Moderator: Tad Smith, CEO, Reed Business Information

Panelists:
Vivian Schiller, SVP/GM, NYTimes.com
Rich Skrenta, Co-Founder & CEO, Topix
Ken Stern, CEO, NPR
Kara Swisher, All Things D

Tad: What's the zeitgeist in the newsroom these days? Kara: Awful. Left a newsroom, saw the water was rising and the Web was higher land. People needed to be changing things rather than bellyaching. Ken: Our zeitgeist is rather good, has doubled in recent years, a market for serious and in-depth news. Tad: How do you avoid blood on the streets? Ken: Social media business model feels comfortable to us, get contributions from audience and corporations, foundations, government is about ten percent, listener donation growth has fueled in their growth. Tad: What's ailing newspapers generally? Vivian: Ad market is declining, but online is growing, we're in the process of rebalancing the business to shift more online. But there's no rainbow on the horizon for print newspapers. Focusing on the big opportunities in digital. Report says online ad revenues have stalled out, true? Vivian: yes, it has stalled, still most revenues come from print. Tad: Rich, do you make money? Rich: Yes, ten million uniques on our site, news by zip code commands good CPMs, ambitious plans for news in every zip code, went and got every bit of content, including blogs, and there wasn't enough. Nobody would cover routine news in Sunnyvale, had to turn to social media. Newsrooms are shrinking especially at the local level, if they're NYT is struggling what about the Palo Alto Daily News?

Tad: What is news today? Rich: New restaurant in your town could be news, no longer looking at what's news from a j-school perspective. Kara: That's very valid, doesn't have to be one way or the other, but when stuff gets corrupted by reporters or bloggers with a conflict of interest you get protection. Our disclosure is about 50 pages long, none of us is fully without something to disclose. It's not journalists are not going to say that fries are on sale at a local restaurant. Ken: There's information and there's news, there's a sense out there that we can get rid of reporters but we invest in editors and reporting. I worry about the space for serious journalism shrinking, people going to newspaper conventions are clinicially depressed. Rich: We see journalists are going away before their very eyes, the paper doesn't go away, it becomes a paper with more wire content. There's a lot of stuff floating around in places like Yahoo groups and it's not discoverable. Classified ad dollars going away, Craigslist destroyed 65 million dollars in classified ad dollars in Bay area. Without grass-roots news gathering we're looking at pre-radio days.

Tad: Is there a role for serious journalism? There's always a role for authoritative quality journalism, not scaling back our newsroom at all, looking at how we can do to make sure that we have the financial support for journalism in the long term. Kara: You are under pressure from investors, but a family controls the company, as with other papers, they don't have to worry about the bottom line as much. Vivian: Yes, but let's not loose sight of the fact that NYT and others are extremely profitable, we're talking about growth rates, it's not a business on its last legs. When we started a little publication we saw real opportunity in standards-based content with high quality, can't stand depression part. Why do you have to roll over and play dead? Ken: Do you have to pair with About.com? What about serious investigations? Kara: It's the mid-size papers that are struggling the most with quality.

Tad: Branding, how much does the brand matter to the average person? Kara: Had an argument with the 12-year old who runs Google News, he was saying that nobody cares where the news is from, people don't want to read about the White House from the Rajastan Times. Have to tip your hat to paidContent.org, went to publisher and said the blog thing was going to be big, now we can do it to.

Tad: Founding fathers and court decisions, protection? Rich: DMCA protects us, every day we get legal issues out of our forums, lawyers say that it's opinion, we try to apply a journalistic angle, does it actually look like libel but without some judgment you don't get discussions. We see cases of people flooding us with mail and it's not a valid case. Is it in the public's interest to see something. Tad: Is there a conflict between social media and news that serves the public good? Ken: There are places for a free-for-all, we're one of the few organizations that doesn't review everything before it goes up. Vivian: Major news orgs are some of the few that moderate comments, it's really about relevance and a great user experience. We want to make sure that comments are on message.

Tad: Is there an economic return from high-quality journalism? Is it shrinking? Kara: Always discussions at WSJ, maybe not, doesn't matter where it is, if they want it on salami put it there, focus on the high-quality product. Vivian: Instead of being afraid of the Diggs, bring it on. Kara: individual brands is inmportant, Mossberg is a Brangelina-scale brand. (COMMENT: Newspapers haven't figured out how to monetize journalists effectively in The New Aggregation, especially when a Google Print-like product kicks in. They're losing brand equity to user-aggregators and they haven't compenstated adequately). Question: How soon before citizen journalists win The Pulitzer Prize? Tad: Soon. Question: How do you make money? Kara: We have a really tiny site, our costs are incredibly low, easier to make money overall. Vivian: Constantly innovating. Ken: We ultimately sell in an uncluttered environment.

Question: Google? Kara: Google is a parasite but a helpful parasite. Vivian: We love Google, we get half of our traffic from Google. 35 million worldwide, good SEO. We fall down squarely on the friend side. Rich: syndication made a lot of sense in print, if Google can't do the best job of telling people the copy that you wrote maybe you should reconsider your syndication strategy. Kara: In ten years we'll look at today's Google and other search engines as very primitive. Question: WSJ clings to its pay wall, does this concern you that you're not being found? Kara: ATD is free, we feel free is better, it's better to be part of the conversation. WSJ provides a mass of information. Wouldn't dream of our stuff not being free.

