Bambi Francisco

Geni's approach to social networking

With the success of MySpace, there has been enormous activity in the startup world focusing on social networks around a particular niche, or purpose. In the case of Geni.com, which launched mid-January, the site attracts anyone interested in genealogy – the study of ancestry or family histories. It is a social network that first starts with one family tree, and then branches out from there. You can imagine that as family trees get filled out, you'll be able to see who your 10th-degree cousin is. You might also learn that your best friend is related by having the same great, great, great, great grandmother.

The viral nature of this site is pretty obvious and compelling. Once someone fills in their family tree, like I did recently, they know exactly what they have to do next. They have to prompt others – parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, in-laws – to fill in their family profiles. To this end, the value proposition seems far greater than other social netwok sites that are trying to get people to post their thoughts, photos and videos on their own personal pages and get their friends or family to connect with them. The problem for those sites are 1) some family members/friends aren't interested in social networks, or they're already part of one 2) there are too many other social networks trying to position themselves as neighborhood or family/close friend networks, such as TypePad's Vox and Friendster, and therefore, it's hard to choose which one to be part of.

Geni.com is interesting because it's a site that organizes your family tree. That's a value-add that other social networks don't provide.

To be sure, Geni.com - though its approach is different -- is actually trying to do the same thing as the other sites. It's trying to connect people. And, on the site, a person can upload their photos, and create profiles, such as favorite cuisines, school and professional history. There's even a place where someone can message me on my Geni.com profile. These are requisite features of social network sites. Now, what I haven't seen is a place to blog. But I imagine it's only a matter of time before this feature is incorporated into Geni.com. After all, once you get your family tree up and running, you'll likely want to communicate with them through stories. Additionally, if people can blog, that means they'll likely stay on the site longer, create content, and drive pageviews. And, since Geni.com is going to be mainly advertising supported, I'd imagine the company will want as many features that drive pageviews.

Now, while I really thinking the viral nature is compelling, it will take a lot of encouragement to get others to respond. For instance, since I pinged my family (nearing two weeks now) to upload their information – their spouse, children, in-laws, etc. – they had yet to fill in any information. But no matter, I’m sure in time they will. It’s a matter of changing their behavior and understanding how easy a family tree can be organized if they just added their 2 cents of knowledge.

Former PayPal COO David Sacks, who also produced “Thank you for Smoking,” based on the popular book (and one of my favorites), founded Geni.com in mid-2006. In this video, he gives his pitch about why he started it and what his vision is.

Flixster - MySpace for movies

This is yet another social network, but the difference is that the content or focus is around movies. Flixster is building upon the popular features that have helped Netflix rent more movies. Those features include the ability to see or make recommendations and see which movies are the most popular among friends or in the Netflix community. Netflix said that some 60% of the movies rented come from recommendations. Clearly, recommendations help people discover new movies to rent. Unlike Netflix, however, on Flixster, you don’t get the great service of receiving movies in the mail. Of course, you don’t have to pay $10 a month either. To that end, Flixster can be a nice complement to the many movie-download services emerging, such as Amazon’s unBox. So, let me share my experience on Flixster. First off, I have to say that this service (more than others) is set up in such a way that it’s easy to invite friends – a form of grass-roots marketing that can have exponential affects on growth. It’s no wonder that in 10 months, Flixster has signed up 5 million registered users who collectively have posted 190 million movie recommendations written. That’s pretty fast. But a lot of that has to do with the way Flixster is set up. One of the smart ways Flixster is making the grass-roots marketing far easier for us is by integrating our address books immediately upon signing up. After I signed up with my gmail account, Flixster displayed my gmail email list and an automated email invite that, with one click, could go to all of my friends (and other random emails) in my email list. Smart move. With one click, I could have invited the 135 emails recorded in my gmail account. The only problem is that the automated invite said: “Hi, I just took a movie quiz at Flixster.com.  If you come take it too we can see if we like the same movies.” Since I didn’t just take a movie quiz, I didn’t think it was honest of me to send this email. Besides, it did feel a bit like I was spamming. The one thing I didn’t like was that I couldn’t easily choose which email accounts I wanted to send an email to. Rather, I had to check off each box (next to an email account) that I didn’t want to send an email to. This was rather annoying, and ultimately a turn-off. Another way Flixster is making the invite process easier is by integrating with News Corp’s MySpace. With 115 million members worldwide, it’s a smart integration. At one point in the sign-up process, Flixster asked if I wanted to send a bulletin on my MySpace account inviting my MySpace friends.

The social network features are great. There’s even a feature that lets you upload videos and images related to a particular movie. There is also, of course, the requisite “profile” page. (I think I must have two dozen profile pages by now.)  The site also seems to have some pretty useful reviews and recommendations. But I’m not sure I’d create a social network just around movies. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of movies – having seen three in the movie theaters just in the last week -- but I wouldn’t build a social life around my movie preferences. That said, I did click onto the tab that said “Meet people like me.” The No. 1 person that showed up was a 13-year-old girl.

