MobHappy

Ask Nokia About the 770

Paul over at MyPhoneRocks has a new feature on his site that sounds pretty cool. He works at Nokia, and has been trying to figure out how best to take advantage of that for his blog and its readers:

I haven’t been looking for a competitive edge so much as something that compliments others in a way that is uniquely enabled by the fact that I work inside Nokia’s multimedia group and have a lot of friends on the “inside”. After killing several dozen ideas I think I have finally found one worth trying... The idea is pretty simple. Pick a product like the 770, track down the people responsible for the product and get them to answer some questions from the blogoshpere. That’s it.

So pop on over and fire away. This is a great idea -- it's nice to see bloggers inside companies use their resources like this.

Weblogs Inc Sells to AOL for $25 million

Congrats to Rafat Ali for the scoop that Weblogs Inc are selling to the venerable (and vulnerable) AOL for $25 million.

Assuming it's true, it's certainly a very fast turnaround from startup to sale - about two years - and Jason Calacanis and team are to be congratulated if they've pulled this off. Mark Cuban also invested $5 million in the company, so he's presumably done very nicely too, though hardly the kind of returns VCs typically look for.

But the $25 million question is; is it worth the money? Frankly, I don't think so and my bet is Jason has cannily sold out at the top of the market. It's yet another sign of the bubble that's going on.

There's a couple of reasons why I think it's over valued.

Firstly, we have the business model itself of niche publishing. The concept is to offer advertisers and sponsors a way of targeting niche audiences via their blogs. This sounds supremely logical when married with the obvious benefits of advertising online - accountability, efficiency, speed to market.

However, most advertisers and their agencies just aren't equipped with the skills and manpower to delve into these rich niches, unless they enjoy real volume of readers. The 30 TV second slot may be dying fast, but it still delivers millions of eyeballs. To get anywhere near these numbers (even taking account of the wastage) an advertiser would need to get on what? 100 blogs? 1,000? Even more? Don't forget that the average blog outside the top 5,000 gets less than 16 visits a day.

So, the poor advertising buyer is suddenly faced with 1,000 buying points, with the same manpower and resources as they had to buy from one.

Ahhha, they say. Isn't that exactly where Weblogs Inc can help? They can offer the advertiser one buying point for 130 blogs.

But it really isn't that simple.

If I'm an advertiser and want to hit parents, as an example, Blogging Baby may well be a great vehicle. It'll help me pick up a few thousand readers a day (and maybe more - I don't have the readership figures). But it's nowhere near the millions of parents I want to hit. So what else can Weblogs Inc offer in that line? Err...nothing.

So, there really is little synergy between the titles.

OK, they do make a lot of money on Google AdWords and the long tail of advertisers this has uncovered. According to PaidContent, Jason recently claimed this was $2 million a year. If so, this would still be a very high multiple and who knows if this kind of thing is really sustainable?

My final concern is the way the content creators get paid. Weblogs Inc pays its bloggers relatively small amounts to create content, which is at the heart of the value proposition - no content, no readers, no value creation. In fairness, it has to be relatively small amounts, as the readership of most of the blogs is pretty small and therefore won't generate much income to spread around.

But, if they're not earning much and it costs nothing - or a few 100 dollars at the most - to set up on your own, why would they stay with you long term? Particularity, as they'll now see you pocketing a nice fat cheque/check off the fruit of their labours. After all, if they move to their own site, work hard for 2 years, might they not sell for a few million dollars too?

Most of these publications are one-wo/man creations and really only have value while the founder is in place. If you doubt this, do you think an individual title Weblogs Inc could be sold, without a very generous share being given to the writer? Engaget might just possibly be the exception that proves the rule.

So a hearty, "well done" from me to Jason and Co. I think AOL have picked a bit of a dud, but then $25 million is small change to them and nothing in the context of their wider business problems and indeed, their very future. In this context, they can take a little risk like this and if I'm wrong, enjoy any upside that comes with it.

Image from Corante.

Mobile Blogger Network

If you write a blog about mobile stuff, you might be interested in joining our Blogging Network.

I've been talking to quite a few blogging friends in the last week about creating a blogging network for independent bloggers about mobile. The feedback has been very encouraging so far, so I'm keen to progress things.

There's two reasons why you might want to consider joining:

1. Mutual Support and Promotion

The first reason for the network is to promote others in the network. This means that all members should see increases in traffic as a result of joining up.

We've been kicking various ideas around about how that would work and I think come up with some interesting stuff.

2. Advertising

Not all the bloggers I've spoken to want to accept advertising on their site. This is fine - though some will probably change their minds as the industry matures.

But if you do accept advertising, we'll try to sell ads for you, by promoting the network to agencies and clients. We will take a commission for this element and we're still working out what that might be. My aim is to offer a very fair commission (I'm not talking anywhere near the 60 - 70% that's sometimes bandied around).

The idea behind the advertising side is that bloggers don't have time to sell pro-actively and anyway, they're probably too small to be interesting enough to cut a deal with, in most instances. At the same time, agencies want to be able to advertise on blogs with one or two phone calls - not have hundreds of buying points.

