state808

The New New Thing!

2008-03-27T17:14:00.008+01:00

It's been a while. I dropped out from blogging here 2005, because it took to much time. I had just got hooked on Flickr and decided that I only had time for my Flickr photoblog

For the last five years I've been working as Senior Marketing Manager Nordics at Yahoo! Search Marketing. Last month I left Yahoo! and decided it was time to get rich, or die trying ;-) So, I've joined a startup called Poosty. It's not launched and it's all a bit floating, but it's one of those rare occasions in life when things seems to fall into place. So I've decided to pick up my blog again to describe the transition from one of the worlds largest Internet companies, to a very small start-up.

I will still have very little time on my hands, but bare with me, every now and then there will be something new published here and I hope you will enjoy checking state808 out every now or then.

The Flickr Bug

2005-09-27T10:10:00.000+02:00

In my blogpost Podcasts-Remix-MOMA I wrote "podcasting and vblogs are still in its early days, but it amazes me how creative people are."

After getting bitten by the Flickr bug, it amazes me even more.
I got inspired and spent the last weeks creating my own contribution to the Flickr-community.

Please check Flickr out. You can also check my pics here .

This is of course one reason why state808 not been updated.
Time is to short & I love my Leica.

Have fun!

The Past, The Present And The Future

2005-08-15T18:29:00.000+02:00

I'm sorry if you checked in on state808 during the summer, without finding any updates. I apologize for this.

I been having a great summer, with sun, fun and holidays. Parts of it I spent offline. There was little time and possibility to update this blog.

A lot of exciting things happened during the summer, but I will not comment on many of them. One exception is "We are the web ", the article Kevin Kelly wrote for Wired.

It's one of those articles I will remember for a long, long time. If you only read one article about the Internet this summer, why not read this one? It's a great piece about "The Power Of Us", a theme that I frequently wrote about in June.

Kelly article presents the past, the present and the future of the Net.
Read it and think about how you can be part of the next 10 years, when the Net becomes the Computer. What can you do, with a little help from you friends? Remember - We Are The Web ;-)

The Podcast Elevator Pitch

2005-07-01T16:36:00.000+02:00

In my blogpost Podcasts-Remix-MOMA I wrote "podcasting and vblogs are still in its early days, but it amazes me how creative people are."

A good example on this is how the venture capital industry picked up Podcasting as a way for entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas. The idea is to Podcast the "elevator pitch". Wikipedia describes the elevator pitch as "a brief overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The pitch is so called because it can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (roughly thirty seconds).

The term is typically used in the context of an entrepreneur pitching an idea to a venture capitalist to receive funding. Venture capitalists often judge the quality of an idea and team on the basis of the quality of its elevator pitch, and will ask entrepreneurs for the elevator pitch so to quickly weed out bad ideas."

Pretty cool. This means that the VC guys can screen more ideas if they listen to the Podcast elevator pitch when driving their cars, or when jogging.

Peer Production Search Engine

2005-06-29T17:07:00.000+02:00

The other day Yahoo! Launched My Web 2.0 , it's integrating personal and social search. It may be very early in its development, but it offers very interesting search features already.

The Yahoo! Search Blog writes: "It is a new kind of search engine - a social search engine - that complements web search by enabling users to search the knowledge and expertise of their friends and community in addition to the web"

Imagine that you are planning a trip over the weekend to Rome. With My Web 2.0 you can save your best search results and write a tag, a short description, about the webpage. Then invite your travelling buddies, to ad their own personal search results. By combining your search efforts, you get a great overview what you and your friends like to see and do, when in Rome.

The Yahoo blog continues: "Over time, we envision communities using My Web to build their own search engines to capture and make accessible the knowledge of their community - search engines populated with the collective experience of a group of medical researchers, a community of PHP experts, a bird watching club, or members of a structural engineering consulting firm."

Chris Sherman from Search Engine Watch has written an interesting article where he explains My Web 2.0. He points out some of the issues he sees with tags being used to help improve the relevance of search.

Overall he is positive. "Despite its rough edges, My Web 2.0 is an innovative, thoughtful approach to personalized and community-based search. Many of the new features are genuine steps toward the creation of the semantic web , the next generation "intelligent" web envisioned by web creator Tim Berners-Lee." Chris writes.