Rafat: Variety dropped the firewall, how is it going? Variety: The early results are strong, looked at how the traffic is growing, felt that for the audience it was worth it. Have 20,000 subscribe online. Kara: so you'll never get to a million. WSJ Online: Online journal now 930,000 paid, trying to have it both ways, trying to offer up a free paragraph in a month, looking at lifestyle content that's not that well consumed behind the firewall. Kara: you can pick your way to sell.

Tad: Social media and the news, the best of times or the worst of times? Vivian: The best of times, new platforms have opened up ways to get the dialog out there. Every day there's a new way to communicate with their readers. Rich: There's no paper in my town, San Francisco paper still shows up but it's not quite as good as it used to be. Looking at the Cherry Hill Observer the news staff is going away while you watch. Ken: Good time to be in nonprofit journalism, a great time for public conversation, but it's a punishing time if you take off the cream. Kara: Grandfather said if someone's going to eat your lunch it might as well be you, people are hungry for great stuff, there's an opportunity for people with high standards to jump in there, sites like paidContent.org are not that hard to make.

Great panel, but clearly the model is going towards supporting independent journalists in context.

Labels: econSM, events, news

Moderators: Rafat Ali and Staci D. Kramer

Panelists:
Esther Dyson, Chairman, EDventure
Jason Hirschhorn, President, Sling Media Entertainment Group
Mike Lang, VP Strategy, Fox
Quincy Smith, President, CBS Interactive

Rafat: Quincy, you were looking for the next YouTube, is there one out there? Esther: These are people who you want to be friendly, small companies have good DNA, large companies sometimes have mass without DNA. Mike: We have a Bay area presence, spend a lot of time working with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs, we have a lot of "old companies" processes, there's nothing closed about where your technology partnerships are going to come from, build versus buy is no longer that simple, you need to nurture the DNA of an acquisition beyond the press release phase.

Rafat: What are the lessons for the MySpace integration? MySpace is so different, IDN is very different in game space, as a result a lot of content gravitates naturally to MySpace. In a lot of ways it's about management. Number one drivers were Chris and Josh, they were maniacally driven, needed that energy. They are now taking on an even larger role across our digital efforts, they've integrated successfully into our organization. Rafat: does social media fit better into angel investment? Jason: Not necessarily, there's been a huge change about the audience being in control, young entrepreneurs with not a lot of expertise so angel investors are forgiving. In some cases companies to acquisitions well, but sometimes it's "We'll change all the people and the name" so it doesn't go too well. When companies understand that you're the talent things can go very well. But Quincy pointed out that unfortunately integration oftentimes ends at the press release. Mike: First thing you say is "what can we do with our own brand" for an acquisition. Esther: There are two challenges: you could put in so much process that it overwhelms the small acquisition in the process of protecting P&L, won't invest in what they bought. Mike: some would rather pay USD 300 million on an acquisition than USD 2 million on creating your own. When you see talented people in an acquistion rise in a big company that's a good sign.

Quincy: Markets are forcing large companies to invest in growth, Internet is not the end of media, its the next step, and you have to invest in it. But they know that they don't control the audiences and that entrepreneurs have the touch. We were fortunate to acquire CSTV, great asset that we keep apart from the organization but we don't starve it, add more allocations around it. This creates a big weapon when talking to other entrepreneurs. Staci: More announcements of large chunk investment funds, but Fox has done small companies. Mike: Our shareholders are looking for value in investment returns, minority investments don't give a preferred path of control and may in fact increase the valuation if you want to acquire it later. We have a lot of commercial relationships that may result in acquisitions - or may not, or may go for warrants. Quincy: CBS might be a little different, made partial investments to help them understand a world unfamiliar to them, a chance to learn and to get exposure to DNA, we have cash, not give it right back to the shareholders all year long. Spend around USD 20 million in seeds. It's a chance to be in the board room to understand the decisions they're making. Mike: Who knows which one is right, it's difficult in today's investment community to have a rational conversation, valuations are out of whack. Esther: We have some companies you may want to invest in.

Rafat: Esther, what are you looking for in investments here vs. overseas? Esther: There just aren't that many people who know what they're doing except for social media, there aren't thousands of Russians using QuickBooks, exits are also harder. Everyone wants to go overseas, just invested in something in Brazil, the best social networkers are in Brazil. Staci: Do you acquire, hire or develop in-house? How do you make that decision? Jason: Hard when you have developers in-house, they feel that they can build things quickly, a lot of media companies were asleep at the wheel, so all of a sudden you need something that scales, if I can buy scale I can satsify advertisers immediately - though sometimes this may scare away audience for social media.

Question: After deal is signed, what advice can entrepreneurs take as to what to do and not to do in negotiations? Mike: Not being realistic. You need management that can say this is what the risk factors are, understand that things may not work out. Don't say that you don't have competition. You need a management team that can react to competition. Don't be too swayed by VCs wanting a theoretical return than to realistic returns from a business. VCs say no, then they don't get an opportunity later. Jason: Sometimes it's a self-fulfilling prophesy, especially when you're talking with 19-20 year-olds. When you have a great product you need to talk about how the company will be run. Oftentimes founders are better off as a chief product officer but they want to be CEO and things can fall if a founder leaves. Quincy: Acquiring companies tend to be slower growers, good at telling people how you need to scale back but not necessarily how to manage strong growth. Accept that acquirers may make mistakes also, speak up. Have to "get real" with each other.

