About Ben Elowitz
About Ben Elowitz Ben Elowitz is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a next-generation media platform company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. The company platforms attract more than 16 million unique visitors monthly. In addition to Digital Quarters, he writes Media Success, a bold and forthright newsletter for digital media thought leaders. His work has been featured in FORTUNE, TechCrunch, All Things D, The Huffington Post, Forbes, TIME, CNNMoney, paidContent, and CNBC.com, among others. Prior to Wetpaint, Ben co-founded Blue Nile (NILE), the largest online retailer of luxury goods. Ben was also an early employee at Fatbrain.com (FATB), an ecommerce company that went public in 1998 and was sold to Barnes & Noble in 1999. Ben holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an angel investor in a number of media and ecommerce companies, and is a frequent conference speaker on digital media, social content, and entrepreneurship.
Posts Tagged ‘Google’
What to Expect When Facebook Is Expecting: Five Predictions for Facebook’s First Public Year
16 May2012
by Ben Elowitz
This article was published as a guest post at AllThingsD, and is republished here for Digital Quarters readers.
Mark Zuckerberg’s baby will be coming of age in a few days, just eight years after it was born in a Harvard dorm room. We’ve been there for the first steps, and the first missteps. But do any of us know what Facebook-all-grown-up-as-a-public-company will look like?
I have five predictions of how Facebook will be maturing in the first year after its IPO:
1. Search
Facebook has become home base for users in many ways. But when it comes to search, Facebook makes you take a bus transfer at Google every time you want to leave the house.
And that’s a shame, because Google starts each search from a place of knowing almost nothing about me. When I’m taking a vacation to Bali, I’m far less interested in Google’s generic recommendations of things to do than I am in recommendations from my friends who have been there.
Facebook already knows which of my friends have been to Bali, and which restaurants and attractions they liked the best. It can even differentiate between the friend I trust for restaurant recs and the friend who always finds the best surfing spots.
There is a clear battle between Google and Facebook. But it’s not over “search vs. discovery,” as it is often framed. Rather, it’s “transaction vs. relationship” — which is why Facebook has the potential to disrupt search as we know it.
Prediction: Facebook will launch a purely social search by the end of 2012 (before tackling the whole hog in 2013).
2. Advertising
Despite the company’s fierce ethos of consumer experience first, business concerns second, an IPO will inevitably put upward pressure on the latter. With the numbers published quarterly and the prices reset every day, Facebook will be forced to support that share price (if not for the sake of its shareholders, then at least for its employees!) by expanding its advertising revenues.
Facebook today brings in quarterly ad revenue of $872M — just a tiny fraction of Google’s $9B. But transactions are by nature pecuniary — and relationships are priceless. As a gatekeeper to nearly a billion consumer relationships, Facebook can roll out new advertising products that are far more valuable than AdWords.
The market for online brand advertising is already huge at $85B today. As soon as Facebook unlocks the potential of relationship-based advertising, the market will open up by tens of billions more.
Prediction: By Q2 2013, Facebook will have more than tripled ad revenues to $3B per quarter.
3. Open Graph
Occupy Facebook! Oh wait, we already do. Or does Facebook occupy us? Facebook currently occupies 1 in 7 minutes of all time spent online.
As the locus of consumer identity, attention and relationships, Facebook has the potential to be the one true platform that links together every destination on the web.
But it’s not there yet. Open Graph was a start, but it lacks a complete and actionable vision for how publishers can connect, access data and establish relationships. Publishers don’t want bits and pieces of data that they need to analyze themselves — they want a unified schema that bridges their audiences’ online worlds and real lives.
When I buy a chicken at Whole Foods using a Facebook app’s mobile grocery coupon, Facebook can match that incoming data point with the fact that I read Cooks Illustrated and that I’ve been on an Indian food kick lately (based on my restaurant check-ins). By the time that chicken is in my reusable bag and I’m hauling it out the door, there should be chicken curry recipe suggestions on my Facebook page.
Facebook has an opportunity to turn data from the long tail of Facebook apps into real inferences about you and me that publishers and other brands on the web can actually use.
Prediction: Facebook will completely redesign their analytics offering by Q2 2013 to provide not just data but real, integrated audience insights that will guide brands’ personalization efforts.
4. Commerce and Currency
Advertising won’t be the only revenue play Facebook makes in its first year as a public company.
