Erich Stauffer

Tag: Social Media

  • My Media Heroes

    I’d like to share who some of my heroes and inspirations in the publishing business (bloggers, media moguls, and Internet marketers) have been and are:

    • Nick Denton: President and founder of Gawker Media, an online publishing group which puts out titles such as Gawker, Gizmodo and Lifehacker. Nick has been involved in internet media since 1996, first writing on the subject for the Financial Times of London, and then founding two companies in the late 1990s. First Tuesday, an internet-era events business with branches in 80 cities, was sold in 2000. Moreover Technologies, which is headquartered in London, provides news search technology to Fortune 500 companies and portals such as MSN. After graduating from Oxford University, Nick began his career as a foreign correspondent for the FT during the revolutions in eastern Europe. Later, while investment banking correspondent, he co-authored All That Glitters, the definitive account of the collapse of Barings Bank.
    • J. Michael Arrington: Founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a blog covering the Silicon Valley technology start-up communities and the wider technology field in USA and elsewhere. Magazines such as Wired and Forbes have named Arrington one of the most powerful people on the Internet. In 2008, he was selected by TIME Magazine as one of the most influential people in the world. Wired magazine also included him in a flowchart of “internet blowhards” citing his obsession with “Web 2.0”.
    • Walt Disney: During a 43-year Hollywood career, which spanned the development of the motion picture medium as a modern American art, Walter Elias Disney, a modern Aesop, established himself and his product as a genuine part of Americana. David Low, the late British political cartoonist, called Disney “the most significant figure in graphic arts since Leonardo DaVinci.” A pioneer and innovator, and the possessor of one of the most fertile imaginations the world has ever known, Walt Disney, along with members of his staff, received more than 950 honors and citations from every nation in the world, including 48 Academy Awards and 7 Emmys in his lifetime. Walt Disney’s personal awards included honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the University of Southern California and UCLA; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; France’s Legion of Honor and Officer d’Academie decorations; Thailand’s Order of the Crown; Brazil’s Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners.
    • Rupert Murdoch: An Australian-born American media magnate and the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of News Corporation, often called News Corp. Beginning with one newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch acquired and started other publications in his native Australia before expanding News Corp. into the United Kingdom, United States and Asian media markets. Although it was in Australia in the late 1950s that he first dabbled in television, he later sold these assets, and News Corp.’s Australian current media interests (still mainly in print) are restricted by cross-media ownership rules. Murdoch’s first permanent foray into TV was in the UK, where he created Sky Television in 1989. In the 2000s, he became a leading investor in satellite television, the film industry and the Internet.  Murdoch and News Corp now own MySpace, Fox, and the Wall Street Journal.
    • Alan Webber: An award-winning, nationally-recognized editor, author and columnist, he launched Fast Company, the fastest growing, most successful business magazine in history and winner of two national magazine awards, one for excellence and one for design. He was named Adweek’s Editor of the Year in 1999, along with co-founding editor William Taylor. Webber understands the important characteristics of a “fast company”: the ongoing competition for the best people, for great ideas, and for the right way to think about leadership.
    • Biz Stone: Co-founder, Twitter Inc. Stone helped found things besides Twitter: Xanga, Blogger and Odeo. He worked for Google with Blogger. He once won a debate at Oxford Union.
    • Mark Elliot Zuckerberg: An American entrepreneur best-known for co-founding the popular social networking site Facebook with fellow Harvard classmates, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes where Zuckerburg is now CEO. He is currently one of the youngest billionaires in the world with personal wealth of US$4 billion in 2010 due to his 24% share of Facebook.
    • Matt Mullenweg: The founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs much of this site and millions of other sites around the world. He wrote the foreword to WordPress for Dummies and the French WordPress book. Matt worked at CNET Networks, but left in 2005 to found Automattic, which is the company behind WordPress.com, Akismet, Gravatar, bbPress, IntenseDebate, and BuddyPress. Matt is or has been an adviser to Sphere, WeGame, Rescuetime, and Foodzie.

  • Microblogging Social Networks

    A List of the 5 Most Popular Microblogging Social Networks: Jaiku, Plurk, Present.ly, Tumblr, and Twitter.

