Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to the sixth episode of Disruptive Dialogue. I'm your host Chip Griffin. Today is Tuesday, April 17, 2007. I'm coming to you from snowy Bow, New Hampshire. That's right, it's snowing out. Well, flurrying at least. It's a little bit odd for this time of year, even for New Hampshire.
In April we are usually into a little bit more spring like or at least what we call "mud season" weather. Unfortunately this year seems to be a little bit different. We have had several significant snowfalls this year, and we just are wrapping up today a three day long nor'easter that blew in lots of wind, rain, snow, sleet, flooding, all sorts of lovely stuff.
Fortunately for the past 10 days I was in Florida. So I wasn't here as most of the snow got washed away off the ground. Unfortunately the nor'easter did make it a 14-hour trip back from Fort Meyers on Sunday.
Nevertheless, I've been right at it since Sunday evening. I've been working my way through thousands of blog posts that I missed. Yes, I was sitting on the beach and relaxing for the most part at least. And I wasn't reading blogs or listening to podcasts. It's something I try to do once or twice a year. Fortunately my weeklong sojourn to Florida in the winter or late spring is a great time to go there, and a good time to step away from it all.
But now I'm trying to dig out from all that. So we're going to try little bit different format for Disruptive Dialogue this week. I'm simply going to try to go through some of the interesting things that I picked up in my reading along the way.
Now I've blogged about a couple of these things, but more just to draw attention to them. I haven't really commented on them so I'm going to use this airtime, if you will, to start to address some of my thoughts on them.
It's going to be a work in progress. I haven't had a chance to do all the preparation that I usually like to do for the show. So we are going to kind of go with the flow here and see what happens.
The first news item that I thought was worth mentioning is a piece of information that I picked up from the Collective Intellect blog. Tim Walters made note of a survey from the Luxury Institute, which is an organization of which I had not heard before.
Apparently, what they do amongst other things is survey wealthy Americans, in this case it was those who earn more than $150,000 per year. And they find out about their habits. I assume this is something that is of great interest to marketers. So that's why they put it together and then obviously sell the data.
But they release little bits and pieces of it in order to draw attention to themselves. One of the things that they put out while I was gone was that 76% of wealthy Americans, in other words, more than three fourths, read blogs.
You know, I'm a little tongue-tied here, but will go without. In any event, 57% said they read blogs in December of '05, so there is a significant uptick in just about 18 months time. One of the questions this raises though, is there a divide between the wealthy and the not as well-off Americans in their social media habits?
That would be suggestive that that is probably the case, because the overall blog readership number is indeed lower than 76%. I can't recall the specific number off the top of my head, but I know it is not quite that high.
It could be that the wealthy Americans are the leading edge. Or it could be an indication that there is some sort of an issue there that may need some addressing somewhere down the road. In any event, it's something very interesting to keep an eye on.
The next item that I have comes from the 9:01 AM blog. This is a great place to go for blog and marketing information. This is a tidbit that seems to help prove my point that not all content wants to be free.
It's about a website called Cambrian House. Now I'm not familiar with them, but, as I understand it, they are essentially a social networking site. I believe it is focused on programming that I only took a skim of what they did. But what is interesting to me is this. This is what it said on the 9:01 AM blog, and I am quoting directly:
"Starting today, all existing members and anyone who joins Cambrian House from this point forward, will earn a share in the business. The more engaged, they are as members, the more shares they will earn over time. Cambrian House measures participation with a glory points system. Points are awarded for a variety of actions such as editing a member profile, commenting on a member's business idea, completing a task or submitting code. Shares are awarded on participation and can be cashed out at any time."
So it's fascinating to me to see that there are a number of companies out there, not just the Jason Calcanises of the world when he was running the Netscape website, but others who are now trying to find ways to financially reward and pay those who create user generated content.
I think this is an important trend because I think over time there is going to be more and more need to compensate those content creators in more direct ways. It won't always be in cash, but I think there is going to be a movement toward cash, equity and other things that have a specific value to them.
