Qumana Blog

One More Step ...

jonh — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:51:50 -0700

Via the Globe and Mail ...

Amazon store to sell music free of copy protection
Reuters
May 16, 2007

NEW YORK — Amazon.com Inc. said Wednesday the company will launch a digital music store later in 2007 with millions of songs, free of copy protection technology that limits where consumers can play their music.

The Seattle-based company said music company EMI Group Plc , home to artists ranging from Coldplay to Norah Jones to Joss Stone to Pink Floyd, has licensed its digital catalog to Amazon, the second such deal in a month.

“Our MP3-only strategy means all the music that customers buy on Amazon is always DRM-free and plays on any device,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO.

Digital Rights Management, or DRM, has been demanded by the music industry to contain piracy by preventing users from making multiple copies; but its critics say it restricts consumers and therefore hinders the growth of legal music uses.

Early last month, EMI said it would make its music available online without a key anti-piracy measure, becoming the first major music group to take the risk in a bid to grow digital sales.

With all music companies struggling from a drop in the sale of physical albums, EMI, announced its first deal with Apple Inc. and the iTunes online music store in April.

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How to Win Friends And Influence People

fred — Tue, 01 May 2007 12:49:58 -0700

One indication of popularity of a band or music artist these days is how many friends they have on MySpace and how many times their music is played and commented upon. I recently came across a service that now helps you get those new friends. Contrary to the advice given in the classic Dale Carnegie book mentioned above, some new enterprising service provider, mysocialMarketing.com, now offers you a way to buy them. A package of 3000 to 6000 new friends is available for the unbelievably low price of US $149, a saving of $150 off the regular price. 10,000 profile views and song plays can also be purchased for an additional $299.

Here is one of their pitches:

"It's quickly becoming common knowledge that many major labels will not consider a band on MySpace unless they have at least 25'000 profile views!
Don't miss out on that opportunity simply because of a technicality.Ok, time to level the playing field! We'll now send unique people to your profile to rank up your views and song plays lightning fast."

I am seriously reluctant to advertise them, but at the same time these types of services need to be exposed. This is really bad for social networking.

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Internet Advertising in Canada reaches $1 Billion

fred — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:48:16 -0700

The Globe and Mail reported today that online advertising in Canada broke the $1-billion mark for the first time in 2006, and is expected to grow another 32 per cent this year, according to a study to be released today.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada, which represents advertisers, agencies and websites, said online advertising spending totalled $1.01-billion in 2006, up 80 per cent from $562-million in 2005. From a booklet available at their website, the Canadian Media Directors council puts all ad spending (2005) at 11.7 billion. A guesstimate total for 2006 would be around $12B or so, online advertising represents about 8.3% of the total.

Spending on online classifieds and directories showed the fastest growth, up 120 per cent to $273-million in 2006, according to the IAB. E-mail marketing grew 82 per cent to $20-million; search marketing grew 79 per cent to $353-million. And display advertising - the most mature online ad medium - grew 58 per cent to $364-million.

While a healthy Canadian economy has seen marketing budgets increase across the board, Internet advertising continues to show the greatest gains. Those findings are confirmed in a separate survey also being released today by the Institute of Communications and Advertising and Canada Post.

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How To Get PR In A Web 2.0 World

fred — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 11:20:39 -0700

I remember a time not that long ago when if you wanted something written about you in the media, a campaign had to be organized. Usually you would hire a PR firm, put together a press kit and a roadshow, arrange appointments with who you felt were the influential writers in your domain and organize a big push to meet them all. A lot of work AND money.

Today, it's a little imagination, some video editing software, and in this case Google Earth and YouTube. In a campaign against forest giant West Fraser Timber, ForestEthics has produced a video that features a fly-over of logging in B.C. and Alberta forests created from satellite images downloaded from Google. The logged-over areas are juxtaposed with images of caribou, wolves and grizzly bears. The video details what the eco-group claims is clearcut logging in endangered mountain caribou habitat.

Whether you agree or not with the politics, you have to admire the creativity of the ForestEthics group. This slick video was quickly picked up by the media and is sure to create some very high level awareness of the issues the are promoting.

Here is how they did it. PR has clearly changed!

"YouTube is frequented from everyone to teenagers after school to reporters to customers who can now all see for themselves what West Fraser's logging practices look like," ForestEthics campaigner Tzeporah Berman said Monday. "Our staff made this video sitting at their desks in Vancouver. We were able to do a fly-over of West Fraser's logging operations using Google. We have never been able to do this so quickly before."

Berman, a veteran eco-campaigner, said that the new technology can have the kind of impact within minutes that it used to take months to achieve.

"It would take us months to gather the footage. I can remember flying to meet customers in Europe with a videotape in hand that I would then put into their machines to show them. What we are doing today is fast, it's immediate, it's fool-proof and it has a huge reach."

Very cool!