If you'd like to learn more about My Web 2.0 you can find the My Web blog here.

Personally I look forward to invite some of my friends to build up an expertise search engine for marketers. Look out for the invitation in your e-mail!

We Will All Be Media Moguls

2005-06-27T17:49:00.000+02:00

John Batelle writes that Google will introduce a digital video player from its video search beta site. The concept is that anyone can upload video to Google, tag it with category keywords so that others can search for it.

Battelle thinks that the digital video player "will be integrated with the Google payment program which was revealed to be in process last week. Plenty of folks uploaded video to Google with a payment option, and that has yet to roll out, but you can expect that it will. . . . this will help the spread of an alternative universe for video distribution and playback, one independent of the walled garden business model in which video is currently locked."

Most European markets are closing down their analogue TV-broadcasts these days. Digital technology is cheaper and offers better quality. In most of these markets, the TV broadcasts are under heavy regulation and political influence. This Google service could sidestep most current market players and let small broadcasters start their own TV-business.

The search engine will transform into the TV-remote control. When you find what you would like to see, you pay per view. Or you view something that is sponsored from the Google advertisers, for free.

If you think this is far fetched, think again. It's happening today!

Re-Mixed Editorials - Maybe Later?

2005-06-20T19:15:00.000+02:00

On June 12th, LA Times promoted an interesting idea. The chance for readers to re-mix their editorials. "Watch next week for the introduction of "wikitorials" - an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials.

This initiative was met with some scepticism.

I think this is a pretty cool idea. It would have given a lot of initiated people the tools to think, argue and make the debate go from the first editorial, to some form of group opinion, depending on how much you empower the readers.

This experiment in its first form was how ever short lived. It's been put off-line, for the moment.

LA Times explains "Unfortunately, we have had to remove this feature, at least temporarily, because a few readers were flooding the site with inappropriate material.

Thanks and apologies to the thousands of people who logged on in the right spirit."

Let's hope this concept will be re-designed and put to good use in some other form by LA Times and others. "Peer Production", is if the noise level is dealt with, an idea whose time has come.

Peer Production - The Power Of Us

2005-06-15T19:38:00.000+02:00

In one of my earlier blog postings I wrote:
"We are going from mass media to media from the masses. Blogs, Vlogs and Podcasting give anyone the possibility to reach out and influence others."

Media is not the only industry that the Internet is transforming. Business Week's Robert Hof excellent article "Power of us", takes a look at how the net are revolutionizing the many industries, by the contribution from virtual communities.

"Open-source software, blogs, file-sharing networks, free Internet telephony -- are disrupting multibillion-dollar industries and reshaping the businesses. What's the common thread behind them all? Us."

He also writes about other examples of networked contribution, like how Procter & Gambles is using a network with 80 000 independent "solvers", who tackle research problems for P&G's clients.

What makes this happen is of course the Net, it can connect many people with many others at the same time. Cheap computing, software standards, open platforms and faster Internet connectivity are also important factors when trying to understand - "the emergence of an economy of the people, by the people, for the people.".

And you should try to understand how Peer Production can be used, or will be used in changing your industry.

"Only the paranoid survive" as Intel's Andrew Grove put it.

Search Marketing Works For B-to-B

2005-06-13T18:17:00.000+02:00

Research firm Millward Brown has recently completed a study on behalf of Google It's not officially published, but the findings have been published by Information Week.

"The study shows that in the research phase, buyers turned to search 30% more frequently than trade publications, the next most popular source of information.

During the final purchase phase, buyers used search 62% more often than trade publications. Across the various phases of IT purchasing, from research to comparison to buying, search ranked second as a source of information, behind manufacturer Web sites."

Even if the report was financed from Google, a spokesperson from JupiterResearch tells the reporter that the report is matching their own findings.

This can't be any surprise to anyone?

The Trade publication is a periodical. Old issues are not easy to get, when you need them. Yellow pages might have the contact details and the map, but will not give you any product information or company background.

By using search and the company web page the buyer saves time and at the same time gets a good market overview.