    This list of microblogging social networks is listed alphabetically and includes their availability, rank, popularity, and features.

    Jaiku

    Jaiku is a social networking, microblogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter. Jaiku was founded in February, 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and opened in July, 2006. Based out of Helsinki, Jaiku was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007.

    The founders of Jaiku chose the name because the posts on Jaiku resemble Japanese haiku. Also, the indigenous Sami people of Finland have traditionally shared stories by singing joiks. On January 14, 2009 Google announced that it would be open-sourcing the product, but would, “No longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase,” leaving development to a, “Passionate volunteer team of Googlers”.
    (more…)

  • What Happened to CollegeClub.com?

    Why did CollegeClub.com fail and others succeed?

    CollegeClub.com was registered on April 4, 1996 and by 2000 had around 3 million registered users. I was one of those users who used it to find friends at other colleges online. On August 22, 2000, CollegeClub.com announced bankruptcy and said it would be acquired by Student Advantage, an Internet educational content and commerce specialist, for $7 million in cash and 1.5 million shares of its stock. Almost exactly three years later, in August of 2003, MySpace.com launched. Less than a year after that Facebook.com began as a social network for colleges on February 4, 2004, but eventually opened up to the general public on September 26, 2006. What happened to College Club? What made it different from Myspace or Facebook?

    Why did MySpace and Facebook succeed when CollegeClub failed?

    All of a sudden what seemed so hard for CollegeClub.com to do seemed easy for others. Was it the curse of the “first to market first to fail” concept that’s befell such greats as Palm, Netscape, and Tivo? Or was it something else? EDIT: since writing this initially in September of 2009, MySpace may not be the best comparison, but Facebook is still doing just fine. 11/4/2011.

    CollegeClub.com’s Business Model

    Lets take a look at the business model. CollegeClub.com allowed users to sign up for free, create profiles, communicate with each other, and post pictures online. Once it attracted a certain number of users, the site was then able to sells advertising to businesses looking to sell to this highly impressionable market with loads of free time and disposable income. Marketers know that if they can hook a customer in college, they may have them for life. Both MySpace.com and Facebook.com used this same model so why did CollegeClub.com fail?

    CollegeClub.com was getting funding at the tune of $15 million from a group of investors that included Convergence Partners and France-based Viventures as well as $40 million from Seligman Technology Group via the group’s investment fund and additional money from previous investors Convergence and Sony. Later deals included partnerships with Ericsson and General Motors, with a planned IPO in the offing. The old addage of “it takes money to make money” wasn’t making CollegeClub.com any money. Why?

    I have two reasons why I think this site tanked:

    The first reason is bad management and the second reason is the high cost of technology at the time.

    Infoworld said at the time, “While one source close to the company traces the financial difficulties to some unorthodox spending practices by management, [new owner, Student Advantage] said it believes that problems stemmed from the nature of the site’s business model.” I think Student Advantage was wrong. We now know there was nothing wrong with their business model (because it worked for both Myspace and Facebook) and this next statement from Infoworld backs this up:

    In the recent past, Student Advantage has shown less than stellar financial performance itself. Since the beginning of the year, the company’s stock price has plummeted from a high mark of just over $20 to its current price, which is hovering just above $7. In addition, Student Advantage has continually met analysts’ predictions of red ink, and the company has suggested that losses will continue throughout next year.

    The company went from bad management to worse management – and technology costs were adding up.

    “The business model works.” said Monte Brem, senior vice president of corporate development at CollegeClub in said in 2000 – and he was right – but he noted that with nearly 3 million users, the back-end costs for the site ran high and needed multiple rounds of financing for success. “It requires a tremendous amount of scaling to be profitable,” Brem added. And back then, scaling cost much more than it did in 2003 and 2004 for MySpace and Facebook respectively. Moore’s Law has two effects. Not only does technology double in speed or capacity each year, but the price almost always shrinks by half every two years. For example, a Pentium III desktop PC with 128 MB RAM and a 40 GB hard drive cost $1800.00 in 2000. In 2003, the price of a desktop had dropped below $1000 for over twice the power. Multiply that over all the equipment needed to run a large social network. In April, 2008 Facebook expanded the number of servers it uses to 10,000. The more CollegeClub.com added users, the more technology they had to add on back-end to support the load. Their revenue simply could not overcome their expenses.

