Polygraph Media Blog

Launching Lasso v3 and what is social commerce

We're busy hatching version 3 of Lasso, which brings us squarely into the fray of social commerce. The first customer has gone live and several others are following suit shortly.  I'll share these examples when they go live throughout March 2011.

So what is social commerce exactly?

We think of social commerce as the broad requirement that marketers will increasingly face in 2011 and beyond to begin to make money directly from the relationships that consumers have with one another.  That can take place on Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, mobile devices, other social networks, and web properties.

The best social commerce product and solutions providers will have technology and business processes that make these things happen without annoying consumers.

Groupon and group purchasing companies have dominated the landscape of social commerce thus far.  We have a group purchasing offering in Lasso v3.  But we're also (and perhaps more) interested in what comes after group purchasing.  Are there other ways that groups will form and make collective buying decisions?  How can technology help businesses earn more revenue and profit from groups they have either created or fostered over the years?  And what can be done for larger organizations that have earned large audiences over the years -- how can they be empowered to succeed?

These are some of the questions we are answering with Lasso v3.

What I don't get about Enterprises & Creative Disruption

I am a four-time entrepreneur who has also worked in a major corporation for several years and has consulted many others.  Yet my experiences working on both sides of the fence don't make it any easier for me to understand why big companies consistently fail to place at least small bets more adventurously when there are signs that their business model is peaking or has peaked.

Sure, Clayton Christensen outlined a lot of great reasons in his classic The Innovators Dilemma.  But my question is a little more fundamental.

When big companies have a cash flow and the wherewithal to actually make some seed investments in something new, why does it never, ever happen?  Why are things like serendipity, experimentation, and the like considered to be so awful?  Are the internal zealots shouted out by people focused on the core business?  Are executive leadership teams always more prone to act on survival than opportunity?  

New ventures are usually the things that can ultimately give the big business some assets when the old business model does indeed wither away.

Amazon is pretty good about it.  Google has been chastised for it, unfairly in my opinion.  I hear that eBay does a reasonable job.  Who else does a good job of it?  There aren't many cases.

Just something that I may never really understand.

The Conversation with Cathy Brooks

I was on with Cathy Brooks yesterday -- it was an enjoyable conversation if you have an hour.  We talked social etiqutte, social media, disruption, hype, the book, and a variety of other topics.

2nd Edition of Facebook Marketing An Hour a Day

Mari and I are teaming up again for a 2nd edition of Facebook Marketing An Hour a Day -- check out the press release Sybex put out this morning.

It's been a great year for the book -- we've gotten great feedback on our work.  The book has consistently been in the top 10 in the Web Marketing category on Amazon, and I'm told it is a best-seller although I'm not sure how a book qualifies for that distinction.  We have been told many times that it is best book available on Facebook Marketing, and that's very humbling to hear every time someone says it.

I can't believe that it has already been a year or so since we put the wraps on the last book.  Now we're ready to create the next edition.

The crowdsourcing angle in the PR piece is new -- we want to open up an entire chapter to the best questions and/or observations from the community.  I'm sure these contributions will round out the book nicely.

So much has changed in just the last year for Facebook -- social plug-ins, Facebook Connect, Facebook Deals, new Groups, real-time comments, Questions, hidden notifications, Likes and not Fans are all new concepts Facebook has rolled out in the last year.  Mari and I both look forward to covering these items in detail in the next edition.

AOL, the Huffington Post, and the assault on local

Today is a watershed day in new media, whatever it is that we're calling it in 2011.  Why?  Because AOL is now truly doing something interesting in the content business by buying one of this cycle's best content properties, the Huffington Post, for $315 million.

Sure, AOL spent 40% of its available cash on the property.  Yes, there will be a culture clash as HuffPo is integrated into AOL.  And of course, we've heard of issues with AOL's integration of TechCrunch.  

But this isn't the same AOL that distributed tons  of these discs via mail for more than a decade.  It's a company led by someone with experience at a market leader who has a vision for the future.  That vision requires that AOL repeatedly produce profitable content -- something that old media has certainly struggled to do lately.

The TechCrunch and now HuffPo acquisitions, however, tell me that AOL has determined that it is a better strategy to buy great properties than to build them.  Why?  I'd posit three reasons:  1) these are properties that have discovered how to create quality content sustainably, 2) these properties make money, 3) AOL's experiments with Patch and Seed likely have not succeeded as they've hoped.

But the last reason isn't necessarily a criticism of AOL.  If you look at business across the United States, one megatrend that we're seeing is that big, relatively antiseptic brands are winning the war for $$ and mindshare against local businesses with local/regional flair.  Like it or not, eyeballs and attention flock to Chili's, the HuffPo, and the NFL instead of Billy Bob's Bar & Grill, the Smalltown Gazette, and high school football.  The American experience is homogenizing right before our very eyes, and as such brands that specialize in products with mass appeal will likely win in the long-term over local providers that struggle to effectively reach a local audience.  Niche businesses will survive, but a vast majority of local businesses are going to continue to suffer as the local experience gets more corporate.

I'd argue that these trends are driving the content business and will continue to do so.

We will see what happens with AOL's play -- one that puts it in Demand Media's neighborhood and clarifies competition with old media.  It's on.  I think the early advantage is in companies like AOL & Demand who are driven by the unit economics of creating content far more than old media as a generalized whole.

Old media has two other distinct disadvantages: 1) significant overhead, and 2) traditional "journalistic" standards.  But as an industry it is much, much larger than AOL or Demand Media and can still compete if meaningful changes are forthcoming.  And you can argue that neither AOL nor Demand Media have quite yet figured out how to scalably create great content for profit.  It will be an interesting battle to watch in coming years.  Consider also that of the major tech players only Apple, Yahoo, and Amazon have made major content plays.  Are Google, Facebook, and Microsoft next to jump in?

It's possible that as old media continues to be disrupted, that content is the next bubble.  We'll see how the industry responds.