My conclusion is that B-to-B search advertising is not only here to stay, it is also likely to grow in importance to most B-to-B advertisers.

When reading this, please note that I work within the search marketing industry.

Internet Ad Spending Growth!

2005-06-10T12:54:00.000+02:00

IAB estimates that US Ad spending on the Internet totalled more than $2.8 billion for the first quarter of 2005. Ad Age reports that "The first-quarter spending figure represents a 26% increase from the $2.2 billion spent during the same period last year, and it spiked 4.3% from the fourth-quarter 2004 figure of $2.7 billion."

In Sweden IRM reports for the SE market where the total Ad spending was up 5,3 percent for the first quarter of 2005. Search marketing was the big winner with 50% increase from the same period last year.

Great start for 2005 Ad spending on the Internet!

Podcasts Remix MoMa

2005-06-01T20:54:00.000+02:00

The New York Times writes about a homemade audio guide for the Museum of Modern Art, MoMa. It's done by a Professor and his students, and is downloadable as a Podcast from their website.

They describe it as a way of "remix MoMa". By doing this they offer art-lovers an alternative way of experiencing the museum with a blend of irony and pop-music.

Being an art lover, I can really see the use for this.

First, It's to often the speaker voices are boring and don't bring anything to the exhibition. Second, coming from a Sweden it's rare to have any local language audio guides when travelling. With podcasting you could get the audio guides translated into different languages, downloadable from the Internet.

Blogs, podcasting and vblogs are still in its early days, but it amazes me how creative people are. Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom.

Online Marketing Book That Works

2005-05-31T17:32:00.000+02:00

There are lots of interesting books about marketing, but few that use their own points to prove that their marketing works.

Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg did. They sold 90 percent of their new book Call To Action online and marched into the bestseller lists at the Wall Street Journal (requires subscription) and USA Today. They managed to do this without the support of the nationwide bookstore's.

This achievement should be a wake-up call to marketers doing what they always do. There are more than one way to reach your sales targets and in doing so, save some of the marketing budget.

So what about the book?

Call to Action presents an overview of the principles and tactics of conversion rate marketing, focusing exclusively on helping clients persuade and convert their traffic into leads, customers and sales.

I will read the book and let you know what I think, by evaluating the ROI I got from their advice.

Behavioral Targeting Buzz

2005-05-27T18:43:00.000+02:00

Ad Age reports that behavioral targeting is becoming more popular among US online advertisers. A majority of interactive ad agencies are already using it and 58 percent of those who don't plan to start, according to Ponenom Research.

Significantly better results are behind the increased popularity among advertisers. As an example:

"A Volkswagen Jetta A4 campaign done by remnant advertising network Advertising.com, placed 100 million branded placements, and received 9,000 clickthroughs from consumers looking for more information. But among 10 million impressions served on behaviorally targeted sites, there were 10,000 clickthroughs for more information."

The example shows that advertisers get more clickthroughs and the Web real estate is used more efficient. The Internet user sees ad's that is more relevant to his or her interests and responds by clicking through to the advertiser's website.

This is probably banner advertising at its best.

Retailers Search Ad Spending Up

2005-05-26T13:09:00.000+02:00

US Retailers doubled their spending on search engine advertising in 2004, according to a Forrester Research report

Media Post writes that "Forrester reported that 137 retailers nationwide spent an average of $877,630 search-engine ads in 2004, compared to $399,923 in 2003. The retailers also said search marketing was responsible for 43 percent of traffic to their Web sites."

To me, the Search Engine share of the traffic is very impressing, these companies probably spends a lot of their budget on above the line marketing, like Print, TV, Radio and Outdoor.

Please remember that I work with Search Marketing, when reading this. Still, the numbers tell their own story, don't they?

BitTorrent Launches Search Engine

2005-05-24T11:52:00.000+02:00

Wired reports that Bram Cohen, the master mind behind BitTorrent , the ingenious P2P file distribution tool, is launching a multi-media search engine. It will be dedicated to cataloguing and indexing files that are downloaded with the popular Bit Torrent protocol.

The search-engine will carry pay-per-click advertising.

A spokesperson from the project told Wired that: "Web search rates things by relevance. Our search rates things by relevance and availability."

