40 posts tagged HB

I wrote this as a comment on John Battelle’s blog, but I figured it deserved its own post:

I’m most intrigued by the second stage of Promoted Tweets: the ability to inject promotions into people’s streams. 

As the New York Times notes, Promoted Tweets sound a whole lot like the fundamental building blocks of AdWords as they measure resonance with similar metrics:

Twitter will measure what it calls resonance, which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links. If a post does not reach a certain resonance score, Twitter will no longer show it as a promoted post. That means that the company will not have to pay for it, and users will not see ads they do not find useful, Mr. Costolo said.

However, in this instance ads will be placed in the context of personal feeds and conversations, not search results.

I think this is the dawn of a new age in advertising, one that doesn’t necessarily leverage purchasing intent (like Google AdWords), but rather one that targets personal tastes and preferences.  As everything becomes more social (Mary Meeker’s recent “State of the Internet” report will attest to that), we’ll see new methods of delivering advertising, primarily by injecting promotions into social streams (whether this is your Facebook Newsfeed, Twitter feed, etc.).  

I think the model will work.  It’s inherently social and if done right it can be an integral part of, and even enhance, a user’s experience consuming and interacting with information in the stream.  I’m excited to see the evolution of Promoted Tweets and in-stream advertising and monetization, not just as it relates to Twitter, but as it relates to all social applications.

Charlie O’Donnell wrote a great post today about the present state of e-commerce. He brought up an idea I find particularly interesting:

One thing that Chris Fralic and I have been tossing around is the lack of a retailer centric play—where individual retailers can run their own group buys, manage discounts across various sites, run local campaigns across Foursquare, Facebook fan pages, etc.  All of the current sites revolve around a centralized curation and sales function.   To get that spa or sandwich shop onto your system, you still need a person getting on the phone, calling them up, running through the economics and particulars of the deal, scheduling, etc. That leaves a lot of open space in the market.  Even if you have 5 major competitors in a city and they do a different place every weekday, you’re still only covering about 1,000 retailers and merchants per year, assuming no overlap and no repeats.  On top of that, the economics of having that salesforce requires you to raise boatloads of money. 

For local business owners, there exists an overwhelming amount of social media services for promotions and marketing - there’s Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, and the group buying platforms (eg Groupon, LivingSocial, Scoop St, BuyWithMe, HomeRun, and hundreds of others).  All of these tools are remarkably helpful, but they’re a pain in the ass to manage if you lack the online savvy or simply don’t have enough hours in the day to commit to them.  Even large commercial chains spread themselves thin and fail to utilize these services to their full potential.

I’d love to see a platform that local businesses could use to leverage all of these different social components.  It’d be so much easier to use one point of contact to manage group buying efforts, campaigns across social media, and other local promotional and marketing initiatives.  Tack on a killer analytics tracker and you have yourself a remarkably useful tool.  You could charge a monthly subscription fee or take a percentage of all coupon and group buying transactions.  I think it’s a no-brainer service for local businesses and it would optimize their efforts across these different platforms.

Yesterday Google announced its new “remarketing” campaign as an integral part of itsinterest-based advertising beta.  At first glance, the concept and execution of remarketing seems like a huge step for leveraging purchasing-intent based advertising. Google claims:

Any AdWords advertiser can use remarketing to reach users as they’re browsing the web on sites within the Google Content Network. Remarketing is a simple way to connect with users, based on their past interactions with your website. 

That’s a pretty big deal.  If I have an ecommerce site that sells guitars and a group of people browse it for a while but don’t purchase anything (presumably because they’re price-shopping), I can remarket my site to them through the Google Content Network. This means that when I have a 50% off sale on acoustic guitars, I can specifically retarget these people on any site running Google Ads and attract them back to my guitar store.

This is a huge step forward not only because it augments the effective duration of Google ad campaigns, but also because it leverages purchasing intent for an extended period of time.  If I want to buy a camera but decide it’s too expensive, I’ll now be notified when the price decreases or when a similar attractive deal surfaces via remarketing. It has proven quite difficult to serve relevant ads for internet users outside of search results and niche content sites - this model can potentially change that.  Although Google is ultimately limited by the reach of its Content Network, remarketing is a step in the right direction.  It will be interesting to watch this concept unfold and be applied to sites and ad networks outside the Google ecosystem.