Mobile social networks

If you want to see where your kids will be spending their time in the future, take a look at Gemini Mobile’s platform that lets carriers offer their subscribers a social networking community on their phones. Essentially, the service is a mobile community – a MySpace on the go, but for more virtual reality. The platform is called eXplo, and it powers SoftBank Mobile’s S! Town. S! Town is pretty neat. A subscriber can have an avatar that walks around this virtual world. In the demo I was given, Michael Tao, Gemini Mobile’s CTO, had a black anime as his avatar. His avatar strolled through S!Town’s virtual town center, which was quite deserted, given that it was 4 am in the morning in Japan, where this service is available. At first, it seemed pretty silly and useless to be walking around this deserted town. But then Michael bumped into several females (or at least one might think they were female because their avatars were female). Michael tried to befriend them, while at the same time clicking onto a user profile to find out more about this person. All members have profiles that can be made public to the community. All community members can roam around this virtual town and meet other members. Watching this interaction was a bit frightening, especially when Michael could – with just a click of a button -- find out more about the person whom he was interacting with. When I was a little girl, I played tea with some dolls around a mini table. My future little girl will likely be playing tea on her mobile phone with (hopefully) other little girls. So, what's the business model? Consumers don't pay for the service. Rather they can buy content in the town. There are also advertisements on billboards in the virtual town. In 2007, the service is expected to be deployed with U.S. and European carriers.

Tumri's network merchandising

Tumri wants to help retailers spread their products across a number of Web sites. Essentially, it's a bit like Google's Adsense, whereby any publisher can be the distributor of Google's ads. It's like Edgeio's model of letting publishers be distributors of Edgeio's classified lists. Tumri is a smart idea if it can help retailers find their target market for a specific ad across the fragmented Web. Getting a specific product, say carbon fiber bicycles, distributed across the right sites with the target audience is a tall order. Additionally, Google's advertising Adword clients can create ads for specific products as well and be distributed across Google's Adsense network. After all, merchants are advertisers. Going after the merchant market is essentially the same as going for the advertising market. Look what happened to eBay's merchants. They too are Google advertisers. That said, I like the idea. Additinoally, the cost for merchant is based on performance. To that end, they'll only pay per click. Tumri will probably have to deal with clcik-fraud issues, but for starters, it's a fair way to go for merchants., unless they push for a click-per-action or click-per-purchase model. The trick for Tumri (and Edgeio) is to increase the relevance on the ads for each site. I plan on becoming a Tumri distributor. I'll let you know what I think of the experience over time.

The social and visual Web

I recall years ago when Steve Case said that those who dig for gold make more money than those supplying the picks and shovels. As the co-founder and former CEO of America Online, he was bias. But he has a point. These days if MySpace and YouTube are the ones digging for gold, their sales to News Corp (nws) and Google (goog) show that when you hit gold, you hit it big.

But the battle to become a top video or social network destination site is fierce. The landscape is littered with sleep-deprived, burned-out founders and CEOs of dozens of startup video-sharing or social network sites, as well as those working at veteran Internet sites. So despite the rich rewards in finding that pot of gold, some startups are avoiding this costly war, opting instead to provide the tools and platforms to socialize and video-rize the world. Essentially what they're saying is: Rather than fight with MySpace and YouTube, and the dozens of others, why not just provide the picks and shovels to others who want at it? What's the result of that?

I'm not sure, but I can only imagine that my inbox will be filled with "new friend" requests in a video format some day. Oh, joy.

So, who are these tools and shovel companies? This week, two young companies -- DAVE.tv and vSocial -- unveiled software services to provide companies and individuals a way to have a video and text blog platform that also includes social networking features. (Note: I use blog to define a Web-based publishing platform that allows anyone to contribute.) I think it's an excellent idea. As many of my readers and viewers know I love the marriage of both: The blogging capabilities in video or text allow for anyone to contribute from a staffed producer and reporter to the audience or the user. The social network features allow anyone to market and distribute the content.

Now, sure, there are others who already provide white-label video solutions, such as Feedroom, Brightcove, VideoEgg, Maven Networks, and Narrowstep. Even Cisco Systems (csco) is offering video-capabilities to businesses. But none of the aforementioned companies (besides DAVE.tv and vSocial) are offering the social networking features that let the audience communicate with one another, make friends, share and build affinity groups. These are the features that give the audience control to manage their worlds, or in MySpace parlance, their spaces. 

That said, it's only a matter of time before social network features (connect, make friends, share, vote, rank, etc.) are commodities incorporated into blog publishing platforms. It's only a matter of time before all the companies I mentioned above announce that they too will offer the same services and tools. For now, they don't. Or if they do, they're in stealth mode.