I bet you that most file-sharers like the sound of that!

Transition Times

2005-05-22T16:28:00.000+02:00

The uptake of broadband use has been slower in Europe than in the US, with approximately one in five households connecting to broadband, compared to nearly one in three in the US. But this is changing quickly. eMarketer tells that "Broadband households in Western Europe increased by nearly 65% last year, a rate twice as fast as the US."

The high speed Internet connection is opening up for quicker transition of offline advertising to online. These two articles tell us that it's already happening.

Clickz.com "Video Ads Are Streaming In" stating that "Streaming video ads and sponsorships number over 1 billion served each month, according to a new AccuStream iMedia Research report."

LA Times "Web Pulls Ad Buyers From TV" " stating that "More than 1 million people saw a Buick commercial before watching the antics of "Desperate Housewives." So why should broadcast television executives be nervous?

Because the Buick ad was on the Internet."

From Mass Media To Mass Marketing

2005-05-19T21:05:00.000+02:00

Andy Warhol once said "In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes." Later he stated: "I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, " In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous."

I don't think Andy Warhol knew how right he was - Twice!

We are going from mass media to media from the masses. Blogs, Vlogs and Podcasting give anyone the possibility to reach out and influence others.

Imagine the power of an individual when they are able to publish and internationally distribute audio and video more effective then a TV network. The net is creating world famous stars and the audience is listening.

Today it has become more difficult and more expensive for advertisers to reach consumers via mass media. Consumers are no longer the "mass audience" they used to be. They expect a more personalized and creative approach. They show an increasing lack of tolerance for marketing that is irrelevant to their lives, or that is unsolicited.

No wonder creative marketers came up with new marketing concepts like "word-of-mouth", "creating a buzz" and "network marketing" - What we all know as "viral marketing" on the Internet.

A new concept where the salesperson is the same as the consumer has been born. It's using bloggers like you and me, to reach out and influence others. If this is true, USWeb.com are paying people to blog about USWeb.com's advertising clients.

Besides the legal aspects of the idea, what happens if smart mobs become paid mobs?

The whole concept makes me wonder if it's a marketing trick for...you know who?

Yahoo Is Back In Scandinavia

2005-05-19T16:02:00.000+02:00

Today Yahoo re-launched in Scandinavia. Please check out the sites in:
Sweden , Denmark and Norway

Here are some press-coverage in local languages:
Dagens Media - Sweden
Computerworld - Denmark
Propaganda - Norway

Great News!

Is Pro Bloggers The Future?

2005-05-18T19:10:00.000+02:00

What's your opinion about the trend where journalists try to blog on the big dailies websites?

Nah, I guessed so.

More exciting is the suggestion from Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations at the New York Times Co, he said that New York Times may offer columns to bloggers in a revenue-sharing arrangement. You can read the whole interview from AdAge.

Btw, This gun's not for hire ;-)

Mobile TV Coming To A Screen Near You?

2005-05-18T06:55:00.000+02:00

Yesterday Telia, launched two channels in their 3G network - Star and Voice. Another 3G operator, 3 have been streaming video to their mobile phone users for quite some time. 3 have been focusing on music services, like On Air and MTV.

These are the first streaming video channels of many to come to our mobile phones. In fact, we all will probably have mobile TV in a few years. Most mobile phone users switch mobile phone more often than TV or computer. For this reason, the first digital-TV receiver in many homes is likely to be a handheld.

Mobile TV is said to have higher quality than the streaming video used today. Nokia and Samsung have both presented mobile phones capable of receiving TV signals broadcasted to all mobile phone users at the same time.

These handhelds is said to hit the market before the end of this year and the research group Informa expects handset makers to sell 130,000 TV phones this year, rising to 83.5 million by 2010

That is big numbers in a short period of time. Compared to the Apple Ipod sales over the last few years, it's huge. And we all know what kind of money and spin-off companies that Ipod generated.

I'm not capable of judging the Informa estimate, but I believe Mobile TV will be a hit. According to The Korea Times Nokia claims that 4 out of 5 Germans wants to receive Mobile TV on their handheld. Not surprisingly, Deutsche Telecom has made a deal with Samsung for the delivery of Mobile TV handhelds.