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail is a fantastic read for anyone with an interest in better understanding what happened to the financial industry and economy in 2008-2009. The book is not intended to vilify Wall Street or the government, and it doesn’t try to explain the complexities of crazy financial instruments like CDS and CDOs. What it does is synthesize thousands of hours of interviews and millions of pages of documents to create a 500 page chronological account of exactly what happened amongst the key players in the financial world from the time Bear Stearns collapsed to the initiation of TARP.

The average person feels far removed from Wall Street. Only a small group of individuals know what really happens there on any given day.  Too Big To Fail gives the average American an insider’s perspective into Wall Street. It humanizes banks and their leaders. It portrays them in their darkest and most intimate moments - in their offices, in the Fed, and even in their homes - and provides a glimpse into the smoke-filled rooms where billion dollar deals were orchestrated. We see interactions amongst the CEOs of the biggest financial institutions in the world from their most dire and desperate of situations to trivial brick breaker tournaments (no joke).

The most intriguing aspect of TBTF is that we really get to know the most influential people running the US financial system: Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Jamie Dimon, Lloyd Blankfein, Dick Fuld, John Mack, John Thain, and Ken Lewis. The attention paid to these personalities helps us understand the egos and forces at play behind the major decisions in the 2008-2009 crisis. We see bold moments like Mack literally telling Geithner and Paulson to “get fucked” as his firm’s (Morgan Stanley) survival was on the line. We also see sad and sympathetic moments when Lehman Brothers’ Dick Fuld breaks down crying in his office when he realizes no one - no bank, government, or individual - will help save his firm. It’s glimpses like these that make the events of the financial crisis, which have always seemed to take place behind closed doors, so relatable and understandable to everyone.

In TBTF, we interestingly see the financial crisis through different perspectives: that of the government (ie Paulson and Geithner), and that of the banks and their leaders. It’s a dynamic juxtaposition. Sometimes we see everyone’s interests aligned, other times we see blatantly forced and unwanted government intervention, and many times we see instances of complete chaos and confusion.

Given its recency, there aren’t many pieces of literature about the financial crisis so comprehensive or informative.  The access Sorkin had to the country’s top CEOs and government officials is unprecedented.  This is a rare glimpse into the inner happenings of Wall Street.  For the first time, Main Street is given complete access to the back channels of the nation’s most powerful financial institutions and government, and that alone makes TBTF worth the read.

Geoff Cook, CEO of myYearbook, wrote a thoughtful piece about the future of social networks in a world dominated by Twitter and Facebook.  He has a unique outlook on the future of social networks and the various forms they take.  Presently, the dominant form is the stream.  Facebook pioneered it with their News Feed and Twitter capitalized on its simplistic presentation and ease of use.  There’s no doubt that Facebook and Twitter are the 800 pound gorillas in the room, but I think there’s more space to innovate than Cook acknowledges.  In his article, he comes to the following conclusion:

There are at least two ways forward for social media in a stream world – even in a stream world dominated today by Facebook and Twitter. You can dedicate yourself to creating applications that play well in the stream, or you can try to come up with a new way to shape the stream itself.

I agree that one way forward is focusing on applications that “play well in the stream.” Zynga is the quintessential example of a company focused on creating applications that successfully leverage the social stream.  Others like Playfish and Playdom have also followed suit.

However, I disagree with Cook’s claim that you need to find a new way to shape the stream itself.  The stream is here to stay.  It’s not going anywhere over the course of the immediate future.  It’s by no means a permanent fixture in the world of social networks, but it’s proven to be a successful model for delivering and consuming information.  Revolutionizing or reshaping the stream in its entirety is a lofty goal, and I don’t think it’s necessary right now.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

There’s plenty of room for innovation when it comes to the stream.  Facebook is compromised by the fact that the stream is really a flood.  There’s too much information from too many people on the fringe of my social graph.  I just don’t care about 80% of the information I see in my News Feed.  It’s overwhelming and irrelevant a majority of the time. That’s not to say that everyone feels this way.  175 million people log into Facebook everyday.  That’s a huge number or people who derive utility from their News Feed or other stream applications on a daily basis.  However, Facebook’s stream is primarily focused on providing updates in the form of text and photos for your immediate social graph.  They’ve left plenty of wide open spaces to play around and innovate.