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Mining For Gold in the 21st Century

fred — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 12:07:22 -0700

A comment from Dave Winer's Scripting News:

"User-generated content is actually on the road to nirvana, but it's not a sustainable model in itself. In all that content, which today's companies view as frankfurter meat, undifferentiated slurry, a medium for unwanted hitch-hikers, is the idea for the next iPod, or the formula for peace in the Middle East, the campaign platform for the President we'll elect in 2012, perhaps even a solution for global warming. You just have to believe that intelligence isn't concentrated among the people who rose to the top of the 20th century's ladders to believe that there are nuggets of wisdom waiting out there for the taking, among the minds that created all that UGC."

I have to agree. Buried in the massive growth of user-generated content is nuggets of gold and pearls of wisdom beyond on imagination. Our challenge in the upcoming years will be to find ways to more quickly bring this information forward to people who can use it. Sadly, it's not easy.

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The Music Industry

fred — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:47:25 -0700

One of my favorite blogs to read at the moment is the Lefsetz Letter. Bob Lefsetz is one of those entertaining irreverent writers that takes daily shots at the music industry. His post today is "The World Is Flat" and gives us a very nice concise analysis of the current state of the music world. It is definitely worth reading and digesting. Why? What's happening in the music world is happening in a lot of other industries as well. Pay attention!

Quote:

It’s a changed world. And the world will keep changing. If the old players don’t get up to speed it’s not the worst problem, new entrepreneurs will find a way to create a new business. But the old players are a drag on the system, they’re lumbering giants inhibiting legitimate progress.

The days of dictation are done. The labels and their MTV and terrestrial radio cohorts are no longer all-powerful. If a record sucks, people won’t buy it. They know that it sucks from Web word of mouth, from hearing the tunes online, DOWNLOADING THEM BEFORE THEY’RE FOR SALE! The solution is not to try to inhibit the exchange of information, but to deliver higher quality product that the audience raves about as opposed to decries. Oh, it’s tougher. Then again, it’s tougher being IBM in a changed world.

Update: Bob added another installment on the same theme today, "Where Are We Now"

Quote:

I believe the overall music business pie, the total revenue achieved, can be greater than it’s ever been, if the acquisition of music online is paid for instead of slipping through the fingers of an industry that only wants to sell songs a particular way. Shouldn’t be tough to get everybody to be a music customer, if the buy-in price is low enough, if they can sample and acquire a mass for a reasonable fee. But is everybody going to buy the same limited amount of product? Absolutely not!

We’re living in the era of niche. Broadcasting is dead. Just ask NBC, which reported its worst prime time ratings EVER! People can now get what they want, exactly what they want, and they tune out everything else. So, if you’re trying to assemble a mass, you’re screwed. Hell, just look at the SoundScan numbers. What, there’s one platinum release this year (Norah Jones)?

The major label model is history, except for the few superstars left. Everybody else is going to have to slug it out in the trenches.

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That's A LOT OF MONEY For A Collaboration-Oriented Web Service

jonh — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 08:40:11 -0700

I think Cisco believes that the world of work will change a lot more than it already has over the years since the dot.com bust.

I also remember a few years back learning that Cisco was involved (in alliance with Electronic Arts, I believe .. I'd have to go back to the source, a book titled Work 2.0) in some quiet research about the use of video game principles and techniques in workplace application. I was doing the research because I was trying to convince one of my then clients that the video-game idiom would be found in more and more workplace productivity and learning applications in about ten years (that was five years ago).

Anyway .. Cisco just forked out a lot of moolah for a web service that helps people conduct meetings online .... a really lot of moolah, $3.2 billion !

Via AP and the New York Times:

Cisco to Pay $3.2 Billion for WebEx
March 15, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Cisco Systems Inc. said Thursday that it has agreed to acquire the online meeting company WebEx Communications Inc. for about $3.2 billion in cash.

Cisco, the leading maker of routers and switches that direct data over computer networks, said it will pay $57 per share of WebEx. That represents a 23 percent premium over WebEx's closing price of $46.20 Wednesday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Shares of WebEx soared $10.53, or more than 22 percent, to $56.73 in early trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. Cisco shares lost 6 cents to $25.79 on the same exchange.

Cisco said the acquisition has been approved by both boards and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2007. Cisco said it expects transaction to have an immaterial effect on its fiscal year 2008 earnings after one-time charges are subtracted. The total purchase price will be about $2.9 billion when factoring in WebEx's $300 million in cash on hand.

The San Jose-based company has recently made a number of acquisitions branching out from its core business of supplying networking gear and into communications, social networking and other areas that help drive traffic over the network and increase demand for its core equipment.

Tags: Cisco, EA, WebEx, networking, collaboration, the future of work

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Cory Doctorow - 2007 Leonardo Lecture at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

jonh — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:36:47 -0800

Glenn Greenwald's clear warning this morning about the infrastructure of a surveillance society ...

