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Trendspotting — Where 97.9% Fail

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 37 Comments

Learn Everything

Trendspotters 101 logo

We all want that ability to be able to see the next big trend before it happens — what people will be wanting, doing, needing, going to, and buying NEXT. We want to be there ready and waiting for those customers.

Some folks can see that next trend and hit it fairly often. No one can do it 100%. No one can get any customer base to behave 100% predictably.

Good morning, Class.
Find the next trend. Oh yes, 97.9% of you wll fail this test.

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The TECHNORATI Business Model Revealed

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Customer Think, Outside the Box, Strategy, Successful Blog, Technorati | 45 Comments

Smoke and Mirrors

Don’t be fooled by smoke and mirrors. Five blogs on an AP website is nothing. Technorati on every one of them is a big deal. Technorati is joining the mainstream. That doesn’t mean bloggers are.

By virture of it’s index of OUR blog posts, and 3 deals in announced in the last 3 days, Technorati is one of the worlds largest content providers with it’s name on every Paramount Classic and AP website.

It sure looks like we provide their content for nothing. Technorati gains plenty of fame and who knows how many dollars?

I was wrong before. The strategy here is brilliant. It’s so far outside the box, I didn’t even see it.

Sorry David, this too clever by half for me to be quiet about. What is it that I misinterpret here? Please set me straight. I really want to believe I have something wrong, but all of the pieces fit as I look at it.

How did this happen? Why doesn’t anyone see this? [links via Bloggers Blog]

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Open Source Education — GELC

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Trends | 4 Comments

Open Source

We know open source is only as good as the folks who contribute. It can be as successful and adaptable as Linux. It can be helpful as all of the WordPress plugins.

Open source can also get mired in policy and minutiae — you can trust the definition at that link; it’s by the experts on the subject. Such issues have to be what shut down Zeal.com. I had to take the insane Zealot test four times a day for days, until I passed it. The questions were about such tiny details my mind couldn’t absorb them. (See Dear Wikipedia and try being an editor for the DMOZ.)

Enter the GELC

Enter the GELC, something really exciting. The Global Education and Learning Community. Some really smart, talented, experienced people are working together on it. It has the goal of an open source learning curriculum. It could be as powerful as Linux. I sure hope it is. Right now, Dr. Barbara (“Bobbi”) Kurshan, Executive Director of GELC is trying to prioritize some ideas via her blog. [The formatting is mine.]

Several ideas include

  • a repository to build and distribute open source textbooks – which are probably the first curricula ever developed for teaching and learning
  • a place for assessing the progress of a learner
  • a virtual design center for creating a curriculum from open education resources
  • a repository of courses
  • and a community for discussion about open source curriculum.

. . . all of these ideas will become part of GELC. But, which one is unique? Which one will make GELC the “thought leader” in the open source curriculum arena?

What would you answer? One comment said, . . . drop this area. It’s a big turnoff currently. Is that what you think?

–ME ‘Liz” Strauss

Related in some way
Dear Wikipedia . . .
Out WikiPedia, Hello Encyclopedia of Stupid

Trendspotting: How to Crawl into People's Heads

Filed Under Analysis, Branding, Customer Think, Marketing, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | 5 Comments

Your job — should you decide to keep working here — is to figure out what our customers want NEXT.

Trendspotters

Trendspotters 101 logo

I belong to a networking group which requires endorsements. As I was editing my profile last night, I came across this endorsement from a client.

” . . . Liz can spot an emerging trend before it is even on the horizon. — Blake Education, Australiaâ€?

It’s true I often can. My friend, Chartreuse BETA, is phenomenal at trendspotting, as is our friend, Copyblogger. Scot Karp is excellent at seeing what trends are about to happen. Sometimes it depresses him. Don’t leave out Tom Peters. . . . How exactly do we do that?