Staci: CNET's been expanding, Zander has been investing, how do you move forward? Zander: Have expanded into games, TV.com, MP3 less so, vibrant properties in Tech Republic, American Babies. We have to go in and sell them a culture. If you pay top dollar, you better integrate successfully. Rafat: Google's acquisition of DoubleClick? Quincy: DC needed a next-generation platform, Google overwhelmed them with salesmanship. Was an anti-Microsoft move. Esther: There are some that are appropriate to sell to Google, some not. The culture match is not always good. Jason: Sometimes Google overpays wildly, hard to turn down.

Question: Esther, how would you now position relationships versus content value, what would you recommend or suggest entrepreneurs for revenue models for social media? Esther: Good advice never means much until you try to apply it. Board members can give specific advice. Try to keep them loyal. Ad models, Flickr has subscriptions, mobile charges for deeper content, selling marketing collateral such as T-shirts. Be creative. Rafat: Can you build a widget company to scale? Mike: Yes, distributors will embrace widget companies, ultimately it will be how experiences are monetized, if you have a small company with a great application come to MySpace, figure out how to get distribution, hard to build traffic on your own. Do whatever you can to partner with distributors. Difficult to hold on to it all yourself. Partners like MySpace will think about the user, that's why they've done so well.

Question: What would you be buying today? What genre? Quincy: Looking at buying reach, consumers control more of the content. We don't compete with Fox, competing with LonelyGirl who uploads her content everywhere. Look for CBS to get into the game like Fox and NBC with deals that help them to make a statement sooner rather than later. Also care about new content, arrogant to say that regurgitated TV shows are going to work. User-generated content can be hilarious, new content and reach is key. Mike: Video applications, ways to do things with video, bullish on video's future on Internet, different kinds of applications. International will be important also, new audiences and new kinds of content for new regions, in many cases mobile is stronger in overseas markets. PhotoBucket guy stands up, we made up with Shawn, it was miscommunication, didn't understand monetization on MySpace.

Question: eBay/Skype deal? Jason: Could be some potential but it seems to be sitting there. Rafat: How long can Facebook hang on? Quincy: A CMO's dream, profiles get bigger, develop stickiness. On Skype, always have to buy from a position of strength, eBay core business proposition had been hacked, I give acquisitions 3-5 years, still have core team, still evangelical, audience user base is growing. On FaceBook, users don't always incorporate a lot of professional media. Over-50s need to take notice. Esther: A few years ago everyone was talking about ideas, now it seems that everyone's destiny is to be sold. Jason: Don't know that FaceBook doesn't want to sell, may be that just the price isn't right.

Question: Have some of these companies taken too much from you? Mike: Yes. Over-200 valuations vs. IPOs. The best part of a MySpace deal is that they didn't have to tell Wall Street what's happening every quarter. We've had conversations where 50 million wasn't enough to cash out. VCs they deal with take the long view, try to work rationally. Rafat: If MySpace had been under MTV umbrella, what would they have done? Jason: They'd have to invest in it. NewsCorp did a yeoman's job of investing in infrastructure and supporting the management team. It's a model for other media companies to watch. You help but you get out of the way.

Question: Google acquisition of Blogger and Dodgeball versus Yahoo with Flickr? Staci: People who leave Google are disappointed in how they were treated, that could leave baggage. Jason: Google makes mistakes just like anyone else. They just happen to have a halo over them. Mike: Yahoo and AOL don't get enough credit for their acquisitions. Esther: Yahoo has the best record of keeping the management. Ex-Googler (ex-Pyra labs, aka Blogger) - they had never acquired a company before, took a while to get their sea legs and to get the right support. Dodgeball guys were in NYC, DoubleClick in NYC also but now has more center of gravity. Some acquisitions go well, looking now at people who are going to lead a product in Google. Jason: should never underestimate how important culture is. You're used to doing what you want to do versus being in a Google where you're not employee 100. Esther: Sometimes the best place for M&A people to come with is from HR.

Labels: econSM, events

Moderators: Staci Kramer, Rafat Ali

Panelists:
Peter Adderton, Founder and CEO, Amp'd Mobile
Maro Boerries, Senior Vice President, Connected Life, Yahoo!
Shawn Conahan, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Intercasting
Larry Shapiro, Executive Vice President, Walt Disney Internet Group
Jason
[NOTE: There's a lot of noise in a change of venue room, will do my best...]
Staci: What are you doing in social media? Larry: Trying to get more activity from users on our sites, as applied to mobile, looking at how it translates. We look at mobile as a part of a connected network, part of the same handheld ecosystem. ???: Sweet spot is where entertainment intersects with personalization and peer-to-peer, working on fantasy sports, can control entire lineup on mobile phone, can compete with friends, interacting with other people. Next frontier is intersection of mobile and Web, social networking and user-generated content. Has to be very different. Shawn: See massive opportunity on Web, social media is a construct, they all do the same thing, to provide a full-breadth approach you have to act as an aggregator. Marco: Mobile is going to be the platform for most of our social media interactions, all about new forms of sharing communications, mobile phone is with us all the time, helping people to aggregate their social networks. Peter: This is about how to make money about social media, and in the process you may lose what social media is all about, exclusive deals may stifle that, even if you think that it's going to make you money. Marco: I am not so sure about that. Shawn: Only new thing we're talking about is that consumers can communicate with other consumers, this is not a new thing. In 1999-2000 when phones were black and white, we thought about what we can do to make this a fun experience. Tried viral chain early on, network was overwhelmed, just made it cooler by letting people know who was sending the message.

