, he's an interesting guy on his own, and had some fun, smart things to say about technology, blogging, communications, openness, etc.. Two, he worked for Microsoft and had a very human, not-too-high-and-mighty-voice, and we're fascinated by that. Put those together, and lots of people enjoyed a more flesh-and-blood peek into the Death Star. That peek was chiefly through his blog. So Scoble was blogging, in a way, about what he was blogging about. It was a meta meme. And those can be very powerful. And he got lots of comments of the blog from people both inside and outside "the loop" of the tecnocracy. His blog had, for quite a few people -- some of them important -- some measurable degree of social share. The fact that Microsoft "let" (and perhaps encouraged) him to do the blog made it even more social and intriguing.

Now... Scoble is doing something else. Queston? How much of Scoble's social share depended on the Microsoft connection? Or, more accurately, depended on it being active. He will always, of course, be an ex-Microsofty. But will the folks who liked to be interviewed by him, comment on his blog, link to it, be linked-to by him, etc., like it as much now that he's with a Silicon Valley start-up? More importantly, regardless of how much they "like it," will they continue to actually participate in the Scoble network per se? His new employer is certainly hoping so...

Because that's the whole differentiator between old-school, advertising-heavy, one-way, mainstream media and word-of-mouth, social, networked, empowered, epitomized-by-blogs "2.0" thing: participation. And if that's the horse that you're going to ride into the ring, that's the one you've got to be ready to ride out on.

What I mean is you can't make the claim that the "special thing" about all this Web 2.0 stuff is its participatory nature when you're trying to sell all the new cool Flash, AJAX, Ruby on Rails stuff to your investors... but then bail on it when the numbers don't show up. The equation has to equal out.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm a huge fan of this whole thing. I just don't want the enormous potential and value of social networking and many of the possible benefits to go the way of Pets.com and the rest of the Dot Bomb.

Very short conclusion

So... when you're thinking about social software and building networks of users, think about social share the same way you would market share, incremental market share, share of voice, mind share and share of wallet. As one part of a business equation. Not as something to do "just because it's good." If you build it, they might come. But if they end up peeing in your cornfield and leaving... what was the point again?

Pure balls

I get asked about branding more than a little. Since I do it for a living sometimes, have taught it more than once and have written and published articles on the subject, I don't mind getting asked. And while I feel like I know enough to talk and write on the subject with some authority, it is always a tricky and somewhat... fuzzy topic.

It's a soft science. You can't always say, "Do this-and-such and you'll get great results from your brand."

But, like many things, while it may be hard to define, sometimes a good example is truly better than a bad attempt at description.

Philips Norelco has a new product called the Bodygroom. It's an electric razor for men. And since it's called the "Bodygroom," you can figure out that it's not for our beards.

So... you want to launch a brand for a new beauty product geared to remove unwanted hair primarily from men's backs, underarms, chests and

 

Fine. You've got a brand development choice when it comes to promoting the thing. You can take the "high road." You can go all doctor this and health that. You can be very 1950's in terms of the tone. You could even go techno-zingo and show the "razor-in-space" thing while it cuts through 3D zoomarooma virtual hair in some kind of orbit over something that might be an asteroid... or something. Or... something.

Or you can do what Philips did and put up a fantastic site that is funny as hell and will, A) be mad-viral and have everyone and their bruddah emailing each uddah saying, "You gotta check this out (which is how I heard about it, of course); and, B) hit the nail on the head in terms of what the brand should really be.

Whom am I to say what the brand of men's beauty products "should be?"

Come on. It's an electric razor for shaving hair off your


and   

Even for guys who actually take body hair grooming seriously, they're going to pretend not to. Tongue-in-cheek funny is dead-on-perfect for this brand, and the site pulls it off splendidly. It's not slapstick, it's not over-the-top rude... it's just, damned funny. And it's unexpectedly funny. And it's even a little smartly funny while being smart-ass funny. And you just don't expect a big ol' 19th century comp'ny like Philips (with Santa on the Norelco razor) to "get it" and be that funny. Which makes it even that much better.

I applaud the marketing. Three thumbs up. Way up.

Good little game

Interactive Buddy. Be prepared to waste 30-60 minutes.