The Bush administration has created vast and permanent data bases to collect and store evidence revealing the private activities of millions of American citizens. When the FBI obtains information essentially in secret -- with no judicial oversight -- that information is stored in those data bases. This is all being done by the executive branch with no safeguards and no oversight, and the little oversight that Congress has required has been defiantly and publicly brushed aside by the President, who sees legal requirements as nothing more than suggestions or options which he will recognize only if he chooses to.

That is the constitutional crisis that we have endured under virtually the entire Bush presidency -- the crisis which, for the most part, our mainstream political and media elite have collectively decided not to acknowledge.

... comes on the heels of last night's Leonardo Institute's annual Leonardo Lecture, delivered by Boing-boing co-founder, cyberactivist and sci-fi writer Cory Doctorow. He delivered a bright and snappy talk (he's good .. clear, down-to-earth, understatedly yet pointedly funny and sarcastic (in an unique Canadian way , I'd say) ... he happens to be Canadian and so carries, I believe, a Canadian-ish perspective on culture in North America and the world kind of mien, if you know what I mean.

The audio recording is here ... it's worth a listen.

He drew a nicely synthesized and coherent verbal time line about the evolution of the Web, the cognitive processes we've been undergoing as we read, watch, think, write, publish, click and exchange through the Web, where ideas, concepts and creative works come from and why a fundamental revamping of copyright and digital rights issues is necessary and hasn't happened yet, and the dangers of a surveillance society ... all key aspects within or related to what I call wirearchy - organization and governance stemming from being wired and interconnected in pervasive ways in the course of many basic human activities.

Cory related an interesting story that for me distills much of the mental and cultural shaping we are undergoing / living in a world in which we are penetrated and surrounded by integrated and interconnected information technology. The well-known aphorism "First we shape our structures, then our structures shape us" also comes to mind.

He started with his love-hate relationship with Disney's Magic Kingdom (saying it was only natural that his first novel was titled Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom), and how the entry to Magic Kingdom now requires fingerprinting (though Disney takes pains to emphasize that they are only taking "an imprint of the unique characteristics of the shape of your finger" (not sure I have that as verbatim from Cory), but the point was they are not recording these characteristics for the purposes of fingerprinting. But once captured on a mass basis, these would or could be available to the users of the Total Information Awareness data bases, for example.

However, if you don't want to be fingerprinted but still go visit the Magic Kingdom, you can go and present additional identification .. in other words, be shunted over to another passport line where you are checked out a bit more. So he says he and his friends do that when they go. One time when they went, he and his friends were declining to be fingersussed, slowing down the entry line when a 10-year old kid behind them piped up something like (no verbatim) ... "Come on, it's how you get in". Cory's story made the point of how if we are not careful, if we do not watch the watchers and use our fundamental right to not agree, it all too easily becomes just part of what we do .. and it feeds the databases.

Anyway, a good talk though the issues are familiar to me. Cory knows his stuff. It's also always interesting to be in public places and listen and watch as more and more people are connecting more and more of the dots about the Intertubes and its sociological implications.

Tags: Cory Doctorow, Leonardo Lectures, Leonardo Institute, EFF, TIA, Disney, Magic Kingdom, Fingerprinting, surveillance society, wirearchy

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Hybrid Media 1.0 ?

jonh — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:16:54 -0800

The ongoing professionalization of amateurs ?

It seems like Next New Networks is raising the bar (or is it lowering the threshold) in terms of soliciting and promoting _user-generated content_.

Via the New York Times

Internet Start-Up to Take a Hybrid Media Approach
BRAD STONE
March 8, 2007

Several cable television veterans are putting their band back together and taking their act to the Internet.

Next New Networks, a New York-based Internet start-up run and backed by former executives of MTV and Nickelodeon, will announce plans today to begin a series of video-oriented Web sites — what the company calls micro-networks — on niche topics like do-it-yourself fashion, comic books, car racing and cartoons.

[Snip ...]

Next New Networks plans to blend elements of old and new media into a type of hybrid entertainment that is different from traditional television and user-generated sites like YouTube. Its various Web properties will revolve around professionally produced videos of three to eight minutes, which it plans to pitch to sponsors as safe and predictable places to advertise online.

Many of the programs will solicit contributions from their audiences, but the company will screen submissions before they approved as final product. The company plans to generate some programming itself while also identifying talented video contributors and bringing them into the Next New Networks fold.

It is starting with six Web sites, including Fast Lane Daily (fastlanedaily.com), which features a daily news program for auto enthusiasts, and ThreadBanger (threadbanger.com), which offers a five-minute weekly show with MTV-style anchors who discuss the homemade-clothing culture.

Mr. Seibert, the creative director, is bringing two existing video sites to the network: Channel Frederator (channelfrederator.com), a weekly program on animation, and VOD Cars (VODCars.com), a curated collection of video clips from the car culture.

