Keeping Up: Chronicling Technology Innovation Online

Wireless Internet on Airplanes

I spent a lot of time on airplanes this week traveling to Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago.  While flying, the thought flew through my head "I wonder how much longer it is going to be before this flight is full of people banging away on their web browsers and using the Internet?"   Today I discovered that the answer to my question was "about seven days".  Apparently Jet Blue will be launching wireless internet this week and shortly thereafter it will be rolling to Virgin, Alaska, and American Airlines.  This will be an interesting test in human behavior.  I am sure a new list of decorum will now have to emerge about what is okay to do on an airplane.  The world is changing right before our eyes....

Channel Advisor Holiday Email

I received a Holiday email in my mailbox today that thought was creative.  It may be one of those things where you need to know the people in the skit (ie. Todd at RockBottomGolf) but I thought it was creative and it took someone a little time to pull this together.  It deserved a post!

Tank Stickman - Channel Advisor extraordinairre:  http://www.channeladvisor.com/tank/

Facebook's ad platform - Facebook Beacon

As many of you may know, Facebook last week unveiled their ad platform "Facebook Beacon".  Although timing could have been only moderately coincidental, it seems to me that the release was an attempt to quickly rationalize why a $240 million investment from Microsoft for 1.6% of their business is somehow a "good buy".  1.6% of Facebook doesn't make much sense to me for Microsoft but that is besides the point I suppose.  Facebook's Beacon will tie in activity across numerous websites into a user's Facebook profile.  The Facebook spin says that the rich user data self-provided will allow a level of advertising targeting not yet available.  Somehow as a search junkie, I still think that a search results query provided at the very moment when the user requests it is FAR more timely and at least or more relevant (assuming the engines do a good job providing results).  I am of the belief that Facebook's move to open up their platform to outside innovation was a GENIUS MOVE and is consistent with the sea change on the Internet towards a crowd-sourcing, mass collaboration marketplace (my association with Bazaarvoice is evidence that I am a big believer in this market force).  However, I think its somewhat dubious to think that Facebook is worth $10 billion because they can display targeted ads. The integration capabilities across the web are interesting and maybe one day that will prove to make $10 billion cheap.  Personally, I would be hesitant to invest my own $ knowing how fickle and anti-corporate the web user is today.

One of the partners for Beacon is Typepad who hosts this blog.  Thus, I am going to test out their blog post integration capabilities and let you know what I find out! Here goes...

 

Radiohead going after the long tail

As many of you may have read, the band Radiohead recently sent a shot across the bow of the current recording industry power structure by releasing the album "In Rainbows" on a "pay what you want" basis.  At first, I reacted with a "what?" and then after ruminating for a few minutes it became a "how brilliant!"  It seems to me that Radiohead is tapping into the famous long tail concept so prevalent in search engine marketing today.  If you allow people to pay what they prefer, the universe of buyers will grow tremendously to the point that those people way down at the end of the long tail paying only $.10 or $.50 will still accumulate to be far more in total than the universe being forced to pay a set price.  Sounds like Radiohead took one right out of the Google playbook.  Although they did something that on its face would be considered oddball to the establishment, in the end it may prove to be genius.

Due to its electronic distribution, sales figures were quick to come and Radiohead sold 1.2 million copies in roughly the first 72 hours.  In addition to the sales, just pure buzz on the web has to have given a huge boost to their overall brand. Check out a query on "Radiohead" on Google Trends:

Online Offline Advertising Measurement Innovation

In my days in large brand marketing online, I had the excellent career development opportunity to work with the traditional advertising team.  We constantly were trying to come up with ways to crack the online/offline nut.  The ultimate question was, how many online impressions does it take to generate a store visit and ultimately a purchase offline?  We tried numerous math calculations with a vast array of assumptions including in-store foot traffic conversion rates, online ad CPM and click through calcs, etc.  We tried offering unique coupons that were known to be only distributed online so if we saw a coupon redemeed, we knew it was electronically driven.  We spent many meetings and team hours trying to come up with the best way to advertise online and measure success offline.  I recently ran across a patent filing that has the potential to break through the online/offline barrier.  Its a simple concept but if the technology works, it could be BIG - its called "pay per visit" advertising and that visit is an OFFLINE visit.

I did some research on the team behind the idea. Apparently a few ex-Amazoners have gotten together to form a company called Pelago.  They have reportedy patented technology that purports to tie together an online impression viewed on your PC or your wireless device to an instore visit.  The premise is that your cell phone can be tracked via GPS or Bluetooth/RFID and if you had previously been exposed to an ad, they bridge that gap. 

Now obviously there is a large array of privacy issues that can come from such a premise.  If Pelago can get over this barrier then they may be sitting at the edge of a major platform that would attract the attention of billion dollar offline brand marketing budgets.  This is a place that there is a large amount of $ itching to be spent so this bears watching!

Amazon Honor System

I recently have posted about privacy issues and search logs on Google History so you know by now that I am somewhat concerned about how privacy issue gets worked out over time on the web.  I recently ran across a blog where I saw something quite surprising.  It showed a badge on the page saying "hello Kurt Krake...(linked here as a live example) sponsored by the Amazon Honor System.  Now I thought I had seen everything on the web but this one took me by surprise.  I was on a random blog forwarded to me by a friend and yet Amazon knew I was there and had content - my name (!!) - render on the blog.  Big Brother?

 

Two things come to mind when I see this happen:

1. Why would a site owner put this on their site and freak out a visitor? Amazon Honor System is intended to collect micropayments for websites trying to make a few pennies and recover cost.  I went hunting for what kind of sites had posted this badge on their site and for the most part, I found 3rd tier blogs showing it.  Google shows 1.6 million web pages on exact matching the phrase "Amazon Honor System". Most sites were using it as a sort of online tip jar which (makes sense to me) and had been smart enough to remove the default setting of showing the browser's name.  I was surprised to find a handful of larger sites like CouponSurfer using the badge.  ADVICE:  If you are a website owner with the badge, make sure you set the software to not show someone's name.  The text can be customized to your particular site's content.

2. Why would Amazon make it so in-your-face that they are able to track you across the web?  In the "Google is all knowing" day and age (ie. search history being routinely used now in murder prosecutions), I would think that Amazon would run from this like the plague. Privacy issues are radioactive. Every large web property today is capable of this tracking in some form but to display it openly and display a browser's name is simply too much.  I see this effort as damage to the Amazon brand.

What I discovered is that this service has been in place since February 2001 per Wired Magazine and is probably an idea that got concocted when the Dot Com world was in complete freefall.  It made it through the "thats a great idea" meetings at Amazon then but would be slapped away in heartbeat today.  Hopefully Amazon has not forgotten that they are out there doing this and freaking users out!

Advice: Don't ask for A Client Reference In the Same Email that you......

......raise your prices!

Recently, a friend of mine in the e-com world told me a story that I found too unbelievable to not post about it.  He received an email from a key business partner who in paragraph 1 increased their fees by 25%.  In paragraph 2, they asked for an important client reference.  Sheer stupidity? Quite possibly.

A bit of advice to all service providers out there in any and all industries.  If you plan on increasing your price, make sure you ask for the client reference BEFOREhand.  I cannot believe this actually happened.