Digital commerce (i.e. digital goods) already represents more than $16B in market size, and is projected to grow to $36B globally by 2014. E-commerce is another $680B on top of that. Both are currently conducted by arcane means: Visa card numbers and PayPal accounts.
Why have digital payments been so slow to evolve? Because even the most trusting of us only allow a few close associates access to our most private details. Who knows me the best? My bank, my lawyer, my mother and Facebook. In fact, no one owns my identity as well as Facebook these days (sorry, Mom!). Just because Facebook doesn’t have access to my wallet yet doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen.
A host of companies today (Google, Apple, Square) are trying to become your digital wallet, but Facebook holds a valuable advantage: it is already the locus of your relationships with third-party Web sites through Open Graph. While the logistics will certainly be no piece of cake, commerce is right up Facebook’s alley.
Prediction: By Q2 2013, Facebook will be presiding over $2B in transactions.
5. Timeline
There’s nothing more core to Facebook than its user experience, and Facebook has since its birth shown a consistent healthy dissatisfaction with it no matter what the status quo.
The current timeline experience is a nice try, but it’s not quite right. Timeline solved one problem — the indigestible frequency and quantity of updates at all levels of priority — while creating several more. New Problem #1: Timeline’s intuition about what’s important is too frequently just plain wrong. And while it gives us a great retrospective on people, it does a surprisingly poor job of helping us stay up to date with them. New Problem #2: Timeline depends heavily on Open Graph widgets to summarize our lives.
The latter is both ambitious and troubling. We admire great biographers for their ability to identify and communicate the essence of a person. It’s an insult say that a Nike Fuel score algorithm can capture the “real me” in the same way.
Timeline is a v1 product. It will take significant and deep tuning over many versions to reach its full potential.
This may seem like it’s just a UI update, but it’s not. Timeline is the clearinghouse for everything that happens on Facebook. Getting Timeline right is probably the single most valuable thing Facebook can do to grow its effectiveness with users — and its revenues.
Prediction: Facebook will release the first major redesign of Timeline by the first half of 2013.
Will the precocious kid that Facebook is today grow into a smart, savvy adult? A boatload of investors and J.P. Morgan certainly seem to think so. Over the long term, it will depend on Facebook’s ability to leave its youthful single-minded focus on users behind and execute consistently against two metrics: great user experience and revenues to match.
Social Done Right Is a Multiplier
9 Apr2012
by Ben Elowitz
A number of people have asked me to share the math behind something I said last week: that social users are much more valuable than users from search.
As some of you will recall, I was referring to the most powerful use of social: to build loyal audience relationships. It’s worth far more than a chance at a viral hit, a millionth fan, or even a social comment or like. That’s because the social networks are really “relationship platforms.” The currency of social networks is the data describing what users like. And with that data, anyone can serve an audience – and build a branded relationship with users – far better than a blue link in Google can do.
In the interest of proof, I’ll share some of my company’s data with you. We’ve been tracking the long-term value of users from various sources for some time – about 7 months and counting now. And the results couldn’t be more conclusive:
Users from social visit more often and stay longer.
How much more often? Our Facebook users come 70% more often over the course of our dataset.
And each time, they stay on average 50% longer – consuming more content, pageviews, and advertising.
Put that together, and each Facebook user brings us 2.5x the revenue of a search user. And that’s without yet even adding in the value of engagement and viral referral to drive even more audience!
You may be wondering why that is. Well it’s not just pure luck. The reasons are twofold:
First, social users are in a branded relationship. When your property shows up in a Facebook or Twitter feed, you can be identified with your logo and brand name. One better is when someone Likes or Follows you. When that happens, you’re now talking about the chance to build a relationship many times a day – with each and every post. From a brand building standpoint, this is nirvana – and it’s probably the most important reason why advertisers will spend billions of dollars to get into the social news feed this year. But even better for content publishers: if you do it right, you can get in for free.
Second, the social relationship platform actually doubles as a data platform. It gives publishers real-time feedback data about what works, when. If you watch and measure carefully, you can tune the content, packaging and timing with real-time feedback so you can give the audience exactly what they want, when and how they want it.
So while social users are outperforming search today, the good news is that next week, if you use all that data to improve what you do, they’ll do even better. The chart above is an average value over the last seven months, and what it doesn’t show you is that social users have been increasing in value over time. Take a look:
In January, the average user who came from Facebook looked at 9 pages – that’s more than double the number we were seeing just 5 months ago.