The founders believe the Internet offers a programming opportunity similar to the early days of cable, which traditional media firms are not exploiting.

“The nature of big media companies is about incumbent brands and repurposing and refashioning their material for the Web,” said Mr. Scannell, the chief executive. “We have no incumbent brands. We’re a white sheet for creative people.”

Mr. Miller, who left America Online last October under pressure from his bosses at Time Warner, cited the founders’ cable experience as the reason he is backing the company.

“To me these guys are returning to their roots,” he said. “They are unshackled from large media environment where it is much more about what your quarterly goals are, and can go back to developing new networks and ways of communicating with audiences.”

In part, Next New Networks is also challenging the idea that the chaotic terrain of sites like YouTube and MySpace can be a friendly place for advertisers.

“Video sharing is awesome, but advertisers are knitting their brow,” Mr. Scannell said. “They want to know what they’re backing. There is a place for brands to deliver something that is consistent.”

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Blogging Brings Local Information to Your Neighbourhood, and Vice-Versa

jonh — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 14:23:44 -0800

A new service that has been developing under the radar.

It's the brainchild of Steven Berlin Johnson, author of Emergence, Mind Wide Open, The Ghost Map, Everything Bad Is Good For You

and ...

John Geraci, a well-know builder of virtual communities

A high-profile investor and lots of high-profile angels and advisers .. in the first camp Union Square (Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham) ... and in the second

We've still got a great list of angels involved as well. Marc Andreessen just wrote in out of the blue to say that he really liked the site, and to ask if he could help out with the financing. Esther Dyson, John Borthwick, George Crowley, and Richard Smith -- it's a fantastic list of people to have behind you. (Along with our other founding investors, John Seely Brown, Mark Bailey, and Andy Karsch.)

Outside.In

Neighbors are registered users of outside.in. Each neighbor has a profile page that shows a bio, photo, neighborhood, website, plus all the stories, comments, and places they’ve contributed to outside.in. (Right now it’s a little tricky to find a specific neighbor, much less communicate with them — but we’re working on it!)

Stories and Comments are the content you add to outside.in about your area. When you add them to the site, they appear on the home page of the area you specified for everyone to see, as well as on your neighbor pages.

Stories are content that comes from other sites, like blogs or newspaper websites, that you submit to the site via the submit a story link in the right column of the page. Add stories to outside.in that relate to your neighborhood and that you find interesting and want to share with your neighbors.

Comments are content that you write yourself, directly to the outside.in website. You add comments to Places, which are any location or venue in your area. Add a comment to any Place you want, either to point out something you like, or just to talk about something interesting in your neighborhood.

Places can be everything from restaurants to playgrounds to schools — or even more subjective categories (most dangerous intersection, best spot for winter sledding.) Any story or comment can be attached to a Place. The cool thing about these Place pages is that the become an archive of everything that’s been said online about a given place — comments from outside.in Neighbors, blog posts, newspaper reviews, discussion threads.

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2011 Web Ad Spending at Over $80 Billion - a 400% increase!

fred — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:47:15 -0800

Piper Jaffray's predictions for online ad spending keep going up, and are now expected to go beyond the $80 billion mark by 2011. Higher growth rates at the close of 2006 are one factor, but the research firm points to the people as the true driving force. As more consumers take the reins when it comes to controlling their media diets, and spend more time online and creating their own content, advertisers will continue to boost online budgets. Several prognostications are made in the firm's new "User Revolution" report, including the domination of video online, a Google dynasty, and the death of the portal.

In December, Piper Jaffray & Co.'s Internet ad revenue forecast for 2011 was at $78 billion, but today's report raises that estimate to $81.1 billion. "We have more confidence in the growth rates," of the Internet, said Safa Rashtchy, managing director, senior Internet analyst for the company. According to Rashtchy, when measuring Internet ad spending, the firm includes search advertising, display ads, text links, video advertising and e-mail, but excludes mobile and iTV.

The explosion of niche content online and the related segmentation of audiences will continue to drive online ad spending by small advertisers that otherwise cannot afford mass market vehicles. This "will actually give more power to small advertisers," Rashtchy said. Still, big brand advertisers will continue to shell out the lion's share of online ad dollars, he continued, noting consumer packaged goods and automotive advertisers will maintain their big spender positions. "Over time, there won't be much difference between the Web and the rest of the media channels….It will reflect overall advertising dollars out there," he added.

Source link: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625088

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Japan's Alternative To MySpace .. Mixi

jonh — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 08:49:30 -0800

From this report on CNN, it's about what you would expect ... cultural differences yield a difference in look, feel and dynamics. I expect we'll see more and more of these kinds of cultural shadings and nuance, and that there will come to be observable patterns in how people share, comment and use advertising in such a space.

The tools and services offered by Qumana are designed from an ease of use point of view, and hopefully offer little in terms of cultural barriers to their use. The content assembly and advertising selection and placement capabilities we offer users let them make the choices and stay in control of what they want to do and how they want to do it.