Read my Net Sense column on MarketWatch for the rest of the column: Socialize this... video

The Web 2.0 cost - less control

Facebook is going to open up to the masses. Some rabble-rouser Facebook members are upset. But Facebook has no choice.  Even though it has 9.5 million members, that pales in comparison to the 100-plus million members that News Corp's MySpace has.  But here's the silver lining... well sort of.

Facebook founder and  CEO Mark  Zuckerber is likely learning a lessson. And, other Internet startups can learn from him as well. In the Web 2.0 world, control has been shifted over to the audience, or "community." Web 2.0 companies enjoy the fruits of that community labor. Web 2.0 companies haven't paid for the content created either. 

But everything comes at a cost. And, the cost in the Web 2.0 world may be less control.

For my full column, blog, video commentary and interview with Zuckerberg, go to:
My blog on MarketWatch

Passion for pets, Woof!

Dogster just got $1 million in A round funding from a group of angels and entrepreneurs, such as the founder of del.icio.us. It's the first round of funding since the launch of Dogster back in January 2004. Dogster founder Ted Rheingold plans to build more properties to cover "all pet passions," like horses-ter, birdster, and herpster (biologists use the term herp for all reptiles and amphibians, according to Wikipedia). Dogster and Catster will generate over $1 million in online advertising and subscriber fees this year. Combined Dogster and Catser have 250k subscribers. A smaller number pay roughly $20 a year, to get storage for videos, and photos, and the ability to IM other members on the site, using their pets as avatars. The majority of the revenue comes from advertisers. The market for pets is $35.9 billion in the U.S., says Rheingold. That includes spending beyond advertising. "We expect to grow into many types of passions, not just pets," said Rheingold. "What we feel is that people like to share their passions online... So, while we've gotten very good at pets, you can think of all sorts of passions."  The angels were chosen for their understanding of how communities can flourish on the Web. That is, communities flourish in an environment where like-minded people can feel comfortable with others they can share their passions with. Rheingold, who says his site is already profitable, says the capital can last at least through the end of 2007. Get ready for a lot more features on the Dogster and Catster site, as well as new pet communities. In all the sites, there will be a whole set of local listings, including dog groomers, vets and pet stores. All of this content will be user added, said Rheingold. 

YouTube and Paris, Take II

Paris Hilton is a great argument that money doesn't buy happiness or talent.

But then again, who needs talent to get an audience? As of nearly 9 a.m. pacific time, Hilton's video was viewed 2,390 times, commented on 456 times and rated 3207 times.  Hilton may not have talent, but YouTube, Fox and Warner Bros. know what she has to bring to the table: Sex and an audience that likes, well, sex. YouTube struck a deal with Time Warner's Warner Bros. to be the online billboard for Hilton's new music album.  Hilton becomes YouTube's first branded channel. Now, YouTube has already allowed users to create their own channels. But user-generated channels are a problem for advertisers. As of today, the most subscribed channel goes to "Geriatric1927," with 22k subscribers and 659k views.

To read the rest of my thoughts about video ads, go to my official blog at: MarketWatch

On another note -- a more cultural one -- when you look at the Hilton video, you just have to  wonder what drives many of us to want recognition. This is what Benedict Carey of the New York Time writes:  "Money and power are handy, but millions of ambitious people are after something other than the corner office or the beach house on St. Bart’s. They want to swivel necks, to light a flare in others’ eyes, to walk into a crowded room and feel the conversation stop." Carey also writes: "People with an overriding desire to be widely known to strangers are different from those who primarily covet wealth and influence. Their fame-seeking behavior appears rooted in a desire for social acceptance, a longing for the existential reassurance promised by wide renown."

Carey goes on to say: "In media-rich urban centers, the drive to stand out tends to be more oriented toward celebrity, and its hold on people appears similar across diverse cultures. Surveys in Chinese and German cities have found that about 30 percent of adults report regularly daydreaming about being famous, and more than 40 percent expect to enjoy some passing dose of fame — their “15 minutes,” in Andy Warhol's famous phrase — at some point in life, according to data analyzed by Dr. Brim. The rates are roughly equivalent to those found in American adults. For teenagers, the rates are higher." Read Carey's article: The fame motive

Is it privacy or economics?

One of the most intriguing stories about the Internet isn't how much wealth it's created, but rather its impact on society. 

Each day, it seems, we spend more time on the Internet. We search more, share more, participate more and voice our opinions more. We've probably all become aware of how self-absorbed we are and/or how different we are from others, and we're proud of it.

But is there more about ourselves that we don't know? More that the data we leave behind may reveal?

