I was reading a story last night about MySpace in the latest issue of Wired, and it twigged me about a discussion I had with my brother, Sean, about whether marketing really matters within Web 2.0. If you think about it, many of the biggest brands and most popular services – MySpace, Google, YouTube, PhotoBucket – were mostly created on the strength of low-cost viral marketing and word of mouth. There were no expensive advertising campaigns or well-crafted public relations initiatives. Instead, these companies offered compelling and useful services that resonated with consumers. So what role does marketing play within an environment that prides inside on low development, distribution and marketing costs? Is there room for hotshots like Tara Hunt, who expound new marketing theories for the Web 2.0 world. You could probably make a good argument that Web 2.0 companies with interesting and useful services can get away with a single marketing person (albeit someone who can wear a variety of hats). Instead of marketing campaigns, companies should just focus making their services, meeting the needs of users, and using nontraditional tools (blogs, podcasts, self-generated e-mails from the CEO when someone signs up for a beta, etc.) to build a community and create a brand. Of course, you could argue these are marketing tools but they are grassroots as opposed to hiring some slick marketing agency to "build" your brand.
Update: Ben Barren has a few bon mots about the Wired story while Om Malik takes the opportunity to highlight a Business 2.0 story he wrote on News Corp.'s Internet strategist, Ross Levinsohn.
Nortel Slashing 1,100 Jobs
Surprise, surprise (well, not really), Nortel is cutting 1,100 jobs and reviewing its pension plan. The jobs cuts will reduce annual operating expenses by $100-million in 2007 and $175-million in 2008. The company also unveiled changes to its pension plan from defined benefits to defined contributions contributions to defined benefits, which will save Nortel about $100-million a year. And everyone wondered why Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski is so bullish about the company's prospects.
Citron's Losing His Marketing Mojo
Vonage's post-IPO troubles must be weighing heavily on the shoulders of chairman and co-founder Jeff Citron. For the second time in two weeks, he gave a keynote at a conference that lacked any kind of sizzle. Brian Ward said Citron's speech at Convergence 2.0 failed to address any of the issues facing Vonage these days (growing criticism about its marketing spending, class-action lawsuits, discounts for subscribers who threaten to leave, etc.). With Vonage under siege, this is a time when you'd expect a marketing-wizard such as Citron to creatively and enthusiastically come to the company's defense. After all, he co-founded Vonage because he believed VoIP would be a disruptive technology. What happened to that chutzpah? Now that Vonage is public, itseems like Citron believes he has to behave. But if all you're going to do is give tepid keynotes with no meat, why bother talking at all because you end up doing more harm than good? One other thing, Citron declined to answer questions after his keynote. Strange because it's not like he's not good at avoiding questions he can't answer.
Seeding the Blogosphere; Newspapers' Future
Anyone with an interest in in the future of newspapers should give Shane Richmond's blog a read. A recent post on how newspapers should use their brands and resources (reporters, etc.) to seed conversation within the blogosphere is a rare example of someone within Old Journalism totally getting how to position traditional media for the Web. Richmond, a news editor with Telegraph.co.uk, argues many bloggers are commenting on content produced by news organizations such as newspapers. This is a positive news. Why? One, it suggests newspapers are still relevant within a Web World of Google News/Digg/Techmeme world; and two, it should, in theory, drive more traffic to newspaper Web sites as people search for news producers in addition to content commentators. This, in theory, should make newspaper Web sites more attractive to advertisers looking for strong, well-branded, credible destinations in a world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to sort through the moutains of content being created.
As a journalist increasingly aware of the impact of the Web on the newspaper business, the last two paragraphs of Richmond's post are encouraging:
“To the naysayers, newspapers are surrounded on all sides. There are news aggregators to the left of us and wire services to the right os. But it doesn't have to the Valley of Death. If we shake off some old ways of thinking and begin to work with this new world instead of against it, we can build a better media.
We shouldn't feel we're surrendering to aggregators. We should be joining in. This is the most exciting time for newspapers for at least 20 years. If we stopped being so negative, we might actually enjoy it.”
We shouldn't feel we're surrendering to aggregators. We should be joining in. This is the most exciting time for newspapers for at least 20 years. If we stopped being so negative, we might actually enjoy it.”
Update: Slate's Jack Shafer piles into the newspapers are dying conversation with a doom and gloom story about shrinking newsroom and disappearing sections. He suggests, however, while newspapers are dying, there is plenty of demand for information, which ties into Shane Richmond's argument. Shafer suggests newspapers need to change their stripes and look at other platforms (cell phones, free tabloids, Web sites, etc.) to expand their audience. Here's an interesting paragraph:
“As much as people may have given up the newspaper habit, their appetite for news has become insatiable, [and] news companies are learning. The 1.1 million-circulation New York Times served 25 million unique readers in April via its NYtimes.com Web site, according to its own logs. Washingtonpost.com, which serves 80% of its audience outside the D.C. area, has made the Washington Post a national newspaper.
Shafer highlights what is becoming an increasingly obvious – but very difficult – strategic challenge for newspaper publishers, which need to start moving towards different platforms aggressively and with more urgency. Whether it's the Web, RSS, blogs, podcasts or cell phones, newspapers need jump into the digital information world – and not by launching Web sites that simply repurposed newspapers. Forget about online subscriptions, walled gardens or blogs that don't link out to other sources of information, the information world is changing. If newspapers don't adopt, they'll die.
The Scourge of Trackback Spam
With Blogware upgrading its anti-spam technology recently, the amount of comment spam on my blog has tumbled dramatically In its place, however, is trackback spam. Every day, I've got to manually prune dozens of items, which means some legitimate trackbacks probably get caught up in the process. Is there anything that can be done to combat the scourge of trackback spam?
The Colossal Failure of eReaders
Amid all the buzz about the Sony Reader, I have a feature in today's National Post looking at why attempts to create a portable device to read books haves, for the most part, been a huge failure. Nevertheless, this could be the year of the iPod for books as several companies are intent on trying to finally get the eReader formula right.