    CollegeClub_com_2

    So why did CollegeClub.com fail?

    Primarily, it was ahead of its time. It had a good idea, but no one had really succeeded with it before. Bad management decisions were made and the implementation of the idea did not match up with the cost of the infrastructure at the time. Had they waited until 2002 to launch, they could have superseded either MySpace or Facebook, but there is another reason why they may never have made it: their name. Names like MySpace and Facebook are not associated with a specific group like CollegeClub.com is. Eventually CollegeClub.com started HighSchool.com to address this problem but even it has the same problem of locking it into a specific group. There were also privacy and age related problems on the site, much like MySpace ran into in 2006 and Facebook has ran into almost every year of it’s existence.

    What can we learn from CollegeClub.com?

    There are three things they could have done differently:

    1. They didn’t pick a scalable name that was generic enough to be applied to almost anyone, anywhere. Sometimes it is good to be niche, but you take on more risk if you’re running your own equipment. Sometimes is pays to have a name that can be used broadly, even if you start off small within a specific niche.
    2. Take the time to develop a good business plan and don’t be afraid to change the business plan as you go. Create metrics for success, track them, and change course if necessary. The businesses that are most successful are the most agile.
    3. Avoid debt if possible when starting a business. It always catches up with you. And the more debt you have the less your’e able to (as in #1) scale or (as in #2) change course. One of the most important things in any business is cash flow.

    When You Say Yes but Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies…and What You Can Do About It

    In 2003, Leslie Perlow wrote a book called, When You Say Yes but Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies…and What You Can Do About It. In that book, Leslie does a case study on the demise of CollegeClub.com in the chapter, Nine Bad Endings. Pages 141-156 cover the merger with Versity, the talks about the IPO, and the eventual bankruptcy. Overall it’s also a good book on management as one reviewer called it, “A Management Must-Read”.

    “Saying yes when you really mean no” is a problem that haunts organizations from startups to big businesses. It exists across industries, levels, and functions and is inflamed by a sour economy, when the fear of losing your job is on everyone’s mind and the idea of allowing conflict to surface or disagreeing with others seems inherently risky. Too often, the conversation at work bespeaks harmony and togetherness, even though passionate disagreements exist beneath the surface. Is this what really happened to CollegeClub.com? Read the book to find out.

    CollegeClub.com Email

    CollegeClub was full of so much promise. What happened?

    CollegeClub even had email by phone. It was pretty advanced for its time.

    CollegeClub “The world’s largest college community”
    FREE E-mail you can also hear through the phone!
    FREE voicemail, with your own 800 number!
    FREE discount card!
    FREE Web page builder!
    TONS of ways to meet people like you! (Chat, Interest Groups, and more!)
    LOTS of other cool stuff! (Including online games and music videos!)

    Suprise. CollegeClub is no longer offering free email.

    In 2007, Alloy Media, owner of the CollegeClub.com trademark, discontinued the CollegeClub email service rendering all “@collegeclub.com” email addresses defunct. Their website (http://mail.collegeclub.com), simply said:

    “Oops! Sorry about that! These CollegeClub applications are no longer in service.

    If you are trying to access your old emails so that you can forward them on to another address, use this url: http://legacy.collegeclub.com/mail.

    This Service will only be available until Friday, March 16th, 2007.

    Here is what the email login screen last looked like in March, 2007:

    CollegeClub.com Where Are You Now?

    If you type ‘http://www.collegeclub.com‘ into your browser you will be taken to Teen.com, which is, according to their web site the, “ultimate online destination for teens on celebrities, entertainment, music, and fashion.” I think what they mean to say was that they are a ‘destination for teens’ that covers ‘celebrities’, not “teens on celebrities,” which has an entirely different meaning.

    Teen.com is owned and operated by Alloy Media, LLC, which is a New York based media company that is partners with Alloy Marketing and Alloy Entertainment. Alloy Media also owns Channel One News, which most know is a 12 minute news program for teens broadcast via satellite to middle schools and high schools across the United States.