"The Internet has changed everything," said Schmidt, who held a small session Wednesday with a couple dozen journalists after he was interviewed on stage by search guru Danny Sullivan at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif.  Schmidt went on to describe how the Internet has obviously improved access to information and the empowerment it's given many, including the press, to gather that knowledge. But the "development to me that's most interesting is the social networks as online lifestyles. That's a really new phenomenon," he said. It's a phenomenon on scale with the rapid-fire adoption of instant messaging, he added. "It's [social networks] a big deal."  Indeed, his words are backed by his actions. On Monday, Google announced that it is paying $900 million to be the exclusive search engine of MySpace along with News Corp's other Net properties. What fascinates me about this deal is the potential to take search history data and marry it with personal data, such as what we like and dislike, who we like and dislike, and basically what makes us tick.  "We do not link," said Schmidt, adamantly. "We try to do things with user permission," he added.

Sure, there may be some privacy issues. But is that all? After all, we've become such a transparent society with high expectations about service (and that means better targeted ads).

Maybe I should have asked him, could Google make more money by using search history to serve up display ads on its partner sites?  Based on a simple analysis and example, it appears that perhaps the incremental benefit of using search history for targeted ads may not be worth it. For that analysis, you'll have to read my column. 

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

Google pays up for next generation

Google's $900 million deal with Fox shows that the search giant is willing to pay a hefty amount for the next generation of Internet addicts who tend to socialize as much as they search.

It's been no secret that News Corp been seeking a search partner for the inquisitive MySpace members, who'd been wont to search on Google after socializing on the virtual site. But as the popular social networking sites' traffic surged, so did its ability to leverage its audience. MySpace generated 23 billion pageviews from 45.7 million unique visitors in June, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. sk.com to see who'd offer up, among other things, the highest guaranteed upfront revenue for the MySpace and Fox digital properties' traffic. News Corp set last Friday as the deadline for bids. No one matched Google's offer, though MSN's was competitive.

Obviously, it turns out Google was the most aggressive and willing to capture this exploding network on the Web.

Here are the takeaways. It's great news for News Corp because it's leveraging its online traffic and, if it meets certain thresholds, will definitely beat advertising forecasts set for its digital properties in '07 and the following years. Also, MySpace gets to keep its members on its site searching, because apparently a good portion of them left to search elsewhere.

It's probably good news for Google, since it won't have to pay that revenue unless certain search and traffic. ich had been providing search queries for MySpace, which recently topped the search engine as the most visited site on the Web, based on pageviews. Obviously, MySpace users like to search. According to HitWise, about 10% of MySpace users left the social network and went to Google to search. That's search traffic that Yahoo, MSN or Ask could have had.

It's terrible news for MSN, which is trying to bolster its ad-search business with AdCenter. What was it thinking? To me, the fact that MySpace chose Google isn't that surprising, since I've been writing about this possibility for some time. Whatwill be pretty intriguing to watch from now until the deal is over, is the extent to which Google personalizes the searches on MySpace personal pages and group pages. Now, personal information and search information may actually merge.

Read the rest of my column on MarketWatch.

Paying up for MySpace

You have to wonder what Microsoft's (msn), Yahoo (yhoo) and InterActiveCorp's (iaci) Ask.com were thinking by letting MySpace go to Google. MSN has enough money and it's trying to validate its own search advertising platform. Yet it wouldn't pay up for MySpace traffic, which tend to go to Google to search.

MySpace had 45 million unique visitors in June, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.  And, about 10% of MySpace traffic leaves MySpace to go to Google, according to HitWise. Clearly, there was an opportunity for the other search engines to capture that search traffic. They let it slip away. Too bad for MSN, Yahoo and Ask.com. Also, Bill Tancer noted a while back that when MySpace had an outage, a lot of its users went to Google. Read Tancer's take.

Btw, if you were reading my MarketWatch blog today, you would have known the MySpace/Google deal was coming. It was posted before the close of the trading day.

Blogs.MarketWatch.com/bambi

Also, watch for my Net Sense column, in which I'll comment about the Google/MySpace and Google/MTV deal. Also, go to MarketWatch Tuesday for my video interview with FIM's Ross Levinsohn.
Watch out for my commentary tomorrow.
   

Video enablers

Only 2% of the total online advertising pie was tied to video ads last year, according to eMarketer, an online marketing research company. That's only expected to rise this year to 2.3%, as online video ads are expected to rise 71% to $385 million while total advertising is expected to rise 34% to $16.7 billion in 2006.  So how will online media and video enablers funnel more dollars into video? For that answer, the best resources are the startups in my opinion. They are definitely redefining the world of video and commercials. I've noted several in my Net Sense column: Vidavee, a Manhattan-based company that's helping marketers place ads - banners, video, etc. -  at points within a video that attract the largest crowds. Gotuit, a startup that lets the audience fine-tune their searches inside a video; Vmix gives users copyrighted material to mash up with their own homegrown movies; One True Media takes makes video editing with its Web-browsing tool and Dave.tv is putting "buy now" buttons on its video-playing technology. Revver is helping amateur producers become stars, such as Fritz and Stephen (check out Eepybird.com).   The makers of the Mentos video made $30,000 so far at a $7.50 cpm.  Other companies mentioned in my Net Sense column are Jumpcut.com, Brightcove, Booyah Networks, and VideoEgg.