If we had an arrangement with a major Japanese advertising supplier, the users of Mixi could go about assembling and publishing content, and could use advertising supplied by Mixi in a work-and-revenue sharing arrangement .. getting content into circulation with appropriate Mixi-approved advertising woven into the content.

MySpace faces cultural hurdles ... and Mixi ... in Japan

Mixi is projecting 4.8 billion yen ($40 million) in sales, mostly advertising revenue, for the fiscal year through March, more than double what it made the previous year. Its initial public offering last year earned more than 6 billion yen ($50 million), catapulting Kasahara to dot-com stardom.

Fumi Yamazaki at Technorati Japan, a blogging search company, isn't too upbeat about MySpace's chances in Japan as people usually don't want to switch social-networking services.

"Mixi and MySpace may be able to appeal to different needs," she said. "But there are some hurdles MySpace needs to overcome."

Even MySpace Japan Vice President Naoko Ando acknowledged MySpace isn't about to put Mixi out of business, but she believes Japanese can use both.

Ando is hoping that Japanese may want to check out American musicians, who offer tunes, messages and virtual friendships on MySpace. The site plans to use its Softbank partnership to sign on Japanese artists.

MySpace also has strengths in video sharing. It's among the leading sites where users post video clips, but MySpace does not yet offer video sharing in its Japanese service and is trying to win over copyright protection groups here, said Softbank spokesman Takeaki Nukii.

Mixi started offering video sharing earlier this month.

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Qumana Now Works (Again) With Blogger

jonh — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:03:21 -0800

For Windows users, here's a new and improved version of the Qumana offline blog editor.

The gradual introduction of the new improved Blogger platform coincided with our ongoing search for the best way to make Qumana work effectively.

But .. we are pleased to announce that the most recent version of Qumana for Windows ... available for download here ... now works with the new Blogger platform.

We have more stuff coming along soon, and don't forget to try out the versatile Q-Ads tool, a browser extension for adding advertising content to a range of blog platforms

We're still looking for someone with the appropriate Java 1.5 experience to help us adapt the Mac version of Qumana. If any of you out there know of anyone with great Java and Mac OS skills, please point them (or yourself) our way.

Tags: Blogger, Qumana, better blogging, blog editing

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Qumana Named to BC's Rocket Builders' 'Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch' 2007 List

jonh — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:32:13 -0800

Qumana has been selected as one of the select IT companies in British Columbia on Rocket Builders ‘Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ list for 2007

Compiled by the Canadian-based firm Rocket Builders, the ‘2007 Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ named a small select group of British Columbia technology companies gaining traction within the information technology trends that contribute to faster growth than the IT sector as a whole. These companies represent high-potential growth in revenue and profile and that are beginning to be of real interest to potential partners and venture capitalists.

“Companies that make our annual ‘Ready to Rocket - Ones To Watch’ list come from a variety of technology businesses and industry sectors across British Columbia, and Rocket Builders has a credible track record of identifying these emerging companies,” says Geoffrey Hansen, managing partner at Rocket Builders. "Many promising companies are too early in commercialization, too early in first revenues, or in transition to new markets or business models. Based on the potential of their technology alone, we recognize their potential in a "Ones to Watch" list."

About the Ready to Rocket 25 and the Ones To Watch

Each year, based on analysis of trends that will drive growth in the information technology sector, Rocket Builders identifies twenty-five (25) private companies that are best positioned to capitalize on the trends for growth. This selection methodology has been an accurate predictor of growth with "Ready to Rocket" companies exceeding the industry growth rate. Also, many of these companies raise investment capital and each year many of the profiled "Ready to Rocket' companies are acquired. To be eligible for selection to the "Ready to Rocket 25" list, companies must be a nominated Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation, and have a commercialized product on the market that has customers and is generating ongoing revenue.

Additionally, Rocket Builders also identifies early-stage high-potential companies it places on its 'Ones To Watch' list

"Many promising companies are too early in commercialization, too early in first revenues, or in transition to new markets or business models. Based on the potential of their technology alone, we recognize their potential in a "Ones to Watch" list."
Visit: www.readytorocket.com

About Rocket Builders
Rocket Builders is a market strategy and consulting firm focused on helping technology companies to capitalize on market opportunities. Since 2000, we have been engaged in market research, market planning, business development initiatives, strategic selling, and product launches for over 100 organizations. As a service to the local community, each year Rocket Builders shares its insight on market trends to showcase the most promising information technology companies in British Columbia through its “Ready to Rocket” event.
Visit: www.rocketbuilders.com

Tags: Rocket Builders, Ready To Rocket, Ones To Watch

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User-Generated Content (UCG) Marches Along to the Beat of the DIY Drum

jonh — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:15:11 -0800

The recent announcement that YouTube will share advertising revenues with members who contribute their work to YouTube is yet another marker is the steady march towards dissembling the structure and dynamics of the traditional broadcast media industry.