Mobile TV will become interesting from a marketing perspective. Mobile TV combined with geo-targeting is local TV-advertising on the go. TV direct marketing to a known user at a known location.

"Today H&M Stockholm is starting up the wicked winter sale!"

Wham bam - from the screen into the store in less then 3 min walk!

DAB Radio Failure

2005-05-16T17:22:00.000+02:00

An article in Svenska Dagbladet is claiming that after 10 years and investments for over 400 million SEK DAB Radio in Sweden has attracted only 7 000 users.

In the same time web radio have gone from 0 users to 178 200 daily Swedish listeners. Even more impressive is the weekly reach of the 795 600 web radio listeners. I wrote about the Swedish web radio in "Internet and the private radio " yesterday.

I for one wish my tax money was spent on more productive initiatives than DAB Radio projects with little future.

To expensive and too late!

Internet And The Private Radio

2005-05-16T00:48:00.000+02:00

In the early nineties I used to be a radio DJ. It was during the years Sweden went from government monopoly radio, to commercial radio. It was great fun.

Unfortunately the government decided sell the commercial frequencies to the highest bid. The best frequencies went for millions of SEK, a fee to be paid every year. This killed any chance the private radio had to produce local material. The stations could only afford to send networked music radio. Hiring local DJ:s and producing local material wasn't in the budget.

If you haven't heard the Swedish private radio, believe me - It's less fun listening to, than washing your car!

Ever since I stopped DJ'ing, I've been interested in how the Internet will change the the listening habits. Today web radio is becoming more and more popular. RUAB have asked 20 000 Swedes aged 9-79 about their web radio listening:

- 2, 3 percent or 178 200 Swedes are listening to web radio on a daily basis.

- 10, 4 percent or 795 600 of the Swedes are listening to web radio every week. That?s up 2, 2 percent since last year.

- In the ages 9-34 well over 15 percent are listening on web radio every week.

In fact - The daily web radio listeners equals the number of inhabitants in Uppsala, Sweden?s fourth largest city. Uppsala is the home of two private radio stations, Rix FM and City Radio.

City Radio are paying 2.539.000 SEK yearly for their frequency in Uppsala. As if that wasn't bad enough, City Radio have to compete with a lot of local public- and amateur radio stations. Given the fact that City Radio is reaching a percentage of all listeners in Uppsala, the frequency cost per listener gets very high.

My conclusion is that the private radio stations are paying a lot, for analogue frequencies that the Internet is overriding.

The politicians could give the Swedish private radio a break by lowering the frequency fees. Then the local stations could hire some local talent and add that important local touch that's missing today.

Or is it too late, with the Podcasting revolution just around the corner?

A How To Checklist For Marketers!

2005-05-13T17:48:00.000+02:00

I regularly check Henrik Torstenssons weblog where I often find interesting pieces about just about everything on the Internet.

Today Henrik published a link to Seth Godin who writes about What every good marketer knows. It made me laugh when Seth points out that:

"Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it."

That's very, very true!

The iPod Effect On Mac Sales?

2005-05-12T07:48:00.000+02:00

When Apples success with iPod became clear, journalists and analysts started talking about the "halo effect". That is, when the positive sales and vibes surrounding iPod and iTunes would translate into higher Mac sales.

Maybe the "halo effect" is real?

According to Apples second quarter results, Apple shipped 1.07 million Macs. That's a 43 per cent increase on the same period a year ago. This sales might have been boosted by the sales of over five million iPod?s in the same period - 558 per cent increase on 2004.

If the "halo effect" is true, it's no surprise. After falling in love with my iPod I bought my first Mac. I remember walking out of the Apple store, wondering how many PC users where switching to Mac, because they fell in love with their iPod's?

At least we know the numbers are rising!

O'Reilly Radar - Follows The Alpha Geeks

2005-05-11T10:56:00.000+02:00

Technology is developing at the speed of light. For those of us interested in monitoring what's hot or not, it's a hard and time consuming task. Especially if you're looking for the new-new thing.

Now O'Reilly Radar, made things a little easier. They are paying attention to what the alpha geeks are interested in. Then they let us all know. Awesome!