To read the whole story, go to my Net Sense column on MarketWatch. Or visit my official blog at blogs.MarketWatch.com/bambi
 

YouTube's 'clip culture'

YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley said his video-sharing site is encouraging what he calls a "clip culture."

In an era of limited attention spans and abundant choices, his assessment of society as online video comes of age is right on the money. These days, as television networks are attempting to redefine themselves with costly, long-form productions just to maintain their audiences, let alone grow them. YouTube's short-form and low-quality audience-generated videos are attracting about 20 million unique visitors a month. The average video length viewed is 2 1/2 minutes long, said Hurley. Changing the way society behaves is a big feat in and of itself. But it's unclear whether YouTube can make a living doing so. Today, YouTube gets money from banner ads. It's also struck a deal with NBC to promote that network's shows. When I asked Hurley what else YouTube can do for the major networks, he said that the site can be a platform for all the video that's typically on DVDs, such as behind the scene takes and bloopers. Hurley and I chatted after his panel at the Always On. One obvious way for YouTube to make money -- before burning it all away on delivering the video for the world -- is to place 5-second post-roll advertisements on those 100 million video clips being viewed each day. Yet Hurley doesn't want to do that. To me, inserting advertisements into the videos seems inevitable. Auctioning the placements in the video ads is a business process that also seems inevitable to me. Another model is to get sponsors for groups. Yet another is to either get paid by marketers when users recommend certain products.

Go MarketWatch, and read my Net Sense column for my video interview with Hurley and the rest of the column. Read BF's Net Sense.

Inclue RSS video feed

Here's a new way to subscribe and watch the videos on my blog from your email. Check it out. Inclue is a 14-month-old company, based in Lajolla, Calif. The company has 6 employees and has received $900,000 in angel funding. What's nice about this service is that if you want to watch video blog posts from inside your email box, you can do so. The problem with the current RSS readers is that they're not rendering the videos that are being placed inside of blogs. So, if someone subscribes to, say, this blog (which has a lot of video), they would just receive a link to the video. With inclue, there is instant gratification. In three weeks, inclue will be working with Outlook Express - the free email client that comes with every copy of XP. Inclue founder/CEO Nick Gogerty says the company is also in talks with user-generated video sites to help them distribute their video content.

Tribe at less than $5 million?

Despite the rumors, NBC has yet to sign any deal to buy Tribe. net, the social networking site founded by Mark Pincus in 2003. 

From what I hear, the price for Tribe is far from the $50 million reported by Rafat (at Paidcontent.org). Rather it's less than $5 million, according to a source close to the situation. NBC is looking at Tribe's technology to incorporate new Web 2.0 features/tools into its social community iVillage.  Of course, $5 million sounds really tiny considering that Beebo (one-year-old social network site received a valuation well north of $50 million). Then again, Tribe hasn't really taken off in popularity, and broadened its user base. According to the latest traffic figures from Nielsen//NetRatings, Tribe.net had 611,000 unique visitors and 2.7 million pageviews in May. By comparison, Friendster (which isn't exactly a success story) had 102 million pageviews in May. Bebo had 123 million pageviews. Yahoo 360 had 117 million pageviews while Tagged (social network for teens) saw 130 million pageviews. 

MySpace in its own space

With the exception of Google, it's been a negative year for Internet stocks. Internet merger activity is quiet compared to last year, and there are few IPOs to get us excited. Vonage put a damper on any IPO enthusiasm. If MySpace were a standalone it would be a hot stock worth about $3 billion next year, based on revenue estimates of $528 million in '08, a 30% cash flow margin, and a multiple of 20 times. It's not a serious consideration at News Corp, but I'm sure the thought crossed their minds. After all, MySpace is adding 230,000 new members each day and has more than 90 million members. It's the fastest-growing property across the top Web brands, drawing 42 million unique visitors in May, up 329%, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Monthly pageviews grew nearly 400% to 19.3 billion, second to Yahoo. But how will MySpace really make money?