Twitter’s stream is much different.  They’ve proven that a model focused on brevity (140 characters) and an open following system (versus Facebook’s mandatory reciprocated following system) can scale.  With Twitter, I can better control the information in my stream by selectively following content providers I find interesting. This helps to provide a much more useful and personally relevant source of data.

Twitter is just one successful iteration of the stream.  Tumblr is doing something unique in the space as well by leveraging the open follow system while creating a platform focused on the curation of mixed media. (Disclaimer: I work for Tumblr.)  It allows for a different type of interactive experience, more engaging on an emotional, aesthetic, sensory, and personal level.  The Tumblr stream, or Dashboard, has become a place for people to socially curate and consume the things they love.

There are plenty of other ways to leverage the stream.  Hot Potato is successfully providing a platform for creating social streams around live events.  Foursqare is focusing on personal activities.  Plancast is trying to do the same thing for future plans.  There’s a rapidly growing segment of emerging startups focused on taking streams and using them to leverage different verticals.  There’s also a handful working on rearranging the presentation, functionality, and applications used to interact in a stream.  The immediate future and growth of the social stream is not about revolutionizing its functionality or interface, but on leveraging niches that provide value to an engaged user base.  As Facebook surpasses 400 million users, it grows increasingly difficult to target and leverage verticals within its ecosystem.  People will gradually move towards streams they find personally appealing and consist of peers who share a common interest (Facebook recognizes this and has brilliantly fostered Facebook Connect as a mechanism to stay relevant and connected).  What’s really interesting is thinking about the unique economies, diverse monetization opportunities, and interactive mechanisms for these streams, but I’ll save that for another post.  It’s an exciting time for the emergence of social platforms, especially those focused on providing unique and relevant utility.

The job application process for graduating college students is antiquated and inefficient. A majority of interviews and hiring is done through college career services and HR/recruiting departments from various firms.  Students submit a copy of their resume and cover letter through email, or whatever online service their college uses, and the HR people at these respective firms get to work filtering through stacks of resumes, which for the most part, all look the same.

This past weekend I was talking to some friends about the hiring practices at their firms. They’re first year analysts at a top-tier management consultant firm and investment bank, and listening to their stories about college applicants was a little disturbing.  Part of their job is filtering through applications from their alma mater, weeding out the riff raff, conducting interviews, and making hire decisions for summer analysts and incoming first-years.  On paper, a majority of applicants look the same: 3.7+ GPAs, a quantitative or analytical major, a couple extracurriculars, maybe some relevant background experience, and that’s about it.  I asked them how they decide who gets the job and who doesn’t.  Obviously, successful applicants make a good and lasting impression in an interview, but they also have other unique traits like “food adventurer,” or “fluent in German, Japanese, and Tagalog.”  These are the deciding characteristics.  It matters if you have a passion for exotic cuisine or if you’ve helped build houses and plant trees in the middle of Indonesia.  All in all, the whole hiring process is tedious, and it’s inevitable that some of the best applicants are overlooked.  It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re looking at thousands of black and white pieces of paper, all of which look almost exactly alike.  It’s an archaic system.

There has been a growing sentiment in the tech community that if you’re serious about your work, you need to establish an online presence.  Chris Dixon talks about it all the time.  USV hires their analysts by asking for a link to their online hub.  The URL is replacing the standard resume.  It’s a growing practice and it carries significant merit. I’d argue that this approach to hiring and establishing an online persona should be extended to all industries.  If you’re applying for a job, you’re going to be Googled, and when someone Googles you, they should find something you’re proud of.

