Polygraph Media Blog

The Travelling Road Show

The job of a CEO is never easy -- but it's been particularly challenging over the last few weeks.  Travel has picked up significantly as we get more and more traction.  Our core business -- helping local newspapers and new media sell relevant advertising systems to small and medium businesses -- is booming.  We've had a few soft launches this summer with more in the works right now.

Overall I think that many local media companies and newspapers are beginning to realize that the SMB segment is indeed a moneymaker.  It just requires a few things to work well:  product, price, value for the consumer & local business owner, and probably most importantly -- sales team engagement & readiness.  In that sense, our engagements with local media have been a TRUE partnership -- requiring and depending on both us and the partner to execute.

Anyway, I've had a few customer/partner visits and a lot of engagement with local business owners around the country over the last month or two.  I won't use this forum to share all the feedback from them, but I can tell you that the advances of the last few years (self-serve, social media, group purchasing, etc.) have really empowered business owners.  I don't get the "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" I got when we first started talking to local businesses back in 2004!

Quick Hits July 14, 2010

Howdy everyone.  I'm back after taking the longest break from this blog I've ever taken in the 28 months I've been writing here.  I don't think I've gone 10 days without a post & here I am getting back to the blog 33 days after my last post.  The ironic thing is that I have been doing a lot of writing but primarily for purposes -- guest blog posts, marketing materials, investor docs for Lasso, etc.  So I'm maybe a little burned out on writing at the moment, but I'll push on.  I've also had the good fortune of participating in some podcasts

Anyhow, some quick hits:

• LinkedIn Direct Ads, in my experience, have been a total waste of time & money for me.  Far less effective than Google Adwords or Facebook Ads.  They're expensive and they are integrated so seamlessly in the rest of the site, people can't find them.  It's alluring to reach people for B2B purposes, but the luster fades fast IMO.
• The location-based services buzz just keeps going.  Kudos to folks at some of the more popular services for staying buzzworthy for so long.  I still suspect the usage metrics are heinous, but if they can keep chugging along sooner or later they'll figure out the equation to get people to use those apps repeatedly.  It may take some time though.
• I am not a fan of the Influence Project on Fast Company.  Without getting into too much detail, I think it's a self-serving way for Fast Company to inject themselves into social media on the backs of mavens who desperately need to promote themselves.  Like it or not, there is no denying that social media can put everyone on stage to some extent and that impacts sincerity.
• For what it is worth, I think all of this is yet another reason why a lot of people will grow weary of social media in the long run.  The salad days are here to stay for awhile though.
• Kudos to the folks at Old Spice for their brilliant use of YouTube to extend their brand to & through social media.  The videos are entertaining, but maybe more importantly they've created a viral phenomenon by giving people an incentive to talk about Old Spice across all major social media outlets.  It's pure genius.
• Facebook recently announced two things of interest for the future:  1) 150m mobile users, and 2) their intent to make mobile a platform for third party developers much like they originally did with Facebook.com.  Facebook has not been downright hostile to developers as Twitter has, but remember the rules did change rather significantly over time.  Just saying. :-)

Newspapers & Local Media Fast to Adapt?

Interesting article today from The Economist about how newspapers are modernizing operations, making cutbacks, and gearing up to compete in the 21st Century.

Popular opinion is that local media has not adapted to new technologies.  Certainly, reaction has been slow in a lot of places.

That said, this article communicates a contrarian point that jives with what we're seeing in the marketplace.  Old media has certainly awoken to the realities of new media, and are now aggressively adding new offerings to their product mix on both the editorial and advertising sides of the house.  They're running leaner and stronger, and I expect that (like the purported demise of the music business) we won't see the fall of local media either.

It was only a matter of time for big media to begin to make sense of it all, and we're just now seeing it.  Expect more here.

Follow up on Mashable guest post

Howdy everyone -- I'm back at home after some customer visits last week.  Every time I write something that has an impact, I am out of town.  Maybe I should go out of town all the time. ;-)

A few quick observations & some additional context for the post:

• First of all, let me say that I did not mean for the post to attack or criticize anyone in the LBS business.  I have communicated with folks at all the major consumer LBS companies & they're all more or less good people.  We may even partner with a few.
• I think the LBS people are trying to do too many things with their apps, and so from a business perspective they're good at closing the deals but the apps could be a lot better in the business metrics area.
• I do think that they're all overvalued for reasons that I pointed out in the post as well as some others that I didn't mention.  But what I think really doesn't matter because value is based on what people will pay whether it is a venture capitalist, an investor, or a company that acquires one of these should it happen.
• The post was primarily written because I have seen all the PR around many of the major players & quite frankly have been impressed by how that has excited & energized the tech innovator community.  I have been surprised to some extent that the major tech blogs haven't been a little more critical & demanding of the #s that are put out by consumer LBS companies.
• A number of people have written, however, about how a lot of technologies fail to make the leap to a mainstream audience because the tech crowd can't empathize with late adopters/middle America.
• I do think most of the LBS providers understand this more or less (ex. the Starbucks deal I cited in the article) and are working the problem.
• But they really aren't close IMO and I think they'll need a lot of help.  We deal with a number of major brands and household names as well as local businesses.  Very few of them look at LBS as a big opportunity.  Most don't want it, and many don't even understand it.  Their needs are different.  Where there is interest, it is out of curiosity primarily & the need to not get left behind.
• And of course we haven't seen moves by all the major tech players, all of which will be doing major things in the location area.
• Ergo, there is a big gap between consumer LBS reality & the hype that needs to be closed.

I'd also add that there are some interesting applications of location technologies that are monetizing and are churning cash far better than consumer LBS.  Wavemarket does some interesting things as do a number of other players who have focused on partnerships with major media to make things happen.  I think this is the way it works -- LBS is an enabler that empowers big media to add location to their tech portfolios.

In the end, I think it all looks a lot different than it looks today -- and we'll all look back and get a good chuckle out of all of this.  It will be an interesting few years as all of this evolves.  I know we're looking forward to competing & bringing interesting and sustainable products to market.

Recap - Rice Alliance Monetizing Location Panel

A few quick thoughts on the location services monetization panel discussion I was fortunate to sit on last night at the Rice Alliance event.

First, it was great to see so many enthusiastic people in the audience.  The event looked to have around 200+ people in attendance.  Of course, Josh Williams (CEO of Gowalla) was the big draw -- I think that was one of his first appearances at an Austin community event.  It was the first time I had met him in person and likely the first meeting for a lot of folks as well.  The other panelists were great as well.  I love TabbedOut and think that Rick and his colleagues are on to a great idea and are executing well.  Blair Garrou of DFJ Mercury is as astute a VC as you'll meet when it comes to location services and how social media, game mechanics, and real-time technologies will shape the future of tech.  So it was an honor to be among such company.

I had a few interesting takeaways from last night:

• Josh is a realist when it comes to some challenges re: LBS -- like the inconvenience of "checking in", privacy, etc.
• I was surprised by the extent of Blair's enthusiasm for the future of location-based services.  If you substitute "LBS" for any other business, I think VCs would be a lot more cautious and perhaps tougher on the execs involved.  Not to mention, there is a nagging question of what Facebook, Google, & Apple may do with their mobile apps/devices and also what Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft may do to jump in.  But we're seeing a migration of folks to smartphones and computing is getting increasingly mobile.  I think those megatrends are outweighing a lot of questions that VCs would ordinarily have of LBS execs and their business model assumptions.
• The best marketing plays today for location services are definitely in the branding/corporate marketing area.  I'm talking about the Jimmy Choo foursquare example, things Gowalla has done with the New Jersey Nets, etc.  More on this in a guest post coming soon.
• Rick and his team have done a great job solving real problems for bars.  Our experience is similar -- it's hard to scale solutions to real problems, but that's also where a lot of value is created for local businesses.  The rubber has to hit the road & I think the guys at TabbedOut are learning a lot there.
• It was an interesting data point that the final question asked in Q&A was the first one re: actually monetizing location.  I think that would've been quite a conversation -- but I guess we'll have to talk specifics next time.  We'll all know a lot more. :-)

So if you were there, thanks a bunch for attending.  I will update this post when the video of the panel discussion is released.

Busy Week - Lasso progress, Facebook book release, speaking at Rice Alliance event

Interesting times in the land of Lasso.

We go live with one customer this week although you won't get to see it for another few weeks.  We start onboarding two other customers this week, and we have a third call about a new application of our product that is very, very exciting.  The game is proximity marketing, the applications are tremendous, and the opportunity is significant.  We are the infrastructure that makes it all sing and that infrastructure just keeps getting better & more capable every day.