Staci: How do you overcome the carriers? Shawn: When network operators shifted model from voice to mobile services they had to redefine their competitive matrix. People are now communicating through their MySpace friends' list. Peter: If you're relying on Sprint and Cingular to tap into users you're wasting your time, carriers are a few years away from working out relationships with social media sites. Shawn: Web is a well devised space, have cut and paste, mobile is far behind. You can provide integration for wireless network partners. Larry: Happy medium is value-add services. Peter: It's not about the user experience for carriers, it's all about money. Marco: Mobile carriers realize that if they cannot create valuable user experiences they're going to find another service that does. People want to see the latest photos from Flickr, that is consumer value. Some areas where Yahoo competes with Verizon.

Rafat: Why should a consumer care how much a carrier has invested in content? What's the value long-term of an exclusive deal? Missing link is an advertising model that works for mobile. Cross platforms applications are going to be very interesting. Question: Apple phone will have a full browser, how will that impact mobile products? Marco: It's all about the best user experience in the long term. Peter: Nobody cares whose network you're on, our job is to enable consumers to use the technology.

Sorry that I didn't get more of this one, had some distractions.

Labels: econSM, events

Moderator: Staci D. Kramer, Executive Editor, paidContent.org

Panelists:
Ilene Chaiken, Executive Producer, The L Word/CEO, OurChart.com
Alan Citron, General Manager, TMZ.com
Carson Daly, Host, Last Call with Carson Daly
David Eun, Vice President, Content Partnerships, Google
George Klavikoff, Chief Digital Officer, NBC Universal

Staci: Is social media like the little black dress in the closet, something that you have to have but you really don't use it? George: What we're about to do is to engage all our fans in what the content has to look like. David: What I'd like to see more is YouTube as a place where communities can form, a community of users worldwide upload responses on YouTube, needs to be more of that. Carson: Great interest in social media, back in 1998 hosted request live, hour of programming chosen by viewers, social media issues are quite important. Site soliciting content to incentivize users. Work also for Demand Media, relaunching DotTV. Alan: Main value of social media is creating value around stories that have most heat. We make it easy for them, doing a good job now and exploring new technologies. Ilene: OurChart.com inspired by character who did this on TV show, for engaged fans and users who congregated around their show, kind of a lesbian MySpace. L-Word has unusually engaged fan base, fans invited to write some episodes.

Staci: NBC has been having producers blog, but shows still die. How useful is social media? George: Very useful, helps to create communities around affinity brands, a piece in a puzzle to get ratings. (COMMENT: When are we going to get to the point when we see TV shows appearing at a sponsor's site rather than just at the media company's own portal? If advertisers want engagement it would seem to make sense. Kind of like Texaco Star Theatre at the Texaco portal) Alan: Now a predictable pattern, story that's exclusive gets posted and immediately the feedback comes in. Responses come in by the hundreds of thousands in forums, similar in comments, but the other part is that while this is happening at their site it ricochets out across the whole Web.

Staci: How can you tell when someone's sharing your video? Alan: A lot of people ask permission and tracking can show. Staci: How does the Chart spin out? Ilene: We have a chart, every one can create a profile on the chart, can go through profiles or go to the chart and get a representation of a primary user (like a Inxight star tree but more interactive). Up just a couple of months, have about 60,000 profiles. Staci: Does every show need a social network? Ilene: No, there aren't a lot of lesbian portals, it was a natural place for it on our site. Staci: Carson, how do you use social media? Carson: We're the caboose to the Conan O'Brien show, have to do everything that we can to engage the audience, invite the community to talk amongst themselves, engage with music.

Staci: YouTube says there's a huge promotional value for videos shown in their brand, does that really work? David: Have created branded channels in YouTube, something that appears bad on the surface could turn out to be good. Staci: NBA content wasn't embeddable, how do you get content partners to understand the value of embedding? David: It's early days, everything about the way that businesses are structured for rights and clearances can make simple things very difficult. We need to work with content partners to create more upside with limited downside. The industry doesn't necessarily reward the first-comers but you definitely don't want to be the last one in. Question: Is there any value to taking people who are popular in social media and putting them in a show? George: We see social media as a great talent system. Every time we make a bet on a television show it costs millions of dollars, any advantage is useful. A study showed that paying attention to how often shows are mentioned and how often positively, it correlates with ratings rankings and you can see it before the show is even launched. Need to use the wisdom of the masses to guide what they do. Staci: Ilene? Still evolutionary, a lot of users ask to be on the show, looking at using more user-generated content to see how it can fit and commissioning content, looking to see if something they're doing in a small venue could wind up being in a network TV show. Will get a better hearing when the show goes to an executive's office. Question: YouTube is a big platform, but there's nichification, Will Smith's site, are the platforms the way to go or is it about niche communities? David: Everyone talks about the long tail, what they forget about is the middle part, the "torso," niche producers who can afford to mine specific audiences, working with producers in the torso to feature their content, but don't want to lock any one in, use YouTube as a fantastic platform but use everyone else in the meantime, then use tools to measure success on YouTube. We're doubling down on the torso (COMMENT: Process of attraction by success. Familiar Google model) There's how-to stuff, serious stuff, too, but entertainment is also very important. George and I talk all the time, but we're not dependent on any one kind of content.

