Web Strategy Blog

Tasty Data Goodies... Swivel

If you haven't checked out Swivel yet, its a data geeks dream. Launched a few months ago, Swivel is a site full of all kinds of interesting data. Explore, compare, share and upload data. Search for data, have fun browsing through endless graphs, charts and data sets. If you upload data and make it available for public consumption, Swivel is free, if you upload data and want to keep it private there will be a small fee. This is obviously going to be a site that over time becomes more and more valuable as the volume of data increases - smart marketers will populate this site with data that they want to be made public. Check out this graph on Second Life usage stats that was posted today:

Workshop at the SVAMA

I gave a workshop "Going 2.0" last week at the Silicon Valley AMA and we had a great turn-out. This was an overview of Web 2.0 and Social Media for marketers. I'd love to do more of these kinds of workshops in the future - especially deep dives on social media related topics. Crimson Consulting gave away an iPod, the lucky winner was Heather from Cisco - enjoy!

Happy Birthday Ma.gnolia!

I had fun last night at Ma.gnolia's 1st Birthday party, held at Citizen Space in San Francisco. There, I met Ma.gnolia founder Larry Halff who brought out some awesome bottles of wine from his personal collection for the occasion, thank-you Larry! We chatted a bit about Ma.gnolia and where it's going. For those who don't know about Ma.gnolia.com - its a fabulous social bookmarking site that allows you to bookmark and tag your favorite sites online AND it allows you to see what your friends are others are bookmarking. In a random browse though the site I saw the bookmarks of one of my favorite TV chefs Alton Brown. It got me thinking that having visibility into one's bookmarks can really tell you a lot about a person.

Disco Floor Guy

Spent some time recently looking at Developer communities - and whoa! they have come a long way in the past few years! Found this hilarious story on Microsoft's Channel 9 about this developer Clint Rutkas who built a Disco Floor in his apartment. He coded everything so that the lights were timed to the beat of the music AND he figured out a way to display low res images. Admittedly he embarked on this 10 mos project out of boredom and as a tactic to lure girls ... but you have got to admire his ingenuity!

Will there be a DRM-Free Music Future?

In a recent public announcement Steve Jobs discussed DRM (Digital Rights Management) and the fact that Apple would welcome the labels getting rid of DRM all together. Apple has been recently criticized, particularly in Europe because of the proprietary nature of their DRM technology called "Fair Play" which allows music sold on iTunes to only be played on an iPod player.

No matter what your music player preference - consumers are wanting DRM free music downloads. It was obvious to me that when attending some music industry conferences recently that the labels aren't any closer to understanding that opening up DRM might actually help increase music sales. In the heyday of the original Napster when digital music files were being freely swapped, the music industry was booming - since shutting it down, music sales have been declining.

EMI stands out as one of the forward-thinking labels - in December they experimented with selling some Nora Jones tracks DRM free on the Yahoo Music Store. EMI has been rumored in the WSJ to announce that they will sell a substantial portion of their music catalog as DRM-free music files - so the results must have been encouraging! If they do in fact start to publish all of their music DRM free, I for one will applaud and support that as a consumer with my wallet!

The Retail Experience - I love browsing!

I finally had a chance to view Steve Ballmer of Microsoft's video of retail of the future from the NRF. It shows a woman managing her shopping list through her cell phone and using that to navigate through the aisles in an efficient way. It made me laugh because I actually know someone that has most of the aisles mapped out at the local grocery store to a shopping list. I have made fun of his obsessiveness of mastering the granular details of store layout, and this video validates his process! I'm not sure that this would be very appealing for a lot of people (including a lot of women I know) who actually like - oh dare I say - prefer to browse! I guess it depends on your perspective of the retail experience, I find shopping fun and entertaining. Others find shopping a chore that needs to be made as efficient as possible.

David vs. Goliath

In a recent discussion about brands that dominate a market, I was struck by how many examples are emerging in Web 2.0 companies similar to the David vs. Goliath story.  iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, Google all dominate - yet there are emerging competitors that threaten to put a crack in the foundation of what seems like an insurmountable advantage.

I have a belief that there are a few ways that smaller players can still have a differentiated offering and thrive:

• Focus on the user experience, make it dead-easy to use - Was iTunes the first to offer music downloads or even movie/ TV downloads for that matter? Of course not! There were a multitude of legal and P2P download sites before iTunes. The brilliance of iTunes is the sheer no-brainer ease-of-use and the way that you are able to keep purchasing downloads without even feeling like you are spending money.
• Pick a niche and serve it well - You don't need to have 80% of a viable market to have a thriving company. By choosing a focused niche within the market and going deep rather than broad - you can have an advantage over the dominant player. How will you know when you have been successful? When your brand becomes synonymous with that niche, and when you start seeing competitors imitating you. 
• Let users needs guide the direction - Craig's List that now dominates online classifieds has refused to take advertising revenues - why? According to Craigslist President and Chief Executive Jim Buckmaster "No users have been requesting that we run ads'' The now wildly successful Craigslist.com used to run head-to-head against large newspapers and by focusing on the needs of its users it is now considered a threat to the newspaper industry. 
• Make good use of your marketing $ - In order to get above-average response from your marketing investments, I have a strong belief that they need to be driven by BIG ideas. Web 2.0 companies have a clear advantage in this area where so many of the fundamentals of their business are well-suited to interesting and unique marketing initiatives that involve the user and new media. Everything from contests to recognition programs to initiatives that allow member expression - Web 2.0 companies have an opportunity to get returns and buzz with their marketing that more traditional companies envy.