Shared characteristics of successful ad supported Internet companies
Mar 21, 2009
Below is a draft of a few characteristics that successful advertising supported Internet Companies embody. This is just a simple table – and a start to taking a birds eye view approach for what makes the great companies tick. Thoughts are welcome.
Advertising Supported Internet Industry Overview
| Purpose | Connecting with Friends | Consuming Content |
|---|---|---|
| Success is Driven By: | - Controlled platforms (you control who you are friends with) | - Current Fads |
| - The size of each users network (the bigger the better - to connect, you must be on the platform) | - Respecting Super-Users | |
| - Users generate their own content (self service platforms) | - Multiple content providers (self service platform) | |
| Sample Companies: | - Facebook / MySpace | - Google / Wikipedia (close to being ad supported)) |
| - AOL IM / Skype | - Pandora / Digg | |
| - YouTube / PhotoBucket / Twitter (email / embed functionality) | - YouTube / PhotoBucket / Twitter (destination site) | |
Thanks to Scott, Adam & Evan for thoughts.
A futuristic look into the newspaper business – From 1981
Jan 31, 2009
AdAge ran an article on the video below which predicts the direction that the newspaper industry will go (circa 1981).
Ad Supported Internet Video on your TV – Round 1
Jan 25, 2009
SlumDog Millionare
Dec 14, 2008
I know that I am a few weeks late to praising this one, but I was catching up on my Ad Age readings on a recent flight, when I found this article. Usually brands line up to be in films.
Black Friday Online Sales Up 1% vs 2007
Nov 30, 2008
ComScore just released sales numbers for Black Friday, “Black Friday Sees $534 Million in E-Commerce Spending, Up 1 Percent Versus Year Ago“, so what does that mean relatively (adjusted for the economic downturn)? There is some interesting predictive data that can be derived, but let’s wait to see what happens on Cyber Monday. My prediction – flat or down from last years $730 million, up 15% from last year!
Black Friday sales results 2008
24 hours into the Storm
Nov 22, 2008
I picked up a Storm last night and while waiting for the associate at Best Buy to activate (it was sold out everywhere else) a few concepts where going through my head:
- Verizon’s phones stink – which was probably 90% of what caused people to line up around the block for them. To think that Verizon passed on the iPhone.
- What an amazing job the carriers have done inching up the phone bill. All in, it appears that an unlimited plan on Verizon with data for a blackberry will be >$150.
- On that same note, think about what has happened to your cable bill in the past few years: First it was premium services (HBO, etc.), then PPV, then digital boxes, then VOD and now HD boxes and fees
Initial thoughts on the Storm – awesome from a screen, multi media and UI perspective, keypad sucks, I want to know who prefers a touchscreen keypad. I look forward to getting more use out of a phone than my old BB at shouldbesimple.com.
and since the title of this post uses 24 in it, a friendly reminder – Jack is back tomorrow night on Fox!
Facebook keeps charging forward – good move
Nov 22, 2008
Facebook’s Land Grab in the Face of a Downturn was the title of an article in the most recent edition of Business week. This is refreshing news especially in this environment when it seems that all you hear about are layoff’s & downsizings. Downturns present a phenomenal opportunity to start or push forward young venture and if you take a step back and really assess the situation if the average company that is acquired is four years old, would you prefer to be exiting during a bust or boom? The economy is cyclical and will be back, why not already have a few years of business growth under your belt?
Soocial – Organize your contacts
Nov 21, 2008
Great concept – you can organize and sync all of your contacts to all of your devices / emails. If you are like me and have contacts from random places and times in different locations (think Gmail, Mac, Outlook, BBerry, etc.) this should be the answer. Unfortunately, after messing with it for a few hours, the only comments are that it needs work – made triplicate copies of my outlook contacts and crashed the computer twice. As always, revenue model to come later, up sell on premium version, don’t know if people will pay for just a contact storage / sync solution.
But they are claiming to only be in Alpha mode, and did caveat the heck out of backing up your data! Look forward to future versions.
Posterous – Life Blogging
Nov 20, 2008
The team at Posterous has created a tool that makes it simple to upload media files (Doc, PPT, EXE, MP3, JPG, etc.) to a website. All that the user has to do is email the file to a unique email address and they automatically find a viewer to view or play the content and post to your own domain (there FAQ describes it much better than I can). This gets interesting with the evolution of the smart phones – it instantly allows even the technically slow crew to create a page and share their experiences with friends / family. I plan to try it here, once I get up and going with a new BlackBerry (I have been stuck on the 8700 series with no media capabilities).
Ping me with thoughts.