The other service cited in the article has been sharing revenue for a while, but is not the Web 2.0 darling status acquired by YouTube based on it's acquisition by Google.

Qumana's business model has since the beginning been based on sharing advertising revenue with users who use the Q-Ads service to attach relevant advertising to their social media content.

The bulk of social media sharing (the 'social' in the term social media, tho' there's more to it than that) still happens on and in blogging networks, and IMO this is unlikely to change in the near future.

As advertising gets more and more relevant to niche markets, and gets easier to identify, pull and place into or alongside media-born work created by personal publishers, we believe that Qumana's value proposition will get stronger and stronger.

Via the Globe and Mail ...

Today's YouTube addict, tomorrow's Web tycoon?
SIMON AVERY

Joe Eigo, a martial arts expert in Toronto, used to pay hundreds of dollars a month for computer and hosting services to distribute his own acrobatic and martial arts videos on the Web, in the hope of raising his profile in the TV and film industry.

Today, not only is he able to distribute his content to millions of people at no cost using a popular online video-sharing site, he has also been paid nearly $26,000 (U.S.) by the site owner.

Welcome to the new world of user-generated content on the Internet. What some people consider quirky material at best, companies are increasingly starting to view as a valuable asset. So valuable, in fact, they're willing to pay for it.

Metacafe, a private firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., and Tel Aviv, has been paying thousands of dollars to participants for over a year.

Every video on Metacafe that is watched more than 20,000 times, and is rated 3 out of 5 or higher by viewers, starts earning the producer $5 for each subsequent 1,000 visitors.

Metacafe rates Mr. Eigo as its top earner. One of his clips has been viewed more than five million times and has helped him attract the attention of several producers and film companies, he said.

“It's an amazing opportunity for anyone who wants to produce their own material now. The Internet has become more popular than television,” he said.

Tags: Qumana, YouTube, Metacafe, online advertising, revenue sharing

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Problems at Performancing ?

jonh — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:28:51 -0800

I'm a bit tardy on my blog browsing, so only tonight (24th) caught this item from yesterday (23rd) on TechCrunch about difficulties at Performancing.

We consider Performancing to be a competitor for both Qumana and Q-Ads, and we have noted in the past that they offer a fine blogging editor for Firefox and have or had a good concept for an advertising network.

Personally speaking, I hope things over at Performancing get sorted out .. they are or were helping with progress in this space.

TechCrunch is considering adding Performancing to the DeadPool.

Yesterday evening we wrote about the shuttering of the second of three services at Performancing, as well as CEO Nick Wilson’s recent departure.

Apparently Wilson, who says he still owns 35% of the business, isn’t happy about the closing of Performancing’s ad network. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have known it was happening. On his personal blog, he writes:

"I don’t know what the communication problem between Performancing management is, but there appears to have been some decision making without the benefit of having all the facts.

When I resigned from the company and passed the reigns to Chris, the situation needed a lot of work, but was OK - we had a couple of options on the table for moving forward including picking up talks with one prominent blog player re the aquisition of PFF, or ScribeFire as it’s now known.

I’ve emailed Chris and Patrick, though at the time I’ve no idea if Patrick will still be playing an active role as him and Bill, from Text Link Ads need to dump their shares in Performancing this year due to non-competes after their MediaWhizz aquisition.

Dont count Performancing out just yet."

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Monetizing Content in IE 7 with Q-Ads by Qumana

jonh — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 12:18:14 -0800

January 16, 2007 – Vancouver, B.C.: Qumana Software Inc. (Qumana) is pleased to announce it has released a version of the Q-Ads tool for IE 7, Microsoft’s newest version of its flagship browser. The new Q-Ads tool for IE 7 can be downloaded at the Qumana web site (http://www.qumana.com/qads)

The Q-Ads tool for IE 7 helps users who have upgraded to MS IE 7 choose and place text-based advertising into content that they have created. It provides an easy-to-use and innovative way to add advertising to the content people are creating for the Web.

Q-Ads for IE 7 complements the existing versions of the Q-Ads tool, which work with IE 6 and with Firefox 1.0 and 2.0. The Q-Ads program is designed for personal publishers who want to add advertising to content they create, and for social media and web properties who want to offer their users ways to create and share advertising-based revenue.

Qumana also offers the Q-Ads tool for MS LiveWriter and the leading Qumana offline blogging editor Qumana 3.0, designed specifically for bloggers and others who assemble and remix content from the Web.

Content attracts attention ... attention drives advertising. Use Qumana’s Q-Ads to place effective text-based advertising directly into your content … like online direct mail advertising meeting your readers’ attention.

