Monday, November 21, 2005
Digital Magazine Growth Continues
In the Spring I wrote about a report that Zinio published showing dramatic growth in the popularity of digital magazines. Given I'm an employee of Zinio, I'm happy to share the news that this growth has continued and even accelerated over the past six months. We just published the latest version of our Digital Publishing Report, based on statistics from the independent audit bureaus that authenticate magazine circulation. We also reveal information about the growth in digital magazine use outside the USA and the use of multimedia in digital magazines. You can download your own copy of the study for free by registering here.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Outlook gripe
While sitting with my blogger friend and sharing gripes about technology (of which we have many, even while we love it all), I mentioned a particular issue I have with Microsoft Outlook that is a real thorn in my side. I just can't help myself any longer -- I've got to make this one public. Maybe someday, someone from Microsoft who works on the Outlook team will see this post and will push this feature into an upcoming release (keep your fingers crossed).
My beef involves traveling for business. Imagine you work for a company that uses Outlook for calendaring. Let's say you are based on the West Coast. Then you travel to New York for a meeting next Wednesday. On that day, you've got a couple of con calls that are already booked in your calendar for that day with folks back in the West Coast office. You begin booking meetings with people you are meeting in New York as well. The problem comes in when you realize that the meetings next Wednesday are in Pacific Time. In fact, your whole calendar is in Pacific Time because the time zone setting is global. This means that if you have someone in your office in NY try and schedule a meeting for you, they will see your calendar expressed in West Coast time. If you try and place a meeting you have in NY into the calendar in NY time, it will confuse things thoroughly. So you end up trying to translate every conversation about time for NY meetings into Pacific Time, booking it in your calendar that way, and having to constantly translate. All your alerts get pushed to you in Pacific Time, and you are just simply screwed if you want to easily look at your calendar and understand your schedule. If you travel to multiple time zones on a trip, this process becomes impossible. Ugh.
I guess this is what happens when a monopoly builds the software. No need to fix real problems for customers when there is no real competitive alternative.
My beef involves traveling for business. Imagine you work for a company that uses Outlook for calendaring. Let's say you are based on the West Coast. Then you travel to New York for a meeting next Wednesday. On that day, you've got a couple of con calls that are already booked in your calendar for that day with folks back in the West Coast office. You begin booking meetings with people you are meeting in New York as well. The problem comes in when you realize that the meetings next Wednesday are in Pacific Time. In fact, your whole calendar is in Pacific Time because the time zone setting is global. This means that if you have someone in your office in NY try and schedule a meeting for you, they will see your calendar expressed in West Coast time. If you try and place a meeting you have in NY into the calendar in NY time, it will confuse things thoroughly. So you end up trying to translate every conversation about time for NY meetings into Pacific Time, booking it in your calendar that way, and having to constantly translate. All your alerts get pushed to you in Pacific Time, and you are just simply screwed if you want to easily look at your calendar and understand your schedule. If you travel to multiple time zones on a trip, this process becomes impossible. Ugh.
I guess this is what happens when a monopoly builds the software. No need to fix real problems for customers when there is no real competitive alternative.
Inspirational blogger
I just had coffee with a friend from the go-go Nineties (ah yes, the good old days). He has taken a hiatus from life to travel the country and blog about his experiences. He does a terrific job of integrating the blogging process into his life experiences. You get a real window into his life and feelings. I'd strongly recommend checking it out at: radicaladventure.blogspot.com. If you are debating whether to produce a blog and how you might make it a meaningful personal pulpit, this blog can give you some inspiration.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Digital Magazines are Here to Stay
Let me start out by saying that one of my jobs is to run marketing for Zinio Systems. The company works with magazine publishers to produce digital replica versions of their print magazines. We also help sell subscriptions on our web site and distribute them to over two million readers in 95% of the world's countries. So I'm biased on this topic.
Having said that, we recently produced a research report which shows pretty clearly that digital magazine readership is growing really rapidly. Depending upon the measure, the industry has grown anywhere from 25-40% over the most recent six month reporting period. That's impressive growth, especially in the context of an overall magazine industry that is basically experiencing zero growth.
The report is available for free by registering through this link.
Having said that, we recently produced a research report which shows pretty clearly that digital magazine readership is growing really rapidly. Depending upon the measure, the industry has grown anywhere from 25-40% over the most recent six month reporting period. That's impressive growth, especially in the context of an overall magazine industry that is basically experiencing zero growth.