The next tidbit was from comScore. They released a study that tried to take a look at what happens when you track unique visitors to your website using cookies. Most of us who have been in the game a long time know that there is a lot of problem with cookie deletion and cookie blocking that will tend to cause your unique visitor count to be oversized and overstated in the event that is the methodology which you use.
Now the question is, how much is it overstated? Is it 10%, 20%, 50%? Well it actually turns out that according to their study, on average - now this is on average, there are going to be ones where it is a little bit lower or little bit higher, in some cases much higher - it is 150% higher. In other words, it will over count your audience by two 1/2 times.
Fred Wilson drew my attention to this. He's got a great blog for those of you who are not familiar with it. It's called AVC. He is one of the first, if not perhaps the first VC blogger, and has some great content.
I believe if I recall correctly, he is on the board of comScore. But, in any event, the comScore study also found that there were sites, particularly in communities where people are more concerned about privacy and who are really focused on cookie deletion and blocking.
In those cases it might be that you're over counting your audience by as much as 15 times, if you're using cookies to do your user counting. That's unbelievable to me. To me that really suggests that cookies are a very dangerous way to do unique visitor counting.
We will all need to continue to watch this, companies like comScore, Hitwise and the others help to come up with better metrics and better tools for people to use in assessing their traffic and how they stand up against others.
There are a couple of interesting things on the podcasting front over the last 10 days or so. One was a post by Adam Weiss. I consider him to be a new friend. I got to meet him a few weeks ago in Boston down at a podcaster event.
He does an interesting podcast called Boston Behind the Scenes. It's basically interviews with people about what's going on in the city of Boston. He's had people on talking about the marathon, talking about the Boston accent, all sorts of things like that.
It's really fascinating, particularly for those of us who enjoy the city of Boston. But he's also very good at talking about podcasting techniques. He's been doing it for a long time, and he also does podcasting professionally. He posts podcasts for the Museum of Science in Boston.
So, he talks about the kind of gear you should use when you first set out to podcast. He makes a very convincing case for using inexpensive equipment. In fact, he says that he uses quite a bit of the inexpensive stuff and I checked out his gear. He's actually made a couple great recommendations to me for high-quality but low cost stuff that I have already taken advantage of and started to play with.
A real smart man and, from what I understand, he's going to be getting a broader platform to present his views. I believe he's going to be blogging with O'Reilly about affordable podcasting gear. There's a link to that on my blog and it will be in the show notes for this show. If you're at all interested in podcasting or creating comments for podcasts in a more professional manner, I'd encourage you to check it out.
At the other end of the spectrum, another guy that I enjoy reading, although I have not met, is Scott Borne. He is deeply into podcasts. He runs the podcastgear.com website. For a different perspective, you can go over there and check out his review of a $1,000 portable digital recorder. He says it's great quality and, if you can afford it, you ought to get it. I think that both these arguments have merit. In the month and a half or so that I've been more formally been doing my podcasting, I've been experimenting with both high-end and low-end equipment and I think there are winners in both categories. It's one of those things where if you're interested, you're going to have to start learning by trial and error.
There's another interesting post that I think came out just before I went on vacation and it was one I didn't really have the time to focus on at that point and I really still haven't focused on it as much as I'd like to. Cammy Hughes over at the Communication Overtones blog that she has had, on Monday April 2nd, posted a great post about eight meaningful measures of social media. In it, she talks about some of the ways that you can do a better job of assessing what the impact of social media is. She argues that in the eight things you ought to be looking at are the number of unique users, the returning versus new readers (in other words, do they sustain an audience), referring source statistics (in other words, who's linking to them), and then, explicitly, links from other sites (so I assume, in that, what you want to see is whether it's a clump of sites or what the quality of those sites are and then what the total number of links are). She also suggests looking at Google page ranking, of course.
