I wish I could be more surprised about this news, but there’s a local/social media site in the US (and as of last year I believe over here now too) call Yelp who have been accused of some, let’s say ‘anti-social’ business practice.
There are a few sources for this, but this article in the East Bay Express (with thanks to them for the excellent illustration I’ve borrowed here) sums up the allegation pretty well.
Sandlines has a lot of interest in the intersection of local information with reviews/user generated content and to me this is up a level from what I’d feared about this intersection. I’d been concerned about customers using their ability to post bad reviews as a negotiating stick as something that fundamentally undermined the integrity of review services – much as happened on Ebay before ‘negative feedback’ was banished.
But Yelp appear, from this article, to have taken this to a whole new level.
Qype, who’ve been cast as a company who’ve, erm, borrowed liberally from Yelp’s business model have, I hope, left this element Stateside?
As I was writing this article Yelp’s CEO published a response on the Yelp Blog – sandlines is not qualified to offer judgment on which side of this dispute is correct.
However, I remain firmly of the view that – if your business is publishing customer reviews (whatever the business) – then editorial integrity should dictate that you do not mess with those reviews for reasons other than decency and accuracy. You certainly should not (IMHO) massage results in return for commercial consideration.
| 2.5 |
Sandlines is written by a kiwi expat. And he is (probably for the first time is his long life so far) feeling shame about his home country.
New Zealand have introduced what is “probably the world’s harshest copyright laws’ which combine presumption of guilt against file sharers with a disturbingly unfocused definition of what an ISP might be.
Libraries, schools and bloggers like me would all qualify as ISP’s, it seems.
The regulation is somewhat similar in scope to ideas that were floated in the UK – and then dropped as unworkable – where ‘file sharers’ would lose their internet connection if found to be illegally sharing content.
One source Sandlines found this week suggested that the law was passed in response to some tough dealing from the US over free trade agreements: in other words, the suggestion is that the NZ government were essentially blackmailed into introducing this legislation by the US.
So I’m joining the blackout.
| 3.2 |
Sandlines is indebted to @simon_baptist for sharing two links to blogs talking about how Twitter is making some significant revenues for other companies.
- Dell has claimed to $1m in revenue last year from Twitter alerts – makes sense to me. Kind of next-gen email alerts.
- A terrific comment on a post about Twitter’s business model: investors are saying that they can afford to take their time in finding the right model. This is not the typical situation for pre-revenue companies in the current economy, to say the least!
| 3.2 |
the price of success
I’ve been twittering on and off for a while now – trying to figure out how it fits in with all my other activities – and gradually finding it more and more interesting over time. Already this year, the buzz around the microblogging service has kicked up several gears: Stephen Fry’s often witty stream-of-consciousness has been a highlight, but I’ve been gradually seeing more and more of my friends and business contacts using it.
Links back and forth with blogs (alerting to updates), Facebook, various IM and LinkedIn status messages seem to have potential.
One of my LinkedIn connections has been using his status to advise media sales people when he is in ‘buy’ mode – I’m curious to learn how this will impact the quality of his media buys.
Twitter has also gained considerably attention in mainstream media this month: suddenly DJs on Radio 1 are talking about it incessantly.
So perhaps it is unsurprising that @gordonm’s tweet yesterday about Twitters desire to monetise their service by charging businesses for using the service in a commercial fashion was essentially a link back to the Brand Republic site.
I don’t know how many followers @gordonm has at the moment, but the suggestion of how effective this can be found in @stephenfry’s history, where his mere mention of a site can bring their servers to a standstill. Mr Fry has over 150,000 followers today.
So how long before Twitter becomes part of the marketing landscape? And how will they develop sufficient revenues so that they can improve their up-time (Twitter.com is down as I write this)?
One interesting example: on Monday my flight from Heathrow was delayed by 2 hours. I tweeted “Desperate rush to h’row this morning was futile: flight delayed 2 hrs +. Grrr.” This from my iPhone.
Almost at once I had a response from Boarding! inviting me to post details of airport to them to meet up with other stranded travellers.
It’s going to be an interesting one to watch: can Twitter do what other social networks are struggling to do and crack the social networking revenue stream conundrum? My guess is there’s a way to make it work via mobile perhaps. AFullerView evidently has some ideas as well.
Anyone else?
| 3.2 |
A year after ESPN cancelled the use of Ad Networks (did anyone else follow suit?) there are rumours of UK publishers doing the same? Is this a myth or a mistake?
I understand why premium publishers are committed to maximising the value of their audience – and often the impact of using ad networks can diminish that value, especially if they are selling ‘inventory’ – or ad impression opportunities – on an undifferentiated basis – or selling ‘pork bellies’, as IAB (US) chair Wenda Harris put it last year .
But of course not all third party sales opportunities are about ’stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap’. There are some credible partners in the marketplace who seek to add value to their networked sales approach. This is not selling pork bellies, but making ready meals, to stretch a poor analogy too far.
All of this reminded me of something I read in the Times this morning about the changes being made over at Unilever by the new chief executive, Paul Polman.
It seems that when, last year, Unilever raised prices on it’s ‘power brands’ at well above the rate of inflation (9%), one of the consequences was a drop in market share. It seems consumers, rather than pay the premium for the power brand, swapped to ‘own brand’ alternatives – note my earlier post about the sacrificial consumer.
Sandlines is of the opinion that we’ll see similar things happening in the online market: if some publishers decide to pull from the networks, they will lose some of their revenue, but it is highly unlikely that enough will do this to reduce the ability of those networks to meet their commitments to provide advertising opportunities to their advertisers and agencies.
In other words, they’ll lose revenue and gain little if anything.
As I hinted at the start, it might be worthwhile for a power brand like ESPN to decline to play the network gain, but it is unlikely to have much impact on the way the online advertising marketplace shapes up during the ‘interesting times’ we find ourselves in.
And, interesting timing, all this coincides with a period when many ‘power brands’ in the online display advertising market here are in the process of building their own ad networks…
What’s wrong with this picture?
| 3.2 |
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