Rafat: You book a lot of MySpace bands, how does the conversation go with your producers? Carson: There's some pressure from above, but for a show that's on as late as we are we can focus on emerging bands. In the days of Johnny Carson your "shot" on his show was your chance, MySpace helps bands to build their own career. We try to find the ones who are right on the cusp of breaking and give them a shot. It's mostly Carson's tastes, small staff, scrappy, soldiers in the street, find out who's hot on the streets but also book bands right off the Internet. David: It's very early, second trial of syndicating content from major with embedded ads, potentially syndicated to AdSense network, experimenting with how long an ad should be, tend not to favor long pre-rolls, but lots of data to be gathered. George: The users will tell us that it's too long or too short. We chapter each show, have found a mix with pre-rolls where 70 to 80 percent stick through all five chapters. Question: Is the internet now seen as a stepping stone to get a TV deal? Does the Internet stand on its own? Carson: Thinking of Rosie O'Donnell, I'd look at the Internet as the priority platform moving forward and look at TV secondarily. Ilene: Talent and representation is always behind the curve. Getting representation to allow their talent to do something innovative is always the problem. Alan: An Imus could go anywhere now. Staci: Changes the dynamics when youlve have options. Carson: It's only been in recent months that networks are beginning to understand that they need a flow of original talent.

Question: Once users understand model how do you share revenues? David: 15 seconds of fame is attractive but hard to figure out how it happens. When we think about monetization we know where the traffic is coming from and its from the users. Corporate sites with video programming? George: speaking with some, looking at muscle cars, working with sponsor to create a destination, being underwritten by a marketer, not a car marketer. Made investment in company selling vertical networks, will assume that we'll be successful to attract people to their own site but will ensure that they can still work with other sites for their marketers.

Labels: econSM, events

Moderator: Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Producer, EconSM

Panelists:
Simon Assad, Co-Founder and CEO, Heavy.com
John Battelle, Chairman, Federated Media
Shawn Gold, Senior Vice President, MySpace
Tina Sharkey, Chairman, BabyCenter
Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo/CIO, Publicis Media Group

Jimmy: Comment from mixer last night - the key is to understand when the ad is most desirable. When I hear people talk about marketing they oftentimes are really talking about advertising, not the full range of marketing. What is really going on?

Simon: Have been selling ads for ten years and it has helped us to get out of the gate but marketing is the discipline to create a conversation between two parties that is useful to both. Banners and search are the old world, marketing is about creating the conversations and bring together two people really interested in having a conversation.

Jimmy: The online promise was that we'd be able to track things on a very granular level, hasn't quite turned out that way, John, why can't we measure anything? John: One reason is that we haven't tried, much as the banner ad that made its debut on HotWired in 1994 we're still looking at panel-based measurement, but it doesn't work for niche audiences unless you make fractal-like numbers of panels. Nielsen and ComScore responded aggressively to say that they're going to figure it out, but as we get into conversational marketing what we're measuring is going to change. We're addicted to a certain number of metrics, how do you measure a lifetime value of a customer against a spend at a specific site like heavy.com, don't have the standards much less the conversations that get us to those standards, but we're moving towards it. Jimmy: what's the barrier? John: Time, we're twenty people, takes a lot of time, can't put an algorithm out there and everybody gets it as with AdSense, conversations aren't easy to code into an algorithm.

Jimmy: Quote from MySpace "If you live in a dorm room everything is yours, if the internet were your room it would be MySpace." How do you market differently to people if you think that you're doing it on their turf? Shawn: Have to look at why people are there in the first place and catch people in stride. MySpace is there to help people to discover culture, how do you enhance that value proposition? Talks to advertisers, have to create a subnetwork that is relevant to your value proposition, have to create recognition, brands have the ability to provide access, can offer access to events, discovery, knowledge. There are simple sociological guidelines for social networks. Simple program provided simple contact tables, send a message, personalized, early on was fairly innovative, about 76,000 people used them, not huge but impressions were 2.6 million, helped people to express themselves and to tap into their value proposition.

Jimmy: Because of new distribution methods the release of a film was no longer THE marketing event but an event that begins an extended marketing campaign. How do you adapt? Tina: Must-see TV on Thursdays will never be seen again in our lifetime, the aftermarket is key. Ecosystems are the focus, you have to become part of people's personal capital. People say the music industry's dead, but it's about what friends spin instead of what DJs spin, so those 76,000 people aren't many but their network is of millions, so once in their ecosystem you need to leverage their conversation.

Jimmy: Are there ideas from mass events that social media can learn from old media? Tina: I was watching a concert on MTV, was watching an announcer talk about something backstage that he thought was cool, it was annoying, meanwhile AOL had integrated messaging and other features so that the audience became the experience.