She talks about the ratio of blog comments to blog posts; she notes that's where applicable because some blogs do not allow comments - Seth Godin's, for example, I believe is one that is prominent that comes to mind in that category. But I think she's right there; the ratio of comments to posts can be a good indication of whether or not the blog is creating dialog or whether it's simply providing information. It's suggestive of audience although you do have to be careful; some sites just throw out information and don't do a lot to stimulate a discussion so the comment to blog post ratio would be lower there.
Also, total time spent on the site - I'll be honest with you, this is one over the years that I've always thought was kind of silly. I think it's very difficult for anyone to accurately track how much time someone is spending on a website. I know I keep websites open for long periods of time on my screen while I'm distracted and doing something else; I may click something two, three, four, five minutes after I first got there. That doesn't really mean I spent that much time on the site; it just means I didn't go somewhere else in the meantime. That's the first out of these that I would argue perhaps doesn't have as much merit as Cammy would suggest.
Then, finally, she says to look to the popularity of the content itself - in other words, what gets the most views. Within the blog, you want to take a look at what's popular. Very worthwhile to check out that post if you are at all interested in tracking social media and measuring its impact. Again, I will have a link to that on my blog and in the show notes for this episode.
A little shout-out to one of our own at Custom Scoop, Ian Muir, who has been a guest on Disruptive Dialogue in the past. He won a free trip to Microsoft's Mix '07 Conference out in Las Vegas, the lucky dog! He put together a winning design, in fact, I believe it was the winning design for Remix '07. Remix '07 was an effort to redesign the Mix '07 website using nothing but style sheets - in other words, you couldn't change the underlying content, just apply a new style to it. That's obviously something that requires some talent. Congratulations to Ian!
An interesting observation from my vacation is that, while I didn't touch blogs and podcasts, I did, believe it or not, check in with Twitter. I know this is an odd confession for me because I have ranted a bit about Twitter in the past. It turns out that Twitter's wearing me down! I'm starting to give in to the craze. I'm starting to pay attention to what's being said there. As the technology has matured, if you will, over the course of about two months, since people have really started actually using it, people have really started to settle into a routine. I've been able to find a group of people to follow that put up generally high quality stuff. It's not the "I'm having Cheerios for breakfast" crowd, although there certainly is some of that, occasionally. I tend to learn quite a bit about what's going in a social media space. I was able to use it over my vacation to sort of make sure I didn't miss anything that was really important and interesting.
So OK, maybe I'm softening on Twitter. One of those things, it happens. Sometimes you fall into like with things, sometimes you fall out of like with things. We'll see how that goes over time. I'm sure we'll be talking more about Twitter here because everybody's still talking about it.
For those of you who are interested in other podcasts, this weekend I'm not going to have my breakdown of what's being said on other podcast because I simply haven't had time to compile this week and haven't been listening to as many over the last ten days, obviously. But I did have a chance last night, while I was going through some feeds, to take a listen to a new podcast by John Wall and Christopher Penn. John's another guy that I got to meet recently; I ran into him, actually, at two events in the space of about 24 hours. A real nice guy. He has a great podcast already called "The M Show." Of course, Christopher Penn has the financial aid podcast which is one the more prominent out there.
These two have come together to do what they call "Marketing Over Coffee." It's about a 15-minute show they aim, I believe, to do once a week. They're just sitting there over coffee talking about different marketing things. It's not all about social media; it's not all about blogs, podcasts, or anything like that. In the episode that I listened to, they talked about direct mail and other things - giveaways, conferences, that sort of thing. Really fascinating to listen to, particularly nice dose just for a short pick-me-up of thinking. I would really encourage those of you who are interested in marketing, not just marketing professionals but executives, entrepreneurs, investors, people who have the odd mix of background that I do, I think you'll find that interesting. Go ahead and check that out. Again, the link will be on my blog.