Read my Net Sense column

Life is a stage

Pretty soon, our entire life will be a movie. Creating our own slide show and mini-movie just keeps getting easier. Next-generation photo/video-sharing services like One True Media  should help mainstream America move beyond static photo sharing to storytelling through video montages. I tested One True Media by uploading photos of my nieces and nephew, and a video of a friend and his son (see my examples to the left).  It took me about 20 minutes to navigate through the site, figure out which videos were compatible, select videos and photos, create a music video montage and  upload to my blog. Now that's quick.  The service is fairly straightforward. There's music to choose from to accompany your video montage, and you can upload with one-click. Another feature that's useful is that you can mail all your old video tapes - beta or VHS - and have OTM transfer them into a DVD. We've come a long way from the early days of photo sharing. One True Media's business model is subscription, the sale of hard goods, and soon it'll begin testing out advertising as well.

Interviews with video startups

During the first six months of this year, the amount of venture dollars invested in Internet video startups rose 45% to $156 million, according to Dow Jones VentureOne. Nineteen companies received that funding. If the investing continues apace, the dollars pouring into this sector will surpass the $267 million million invested in 40 startups in 2005. All told, since 2002, 139 video or video-related startups received a total of $954 million in venture financing.

Some of those companies include MeeVee, Revver, YouTube, Video Egg, Brightcove, CinemaNow, FeedRoom, and Veoh. 

Watch my interview with MeeVee President Michael Raneri

Watch my interview with Instant Media CEO Andy Leak

Watch my interview with Veoh CEO Dimitry Shapiro

Watch my interview with MobiTV CEO Philip Alveda

Also watch my interviews with two social search startups, Eurekster and PreFound

Watch my interview with PreFound CEO Steve Mansfield

Watch my interview with Eurekster CEO Steve Marder

Wiki world

If you haven't noticed, Silicon Valley giants, like Google and Yahoo, and a host of two-man shops are attempting to fuse and apply the user-generated Wiki-model, the expert-driven About.com model and the social-networking News Corp's MySpace blog model. Whether all of this turns out to be the next growth engine for online advertising remains to be seen, but the end results are beginning to remind me of that most prosaic advertising vehicle, the brochure.

In some ways the collaboration involved in these efforts recalls the efforts needed to compile any reference work. In particular, it reminds me of Simon Winchester's two books: "The Professor

and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary" and "The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary." I'm reminded of these books because in them we learn that it took hundreds of volunteers (including J.R.R. Tolkien) to contribute their knowledge to create this Bible for grammarians. In like vein, the Web services in development today - Google Co-op, Yahoo MyWeb (and other social media services), ShopWiki, Squidoo, JetEye, Plum, Kaboodle, WikiOutdoords, Wikia, WikiHow, WikiTravel, World66, to name a fraction of the ones that exist or are in the making -- expect contribution from passionate people who will share knowledge simply for the sake of sharing. But unlike that massive undertaking to publish one universal reference for words, today's Web efforts aren't a comprehensive dictionary so much as a tapestry of, well, online brochures.

Admittedly, the creation of brochures sounds absolutely boring. And any contribution to such promotional material seems far less noble than submissions to the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. But it doesn't make these brochures less useful. They're big money generators too, though did you know that a 20-volume OED edition costs $1,600 a pop? Last year,

$31 billion was spent in direct marketing (which includes pamphlets, postcards and brochures), according to the Direct Marketing Association.

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

 

Vox neighborhood

If MySpace is the place to be seen as the hottest restaurant/bar in the country, Vox is the place where you can feel comfortable and safe. It's a feeling you might have at your favorite neighborhood bar, like Cheers (the bar in that long-running situation comedy).  Vox is Six Apart's answer to capturing the many non-bloggers out there who have been introduced to blogging via social networks, like MySpace. Vox is Six Apart's social network/blog for Luddites.  You can choose who you want to be in your neighborhood or family. "It clearly has a lot of social-networking aspects," said Six Apart's Andrew Anker, who was showing me around his virtual network yesterday. I should mention that Vox is not yet open to the public. Even though Six Apart has been working on this project for over a year, it'll be officially launched in September, so Anker predicts. 

After having played around with Vox for not even two hours, I can honestly say, it's one of the easiest blog tools out there - which will work in Vox's favor, I'm sure. That's one of the three reasons I like it. 1) Ease of use 2) One-click options 3) Emphasis on family/friend closed environment (are we tired of being public?).

1) When you compose a post, to the left of the post box, you have options to post photos, videos (from YouTube), and books (from Amazon). Most people like to embed graphics and videos, so having those options right there is easy. 2) Embedding is a one-step procees. I easily embedded a video of my nephew Bubba snowboarding into a post and wrote around it. I also like the fact that you can easily edit right from the front page. No longer do bloggers have to go through a backdoor, like I do when I'm blogging on TypePad. 3) I think my mom might want to start blogging with this tool as long as she knows no one else but me (and other family members) can see it. I know blogs have been around for a while, like Blogger (kind of easy), but this one might just be the right speed for someone like my mom.