I’m actually not surprised that not every publisher is seeing this kind of loyalty and engagement from social users. After all, it didn’t come without effort – I credit the dramatic increase in social user engagement in the chart above to our advanced technology helping the Wetpaint team understand and serve our audience.
But that doesn’t mean that every publisher can’t get more loyalty from social users than they’re getting today. It just makes sense: social users should be more engaged and brand-loyal. They have a strong incentive to read and watch what their friends are talking about, to be included in the conversation. The only reason that many brands aren’t seeing the full value of social is that they’re blind to the opportunity of rich connections and data – and ultimately, they’re the ones who will be left out of the conversation.
- In: Publishing platforms|Search|Social Networks
- Tags: Facebook, Google, Search, seo, smo, Social Networks, Social Web, twitter
Is Social a Fad for Media?
5 Apr2012
by Ben Elowitz
I feel like a lot of my posts lately have been beating the social drum, so I need to clarify my perspective. Social isn’t just a fad. It isn’t just a channel, or an alternate distribution medium.
It’s actually turning into the new ether. As in “need it to breathe.” And while it’s not actually all about friends, it absolutely is about connecting to your audience.
Case in point: according to Compete, in February Wetpaint Entertainment received more traffic from Facebook than from Google. Hey, I told you it was gonna happen. It’s because social has provided a medium for data and connection that lets us deeply relate to our audience. Increasingly, other publishers are finding the same – The Guardian most recently joined the club.
The best part is that these gains in social aren’t coming at the expense of other channels – our overall traffic (including our search traffic) continues to climb. Social signals have a huge impact on search rankings, and so it makes sense that our social success would drive audience growth outside of social, too.
For the last several years, many a publisher’s greatest fear has been that they’ll lose favor with Google. Afraid that any shift in strategy from SEO to social will lead to a precipitous fall from Google grace and a drop in traffic, they monitor the search rankings daily to see if the gods are pleased.
But ironically, it turns out that an investment in social is the best SEO there is.
- In: Facebook|Publishing platforms|Search|Social Networks
- Tags: Facebook, Google, seo, smo, social, Social Web, Traffic, Wetpaint
Social Leaderboard: What Drives Outperformance?
29 Mar2012
by Ben Elowitz
We’re back with the Media Industry Social Leaderboard, fresh off the presses with February results. For any newcomers, the Social Leaderboard is a ranking of the top 50 media publishers by their effectiveness at driving traffic from Facebook and Twitter.
Overall: No Great Shakes
From January to February, social traffic composition was flat, with the average staying at 7%. The gap between Facebook and Google traffic coming in to the Top 50, which had been rapidly closing since November, froze in February with Google holding on to its 30% lead for one more month.
At the Races: Us Magazine Falls Behind
Only four publishers in the top 10 improved their social traffic scores this month: NBC (+1.5%) took third place by trading places with Us Magazine (the biggest loser in the top 10 with -3%, now at #5). Break (+2%) and TMZ (+0.5%) leapfrogged the pack of MTV, NFL and MLB, pushing those three back to #8, 9 and 10.
One of These Things Is Not Like the Others
But the biggest mover and shaker was Wetpaint Entertainment. Wetpaint took an even more decisive lead by adding 7% to social traffic composition since January, vaulting it into the elite group of publishers who, based on Compete data, receive more traffic from Facebook than from Google (in good company with People, Yahoo!, AOL, MSN, Fox Sports, and The Post Game).
With 29% of traffic coming from social, Wetpaint is outperforming its closest competitor by nearly 2x. Is this a data aberration? Some kind of leap year phenomenon?
Let me fill you in on the story behind the 29%: over the last two years, we took a gamble by building a new platform for social media distribution. It wasn’t a sure bet, and not many other publishers were doing it, but we had seen compelling evidence that social was the only way forward for the media industry.
We threw all of our time and talent at the problem, building up a fan base while developing and testing and refining new strategies for delivering content through social channels. We collected tons of data in real time about the preferences of our fans, and then we leveraged that insight to personalize and program their newsfeeds.
Today, the rest of the media industry is just starting to figure out the value of winning fans and courting likes. But because of our early investment, we’re already two steps ahead – we’re focusing on what to do with our 1.7 million fans. We’re delivering over 1,000 posts a week, each one targeted for the right fan with the right content at the right time.