The report is available for free by registering through this link.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
My favorite Oscar Moments
Ok, so the Oscars are not a fitting topic for this blog, but I just had to share. My first favorite moment was just after the winner of the Cinematography award dedicated it to his Mother, who was in the hospital for 45 days. The music they walked him off stage with came from "Terminator".
My second favorite moment was during the presentation of the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing awards. To present the awards for recognizing the best work in sound, they picked two people whose english you can bearly hear, Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek.
Oh, the irony...
My second favorite moment was during the presentation of the Sound Editing and Sound Mixing awards. To present the awards for recognizing the best work in sound, they picked two people whose english you can bearly hear, Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek.
Oh, the irony...
Monday, May 17, 2004
What can tech companies learn from realtors?
My wife is a world class real estate agent, working for Coldwell Banker in Burlingame. As a guy with marketing roots, I've been helping her with marketing initiatives. First, let me tell you a little bit about her practice. She covers most of southern San Mateo County and some of northern Santa Clara County. This includes towns like Burlingame, Hillsborough, Redwood City, Redwood Shores, Belmont, San Carlos, San Mateo, Foster City, Pacifica, Portola Valley, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Los Altos and Woodside. She focuses on residential real estate, including single family homes, town homes and condos. If you are curious, her web site is located at http://www.heidizinman.com.
In the process of helping Heidi, I've learned a great deal about what constitutes state-of-the-art in residential real estate marketing. There is much that technology companies can learn from the real estate business. I'll cover one area now and get back to this in subsequent posts so this doesn't turn into a white paper.
Most importantly, relationships are everything in the real estate business. Most people find agents through referrals. So how do you build a clientele from a standing start? How do you get people to recommend you to others? These are fundamental questions, for a realtor or for a start up. Realtors accomplish this by using direct marketing (print and online) to establish a regular dialogue with their referral network. They also write a lot of notes and constantly send gifts of value to reinforce referral behavior. We all know that these activities are useful for tech companies, but few start ups engage in them effectively. Why not?
In the process of helping Heidi, I've learned a great deal about what constitutes state-of-the-art in residential real estate marketing. There is much that technology companies can learn from the real estate business. I'll cover one area now and get back to this in subsequent posts so this doesn't turn into a white paper.
Most importantly, relationships are everything in the real estate business. Most people find agents through referrals. So how do you build a clientele from a standing start? How do you get people to recommend you to others? These are fundamental questions, for a realtor or for a start up. Realtors accomplish this by using direct marketing (print and online) to establish a regular dialogue with their referral network. They also write a lot of notes and constantly send gifts of value to reinforce referral behavior. We all know that these activities are useful for tech companies, but few start ups engage in them effectively. Why not?
Why is Yahoo on the Social Networking Sidelines?
What is Yahoo thinking? Well, first a little background. Social networks are proven viral growth engines. They connect people with each other and facilitate the creation of user generated content. Most of the leading social networking sites, including Friendster, Orkut, LinkedIn and Tribe, all had to reach a critical mass of users to establish the value of their networks. The externalities all had to be created from scratch.
Yahoo, on the other hand, already has a ton of the basic building blocks for a successful social network. They've got:
==> Users: last I heard, their user base was the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. Now that's critical mass.
==> Social networking data: Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Address Book and Yahoo Instant Messenger already contain the world's largest social network. Everyone that has an email address stored in their Yahoo address book, or email addresses in their Yahoo Mail account or buddies in their IM buddy list has already shared with Yahoo information about their social network.
==> Community tools: My Yahoo, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Briefcase, Geocities, etc. All have the basic community building functionality any social network needs. It just needs to be tied together in a new interface.
==> Daily interactivity: People visit Yahoo daily to get essential information, including news, entertainment and communication with others online. Adding a social network would constitute a trivial adjustment in the relationship with users.
==> Monetization: Yahoo already has the sales channel and the expertise to monetize the value of user generated content from a social network, perhaps better than any other organization on earth.
So what's the hold up? It's ok for Yahoo to be follower, given their significant ownership of users, but how come they are so far behind? One can only speculate, and here are my observations.