What does it take to spot a trend before it takes root and actually happens? What does a person need to watch for? Seeing trends seems to be a factor of intelligence, learning style, and world view. Allowing that you have the prerequisite intelligence — we’re talking business acumen, common sense, and people smarts, not rocket science — the rest is a matter of doing the work and being open to what’s happening. This is lesson 1 on being a trendspotter. Read more

Out WikiPedia, Hello Encyclopedia of Stupid

Filed Under Analysis, Great Finds, Successful Blog, ZZZ-FUN | 6 Comments

Wikipedia Called Us Nonsense

So maybe you were around when we got mired in the labyrinth of the Wikipedia, or when we tried to find out why an article, written by Martin Neumann of the Small Office Herald about the Link Leak Virus, a term coined by Mike Sigers, was summarily deleted within minutes of it’s submission.

I actually wrote to Wikipedia about the situation. The official Wikipedia response to my email said I’d get a response in a few minutes . . . that was over 13 days ago. Hope the young man took food and water with him. A reader friend let us know that some editor said that it was “nonsense.” Kudos to the Advice Librarian who helped us make sense of everything.

We at Successful Blog needed that. We hadn’t had our ideas or our writing called nonsense by a stranger who didn’t know us for a very long while.

Finally I’ve found the home for us — The Encyclopedia of Stupid! Read more

Belated — State of the Blogosphere 2

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Successful Blog, Technorati, Trends | 32 Comments

Move Over English

Though I was at a conference, then deathly sick (note the use of hyperbole), when David Sifry came out with his State of the Blogosphere Part 2 — On Language and Tagging, think there is still important data here to get reported for the record. David’s ability to cut through information on the index of 37.3 million blogs to bring coherent thought to the table is a gift he shares several times a year and we should take advantage of it to get the big picture of how our lives are changing.

For this post, I choose to focus on the analysis of the language data.

David Speaks

He begins by offering a few disclaimers about the data set he’s about to offer. Three important caveats he reminds us to keep in the foreground when studying his data.

Within these caveats, Dave Sifry aso offers this invitation,

if anyone at these (or other) blogging services is interested in being indexed, please drop me a line.

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New Internet & MSM Page

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Successful Blog, Tech/Stats, Trends | Leave a Comment

Internet & Mainstream Media

Every little while a story will appear in the Mainstream Media about the Internet or Blogging that calls out to me. It calls either because it’s being touted as one thing when it’s another, or because it tells a story that invites analysis of a kind that I enjoy. They stories have tended to build on each other over time.

Internet and WiFi

April 25 Do You Trust Congress and AT&T to Run the Internet?

April 24 Net Neutrality Is in Jeopardy

March 18 Saving the Net–Doc Searls & Walter Cronkite

March 03 Who’s Reading Your Comments?

February 19 Chicago Goes Wi-Fi . . . What Does that Mean to Business?

Mainstream Media

April 22 If He’s a Pulitzer Winner, Call Me a Citizen Journalist

April 09 The Headline’s NOT the Story

March 15 Who’s a Citizen Journalist?

March 15 Financial Times Debate On–Should Old Media Embrace New?

March 12 Edelman Aces PR, NY Times Fails Research

March10 Tom Glocer Don’t Spin Stories to My Friends

March 07 Looking in the Right Direction — The MSM Isn’t. Are You?

March 06 Why MSM Are Afraid of Blogs–and Should Be

Blogs

March 03 Blogs: The New Black in Corporate Communication

February 28 Blogs Aren’t Mini-Websites. They’re Powerful Tools

Net Neutrality Is in Jeopardy

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Community, SOB Business, Successful Blog | 59 Comments

Net Neutrality

Brian Clark at Copyblogger defines Net Neutrality in way that we can all understand it.

All of your current Internet marketing plans depend on Net Neutrality. And likely a lot that you do online outside the scope of business depends on it too. Net Neutrality allows everyone to compete on a level playing field and is the reason that the Internet is a force for economic innovation, civic participation and free speech. –The Four Horsemen of the Internet Apocalypse

Why is Brian talking about Net Neutrality?

Because Doc Searls is . . . and so is Jeff Pulver . . . and so am I — on all three of my blogs. Read more

If He's a Pulitzer Winner, Call Me a Citizen Journalist

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Successful Blog, Trends | 8 Comments

Busted

In every Greek Tragedy, the protagonist has a tragic flaw that causes his downfall. I don’t see a protagonist here. I see someone who never outgrew schoolyard.