Blogger and Podcaster Magazine is coming out. That's right, there's going to be a traditional media publication printed on paper that covers the social media space. I find this absolutely fascinating. I know I've found a lot of stuff fascinating today; maybe it's just having been away for ten days my standards have been lowered. It's odd to me because it seems that most podcasters and bloggers would prefer to get their information from a blog or podcast. That said, I think there are still a lot of folks who are interested in this space who will appreciate the paper publication that they perhaps can read on the airplane or, as someone put it in a comment on this show a week or two ago, that it can used in the commode for reading.
Anyway, before we go downhill there, the interesting thing to point out here is that I believe Blogger and Podcaster recognizes the issue because they're also offering their publication in an electronic form. I haven't had a chance to check it out yet and see whether that's a PDF or something else. They are also going to make it available as a podcast. That'll be interesting to find out, too - whether they simply cover the same topics as are in the magazine or they do highlights or if it'll be a sort of book-on-tape format. Anyway, I'll be reviewing that's more in the future. If there is more to say, I will certainly say it. And if you have any comments on it, I would love to hear your feedback on Blogger and Podcaster Magazine.
Let's see, what else do we have here? Paul Kedrosky. Paul is a great guy, who I also had a chance to meet earlier this year. He is out in California. He is a real smart investment guide with a tight angle. He appears on CNBC a lot, that sort of thing.
In any event, he happened to have a post that talked about a study about where people get information. I'll just read directly from Paul's post, because he says it pretty succinctly. He is talking about a Pew Study:
"There is a new and demoralizing Pew Research Report out today," Paul writes. He says, "It shows in short that despite the huge increases in the amount of ambient information out there - the Internet, 24 hour cable news, etc. - Americans know as little as ever or less about national and international affairs. Here are a couple of examples."
"When asked to name the president of Russia, only 36% knew that it was Vladimir Putin. Only 29% knew who Scooter Libby was. 88% knew that President Bush was sending in more troops to Iraq as part of a revised strategy. So that seems to be pretty good. But only one in four were aware that both Houses of Congress have passed legislation to increase the minimum wage."
I imagine frankly even less would know that it is stuck in conference, because I would guess that even fewer know what a conference committee is. But, then I digress. That's my old political hackishness showing up.
So, something interesting there as a news junkie and someone who runs a news monitoring service, I thought that was something that really warrants more attention. I wonder if it's that people are less informed, or if it's just that they are differently informed.
There are times when I say, "Gosh, I really wish people would know these facts." I know that in the past I have ridiculed interns who have worked for me in a gentle way, trying to get the point across that they need to know more.
This was back when I was in Washington. At that time, I focused a lot on history, because even recent history was something that a lot of them from challenging. In any event, I am sort of thinking that perhaps what is going on here is that people know the same amount of things but they just choose to focus on different aspects of the world.
There are going to be people who know a lot more about sports. Some will know more about politics. Some will know more about history. Some will know more about music and movies. Certainly I know that if you pass a quiz out to me about movies, pop culture, that sort of thing, I would just stink it up. That's just not what I focus on.
While I enjoy watching movies and while I enjoy listening to music I don't really know much about it. I sort of just go with whatever I'm in the mood for the time. I don't tend to remember it after the fact.
So maybe this isn't really something we need to be concerned about. Maybe it's just an evolution of what people are interested in. After all, shouldn't people be able to focus on the information that they find most interesting?
The next item is a marketing campaign, where an expensive item is being given to bloggers for free. That's right. An expensive item is being given away to bloggers. Maybe not quite fully given away, there are some restrictions on it, although they are very thin.
In this case, I read about it on BL Ochman's blog. She was someone who, if I recall correctly, was outraged over the Edelman/Microsoft giveaway of laptops. But in this case, she sees a distinction because of how the company is going about doing it.
What am I talking about? I'm talking about Nikon. Nikon is giving away its D80 Digital SLR camera for a blogger relations program. Apparently there are about 50 bloggers who will be getting this camera. It's got a nice 18 to 135 mm zoom lens on there. So it has some nice flexibility.
