Blogs
Time Inc. Buys Into Web 2.0
by Gavin O'Malley, Friday, Feb 2, 2007 6:00 AM ET
TIME INC. THURSDAY SAID ITS Sports Illustrated Group has signed an agreement to buy sports enthusiast Web site FanNation.com. Additionally, Time plans to acquire a minority stake in FanNation's parent company, Sports Technologies Inc., which Time will use to boost the Web efforts of its various units. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.
FanNation.com is a destination site for fans, fantasy game players, and bloggers, which aggregates, filters and customizes sports information while allowing users to contribute their own content.
"This acquisition will enable the SI Group to compete in the Web 2.0 space," Mark Ford, president and publisher of the SI Group, said in a statement.
STI technologies will be deployed first by the SI Group, but soon thereafter across other major Time Inc. online properties, according to Time Inc. executive vice president John Squires.
"Time Inc.'s investment in STI is perfectly aligned with our digital strategy--to enable consumers to access our content across all digital platforms and engage with our brands through personalized and customized online experiences," Squires said in a statement. "STI will be invaluable to Time Inc. as we move beyond conventional publishing online into social forms of media, an area of major emphasis for us this year."
FanNation.com will be run by the Sports Illustrated Group under Ford, who will report to Jeff Price, president of SI Digital.
The digital efforts are the latest from a company struggling with transition online amid major cutbacks. On Sunday, SI.com relaunched with a video-heavy design and a widened layout intended to get more information in front of consumers with varying interests.
According to Sports Illustrated, SI.com contributed between 15% and 20% of the franchise's total revenue in 2006--a percentage that is expected to grow this year, according to Paul Fichtenbaum, SI.com's managing editor.
SI.com lags behind top sports sites like ESPN.com, Yahoo Sports, AOL Sports, and CBS SportsLine. Last September, SI.com drew 5.8 million users, while ESPN.com and Yahoo Sports pulled in audiences of 20 million and 17 million, respectively, according to comScore. Fichtenbaum contests comScore's findings, claiming that SI.com's traffic is at least three times greater than comScore's numbers.
[Source: MediaPost.com]
VH1 Launches UGC Push
by Mark Walsh, Friday, Feb 2, 2007 6:00 AM ET
VH1 HAS ENTERED A PARTNERSHIP with user-generated advertising platform ViTrue to create a series of user-submitted content sites for the music network. The first site developed, talentload.tv, serves as a promotional tool for advertisers, as well as a filter for casting reality shows on VH1 and MTV.
Last month, Warner Bros. used talentload.tv to promote the Feb. 14 release of "Music and Lyrics," starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant, with a contest that invited users to upload videos of original love songs. The competition, which ran until Jan. 20, drew 400 videos from aspiring singer-songwriters and more than a million page views. The winner chosen by online voters will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the movie's premiere and will have their song professionally recorded.
MTV also is using Talentload.tv to screen music acts for the fourth season of the P. Diddy vehicle "Making the Band." VH1 declined to provide a representative to discuss the ViTrue deal. But in a prepared statement, Fred Graver, executive producer of VH1's "Best Week Ever," said, "Through our partnership with ViTrue, we were able to quickly create a site that empowers us to collaborate with our audiences and have them contribute to our network and our partners' properties in ways never before possible."
In recent months, ViTrue has created video-sharing sites for clients including TBS, Friendster and the Cincinnati Bengals. ViTrue founder and CEO Reggie Bradford said demand for the company's user-generated platform is growing rapidly. "We're seeing a major sprouting of these types of sites across all media companies, whether they're trying to find new comedians or bands or are getting consumers involved in programming," he said.
Bradford added that the company already has at least a dozen new sites planned for the first half of 2007 after launching ten last year. ViTrue's partners include Denuo, the media and advertising consulting unit of holding company Publicis Groupe.
