a blog by Ian Kennedy
Steve Rubel writes about The Rise of Business Blogs and covers the growth within Microsoft in some detail. Unfortunately, there are no hard facts on the ROI which is something the industry lacks in order to move most corporate blogging projects forward. One call for data was put out and I’m sure we’ll see more over the coming months.
Is it just me or is there a business opportunity waiting to happen for the likes of Forrester or Jupiter?
This one’s my favorite but there’s a whole bunch more photoshop fun over on Fark.com.
We’ve seen it played out over and over again. The internet has enabled consumers to go directly to the production plant for disintermediated product. Covered in detail in Michael Lewis’ book, Next, the internet has upset age old business models, putting raw materials within reach of the everyman and providing a platform for a thousand new business models to bloom. 2004 was another banner year for online vendors as more go with a source that, because of its virtuality, can offer better inventory and price that a brick & mortar counterpart. Amazon vs. the Mall; it’s like watching mountains crumble into the sea.
Today’s announcement by Yahoo that it will source quotes directly from the stock exchanges is another notch towards the reinvention of the information industry. Reuters, the traditional source of market data, built its business on charging a premium for market data which it sourced from the markets, both in bulk from the exchanges, but also aggregated, from the banks that wanted to list their prices on the Reuters network. It is rare when you have a business model that allows you to charge not only for subscriptions but also for contributions. As any CEO of a public company will tell you, it is hard to fix something until it’s broke.
“This significantly increases our ability to extend our brand outside of our network,” said Craig Forman, vice president of information and finance at Yahoo. “We will have more control of financial information that we can then distribute.”
Depending upon the deal they cut with the exchanges, Yahoo may become the preferred provider of market data on the internet. Superior price and integration options are something that I’m sure they will aspire to and advertising can help offset their costs, an option that’s not part of Reuters’ corporate DNA. Abstracted to our earlier example, is Yahoo going to become the Amazon of Financial Data while Reuters continues to charge a premium for access to a relatively closed network of proprietary information? We certainly do live in interesting times.
Foundstone, a subsidiary of McAffe publishes software called SiteDigger. The publishers describes it’s purpose:
SiteDigger 2.0 searches Google’s cache to look for vulnerabilities, errors, configuration issues, proprietary information, and interesting security nuggets on web sites.
The package is free for the download and all you need is a Google API key to run it. Obviously, if you’re responsible for any web site, the first thing you’re going to do is download this thing and run it against your site. The first thing you’re going to do if you’re trying to break into a site is download this tool and run it against a site you want to hit. I’m not sure which side the makers of this software fall, especially after seeing that they describe exploits as "nuggets," a word usually associated with gold and something traded in by prospectors for currency.
The release and publicity of such a tool brings up an interesting ethical conundrum. If the software gets into the wrong hands, it could actually assist someone in breaking into a site. If it’s used by those responsible for security, it could help secure a site by pointing out holes that may have been overlooked.
Either way, it’s a nice way to drum up some consulting business.
Closest thing I’ve see so far to a statement on the ROI of a corporate blog can be found on Alan Meckler’s JupiterResearch blog.
I would be remiss if I didn’t pile on to the hubub about Amazon’s new Yellow Pages search over on the A9 site. John Battelle’s got the scoop on how it was put together.
In short, Manber and co. (urged on by Jeff Bezos, who Manber says was "very involved") strapped GPS-enabled digital video camera-cum-terabyte server rigs to the top of a bunch of SUVs, then drove them around the commercial areas of major US metropolitan areas, recording what then became composite still pictures of entire cities, one address at a time. A9 took more than 20 million images of 14 million+ businesses across ten cities (more are coming soon), then created a local search application they call Block View.
Of course I see other benefits as well for my friends and family overseas. Wondering what Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley looks like these days? Take a stroll starting at Amoeba Records and click on the image to scroll either up towards the University or down towards Ashby. Notice Amazon still need to get photos of the other side of the street so you can’t see Moe’s yet but the listing tells you it’s still there.
Then there the new game in finding unsuspecting people caught in internet eternity in front of questionable enterprises. How would you like to be known as the guy on the cellphone in front of Peepworld?
It was a big weekend for Tyler. He finally got the hang of riding his bicycle without training wheels. If you look closely at the picture to the left, you can see that both training wheels are off the ground. He was besides himself when he started to get rolling – laughing to himself like a crazy man, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” He quickly got the hang of it and now realizes that the faster he goes, the easier it is to balance. He zips up and down the block like a demon on wheels and I can no longer keep up just by running. Looks like we’ll be riding together more often!
I was up in Napa for two days at the New Communications Forum, a conference about bloggers for PR professionals. While up there I learned from someone that the place to go is not the French Laundry ("overrated") but the Greystone which is the West Coast campus for the Culinary Institute of America.
One of these days I’ll organize my life so I can actually try these places rather than eat over-poached fish and oily salmon at a conference luncheon!
Ok. Last post about the NewComm conference. Andy Lark, formally a VP of Marketing at Sun, is now out on his own as a speaker, evangelist, and consultant for firms that are looking for someone to help them with their blogging strategy.
Shameless plug: Andy is on TypePad on an account that he started while still at Sun. Sun has their own blogging infrastructure so when chided by Sun execs for not having his blog running on a Sun product, he shot back that what he wrote on his blog was his and he wanted to have the right to take the content (and more importantly, the domain, links, and comments) with him when if he ever left Sun.
Andy gave an inspirational talk about the benefits of blogging for corporations, particularly those in charge of interpreting the corporate voice for the public (that would be Public Relations). The best summary of his talk that I could find (I’m sure there will be more in the coming days) was by Jeremy Wright.
UPDATE: You can download a copy of his 82-slide presentation here.