Jimmy: Rishad, the folks that used to be in control are looking for control in an era in which there is no control. What to they do? Rishad: There's still a lot of control, no one would market it there weren't. People are self-marketing, you need to get involved in their self-marketing but you need to be cautious. If you tell people things that are mathematically untrue they'll think that they're idiots and they won't listen to you. Social media will not displace things in five or ten years for marketing, there are companies trying to sell millions of things. What are the incentives for markets and suppliers to change, it's hard work, it doesn't scale. If it won't make money you won't do it.

Jimmy: Conversation in social media always goes towards Second Life, fascinating but a world that's mostly empty except for marketers. What's your experience as a marketer with virtual world? Shawn: unripe and inefficient for marketers, if you look at MySpace and other big social networks audience comes back multiple times a day, Second Life requires a much larger committment, ability to distribute information is very inefficient. John: Was a "Deadhead," went to The Well, there is an incredibly devoted group but it doesn't have the scale to truly pay back that marketers are putting into it. Tina: When we look at Korea we're very engages, multi-generational, think about a marketer from that perspective, very different than it is here.

Jimmy: The Well was so successful because it was really immersive, what sort of immersiveness do marketers need now, does it need to be an amazing looking thing like Second Life? Rishad: In Korea we're very bullish about cyberworlds, in US it's more oriented towards gaming, we monitors Second Life, but we recommend most marketers to stay away. Why do you want it, for a press releases? 90 Percent of SL is for press releases, how is this going to help you sell things and make money? (Scattered Applause) Question: B2B vs. B2C and Ad-generated revenue vs. user-generated revenue (subscription). How are the dynamics different. Simon: Traditional cable companies are set up exceptionally well to sell subscription services, have to buy utility service plus options. Internet isn't that way, for now. John: For now. Simon: Yes, it may become a very different world but right now it's not there. Subscription would be hard to make work where there are millions of options, porn is about the most successful example, ads are not going to solve everyone's problem, every week you hear about one more site or one more model, traditional advertising only grows about 4-5 percent a year, selling stuff is going to grow, advertising is going to be the only real revenue model, and there are a lot of them so you better have a good model. Shawn: On the B2B side, just different application, in the late 90's the "exchange" was a model, that's going to come back. John: Check out GlobalSpec, back end of scientific content, extraordinary, didn't take 50 million in VC to build it. Shawn: There will be technology that will allow you to assess a page, in some sense marketers are concerned about a backlash, it's about what messages you put in the network, so if you're WalMart and promoting greenifying America is doesn't matter if you're against something personal, the value is in the brands that you put in the network. John: Advertisers are afraid of conversations, they're afraid of people thinking about their brands, they get feedback in social media, have to turn this into judo, have to approach marketing from a different point of view, change the structure of how agencies go about their job. Rishad: Marketing is about listening to your consumers, ask them questions, Nike campaign had users send photos to judges, people liked having editing, Zbrand said we're living in a world of crapocopia, bands can eliminate crap.

Question: User strength and power, there are some you want to market to more to promote viral activity, how to you target those types of people? Tina: If you're really committed to social media, you can identify the influentials and send them back out. Can be leaders in the community and spokespeople. Question: The assumption is that individuals control their brands, but what happens when people are talking about their own brands on their own blogs, all of these things are happening away from their control. John: The Cluetrain Manifesto crystallized that markets and brands are conversations, you are the chief conversationalist for your own brands and to guide them, GM posted a blog entry about the do-it-yourself ads that drew some critical ads, but it also drew a lot of positive responses. Shepherding a brand was different before efforts such as this.

Jimmy: Question from social network, egg model, social media on your site, or chicken model, an existing site. Any egg could be the next chicken. Where do you start, a big site or a little site? Rishad: It could be the chicken an egg an ostrich, but please recognize that marketers in America are not stupid, they are not scared, they are not stupid, but they want to embrace a space. The brand does matter, GM incident looks like a mistake, people get bitter, bitterness doesn't attract money. Question: Blend of social media, combined TV, print, banner and community all tied in together, we're seeing that it's very successful. Shawn: You can advertise on home page and reach 30 million people, the marketing mix can be orchestrated, but the mix can take place entirely in social media if they have enough scale. Tina: Social media can become the source material for advertising, winners of contest got to go to Oscars, yet the source was social media. Social media is not one way to do it, prime time isn't dead it's not the only thing that matters. Audences have to be engaged at every point but let them be a part of the brand experience. Question: Is posting and contribution what it's all about, most are consumers, where is the medium going, are more people going to be participating or are they just going to continue to be consumers. Shawn: We choose our friends by our ability to amuse them, that's not going to change any time soon. If they tend to think that we're funny or attractive we stick with them. Content today is so sharable, used to be a cigarette was social currency, now it's social media. John: Surprised that NBC didn't release whole package from VTech killer on Web, social media could chew through it and make sense. White House would try to bury documents but bloggers went through it and found juicy bits for media outlets. Question: Thinking about TV marketing dialogue? Simon: Promise of interactivity has been there for years, broadband will drive the dialog before TV will drive it, kids are using YouTube as their entire entertainment system, by the time that TV figures it out it will be too late. Question: In Hollywood we've stumbled in creating dialogue into revenues, Snakes on a Plane died as a film release in spite of huge online buzz. Awareness might be high but it doesn't necessarily drive consumption. Can dialog move consumption? Simon: there's a fair amount of dialog around TV, 1.3 billion streams on YouTube, we're going to be developing a lot of tools for situations that we just don't know about. Shawn: XMen movie, was an enormous amount of people who found out about the movie on MySpace, 15 percent went to movie because of it, 50 percent became aware of it, AND about half were female. John: SOAP should have been done in DVD and released in 20 theatres.