And it’s starting to pay off.
- In: Facebook|Google|Online News|Publishing platforms|Social Networks
- Tags: AOL, Break, cbs, Facebook, Fox Sports, Google, MLB, msn, nbc, new media, news, NFL, People, smo, Social Networks, TMZ, US Magazine, Wetpaint, yahoo
by Ben Elowitz
It’s time again to check our horses and see who’s pulling ahead in the social publishing race! And the race is definitely on – 85% of the top 50 publishers increased their social traffic this month.
No looking back now
Until I started charting the incredible growth of social and its impact on the rest of the web, I wondered if it might be more hype than actual paradigm shift. But the evidence is mounting beyond reasonable doubt, and this month’s results point to the continuation of rapid growth.
Facebook traffic to the Top 50 grew 9% in January (after growing 17% in December). Not only that, but Facebook is closing the gap with Google: The gap between how much traffic Google sends and Facebook sends to the 50 largest publishers is down to just 30%, from 55% in November. At this rate, I expect Facebook to surpass Google traffic to publishers some time this year.
Favorites hold their lead
At the wire it’s Wetpaint Entertainment (with 22.2% of traffic coming from social) followed by People, followed by Us Magazine. Coming on strong on the outside is CBS, pulling ahead of NBC for 4th place by drawing 14.4% of their traffic from social (up from 11.7% in December).
Wetpaint Entertainment increased its lead this month, adding 1.4% to its social traffic and widening the gap with #2 People by an additional 0.5%. People and Us Magazine increased their social traffic composition by 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively – just slightly more than the Top 50 average of 0.5%. CBS was the biggest mover by far, adding 2.7% to its social traffic.
Ladies and gentleman, place your bets. It’s still anyone’s race, but one thing is for sure: if you’re spending all of your time on SEO and SEM, you’re backing the wrong horse.
by Theresia Gouw Ranzetta
This piece from Theresia Gouw Ranzetta is the eighth in a series of 10 posts about the future of the media industry contained in a report titled: Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web.
Q: How does the rise of Facebook change the relationship between media and its audience?
Facebook becomes the jumping off point for many browsers who count on their friends to curate interesting media for them. How news gets “found” becomes less about searching Google news, and more about checking your Facebook newsfeed.
Q: What’s changed fundamentally about media with the rise of the social Web, and what do publishers need to do to adapt?
Publishers need to understand the “start” point for their digital users. It used to be a portal, so you cut a deal with one of them. Then, it was a search box, so you SEO-optimized your content. Now, it is a social media platform (Facebook or Twitter), and publishers need to understand how to optimize their content for maximum social sharing and social media amplifications. Don’t get me wrong: in each phase, it has always been about great content. But that is just the necessary first building block. Then you need to figure out the distribution to get maximum audience engagement.
Q: We’ve gone from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to SMO (Social Media Optimization), so how will search change as the Web becomes more social?
Reference or informational search will remain relatively unchanged (for example, “What is the capital of Iowa?”). But “search,” where you are looking for guidance or information that has a subjective or has a taste aspect to it, will be completely transformed by social. Instead of typing in “Best sushi restaurant in Palo Alto,” you will ask your friends, or go to a site with a like-minded social groups (foodies, vegans, etc.).
I think we are still in the early days of SMO. Many large publishers have not yet even thought about this, nor are they aware that they should be. As with SEO, they will need to upgrade their content management / publishing systems and processes. Many will turn to start ups, like Wetpaint, to help with this.
But SMO can be even more. Unlike in the search world, where a supposed Chinese wall existed between SEO and SEM, leading platforms can now encourage their advertisers to also invest in SMO as well. So a very savvy company can leverage and get synergies from their investments and learnings from SMO + SMM (Social Media Marketing) in a collaborative way.
As with the early days of the portal and search platform eras, the ecommerce players were the first to experiment, invest and learn about the power of the new platforms to get broader distribution / audience. This is understandable, given that their business models more easily lend themselves to direct data gathering and learning for marketing spend. Once again, in social, I see the ecommerce players blazing a trail for publishers: the GroupOns, Zyngas, ModCloths, and Birchboxes of the world are good places to start.