Last night the LA Times suspended a Pulitzer Prize winner’s blog for something he did that any 7-year-child knows isn’t right.

His name is Michael Hiltzik, and he lied by pretending to be someone else.

He’s a journalist, and he lied in print. He wrote comments under pseudonyms–nice ones on his own blog and not so nice ones on blogs that had content that disagreed with the content on his. Read more

The Headline's NOT the Story

Filed Under Analysis, Business Life, Strategy, Successful Blog, Trends | Leave a Comment

Newspapers Need to Change Metrics

For years, publishers have relied — often to their detriment — upon the metric of paid circulation. But circulation for the core product has been on a long, steady decline, causing some to suggest that print is on its way out.

The industry has touted the notion of readership — a metric that takes into account how many people read the paper whether they buy it or not — for years, but has often taken halfhearted steps toward giving it true legitimacy.

Then there’s the confounding, if promising, online angle. If you count Web traffic, newspapers are actually more popular than ever.
Jennifer Saba, associate editor, Editor and Publisher, Dispelling the Myth of Readership Decline

Surveys Say Move Online–Really?

I came across For Future Readers, Papers Should Look Online earlier this week. It was written by staff writer, Sara Kehaulani Goo, in the Washington Post. I read it and set it aside as not much, but it nagged at me. At first, I was puzzled. Why was the Washington Post writing about this? They were ahead of most at knowing where the readers are. This couldn’t be news to them or their readers. The piece itself didn’t offer much depth. It almost seemed to be filler.

The point of the article was that two surveys–one by the Newspaper Association of America and a second by marketing firm, Scarborough Research–point to the fact that 18-24 year-olds want news, but not newsprint. The point was supported by data and some compelling quotes. I’m guessing this one quote will be all over the Internet.

“People who are not necessarily engaged with the print product are increasingly using the newspaper Web site for news and information in their local market,” said Randy Bennett, senior vice president of audience and business development at the newspaper association. “Blogs, video and other multimedia content beyond what appears in the newspaper are all having an impact on usage of newspaper Web sites.”

Done But Not Over

This morning I decided to use the Washington Post article to inform an article I was writing on my personal business blog, Lizstrauss.com that came to be called WashingtonPost Now to Editor and Publisher Then. While I was doing further research, I found a more serious analysis of the newspaper readership issue written up last November by Jennifer Saba, associate editor of Editor and Publisher. Ms. Saba’s four page article not only cited and quoted the same sources, but laid out the challenges and the potential of what lies ahead for print newspapers. I finished my writing a short while ago, yet the Washington Post article was still in my head–puzzling me. I was done with what I had set out to do, but it seemed my job was not over yet.

The REAL Story

I went back to the Washingtonpost.com article one more time to figure out what it was that was bothering me. Then I found it. It was a quote. This quote I suspect everyone will overlook. It’s the only new information in the article. It says volumes about how the MSM looks at the Internet. This quote is the real story. How I wish Ms. Kehaulani Goo had started her article here.

“But if you continue to grow 30 percent or more a year, within five years, for example, online classified revenue will equal what you’ll get from your print model,” [John] Morton [newspaper analyst] said. “My concern is how newspaper managers treat this online profit. If they treat it as ‘found’ money and don’t use it to shore up the economic model of the declining newsprint model, it’s going to spell bad news for newsrooms.”

Do You Hear It?

Mr. Morton is worried that the newpaper managers won’t take the online readership and profits seriously. He understands that they need it to make the economics of a 21st-century newspaper work. Why wouldn’t managers see the way he does? Do they know something he doesn’t? Do they have their heads in the sand? Perhaps they are preparing to teach citizen readers too.

God bless the mainstream media! They are so generous.

And here I thought I was the nice one.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Who’s a Citizen Journalist?
Edelman Aces PR, NY Times Fails Research
Saving the Net–Doc Searls & Walter Cronkite

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