COMMENT: John hit the nail on the head, social media is an inverted marketing model that allows things to be monetized in small ways, with mass monetization a secondary step. This is contrary to most people's thoughts about mass marketing today, but it's where it's going -and it's where product development will be going as a result. There's a much broader economic cycle that will be coming into play.

Labels: econSM, events

Moderator: Rafat Ali, Editor, paidContent.org and MocoNews.net

Panelists:
Barak Berkowitz, CEO and Chairman, SixApart
Michael Birch, Co-Founder and CEO, Bebo.com
Tariq Krim, Co-CEO and Founder, NetVibes
Richard Rosenblatt, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Demand Media
Herb Scanelli, CEO, Next New Networks

As I am waiting for the panel to sit down, I have to reflect on the scale of this event. paidContent.org is dissed sometimes as being a lightweight in a field of heavies, yet it's ability to build a cross-sector nation of people interested in the future of content is impressive. Core online heavyweights, mobile, entertainment, news, B2B - all have a finger in this event.

Rafat's intro: Primarily focused event on entertainment and media, trying to have it as "social" as possible, will run it as a talk show, will jump into audience after a while.

Rafat: How do you see yourself in social media?

Barak: See social media as a broad horizontal application, everybody will have places where they can express themselves via social media technology.

Michael: Entered market in July 2005, late in this space, in this time became 3rd largest social network in US, bigger in UK and New Zealand, cross between Facebook and MySpace.

Tariq: Founded in 2005, personalization and the ability to discover content is crucial to the online economy.

Richard: Interested in passionate verticals, bought a number of companies towards that goal. First company allowed merchants to build their own stores, spent years trying to empower users to create their own media.

Herb: Broadcasting is about broad audiences, cable more niche, social media even finer communities

Rafat: How to build a brand? Herb: provides navigation for users and surety for advertisers, but brands have to go where the users are. We want to go where the audience is, brand building a combination of making stuff that people love and having people who count in a community and distributing content the way that they want it. TV hasn't had hit since Friends, hits aren't going to happen any more, brands will happen amongst people connected via a passion. These will be the new verticals.

Rafat: What's required for scale? Richard: Bebo used to be just a startup, now the 3rd largest network. For some people who are passionate about verticals you don't want to invite people to an empty party. Buy properties build community around them (COMMENT: pretty much the standard game plan for publishing, nothing new).

Rafat: Built a hot company in France, how difficult is it to build one in Europe? Tariq: Difficult to go from an idea to a product, telcos will stifle any pure plays that upset their position, diversity of languages, required localization to build community. Now we're localized for any country in the world. Europe is a broadband arena, video is huge and the quality is excellent. Rafat: success in terms of audience only? How to make money? Tariq: The Web page as we know it will disappear, NetVibes provides interface where a user can do anything. (COMMENT: publishers are just catching up with the Web as a whole, monetizing widgets is the new frontier and few are ready). Widgets can be monetized but value proposition requires widget to respond to exactly what you want, service will be key.

Rafat: Michael, British-based with US presence, how do you manage that? Around less than two years as a social network, only in key English-speaking markets, can generate greater ad revenue in UK, but a smaller population. The US is a very key market to us, growing as quickly as in any other market. When we launched UK is typically behind US but launched as a mature product, took off in US in pockets, within certain markets Bebo dominates, CA is not a strong market, but succeeding overall. Spent a long time catching up, reached that stage only recently.

Rafat: Barak, you started out as a blogging tool, typically social media company launches with service and then makes a platform available, you did it the other way around, where's the most platform? Barak: In both, TypePad for people who want a low barrier to entry, some very large media blogs on TypePad, LiveJournal youth-oriented, Vox aimed at older community. We make money depending on who's the customer and what they want to do. Focus on giving customer a great experience and apply that knowledge more broadly. Rafat: Are you happy with how it is going, how do blogging tools improve? Barak: Be able to handle more media, become faster, easier to use, not the end of these tools, becoming more critical tools, email not disappearing, blogging tools are in their infancy.

Rafat: Richard, how do you see state of tools for blogging and other media? Richard: Netvibes will address where the user collects it all, users have three or four different profiles around the Web, how do you pull it all together (COMMENT: personal aggregation - The New Aggregation model was ahead of itself...:-) ). One location makes it easier to provide a personal presence online? Rafat: Can you build a company now based on the idea that you can be better than MySpace? Michael: YouTube wouldn't have succeede without being so successful on MySpace, but now its success can allow it to continue on its own. We allow widget companies to invent with us but we ask for a revenue share, Bebo drives as much traffic to YouTube as MySpace. Herb: Part of the mix of how you become a larger entity over time. Richard: Major social networks look at each page as a place to build ad revenues, if you're building your business off of APIs you need to avoid PhotoBucket example of being turned off by a partner. Tariq: Web pages aren't going to disappear altogether, we're looking at how to build a business model over multiple distribution methods, APIs and syndication is becoming the new distribution model (??) will become key for social media. We are going to see more widgets and people will distribute widgets to their friends.