In parallel to social, I think we are also seeing a platform shift – from PCs to mobile Internet devices. So, clearly the rise of iOS and Android are important platforms for publishers to understand and adapt to, both in terms of the technology and the distribution nuances.
Q: How do you build a brand in publishing when, with greater frequency, media is distributed through social channels?
You need to learn how to build your brand following on social media and realize that, no matter how strong your brand is in other channels, this is a whole other effort. It is not just an add-on and thinking of how to get “Likes.” The “packaging” of your content needs to be social media optimized for sharing and tie to your social media presence on your Facebook page and Twitter. It is an interconnected ecosystem that cannot be thought of as separate pieces.
Q: What are the critical success factors in publishing as we look to 2020; and who will be the winners?
Understand that we are in a new era. Social media distribution, branding and user-driven pull – not your push distribution – will win. Also, understand how your mobile approach is intertwined with what you need to do. The winners today will be the companies that have created these new social and mobile platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Apple iOS and Google Android), as well as the market leaders who have successfully built the first leading companies on top of these platforms (Zynga, Groupon etc.). As for the winners in 2020: I’m in the business of funding start up innovation, so I would say it’s the companies that may not even yet be formed – but they will be, in the next year or two.
Theresia Gouw Ranzetta joined Accel Partners in 1999. She is an investment Partner in Accel’s Palo Alto & New York offices and focuses on companies in the social commerce, vertical media, consumer mobile applications and privacy/security markets.
To download the complete report, please click here: Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web
by Wenda Harris Millard
This piece from Wenda Harris Millard is the seventh in a series of 10 posts about the future of the media industry contained in a report titled: Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web.
Q: How does the rise of Facebook change the relationship between media and its audience?
I’m not sure that Facebook is media. But Facebook has changed everything. I see it as a platform for connection. The challenge for marketers is in connecting effectively with audiences in these kinds of social environments. I think advertising by its very nature is often intrusive, but it tends currently to cross the line and be disruptive in social media. It may violate trust with audiences. So, how are advertisers going to reach people most efficiently and effectively in a social environment? Advertising or commercial messaging is going to be like nothing we know today.
Q: What’s changed fundamentally about media with the rise of the social Web, and what do publishers need to do to adapt?
If you’re a brand marketer, you can no longer interrupt the discussion. You have to be part of the discussion. This has a lot of implications. And you have to ask yourself whether people come to you, or do you look at social platforms as a way to build and distribute content and your own messaging. The economic models have changed. In the past, in a siloed world, you had your own site, and you went about the business of attracting an audience and monetizing that site. That’s a simple formula, and it’s not nearly as relevant anymore. We are now living in a world where you have to find your audience where it aggregates. You have to find the audience on someone else’s platform, and then figure out how to make money. This throws everything we’ve known in traditional marketing on its head.
Q: We’ve gone from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to SMO (Social Media Optimization), so how will search change as the Web becomes more social?
We’ve learned so much about the value of recommendations from friends and colleagues. Now, with the continued advance of the Web as a social environment, what’s going to happen is that, instead of typing certain things into the search box, there will be an increasing tendency to go to your social circle for input. If you need an address, you’ll go to the search engine; but if you need a great back doctor, you’ll ask friends or colleagues. This is the personal recommendation engine, and it will be part of our lives. Think of it as personal optimizations – how do you get the best information from your social circle?
Q: How do you build a brand in publishing when, with greater frequency, media is distributed through social channels?
Publishers are worried about the abundance of user-generated content in the whole social media experience right now. The plethora of choice for consumers is almost overwhelming. Yet I believe that consumers are still looking for a trustmark. Of course, you’ll be able to read your friends’ recommendations, and you’ll share on whatever platform you’re using, but when you’re looking for information, I still believe that brands represent a level of trust or a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. That said, when you’re growing a brand today, you can no longer just build it and expect that they will come. Building and enhancing your brand as a .com online is only one element in all this. You need to be where people are – that’s the Facebook phenomenon.
Q: What are the critical success factors in publishing as we look to 2020; and who will be the winners?
New media, digital media and social media – it will all be called media. And the winners will be those who find a way not to define themselves by their tried-and-true or historical practices, or by their distribution channels. You can’t define yourself as a magazine publisher; you’re a content provider. You need to step out of the channel you live in and understand how each of the pieces fits together. How does TV fit with Facebook, for example? Or search engines or print with anything in social media? The key is knowing where commerce is – online and offline. What is the relationship among all media channels? The winners will grasp these interrelationships.