    The Internet is not a friendly place. Things that don’t stay relevant don’t even get the luxury of leaving ruins. They disappear.” -Facebook’s Little Red Book

    For those looking for other ex-CollegeClub.com members, check out ExCollegeClubbers. The ‘tribe’ is “for everyone who wants to meet new friends, but in particular for ex members of Collegeclub.com…It used to be cool like Tribe and we have all lost contact with each other. So non-ex members and ex- members alike are invited to join.”

  • 10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Small Business Forever

    1. Ultra-Local Marketing – direct communication between business owners and their local markets allows for business large and small to add a personal touch and an heir of transparency to give them a human edge in an increasingly no-touch technology world awash with noise.
    2. Networking Old-World Advertising – the still-successful outdoor advertising and television commercials are now being used in conjunction with Twitter to give businesses more ROI and feedback on ad placements and their effectiveness. Even without tie-ins, searches for responses on Twitter can sometimes be just as revealing.
    3. Uprooting Wall Street – think of the “Mad Money Effect” on steroids.  When people start talking about a stock and that it should be bought, it gets bought, and conversely, talk about selling leads to selling.  This is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, but nevertheless is an effect of Twitter on business stocks.
    4. Making Blogs Relevant – blogs entered the scene in a huge way a few years back, but have since become mainstream and a bit of a victim of their own success.  Because of the ease of making blogs, their overall saturation is high and readership has suffered.  Enter Twitter: hyper-focused followings with links to blog posts of interests have made blogs more powerful than ever before.  Call it the SEO effect or not – Twitter is shaping how blogs are viewed as a resource around the world.
    5. New Ways to Gather Data – never before has there been a literal tap into the stream of consciousness as there is on Twitter.  A quick search on Twitter’s real-time search engine at http://search.twitter.com reveals whatever anyone was last thinking.  Businesses have an amazingly powerful research tool like never before.
    6. Helps TV, Radio, and Print Interact – when you see CNN co-anchoring Twitter side-by-side with the host of the show, you know Twitter has hit mainstream.  Twitter allows live television shows,  radio stations, and magazines get feedback on what they are doing, know what people think, and how they feel.
    7. Channeling Micropayments – Twitpay and services like it facilitate small loans or payments to companies or between individuals  and will extend the reach of operations like eBay’s (EBAY) PayPal. eBay, Amazon (AMZN) and other e-commerce companies will get a financial benefit from real-time micropayments.
    8. Changing Telecommunications – Telecom companies have chosen to manage user behavior by forcing customers to transfer voice, video and data on platforms that they can track. Twitter will force telecoms into a position similar to the one cable companies find themselves in.
    9. Government Interaction – Large government agencies will quickly realize that Twitter may be one of the single best ways to communicate with the public and may even mandate that Twitter participate in some programs to distribute emergency notices to citizens quickly like with the Emergency Broadcast System that was used to reach the public over radio and TV starting in 1963.
    10. Enhancing Charity – The Internet and the major products set up to use it are changing at a remarkable speed, permanently altering the way we live. Twitter could have as large a role in this transformation as Google and Facebook have had in the past decade.

  • Marketing Research for New Business Ideas Using Twitter

    I’m going to use Twitter as a marketing tool. I’m going to search for “wish there was a way to” “i would pay for” “i want but” and see what I come up with for possible products or services for a business.

    “wish there was a way to”

    twitter feature: stop following people for certain parts of the day
    wish there was a way to send one casting to all my model friends
    wish there was a way to download the “Dont stop believin” version from Glee!
    wish there was a way to connect my Flickr with my Twitter
    wish there was a way to pump gas without getting out of the car
    Wish there was a way to send you some of the heat here
    wish there was a way to “detect” the tweets of people near you.
     I like the Picnik editor on flickr, just wish there was a way to do a whole set at once
    Wish there was a way to convince people that we just need to keep offices at a normal temp when it’s hot. Not at absolute zero
    wish there was a way to mute the commentators without the background noise
    wish there was a way to create ‘groups’ of people to follow on twitter
    wish there was a way to order Showtime and HBO and nothing else.
    wish there was a way to really be as indestructable as i felt last week
    wish there was a way to sleep longer.
    wish there was a way to transfer a custom Google map you created (pins and all) to the iPhone Google map app
    WISH there was a way to permanently hide any news feed info relating to those “What kind of blah blah are you” quizzes on facebook.
    wish there was a way to download iTunes Pass content onto the iPhone.
    Wish there was a way to remote into a computer to enable vnc remote management
    wish there was a way to opt out of getting messages from some people in facebook. Seems like whey need a spam filter.
    wish there was a way to convert guitar tabs to ukulele tabs!
    wish there was a way to transport my Pandora stations to my car. Bump “the networks” lol
    wish there was a way to turn device updates off except for @ replies
    Wish there was a way to make that txt face with a fat lip 😉
    wish there was a way to post PDFs in #Facebook messages…
    wish there was a way to store up my morning energy and use it when Jude has his nap in the afternoon. So tired and so much to do.