Everyone should get serious about establishing an online hub you can proudly point to. It can take countless forms: LinkedIn, a blog, Facebook, Twitter, online portfolio, etc. I’ve chosen to make my blog my hub with spokes reaching out to Twitter (where I pass along articles I like) and LinkedIn (somewhat of a formal profile).  I can confidently point to my blog and say that you’ll get a glimpse into what I’m really like as a person. You can see the way I think, the things that interest me, and get a topline idea of what I’ve done throughout the years.

Most hiring practices are impractical.  Some allstars are overlooked, and some undeserving people land gigs.  A step towards rectifying the situation is pointing to an online destination that helps show who you are.  If you’re an exotic food junkie, prove it!  Show me a picture of the seahorse your ate, or the blog entry about the time you cooked rattlesnake.  If you love film, I want to hear about your favorite westerns. Resumes are too easy to bullshit.  (You can argue it’s easy to bullshit an online hub, but if you’re putting information out to the public that isn’t true or doesn’t reflect who you really are, someone is going to inevitably call you out on it and it won’t be pretty.) Creating an online identity that represents who you are as a person is more useful than one page of paper listing your GPA and past internships.  It also provides an opportunity to show, not tell, what really gets you going.  You don’t need to be tech savvy to establish you’re online hub, you don’t need to be a programmer, and you don’t need to have artistic design chops.  The tools are out there and they’re easy to use (Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Twitter are SIMPLE!). I think if more people approached hiring, job searching, and resume creation by establishing an online hub, they’ll be much happier with the end result.

Twitter recently introduced Local Trending Topics to tap into the pulse of your city.  It’s a step in the right direction for curating and displaying information that’s relevant on a local scale.  However, if you browse through the different local options, you’ll notice that the trending topics don’t change much.  They also don’t provide much insight or relevancy to their respective cities. For instance, the New York City trending topics don’t really tell me anything unique about NYC, and they’re remarkably similar to those of San Francisco and Chicago.  (Obviously Apple’s iPad announcement yesterday is helping drive these similarities - #itampon appears in every local trending topic.)

Twitter does a great job on tapping the pulse of the nation, but it’s difficult to tap the pulse of a specific geographic region.  Right now all trending topics are national and global issues: Haiti, the iPad, State of the Union, celebrity deaths, etc.  When there are enough tweets to create a trending topic, chances are they’re focused on a larger-than-local topic.

I think there are several actions Twitter can take to help local trending topics become useful:

• Achieve greater scale (duh) and focus on its active user base - the more information the better
• Local curation - it wouldn’t hurt to add an editorial and curated component to help organize local trending topics
• Better algorithms that skim off the popular national and global trending topics and hone in on local-specific data

Local has presented itself as the internet’s next frontier.  There’s a gradual shift from focusing on the general “What’s happening” to the more relevant “What’s happening that’s important to me.”  Twitter has proven to be valuable for breaking news, but they clearly have work to do in breaking local news. They’ve got the momentum and they’re clearly thinking about it.  I think it’s only a matter of time and effort before they figure out the right equation.

Do I need it?  No.  But I’m going to get it and I’ll use it everyday.  Here’s why:

• It’s affordable.  $499-$829 with or without a 3G data plan is an astonishingly low price point.  I was worried about a $999+ price range.
• Reading - I need a device I can read on the subway everyday.  I like to read the WSJ and NY Times in the morning and I can now do that with the iPad.  I won’t be using this as a conventional eReader like the Kindle.  For me, nothing will replace the feel of a real book.  It’s just my personal preference.
• Travel - I can hop on a plane with and iPad and leave my laptop and iPod at home. From what I can tell, this is the quintessential traveler’s device.
• Entertainment & Gaming - I’m not an iPhone user (I refuse to use AT&T), but I do use my iPod touch for entertainment.  My only gripe with the iPod is the small screen size.  iPad solves that.
• Web-browsing on the couch, in bed, and everywhere else - I bet 1.5 pounds feels a lot better than a hot laptop sitting on my lap.

That’s it.  If I can do all of these things on a slick device and interface for $499-$829, then I’m sold.  This won’t be my primary email or work device, but it will enable me to consume content to my hearts delight.  And that’s all I want from it.