Staci: We always have something online, what happens when we want to go offline? Barak: We don't build our products with the assumption that people are always connected, our interpretation is that information is that urgent to get in IM and email is not always the most precious information, the things that you care about most is not always urgent but important far beyond emails and phone calls, making content permanent and storable when people care about it is key. Can well be years after it was put up. People see the power of the Web as a place to store their life, meaning is in the content that can be stored. Staci: my power was out for a week, can't take streaming video on a plane, does that matter? Tariq: Social media tools are about connecting, in Europe it's a bit different, mobile is a key device, offline you still have your mobile, being offline and doing nothing is a good thing as well.

Keith, Edgio: revenues morph, Doubleclick won the first phase, phase two was about monetizing the exit, AdSense, can you get paid for people leaving your portal, now it seems as if social media has not found its model. Is there something to be learned from newspapers, social media and the like, they make money from their readers from classifieds, can you make money from readers making comments on one another? Michael: many SM companies are not focused on revenues, more on scale, clearly a good model about classifieds, we have many ideas beyond classifieds, at absolute infancy. Richard: Why are people at that social network, are they passionate aobut he group or about meeting people in that group. Bought trails.com, whether they're there to meet people is more of a by-product. Herb: also important to reach the trend-setters. Barak: also important to identify that it's important to have a conversation (COMMENT: THAT's what I am talking about - it's not about the monologue, advertisers need to learn how to maintain a dialogue). Estelle: Are you still planning to have your own ad sales forces? How do you maintain ad inventory? Tariq: Moving to a stage where we're monetizing attention more than audience. So many choices, which service am I going to be using, metrics are different based on desire to interact, have to pay attention that advertising is not always relevent anymore, need to provide a service to build a relationship, when you see AdWords you have a low value, the service needs to learn about you and adapt. Have been approached by large brands to ask how to succeed online when people aren't going to Web sites anymore. Michael: You reach a tipping point that makes sense to bring it in-house with a team that really understands your own product and can pitch the benefits. Becomes a two-way conversation, challenge is to sell large page inventory at huge CPM. Did a campaign with Skittles, listed skins that people can use to decorate Bebo, got views of skins on other people's profiles, users promote (COMMENT: Have to leverage the value of personal endorsement). Barak, the close relationships come from our direct sales team. Herb: The best people to tell your story are your own people.

Rafat: When you're building a new brand without an audience, what do you tell them? Herb: you tell a story nevertheless. Tad Smith: NewsCorp has made hay with MySpace acquisition, how would an independent MySpace be different? MySpace was at an interesting point in its development, different capitalization structure, small public company, had we not sold to NewsCorp we would have not had the capital for infrastructure. Sounds contrarian but it's probably bigger as a result. Would we have blocked widgets? Don't know, don't know that we would have done any thing differently. Today it's much easier to raise capital. Most media companies said no, it was way expensive, "a bunch of teens posting photos," others could survive on their own but investors need the stomach to understand how to monetize social media.

Rafat: You were on the team that was on the team that was trying to buy MySpace - Jason - You are so dead now. The future is about creating a platform for your audience to tell their story, Rupert was more aggressive, paid off way bigger than they thought it would pay off, would I overpay for a platform like Bebo? Probably yes, especially if it wasn't my own money. Question: users voluntarily aligning with brand, what should the standards be? Michael: Example was lead by sales team not bizdev team, people are used to pricing things on a CPM basis, pricing models needed to be invented, had to measure how people viewed skin, looking at profiles. Try to demonstrate effectiveness, metrics seem to underpin that but need more than banners on a CPM basis. Sometimes the parts difficult to sell are thrown in with CPM sales.

Question: How do you make a universal ID portable across message board sites, etc? Richard: starts with your own domain, some of the things that we focus on are one platform that provides a portable profile that allows you to jump from one site to another but that lets you change your profile on each different site, go to the golf site and people see you as the golf pro, as a runner on the running site. But outside of those sites you will need some sort of universal login, but if the user is in control of their own media you need to allow for this. Every publisher will have an opportunity to get paid for what they do, details to follow. Barak: Working with AOL on a way to authenticate across the Web (OpenID), always relates to your core domain, very simple model.

Question: Monetization around profiles are the examples, is that the key to revenues or is it in the portal model of driving people into advertising? FaceBook moving into NBA brackets, etc. Tariq: We first ask a user for personalization information so that they can tailor information, we keep what we like and eliminate what you don't like, trying to figure out where the attention is going, both are interesting model. Rafat: Yahoo is going similar things. Tariq: We are independent and neutral, connecting with everyone, not our job to say that you should use Gmail or anything else, the more that they use the widgets the more that they interact with a site, this is absolutely what's going to drive monetization. If I am happy with a widget I am going to send it to a friend. Question: We produce video, vision is interesting but you are betting on a different strategy, could three of you be wrong and being setting up a level of expectations that are too high? In the greater Web Google and Yahoo printing money, is there way too much expectation to live up to for investors? Richard: not so much us hyping social media as everyone else, three years ago DoubleClick was dead, now find, Amazon was dead, just had a blowout quarter. But we need to show more real data, started with one site that was in bankruptcy, had thousands of articles, used it to test thousands of micro-communities, traffic grew 10-15 percent on the site just by adding community. Google lists the articles and the community grows around it. Hopefully we go beyond the hype to true results.

Labels: econSM, events