Wenda Harris Millard is President & COO of Media Link LLC, a leading advisory firm that provides critical counsel to clients in the marketing, media, entertainment, and technology industries. Prior to this, Millard was Co-Chief Executive Officer and President of Media, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and Chief Sales Officer of Yahoo. She has also served as the Chief Internet Officer at Ziff Davis Media, President at Ziff Davis Internet, and Executive Vice President at DoubleClick.
To download the complete report, please click here: Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web
by Jason Hirschhorn
This piece from Jason Hirschhorn is the sixth in a series of 10 posts about the future of the media industry contained in a report titled: Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web.
Q: How does the rise of Facebook change the relationship between media and its audience?
Facebook is obviously a transformative platform. It’s a disruption in the distribution of content. The social endorsement in “sharing” or “liking” a piece of content on a platform like Facebook is almost as important as the content itself. And while they like the digital “word of mouth” I think this scares the film, TV and publishing industries. Why? Because, unlike in the past, they are not controlling the distribution and conversation the way they used to. The “feed” is taking on search, too, because users are ultimately using it as a discovery platform. You may go to Google to find what you already knew you wanted but now the content streams deliver you content you had no idea you wanted, and with an endorsement from someone you know or follow. This social endorsement changes the way you discover and consume content.
Q: What’s changed fundamentally about media with the rise of the social Web, and what do publishers need to do to adapt?
It’s clear that media is becoming unbundled. It’s also multi-platform as the access points are fragmented. It’s real time or archived and it’s on-demand. This sets the trend for what and where people consume. In today’s new and evolving social environment, the packaging and distribution are under less control. Again, the social endorsement of content is just as important as who created the content or what it’s about. Our interests widen on Facebook or Twitter, and we’re able to see the tastes and interests of people we respect or know. We used to turn to TV, radio and print for all our cues, but we’re now going to Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr… to our friends and the people we follow. Traditional media seems slightly hindered because it holds on to its traditional standards. Whether it is scheduling in television, definitions of journalism, and creators as curators or controlling the entirety of your brand. But things are slowly changing. New forms of media bring spontaneity, serendipity and personalization. There are always surprises within your content stream. I realize now I only know a little about the things I like. The fun is in discovering those things you never knew you’d be interested in. That’s what I like about it.
Q: We’ve gone from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to SMO (Social Media Optimization), so how will search change as the Web becomes more social?
My personal view is that search is falling down. People are now using it more for navigation than discovery. “Where is the thing that I want?” Maybe search isn’t about real discovery. I use search less today because of Facebook and Twitter, which are becoming significant parts of my content decision-making process. I’m interested in seeing the news that my friends are reading today. That would keep me on Facebook even longer, and add to the discovery element. Despite its huge impact, though, Facebook and Twitter haven’t even begun to really take advantage of content discovery experiences. They will. It’s going to be a great evolution to watch and positively disruptive.
Those changes will be a perfect match between gathering or discovery technologies and a truly human filter. Ultimately, content discovery needs to have human layers. Without them, it has no “life”, no context. This is where Google has fallen down as a product company. Algorithms vs. Humans. When it comes to content, which always has an emotional bent, humans always beat the computer. Clearly Google+ is trying to address some of that, but they have a ways to go.
Going forward, I believe we need to see more influencer targeting and noise-level targeting. How do you help people or companies find those who are moving the social media mountain? How do you find these influencers and deliver highly relevant and personalized content without infringing on their privacy or conversation and then let them run with it? That will be a key part of the new optimization. These changes will revolutionize advertising and make media spends way more efficient. What it takes to get “lift” will be far different and mediums like television will need to fall in line and adapt.
Q: How do you build a brand in publishing when, with greater frequency, media is distributed through social channels?
From my point of view, curation is the next great layer of value on the Internet. In a world where everything is available, Curating content helps users sift through everything. Trusted sources are coming back. The New York Times is curating when it decides what it will cover. But they don’t seem to curate other’s work. And yet the journalists at The Times pass around links and stories on Twitter that are written by other sources. Those journalists are trusted sources and now curators. I think publications should be establishing relationships with curators; and then they can re-package and re- bundle content into new and important layers. You can build big and important brands with curation today. I know I’m going to try.