They are giving it to these bloggers to experience what the cameras like. This is what the NWW Group, which is the PR firm behind it wrote to the bloggers involved. It says, "The only request we have of you is that you please make sure that if you choose to write about the camera you make it clear how you got it. We would never asked to cross any ethical lines. So openness and honesty on all our parts is in everyone's best interest."
That's certainly true. They go on to say, "The camera is essentially being loaned to you for six months at which point you have three options. One, return it to us; two, re up for another six months loan period; or three, by the camera at a significantly reduced editorial discount."
"Should you opt for number one or number three, the camera or the purchase price will be donated to a photography education program that Nikon supports."
That's it. So, it's interesting because it strikes me that perhaps this is the same thing as Microsoft and Edelman were doing. They were just a little bit clearer about what they were offering.
Because fundamentally as I look at it here, certainly the bloggers are getting a good deal here if they are interested in it. It's certainly the kind of thing where it might influence the coverage that the blogger would give to that camera. It probably gets them interested. I think it's all a great thing.
I thought the Microsoft thing was a great idea as well. It's interesting to me that different companies get treated differently here for doing essentially the same thing. I suppose there are slight differences here but it feels to me more like nuances.
Anyway, kudos to Nikon. Kudos to Microsoft. Kudos to anyone who is willing to share their product with bloggers and submit themselves to just a free, honest discussion about what the merits of the product are.
I'm not going to be one who is going to get one of those cameras I don't think. I do enjoy cameras. I have my own digital SLR. I happen to be a Canon guy. But I'm certainly not along the lines of say a Josh Hallett, for example, who already has the D80 and has talked about how much he loves it. In any event, kudos to them, and I encourage companies to do more of that sort of thing.
I guess the final thing that I will mention here before wrapping up this week's show is the Tech Crunch 20 conference. It's been formally announced. There will be 20 companies invited to participate. It's sort of like the Demo conference. Those of you who are familiar with my blog will be familiar with it I'm certain, as I live blog both the fall and winter versions of the conference twice a year.
That particular conference has about 60 companies or so that come to present their product demo for the first time. They do some great stuff with it.
The interesting thing about Tech Crunch 20 is not only that it is smaller in size but also they are taking a different approach. Whereas Demo charges participants to come to the stage after doing their selection process, Tech Crunch 20 is not going to do that.
They are going to invite the participants for free. They claim they are a little bit more pure than Demo because they are doing it purely on the merits, and there is no ability to pay test in there.
Of course the conference is being put on by Mike Arrington of Tech Crunch as well as Jason Calacanis, who used to be in the conference business when he was in New York at Silicon Alley Reporter.
In any event, I'm debating whether I ought to go to this. I suspect this will be the most over-hyped conference of the year based on the reputations of the individuals who are putting it on and some of the people that they've got to participate and critique some of the companies involved.
But at the same time, this is the kind of thing that really gets my juices flowing. I love going to events where you've got a great mix of entrepreneurs, investors and technologists who are all just kibitzing and interested to see the latest thing.
So I'm going to have to debate that one. It's certainly not cheap. It's up there in the same neighborhood as the Demo conference. It's about $2000 to attend. But it might be worth it. We'll have to see.
In any event I'd be interested in your feedback on the Tech Crunch 20, as well as of course anything else that you have heard on this episode, or frankly anything else that you have on your mind because as I said before, if I don't have your comments to go on it, it's not a dialog. It's simply me talking at you, and really, what fun is that?
We are that we will come to the end of the sixth episode of Disruptive Dialogue for April 17th, 2007. I'm your host Chip Griffin. Until next week, I wish you luck.
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The seventh episode of the Disruptive Dialogue podcast is now available. This one was recorded in Bow, NH and is 22:52. You can download this podcast as an MP3 or subscribe to the RSS feed to make sure you never miss an episode. 
