Web Strategy Blog

Charting Relationships Through Social Media

In the news today - the L Word is launching a social media site called Ourchart.com  If you have ever seen the show, Alice - one of the characters keeps a running flowchart of the relationships of the other characters in the show...supposedly the site will have similar capability. It got me thinking that a great use of social media would be to document business relationships. LinkedIn has some elements of documenting relationships, so do a few other sites - but I'm not aware of any that would allow you to comprehensively document business relationships... imagine the possibilities!

Craigslist CEO Astounds Analysts

Forbes.com had a story recently about Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster's appearance last week at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference. It basically called Craigslist a "newspaper killer" and went on to say that the industry is affronted by the companies lack of desire to monetize the site. Craigslist is viewed by many to be a significant threat to newspapers and Buckmaster made it clear that they are not interested in making a boatload of money selling adspace.

Craigslist stats are staggering: 47th in the US for unique visitors and 7th for monthly page views - and all of this is achieved with a skeleton staff of about 24. Of course the money men look at these stats and see dollars - but they are missing the whole point of what Craigslist is about... its basically an online social service for everyone. The fact that its advertising-free is what makes it so great - monetizing the site would change it forever and possibly kill it.

I have been privileged to have met Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist a few times in the mid 90's. We were all just learning about the Internet and what its potential was. In those days you would receive emails inviting anyone who wanted to get together and discuss non-profit initiatives online, or e-marketing or whatever - meet up at a coffee shop. It was a group of familiar faces and Craig was often among them. I was impressed by his vision and determination to help people by providing a non-profit community. I applaud him for resisting the urge to sell-out and turn Craigslist into a myspace money machine.

A Few of My Favorite Things...Movie Sites

I've woefully neglected my blog in recent weeks in order to focus on a flurry of project delivery and business development...now I'm back!

I've done a LOT of online market research looking at the best-in-class media content out there and I thought I'd share some of the best I've seen. I've literally reviewed 1,000's of sites in the past month (Music, Movies, Games, TV, Kids/ Family and Sports content). There are far too many to list, but  I thought I would share some of my favorites over the next few weeks - starting with:

MOVIE SITES

Observations: Along with increasing focus on online video, online movie content is growing by leaps and bounds. Trailers are still king and a few sites are starting to offer legal downloads of full length feature films. According to Forrester research, almost half of all online video viewed is in the form of movie trailers, and the largest consumers are 13-21 yr olds... with Hispanic's commanding an impressive piece of this audience. Not surprisingly, mobile and HD trailers are becoming immensely popular.

Studio Sites: Disney Pctures, Sony Pictures, Fox Movies, Fox Atomic (Teen Community-based site), Warner Bros. Studios, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, Lions Gate.

Aggregators: Movies.com, Hollywood.com, Metacritic.com, Comingsoon.net, ifilm.

Portals: Yahoo Movies, MSN Movies, AOL Movies, Google Movie Previews.

Databases: IMDB, Allmovie.com

Downloads: iTunes, Guba, Movielink

Community: Rotten Tomatoes

Tickets: Fandango

UGC: Youtube