[Source: Mediapost.com]
04 Feb 2007
1
Community Hyper Vertical Benefits
• The CVH is forums, blogs, photos, and videos all integrated via tag clouds and index search (poles and lists can also be purchased as well as mapping and ratings systems)
• The benefits of this system
o Admin control of photos which can placed into forums and blogs without the use of HTML syntax
o Tag classification of photos – eg. Folksonomy
o Rating control of photos – top rated pics rise to the top
o Comments against photos
o Forums – administrator created /controlled – tag navigated
- Responses can be edited and deleted
- Forums can be maintained or retired and new forums created
- Any Comment can be removed instantly
o Blogs – administrator created /controlled - tag navigated
- Responses can be edited or deleted
- Potential for expert blogs via subscription
- Potential for sponsored blogs – eg. product launch et al
- Articles can be sent to Digg, Reddit et al for additional exposure
o Videos – administrator created /controlled – tag navigated
- How to’s
- Video via subscription
- Sponsored videos
- TVC’s
- Users / Admins can Digg videos as well
o Tag clouds
- Tag Clouds can be placed through out the original website as draw to the CVH
- Ads can be served against tags
- Tags create additional none taxonomical keyword inventory
o RSS to original website or through network – RSS to users (internet) – RSS to mobiles devices
o Email collection / Potential for additional opt-in campaigns
o Creates Web2.0 perception – original model mashed-up with well structured Web2.0 functionality
o Longer session times – great if meta re-fresh is employed by ad server
o Longer page duration
o More and deeper context real estate for graphic advertisers
o Potential for text term purchase (additional ad tool required)
o Tag purchase - Tags forced into tag cloud for duration of client campaign
o Graphic campaigns leading to editorial content from main web site or other sites if on network
o Exposed content optimizes page ranking and gives much greater exposure via search engines
- The CHV is designed to be open to search engines and make best use of their rules
- New search engine rules mean photos and videos get higher rankings
o Potential for sophisticated analytics collection
o Integrated pole capability (optional tool)
o Space can be split between sponsored content and site content – users can interact with all
03 Feb 2007
0
This video is meant to give publishers a brief overview of the Community Hyper Vertical - for more details read below
Definition of a Community Hyper Vertical or CHV
The Community HyperVertical is meant to add Community light to a website – it is meant to augment the current web vertical in terms of bringing community functionality to the original web interface to which it is linked – the hypervertical is also applicable as an advertising product – so publishers who want to give an ad client some big exposure in their site can add the hypervertical and then offer the client on a temporal basis the following editorial ad products:
(Review this website to see how these products can be used and bundled with standard graphic ads into an integrated campaign)
1) Gallery – limited to 50 pics – negotiable
2) Tag cloud – no limitations – shows tags for all tagged content items including photos, blogs, videos and forums
3) Forums – limited to 5
4) Blogs – limited to 5
5) Videos – limited to six - which can be embedded from YouTube or named source – videos are also tagged
6) Design
a. Table clours can be chosen
b. Footers can be defined
c. Logos can be inserted
d. Any customisation of design is extra
7) Measurement not included unless hosted by Venture Logic or re-seller
8) Ad serving not included unless hosted by Venture Logic or re-seller
9) Hosting – additional quoted on application
10) Measurement included if hosted by Venture Logic or re-seller
11) Ad serving – Priced on application – Venture Logic has its own ad server
12) Administration – not included unless by arrangement
13) Custom modules – Price on application – when we start to look at custom modules it leaves the realm of the CVH and becomes a custom application
14) SEO – price on application
15) Online community promotion – depends on context - price on application
16) Deployment – included – client must provide remote access to hosting environment
17) URL’s – provided by client
18) Database license must be provided by client unless a freeware database is desired – for hyperverticals the freeware database is usually good enough – some re-sellers will offer a shared services environment for database and email
Anything beyond this is a custom vertical and is charged accordingly – the whole idea of the hypervertical is community in a week – fast but well thought out and well structured - Venture Logic also offers features such as article ranking so only the most popular articles rise to the top – we can do wallpapers for applicable data sets – mapping integration – integration with other applicable applications
We can even sell a complete photo management app like Flickr on steroids – We also offer Digg like document rating and release functionality – many variants include AJAX features – everything is built in MS .net and can be linked to MS databases
Example Interface
Strategy:
1) Community
a. Depth in content
b. Longer sessions times
c. More page views
d. Augments context of existing website
e. Gives users a chance to provide content and feedback
f. User driven / User submitted content
g. Capture client information
h. Maintain a more sophisticated relationship with users
i. Provide space for user interaction with content – eg. MySpace and YouTube
j. Potentially reduce the need for paid content
2) Sales
a. Better targeting options for ads – ads targeted against tags
b. The hypervertical itself is intended as an advertising product – for existing websites - the hypervertical should be used to bring desired information to the fore – catalyzing user interaction with this data - if used for advertising then helping to assist ad clients reach a desired action or outcome
c. Clients can use multiple instances to sell ad space to their clients or integrate their client’s messages into their hypervertical
d. Within larger more sophisitcated full verticals – subsites can be sold – PR can be sold – graphic advertising can be sold – tags can be sold –
Rules:
Only admins can create forums and blogs
Only admins can add photos and videos
Users can comment on anything
Subscription Scenarios
1) Anyone can comment – no email required
2) Anyone can comment – email required (no validation)
3) Anyone can comment – email required with email validation
4) Anyone can comment – post is not activated until link which is sent to submitted email is clicked – so posts will not go live until the user self validates
5) Anyone can comment – full login – username and password required as well as desired profile information
03 Feb 2007
0
Blogs can be used very effectively for product launches. Instead of creating a mini-site everytime an ad client wants to have special space for a product launch or maintaining a completely seperate site for product launches which likely will not be configured to suit all products why not use blogs?