    “i would pay for”

    I would pay for the NYT and did.
    @JetBlue, I would pay for WiFi! (As long as you also have outlets.)
    I would LOVE for a man to do that for me! I would pay for it lol Romance is dead in these dudes eyes because no many women are
    I would pay for some of them to come home and do nothing. Just to get them out of office
     #ubertwitter is best bb app I’ve used twitberry bbtweet yatca and tinytweet. I would pay for uber and will when beta is over
    i think i’m ready to start paying something for #twitter not alot, yet, but who wants to spend for fun? I would pay for technical support
    I would pay for an audio copy of the conversation that accompanied these actions. =D http://tise.io/7a60c2
    I would pay for 8 hours of uninterrupted snoozy times.
     @hodgman I wouldn’t pay for a song, but I would pay for you to record the message on my answering machine.
     @TweetDeck I so wish my settings/groups were Global and updated the app no matter where I signed in… I would pay for that
    might let the s15 go the insurance/repayments on it is about the same as what I would pay for a wrx with a secured loan
    I would pay for the data plan.
    is there anyway to win backstage passes? cos i really wanna see enrique so bad, or i would pay for them?
    You know, I just had that same thought! I would PAY for a better Twitter to stamp out spam & crap! lol!
    I would pay for my college
     I love my xm! Never thought I would pay for radio but boy do I love it!:)
    lol true but i don’t know if I would pay for twitter though…
    it’s days like this i would pay for someone to bath me.
     I would pay for content online. Frankly, I’m surprised that it has been “free” this long! Make it easy and really QUICK to pay.
    It is free, and really good, so can’t complain. They have to monetize somehow. I would pay for no ads TwitterFon.
     i would pay for a megavideo subscription if i wasn’t 10000% sure that they’d spam my inbox & usps mailbox with crap.
    tanning rocks..i would pay for it but i like the sun..cheaper ahah
     I take it back – TwittedFon app update starts with last 20 tweets and stores everything from there. Ads still blow. I would pay for pro ver

    “I want but”

    Working on my book list…so many I want but how many do I need?
    Buy all the T-Shirt Hell shirts I want but can afford and then spend the rest on a strippers and booze.
    I know what i want but dont know how to get it.
    Thinking about things I want but cant have… Because life is just that way?
    Dont know what i want but i know its not you. I know in my heart its not.     <<<—-OUCH!

  • How to Delete a Digg Submission

    The short answer is, you can’t.  According to Digg.com:

    We are able to edit submission titles, categories & descriptions. Contact us from the email address associated with your username and include the Digg.com URL of the submission as well as the changes you’d like to make.

    However, as stated in the section 6 of the Terms of Use, we don’t delete content unless it is in violation of our Terms of Use. Please note that un-Digging a story removes it from your profile, but not from Digg.com. Additionally, we can’t switch a submission’s thumbnail for you, but we can remove it if you’d like.

    So what are your options?

    1. Undigg it. This is irreversible. You can’t redigg something you’ve undug. This is the weakest option.
    2. Bury it. This pushes it down, but it can be promoted by someone else’s digg. Again, nothing permanent.
    3. Narc it. Turn it in for violating something in their Terms of Use.  That should be easy enough as it has many, many rules.

    Note that everything you post becomes public domain under the Creative Commons license.  This means it is not your own, other than you being one member of the public.  So, when you post things to Digg, just be aware of the long-term implications.  Post wisely!

    More > Learn what query string parameters mean.