Q: What are the critical success factors in publishing as we look to 2020; and who will be the winners?
There are five areas I’d touch on here:
1. Curation, for the reasons I’ve explained above.
2. Form factors. Content should be allowed to shape shift.
3. How you distribute. Your site to RSS to email to Flipboard to Twitter and beyond.
4. How you allow social media inside your content.
5. How smart your paywall strategy is. The New York Times has done the best in this area.
Allowing for social media linkages while continuing to build a pay-model.
Jason Hirschhorn, a media and technology entrepreneur, is the curator of Media ReDEFined (@MediaReDEF), a free daily news feed covering the changing world of media, communications, entertainment, marketing and technology. The former President of MySpace, Hirschhorn has also served as President of Sling Media, Chief Digital Officer at MTV Networks and is on the Board of Directors of MGM Studios.
To download the complete report, please click here: “Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web”
by Lewis DVorkin
This piece from Lewis DVorkin is the fourth in a series of 10 posts about the future of the media industry contained in a report titled: Rebooting Media: The Digital Publishing Revolution for a Fully Social Web.
Q: How does the rise of Facebook change the relationship between media and its audience?
There is an interaction between the two. Facebook turns everybody into a publisher. They publish what’s important and interesting to them, and they share it with friends and colleagues; they become publishers like the media. A whole group of people is distributing content to friends and putting a value on it. And that value is important to friends. People all over are distribution channels today, and they’re editing their feeds. But as they edit their feeds, they’re editing themselves.
Q: What’s changed fundamentally about media with the rise of the social Web, and what do publishers need to do to adapt?
Publishers who adapt to the social Web need to understand that content is content. Publishers, marketers, and audiences all create content; each brings knowledge and expertise, and it’s mingling in one place. So publishers must accept this new reality. They no longer control the content platform, and they have to invite others into the process. The traditional role as media gatekeeper isn’t valid anymore. The question is how you let others participate. I think you have to clearly state and transparently label each contributor’s identity, so users can form their own judgments. In the old world, traditional media would decide who got respect and who was worthy.
Q: We’ve gone from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to SMO (Social Media Optimization), so how will search change as the Web becomes more social?
Search will always be important as a way of discovery, so publishers have to continue to optimize; they can’t give up SEO. But now there’s a new layer, and that’s social media. So you have to work with tools like Twitter and Facebook to understand where the conversations are, who is spreading the word, and how to get your relevant content in that stream in a way that’s positive. There are a number of opportunities to become part of this world; and social media, which drove zero traffic in the past, can now be a significant traffic driver if you optimize content for it. The key question is how you get the edge in Facebook ranking versus Google page ranking.
Q: How do you build a brand in publishing when, with greater frequency, media is distributed through social channels?
At Forbes, we now have a core group of full-time staff people and a core group of contributors. Most of these contributors are publishing content under their own individual names and own individual brands of knowledge. By doing this, we’re curating, and we’re extending the Forbes brand, especially with all the comments and conversations that result. Advertisers and marketers can take advantage of this extended brand, and they get to use the same tools, because they can also create content. Everyone who’s involved believes in our brand attributes – enterprise, the entrepreneur, smart investing, and doing something good with wealth that will make a difference. So, the extended Forbes brand is enabling like-minded people, people who believe in what we believe in, to share information and insights.
Q: What are the critical success factors in publishing as we look to 2020; and who will be the winners?
The economics of publishing today and going forward are vastly different than they were 20 years ago. And we’re not going to return there. Publishers must create scalable new business models for content creation and the voracious appetite for content. Staffers alone can’t meet this need, or equal the expertise of thousands of contributors. Publishers can’t control this experience either; so the trick is how to open up and still maintain brand values and attributes, while helping people feel a sense of partial ownership. Traditional media built up walls – between journalists and audiences; journalists and advertisers; and advertisers and audiences. But media is about connections. If you control the connections, it’s not what everyone wants. You can’t maintain silos; I just don’t see how you can do
that anymore.
Lewis DVorkin is the Chief Product Officer at Forbes Media. He joined the company after True/Slant, his entrepreneurial content network, was acquired by Forbes in the spring of 2010. Previously, DVorkin has been Page One Editor of The Wall Street Journal, Senior Editor at Newsweek, and an editor at The New York Times. He has also been Senior Vice President, Programming, at AOL, and played a significant role in the launch of TMZ.com.
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