It is often the case that when these opportunities arise your technology team or provider cannot move fast enough to help publishers take advantage of the opportunity and the price usually outweighs any profit which might have been made
By using blogs we can simply ask for:
1) The photos
2) Text
3) Videos
4) Links
5) Email lists
that an ad clients want to include and in no time you have a great mini-site that is interactive and can be linked internally or externally depending on client requirements
Below find a sample automotive release blog for the Mazda Ryuga
Mazda Ryuga Concept - Gull Wing Magic in Detroit
MAZDA RYUGA CONCEPT: AN EVOLVED ZOOM-ZOOM
DETROIT – How will Mazda’s Zoom-Zoom spirit achieve form and substance in the future? Laurens van den Acker, Design Division General Manager for Hiroshima, Japan’s Mazda Motor C orporation , disturbed the status-quo and challenged every designer in his three global studios with that very question upon his arrival at Mazda early last year.
After months of soul searching, hundreds of sketches and thousands of discussions, meetings, arguments and revisions, the first part of the answer was unveiled at the recent Los Angeles Auto Show. Mazda’s provocative Nagare (pronounced “nah-gah-reh”) – Japanese for “flow” – concept introduced a new surface language that evokes the emotion of motion in a stationary automobile.
Nagare is one of a hundred or more Japanese words that describe the embodiment of motion – such as how wind shapes desert sand, the way currents stir the ocean’s floor or the way waves lap at the shores of a lake. van den Acker explains, “Nagare is purposely emotional and expressive. Anyone who sees it is drawn for a closer look; they’re moved to caress surfaces inspired by nature, to understand how they could work on an automobile.
“But we wanted to take the idea further,” van den Acker continued. “The Ryuga concept we’re presenting in Detroit is our next step in the evolution of Nagare. It’s an exploratory design study that’s more realistic than Nagare and therefore more useful in gauging reactions from those who see it.
“To put this in fashion terms, if Nagare is haute couture (a custom designed and tailored garment), Ryuga is prêt-a-porter (ready-to-wear, not one of a kind).”
RYUGA: “ree-yoo-ga,” Japanese for gracious flow...
For more see - www.autocult.com.au/
03 Feb 2007
1
Example Video Blog
Windows Vista is the name of the latest release of Microsoft Windows, a line of proprietary graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. Prior to its announcement on July 22, 2005, Vista was known by its codename Longhorn. [1] On November 8, 2006, Windows Vista development was completed and is now in the release to manufacturing stage. Some editions were available to volume license customers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers through November 2006.;[2] Microsoft has stated that the scheduled release date for worldwide availability is January 30, 2007.[3] These release dates come more than five years after the release of its predecessor, Windows XP, making it the longest time span between major releases of Windows.
According to Microsoft,[4] Windows Vista contains hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network using peer-to-peer technology, making it easier to share files and digital media between computers and devices. For developers, Vista introduces version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which aims to make it significantly easier for developers to write high-quality applications than with the traditional Windows API.
Microsoft's primary stated objective with Vista, however, has been to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system.[5] One of the most common criticisms of Windows XP and its predecessors has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows. In light of this, then Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a company-wide 'Trustworthy Computing initiative' which aims to incorporate security work into every aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft claimed that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, significantly delaying its completion.[6]
During the course of its development, Vista has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticism of Windows Vista has included protracted development time, more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new Digital Rights Management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, and the usability of new features such as User Account Control.
03 Feb 2007
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