Compare to Google. Google has Orkut, which was launched a few months ago. It only got off the ground because Google nurtures entrepreneurial and creative activity, however. If Google didn't allow engineers to spend 20% of their time on a creative endeavor, and one engineer over there hadn't devoted his creative development time to this project, Google would still be on the sidelines as well. I suspect Yahoo's culture is nowhere near as innovative and flexible. Launching a social network will demand that someone in Yahoo champion the effort and lead a drive to allocate resources to the activity. For a public company being driven by quarterly results for the last several years, even a few extra bodies can be precious. If you are public company and you don't have tight controls on this kind of activity, things can get out of hand. Still, this is why people leave big companies in favor of start ups. Plainly said, you can just get more done with less effort.
Bottom line: I'd predict that we will see a Yahoo social network by the end of 2004. Also, if Google can keep costs contained and their organization focused, they will be a powerful innovator in the Valley for years to come.
Yahoo, on the other hand, already has a ton of the basic building blocks for a successful social network. They've got:
==> Users: last I heard, their user base was the HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS. Now that's critical mass.
==> Social networking data: Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Address Book and Yahoo Instant Messenger already contain the world's largest social network. Everyone that has an email address stored in their Yahoo address book, or email addresses in their Yahoo Mail account or buddies in their IM buddy list has already shared with Yahoo information about their social network.
==> Community tools: My Yahoo, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Briefcase, Geocities, etc. All have the basic community building functionality any social network needs. It just needs to be tied together in a new interface.
==> Daily interactivity: People visit Yahoo daily to get essential information, including news, entertainment and communication with others online. Adding a social network would constitute a trivial adjustment in the relationship with users.
==> Monetization: Yahoo already has the sales channel and the expertise to monetize the value of user generated content from a social network, perhaps better than any other organization on earth.
So what's the hold up? It's ok for Yahoo to be follower, given their significant ownership of users, but how come they are so far behind? One can only speculate, and here are my observations.
Compare to Google. Google has Orkut, which was launched a few months ago. It only got off the ground because Google nurtures entrepreneurial and creative activity, however. If Google didn't allow engineers to spend 20% of their time on a creative endeavor, and one engineer over there hadn't devoted his creative development time to this project, Google would still be on the sidelines as well. I suspect Yahoo's culture is nowhere near as innovative and flexible. Launching a social network will demand that someone in Yahoo champion the effort and lead a drive to allocate resources to the activity. For a public company being driven by quarterly results for the last several years, even a few extra bodies can be precious. If you are public company and you don't have tight controls on this kind of activity, things can get out of hand. Still, this is why people leave big companies in favor of start ups. Plainly said, you can just get more done with less effort.
Bottom line: I'd predict that we will see a Yahoo social network by the end of 2004. Also, if Google can keep costs contained and their organization focused, they will be a powerful innovator in the Valley for years to come.
A Press Release is Not Positioning
I've had way to many conversations with start ups recently where I've had to explain what positioning means, so I'll post a brief description here. First, what positioning is NOT. Positioning is not a press release. It is not an FAQ. It is not a list of key messages. It is not a competitive landscape. Positioning is statement which describes:
==> to whom a company is selling (if b2b that typically includes industry/title/responsibilities, if b2c that typically includes demographics/psychographics);
==> the problem you are addressing, as the target customer would characterize it;
==> how your product/service uniquely addresses this solution, including how it is different from the competition.
Once positioning is agreed upon, then an organization can develop messaging, which are the words that the company uses to communicate externally. The best way to do this is to develop a messaging bible which includes various descriptions of the company, including a press boilerplate, 50 word description, 150 word description, elevator pitch, etc.
So how many of your companies have written positioning statements and a messaging bible?
==> to whom a company is selling (if b2b that typically includes industry/title/responsibilities, if b2c that typically includes demographics/psychographics);
==> the problem you are addressing, as the target customer would characterize it;
==> how your product/service uniquely addresses this solution, including how it is different from the competition.
Once positioning is agreed upon, then an organization can develop messaging, which are the words that the company uses to communicate externally. The best way to do this is to develop a messaging bible which includes various descriptions of the company, including a press boilerplate, 50 word description, 150 word description, elevator pitch, etc.
So how many of your companies have written positioning statements and a messaging bible?
Why a blog?
Have you ever gotten into a conversation that shook you, woke you up, motivated you? What's better than a great conversation that creates energy for the people involved? Few people have these conversations often enough. This blog is an experiment to see if I can make it happen more often. I'm hoping to discuss company strategies, marketing and technology, and current events in business. I hope to read your thoughts as well. After all, I'm looking for CONVERSATION! :-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)