As Anker puts it: She won't get performance anxiety. And, I'll add, she'll feel safe and connected. Maybe the pendulum will swing, and the desire to be in a big network like MySpace will decline, and the desire to be in a place where everyone knows our name feels just right.

Knowledge exchanges

Yahoo Answers, Google Co-op and MSN's Live Q&A sound very similar to me. Yahoo's Patrick Crane spoke with me about what he thinks is Yahoo's competitive advantage.

Embracing MySpace

MySpace is speaking with Google and Microsoft about a search deal, according to the FT.  Such a deal shouldn't surprise anyone watching the evolution of social networks and search engines. What's surprising is that Yahoo is "less interested," according to the report. Yahoo already powers MySpace's search results.

Who will MySpace choose? I know Google is very interested.

On May 11, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told me emphatically that social networks don't make money, but that Google would like to help them make money. I asked Schmidt how that would work and whether Google would have to partner with social networks, like MySpace.  Schmidt smiled and said, "You can figure it out." Thus my conclusion in my Net Sense column two weeks ago. Google has moved into community-based searching. Communities are formed in social networks like MySpace. MySpace is seeking to build its own search engine or partner. Is there a partnership between Google and MySpace? Read Net Sense, May 11

And, is MySpace worth it? Yes. Read Net Sense, May 9: MySpace-engine.

Blog churn

Technorati's David Sifry talks about the many one-hit wonders in the blogosphere. Yikes.

YouTube vs. MySpace videos

To everything, churn, churn, churn. There is a season, churn, churn, churn. If there is one word we'll hear often in this new media world, it's churn. Consider: It took MySpace's video service four days to top the charts, surpassing YouTube and Google Video, according to Hitwise, a measurement service company - which sells its data for $30,000 to $50,000 annually. It won't be long for that ranking to change since there's a lot of churn at these user-generated sites, according to Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Hitwise, who came to the MarketWatch studios recently. Tancer also clarified some traffic data.

Hitwise had been reporting that YouTube was generating more session times than vids.MySpace.com. But Hitwise wasn't exactly comparing apples to apples, resulting in what may have been overinflated numbers for YouTube. According Tancer, all of the hits on YouTube are counted. So, if I'm just navigating around YouTube's favorite or most-viewed videos, these are counted as sessions, even if I don't watch a video. Also, if I click back onto a video just to write a message, the video automatically plays. On MySpace, only videos that are  viewed are counted as sessions. MySpace videos also don't automatically play.

Meat-market cleanup

One of my 10 Internet predictions for 2006 was a "meat-market cleanup" or "social-network crackdown." When I wrote this list on Dec. 28, 2005, I received a number of responses from those who disagreed. Well, looks like that prediction is coming true. Earlier this week, News Corp hired a security officer - Hemanshu Nigam - to police the largest social network on the Web, MySpace.

This is what I wrote last year: "Because of rising concerns that social-networking sites allow people to disguise themselves, and potentially harm unsuspecting members, there will be a social-network crackdown. As part of this, there will be new attempts to monitor members and to make sure that children don't gain access to these virtual meat markets."

MySpace undoubtedly needs a watchdog. It's inevitable that something unfortunate will happen in the virtual world. Earlier this week, I wrote about how far more public we've become because of the benefits received from sharing information. Someone will take advantage of that information, I'm sure. Until that perceived threat of danger becomes a reality, people will continue to share freely and abundantly.

Read my Net Sense on MarketWatch: Our privacy in exchange for...

 

The transparent society

Back in 2003 I gave a presentation to investors who wanted to know about Internet trends.  Truth be told, they cared less about trends and more about stock tickers. My last slide for that presentation was a picture of Tadao Ando's Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.  Essentially, I ended the presentation by admitting that I was terrible at predicting trends. But what I felt strongly about was that we would become more transparent. Whatever the consequence of that would be, I didn't know. Based on their blank stares, they didn't know either. Nor did they quite understand why I was talking about transparent societies. If they could invest in such an idea, however, I'm sure they would have been all ears. Nonetheless, I left it up to them to decide what transparency means to them, and how transparency would change consumer behavior, and create demand for certain products developed by companies they may one day want to invest in. It's been a long time since that presentation. I finally got the chance to use that "Transparent Society" title in a recent column on MarketWatch.

Read my Net Sense column on MarketWatch

Once again, I wondered what the consequence of such a society would be. I think it's that we all get to know who we truly are at the core. And, I'm pretty sure it won't look all that pleasant.  Consider this, would you really want to see those photos of you during your bacchanalian days?  David Sifry - CEO and founder of Technorati - predicts that in 40 years, we won't be asking about whether the presidential candidates inhaled. Rather, we'll be asking: "What does his Facebook profile say about him?" Sifry thinks that transparency will make us all tolerant of one another. I agree. After all, we won't be able to hide from anyone. 