About Qumana

Qumana Software Inc. is an advertising and web services company that provides web properties and personal publishers with market-leading methods for delivering and adding advertising to online content. Qumana’s mission is to make blogging easier and more profitable for bloggers globally. Qumana is run by Internet industry veterans, hardcore bloggers, software purists, and world-class designers committed to keeping things simple. For more information, visit http://www.qumana.com/

For more Info: Fred Fabro - CEO and President, Qumana Software Inc.

Email: fred@qumana.com Tel: 604.837.0400

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You Want A What ?

jonh — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:09:58 -0800

Hugh Macleod of GapingVoid, arguably an important voice in marketing philosophy and practices in the blogospere, if not Web 2.0, points to Christoper Carfi's Social Customer Manifesto and accompanies it with a provocative cartoon.

THE SOCIAL CUSTOMER MANIFESTO

* I want to have a say.

* I don't want to do business with idiots.

* I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.

* I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.

* I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.

* I don't want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)

* I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.

* I want to know your selling process.

* I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.

* I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.

* I want to know what's next. We're in partnership…where should we go?

Tags: Gaping Void, social customer, transparency, wirearchy

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And So It Grows ...

jonh — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 13:23:15 -0800

Can the Internet ever be controlled as governments might wish it to be ?

Blogging grows in China, despite obstacles. I think I take issue with the headline ... "Monster" ? From whose perspective ?

Via the Globe and Mail

Beijing's censors unleash a monster
A farmer's son is using the blog to change Chinese web culture

The author of the banned articles, a young journalist named Fang Xingdong, was an outspoken critic of the software giant Microsoft. But two hours after his critical essays about the company were published on July 6, 2002, they suddenly disappeared from every website in the country, deemed too controversial.

"I had been one of the pioneers of the Internet in China," he recalls. "Yet after six years of being published on the Internet, suddenly I couldn't get on any websites."

Frustrated and angry, he talked to a friend who mentioned the emergence of blogging in the United States. He glanced at a few blogs. At first they seemed too primitive. But as he thought about it, he began to see the creative possibilities.

"I was very excited," he says. "I couldn't sleep all night."

Four years later, Mr. Fang is chairman and chief executive of China's biggest blogging empire. His company, Bokee, is host to about 14 million bloggers, a quarter of the entire Chinese market, and it gains more than 10,000 new bloggers every day.

Blogging has become the hottest media trend in China. And his company is so popular that it has attracted the interest of media tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch.

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2007 - Year Of Blog Advertising ?

jonh — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 09:17:08 -0800

B.L. Ochmann has forecast some developments in the blogging arena.

At leat two of them are pertinent for users of Qumana, and those who may have heard of Qumana and Q-Ads but have yet to try the tools and service, or are wondering about why and how to integrate them into their work flows.

3. Blog advertising will become the hot ad medium of the year and ad agencies will screw up big-time as they learn the ropes.

Savvy advertisers have already learned that it is possible to have outrageously high click through and conversion rates through obscenely cheap and highly targeted blog advertising.

Bloggers won’t tolerate invasive, annoying, flashing, heavy-handed ads, and agencies will stumble as they try to understand the type of advertising that can beat any traditional medium, hands down, when properly executed. I have consistently achieved click thru rates as high as .857%, and averaging .268% with niche-focused blog ads.

People who read blogs are looking for specialized, high-touch information from experts in particular areas. The right ads directed to those niche audiences can work wonders.

4. Widgets in new Mac and PC operating systems will introduce millions to truly customizing their online experience.

The age of invasive advertising is over and companies will have an enormous branding experience if they provide/sponsor the information people need and want to see every day in widgets.

Essentially, widgets are a way to provide RSS feeds in a frame the user loads onto the page or site of their choice. They allow people to use stupidly named RSS feeds without understanding that they are transferring code.

By lightly branding widgets, companies that provide information consumers want to keep on their desktop or home page have the enormous opportunity to have their brand name in front of customers every day in a positive, almost subliminal way.

Tags: Qumana, Q-Ads, B.L. Ochmann, online advertising, blog advertising, marketing widgets

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Larry Lessig ... "Code Is Now Being Used To Make Culture"

jonh — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 08:06:25 -0800

Brilliant synthesis and summary of what we all know is going on ...

Random excerpt:

"Part 1: Protecting A sharing economy ..

Part 2 is something we've just begun; a new way to use metadata in the infrastructure to link the sharing and the commercial economies ... to produce the opportunity for people to live in a sort of a hybrid space ... where for the sharing economy their stuff is free, and if their creative work is to be used in a commercial space there's a simple way to clear and understand what the permissions are for that to work

For example .. MySpace, Gary NewVision artist .. what's really creative is the way he's begun to deploy his rights .."

It's a great presentation .. watch it !

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Click Fraud Detection To Evolve ?

jonh — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 12:50:38 -0800

Thanks to John Battelle's Searchblog (which in turn thanks Ross Stapleton-Gray) for highlighting this, an academic grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at improving the ways click fraud is dealt with.