Add to this two other events more on the social side.  My book, Facebook Marketing An Hour a Day, is formally releasing tomorrow although it has been available on Amazon for awhile.  In fact, the book has been in/around the Top 10 in the Web Marketing and e-Commerce categories so far & has been doing very well on the Marketing list as well.  So far so good.

The "virtual launch" of the book is taking place tomorrow.  My co-author, Mari Smith, and I will be on camera (technology hiccups notwithstanding hopefully) to talk about the book, Facebook, and a variety of other things.  I would love you to join us.  A quick note re: Mari -- she is amazing at mobilizing people & preaching the good word!  We are sortof polar opposites when it comes to all of this.  She's the extrovert, I'm the introvert.  She has really done a great job becoming a face of social media.  I'm less worried about all of that than I am our startup work.  The collaboration worked really well on the book, and I hope it is the beginning of even more.  We'll talk about all of this among other things tomorrow at the virtual launch.

Finally, I'm on a Rice Alliance panel re: monetizing location services on May 5th at the AT&T Conference Center at McCombs.  Joining me will be Josh Williams (Gowalla), Blair Garrou (DFJ Mercury), and Rick Orr (TabbedOut).  It should be fun -- I had coffee with an organizer Friday who told me that the event is very popular.  It's like I tell people all the time -- we're VERY early in the location services game!

When it rains, it pours I guess.  Not a bad thing.  Have a great week everyone.

The Location-Based Backlash

Well, that didn't take long.

SXSW Interactive 2010 brought the hype, people sobered up, and now the backlash is beginning.

Mark Hopkins kicked it off on March 31 and yesterday Dave McClure jumped in.  They've observed a few things, most notably:

• Even the most successful LBS startups don't have a large enough audience to truly matter, especially for advertisers,
• There is no evidence of a mainstream consumer phenomenon around these apps yet,
• The only reality so far is that LBS apps are hot among the early adopter innovator crowd, and that crowd is serving more or less as an echo chamber and nothing more.

I don't have a problem with LBS startups.  In fact, I've talked with just about all of them in some capacity over the last year or so and there are good people in those companies.  But I do think as I've stated here before that I think the hype/reality ratio is way out of whack right now.  Valuations are in the stratosphere.  Yet, these folks have a lot of work to do to succeed in a way that justifies those numbers.

If you put me on the spot, I'd suspect that one or two will do very well but that there will be a lot of people left out as well.  Those will be the next iteration of a long line of over-invested, "next big thing", and hysterically overhyped companies like Webvan, eToys, DrKoop.com, Boo.com, and others whose biggest achievement was a massive fundraise.

Just my two cents... more to come on this topic that I just find way too fascinating.

Hal Varian on newspaper economics

Interesting blog post from Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist, on newspaper economics.

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/newspaper-economics-online-and-offline.html

Hal points out a few things that I 100% agree with:

• special interest local advertising was the bell cow for the newspaper business,
• people consume news and information on social nets, mobile devices, etc. more and more today,
• experimentation is key to helping newspapers survive and thrive in the 21st Century.

Google has been demonized by folks in the newspaper business for making audiences mobile and destroying newspaper brand loyalty.  While this has in fact happened, I don't know that it's fair to blame Google. These are trends that were bound to be realized with Internet technology.

Now Mr. Varian is certainly not a "disinterested" party.  But he does make good points here.  Newspapers must continue to push the envelope and experiment with new models.  It's a cultural problem that must be overcome -- and it's tougher in some local media companies than others.

Is Local the next bubble?

With today's announcement of Gowalla's $8.4 million Series B investment, I think you can qualify "local" as the new "black" in the tech field. 

Clearly the opportunities are significant -- the newspaper business is being modernized, old business models are failing and being replaced by new ones, advertising is becoming increasingly mobile and social, and the long tail of local services has not yet been modernized & put online to the point that it will in coming years. 

Mobile GPS is spawning location-based services that will likely be a critical part of the portfolio of products and services for the tech giants moving forward.

So the trend continues -- who knows what is next?  All I know is that it is an interesting place to be, and it's where the action is at the end of 2009.  We're having a great time with it at Notice Technologies, and we'll have some very interesting things to announce at the start of 2010!

Proposed SXSW Panel - The Future of Big Media

I have submitted a panel for SXSW Interactive to cover how big media is responding to the lightspeed changes in journalism, local news, hyperlocal, etc.  Check it out here:

The Empire Strikes Back: How Big Media is Responding to Disruption

I have lined up some top-notch panelists who understand the issues far better than you'd think.

Feel free to vote early and often ;-