VC investing in search hits record

In 1999, a tiny unknown company received venture capital funding. Back then, 32 search startups received funding. It was the most active year for venture investing in the search space.

That was of course, until the last two years. Last year saw a record number of search startups get funded.In 2005, 47 search startups received an aggregate of $262.9 million in venture funding, according to VentureOne, a unit of Dow Jones. The dollar volume last year was the highest since 2000, when nearly $280 million was invested into 18 search startups. All told, $916 million has been invested in 130 search-related startups in the last five years, with 82 of those deals done in 2004 and 2005.

Last year's recipients include Feedster -- for blog, podcasts and news searches, X1 Technologies -- for desktop search, Onmeta -- a search engine focused on entertainment, and 4Info -- for mobile search, to name a few. 

Why are VCs pouring money back into search startups? Why not? As they say, "Let 1,000 flowers bloom."  Oh, and that tiny unknown search engine that received funding in 1999 was Google.

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch.

Let me know of any search companies you think I should review.

My media portals

In stealth mode for now, San Francisco-based  Plum is an easy-to-use service that lets you mash up -- to use the au courant term -- what's on your desktop and what's on the Web, putting all of it on one Web page that's not only for your own use but for the perusal of family members, friends and acquaintances, and other potentially interested parties. That is to say: the entire world. Plum definitely exploits the user-centric mindset that's swept the Web in recent months and years.  Read about Plum on MarketWatch.

Engineers have busily been writing code to create tools with a "social" aspect, like Plum, ever since Friendster showed that social networks -- or people just being people -- can attract big crowds in the new-media world. From social networks sprang other services hoping to capitalize on modern society's navel-gazing desire to create (on their own time and dime) and to share.

At times, of course, these media neophytes attach their self-indulgence to promotional skills on par with those of Dick Grasso in his NYSE heyday. Thus, while their output itself may range from brilliant to innovative to pointless to silly, it does tend to command disproportionate attention.

Hence the emergence of social bookmarking sites like  del.icio.us; social photo sites, such Flickr; social content sites, like Rojo.com; social search sites, like Rollyo; social Web organizers, like Kaboodle; and video sharing sites, like Grouper.com, YouTube and Google's Video, just to name a few. On the upside: such services help to solve the latest media conundrum: How to drive up page views by providing the audience with low-cost tools to sell themselves, or their alter egos, or their own creative content? The downside: We're now truly entering  The Al Franken decade, only now everyone gets to replace the comic, author, radio host and presumptive Senate candidate's name with his or her own. Another key difference: Franken was joking.

The emergence of these social services, if you will, reminds me of the days when retailing on the Web seemed like the greatest idea. Back then, the thought was that it would be cheap and easy to put up a virtual shingle and set up shop because there would be no expensive real-estate costs or inventory concerns. But what e-tailers were later faced with were rising costs in marketing, technology and shipping. In like vein, if anyone thinks they can create the next hot-media portal

tossing these tools out to the people, he or she would be wise to prepare for unforeseen costs and consequences. I'm not sure what the fallout will be, but a trail of useless tools is one possible outcome. Another observation: Most people grow tired of creating, or they'll need far more incentive to create. They'll start projects without finishing, resulting in half-baked Web pages and would-be news sites that ultimately are nothing more than one-off snapshots in time. Like the many cardboard folders I've created and then shoved in my desk or into storage boxes. At some point, they lose their value, and we end up with a bunch of useless Web pages or dead blogs just taking up space and clogging up searches. But, hey, each is an individual user's media portal, and users can do -- or fail utterly to do -- whatever they want.

The network effect of photo sharing

If you're like me, you've taken countless videos and photos during the holidays.  Unfortunately, if you're like me, these photos are likely scattered across a number of camera phones, memory cards, digital cameras, photo-sharing services and old computers. A year or two ago, I wouldn't have guessed at how much messier our digital mess would get. Today, not only are we trying to organize our photos and videos, we're trying to organize the photos and videos friends want to share with us. I guess it's what's to be expected in this collaborative and open-source Internet world.

Consider this: People take about 2,000 digital photos a year, according to Lars Perkins, who founded Picasa, which was bought by Google. Digital camera sales topped 50 million in 2003, according to PMA Marketing Research. So, if you've been putting your photos online since then, you'd have roughly 6,000 photos to manage by today.

Read Net Sense on MarketWatch

I'm testing out various services to see which one offers the easiest solution for me to share my videos from my Treo camera phone and digital camera. So far, my blogs pretty effective. The only problem is that this blog is pretty public. I'm sharing these personal videos that I took at a recent Rolling Stones concert as part of my commentary this weekend on MarketWatch's business magazine show. 

Mick Jagger at the Rolling Stones concert in San Francisco

More of the Stones