Detecting click fraud collaboratively and in real time should be quite a feat. I suppose it would mean much less relative arbitrary auditing, and probably much more transparency about why any given click would be approved or not.

If it succeeds, it should make quite a difference.

Govt Study Funds Click Fraud Detection

Just in case the Googles of the world ain't paying attention:

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project will provide a commercial solution to click fraud identification and prevention. The current existing solutions can not detect the so-called software click. This STTR project proposes a real time collaborative click fraud detection and prevention system to detect these software clicks. The approach draws on data mining techniques for fraud identification using detailed user activities. An accurate and efficient classification method based on association rule mining and data stream mining will be formulated to identify the click frauds.

The system will protect Pay-Per-Click advertisers from click fraud and improve their return on investment. The new data mining techniques discovered during the course of this research will be applied in multiple fields related to online business marketing, user analysis and other fraud identification processes.

Tags: click fraud, online advertising, Q-Ads, Federated Media, National Science Foundation, John Battelle, Ross Stapleton-Gray

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Utility and Interactivity Rule

jonh — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 21:15:03 -0800

The Guardian (UK) has put out a new list (and commentary) on the 100 Most Useful Web Sites. I might argue about some of their choices, but I am not really mainstream ... I am pretty much immersed in several areas of what is sometimes called Web 2.0.

Scrolling down the list, it is considerably more Web 2.0-ish than in previous years, meaning that the list is crammed full of web sites where users interact, participate, and either (or both) take content to remix and publish or upload content for others to use.

While many people have complained about the term, the Web is clearly becoming a vast arena for copious amounts of "user-generated content".

And while content has long been considered "king" (it's what attracts the mainstream metric of eyeballs), this relatively new report from Bear Sterns (The Long Tail: Why Aggregation & Context and Not (Necessarily) Content are King in Entertainment) concentrated on television / video suggests that increasingly context and the aggregation of material will play critical roles. Thus, Bear Sterns concludes that a key part of creating value is how content is packaged (Slide # 29) ... for distribution and use (use being a term that covers many forms of what people do with content).

Anyway, back to the 100 Most Useful Web sites. i think that this is an irreversible trend pointing us to an environment where people will eventually move back and forth seamlessly between two worlds, and in many cases sites like those on the list play an essential role in many peoples' daily activities (if they don't already).

The new 100 most useful sites
Thursday December 21, 2006
The Guardian

Two years ago most Britons didn't have broadband and Web 2.0 was barely a twinkle in a developer's eye. Things have changed - as our cream of the crop for 2006 shows

In 2004, the internet was a different place: there was, for example, no YouTube, and most Britons online didn't have broadband. That's changed dramatically: now, more than 75% of users have broadband, and the arrival of Web 2.0 has brought sites where the interaction is as fast as if it were on your machine. So we've revisited the "cream of the crop" that we brought you two years ago.

Some of the crop is brand new; some has stood the test of time. As before, we have 100 sites in 20 categories.

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JibJab's Year In Review 2007

jonh — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 09:52:27 -0800

Thanks to Michael J. of the blog Notio for pointing me to this funny animation ...

BTW, sometimes I love this Qumana thingy I use ... this post took me all of 25 seconds, including typing time.

Nuckin' Futs! The JibJab Year in Review | Send To Friends | Funny Animations at JibJab

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Inserting Video Clips and Ads Into Blog Posts

jonh — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 19:45:13 -0800

It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.

Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.

Qumana's tools have been designed to make it easy ... really easy ... to add video clips and adverts to blog posts, as you see fit.

Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.

Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.

Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.

Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.

Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.

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Social Networking Sites Are Generating Increasing Amounts of E-Commmerce

fred — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 12:07:43 -0800

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES INCLUDING MYSPACE and Facebook are driving a bigger portion of traffic to retail sites than a year ago, according to new research by Hitwise. Social sites are driving more than 6% of retail traffic, up from 2.9% in 2005. MySpace alone accounted for about one-third of that traffic.

The increase in retail traffic reflects social sites increasingly becoming a starting point for Web users. "What we're seeing is a trend among social networking sites, particularly MySpace, becoming a home base for Internet users," said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise. That trend in turn generates more traffic from social sites to online retailers.

What should be next for Qumana?

Tris Hussey — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 19:22:57 -0800

While we're working on making Qumana compatible with the new Blogger, I'm wondering about other features. New features. I use Qumana all the time. Couldn't live without it really. I have to, on occasion, use our competitors products for specific blogs and for testing, but I always come back to Q. But I was thinking today that we're due for a new feature. Something bloggers want and need. I'm not talking about a built-in egg timer or something to remind you it's time to blog, I'm talking about something really useful.

I'm open to suggestions. Of course we can't put everything in. We want to keep Q simple and easy.

So ... what would be great for you?

Tags: Qumana, new features, blogging tools, blog editor