Let me also pre-empt some questions:

1. Cost

It costs nothing to join - apart from commission if we sell an ad and you accept it.

2. Hosting

You make your own hosting arrangements, as now.

3. Content

We are not going to seek to try to influence your writing in any way.

4. Advertising

You keep your existing advertisers, including Google AdWords. You're also free to turn down any advertisers we recruit.

5. Independent

Just in case I haven't made it clear, this is more like hippy style collective than anything that seeks to control or influence. By joining, you're not committing yourself to doing anything that you don't want to do. The minimum requirement will be to promote other network members and if you don't like the detail of what we propose, you're obviously free to leave and will have lost nothing in doing so.

6. Other Benefits

Joining may well have other benefits and I'd be interested to see if there's anything else people want. Examples, in due course, might be discounts of goods and services (like hosting, software, legal support etc). But that's for the future.

If you're a mobile blogger reading this, drop me a line (see the link at the top left of the page) expressing interest or leave a comment with questions.

Our emphasis in on quality blogs, regularly updated with some established traffic. So if you apply and don't meet these criteria, I'm afraid we might turn you away.

As far as members so far, I don't think it's fair to say who has a tentatively agreed, but there's some pretty big names from blogging about mobile involved.

Corporate Blogging Screw Up

Last week, I was presenting to a bunch of corporate comms and marketing directors in Frankfurt, who are all clients of Hill & Knowlton's Hiller, Wüst & Partner - one of the largest tech PR agencies here in Germany. Though there's a lot of interest in corporate blogging, Germany is lagging behind the UK, France and many other European countries, and certainly way behind the US.

I shared a platform with another blogger, Joel Cere, who also had some interesting case studies and thoughts. He writes a blog on what he calls Customer Generated Marketing, which I tend to refer to as Engagement Marketing and very good it is too. Check it out here: Beyond PR. He also wrote this article for Global PR Blog Week, which sums up his presentation quite nicely.

I especially liked the video interview Joel showed about the disgruntled Land Rover buyer, who started a blog by way of protest after being fobbed off by the dealer and the company. He even bought up Google AdWords for "Land Rover" to promote the blog, so that people considering buying one would see his problems.

Naturally, Land Rover had no choice but to cave in and give hime a refund and he went off and bought an Audi Q7. Note though that the blog is still there, still getting visits from prospective buyers and still influencing their purchase decisions. Like herpes, a blog is forever - brand owners take note.

But back to corporate blogging, there's another great example here of how not to do things (via Hugh at Gaping Void).

The really oddly named Cillit Bang (is it just me who finds Freudian implications in the name? Yes? Ok I'll get my coat) is a cleaning fluid and has a blog as part of their marketing effort. If you want to see the rather lame attempt at hoping on a bandwagon without understanding the first thing about the medium, you can see it at this address: http://  barryscott.blogs. com - note it's not a link as I don't want them to get the Google Juice.

At best, the blog is pretty harmless, though whoever sold the idea into the client must be some kind of sales genius as I can't imagine how the brand manager thinks Cillit Bang might be benefiting. The idea is the imaginary front man, one Barry Scott, is the blogger and he prattles on about nothing in particular.

But they couldn't let it lie there. It seems that someone using the name "Barry Scott" has left a comment on another blogger's blog (and maybe many more for all we know). The thing is that the blogger, Tom Coates, was writing about something very personal - meeting his father for the first time in 30 years.

"Hi Tom, Always remember one thing. Life is very, very short and nothing is worth limiting yourself from seeing the ones you love. I hadn't seen my father in 15 years until 2 years ago. I was apprehensive but I kept telling myself that no matter how estranged we'd become there was no river to wide to cross. Drop me a line if I can be of any more help. Cheers, Barry"

Tom traced the IP address back to the brand owner, via one of their agencies, who promptly issued an apology, which you can read here.

I don't suppose we'll ever know the full story behind it - misguided enthusiasm at one end to twisted sick bunny at the other. But it's obviously a screw up.

If marketing people (and I'm one of them, by the way) want to use blogs to get closer to customers and engage in dialogue, I think this is a good thing. But you have to do it openly, honestly, humbly and with authenticity. Shabby tricks, faux blogs, clever-clever and short cuts will backfire and bite you on the arse.

And if someone tries to sell you a blog as part of your marketing and communication plans, make sure that they understand what they're talking about. The best first step? Ask to read their blog.

Juicy Fruit Goes Blogging and Gets it Soooo Wrong

Quite the most bizarre "blog" I've ever seen. I've kept returning to it all day with the kind of macabre fascination that you might have for a really bad car crash.

What do they think they're trying to do? Which agency managed to persuade this client that they understood the first thing about blogging?

Lord Hanson famously said "If you can see a bandwagon it's too late". But these guys have seen a bandwagon lumbering down the street, tried to jump on it and missed it completely.

I'm sure it won't be up for long before sanity prevails. So get your rubbernecking in while you can.

Google Blog Search Disappointing

Om Malik reports that Google have launched Google Blog Search - a search engine that sticks to searching blogs only. Hence the rather clever name.

There's clearly a massive gap for blog search, especially as Technorati seemed to lose the plot a couple of months back. While services like Feedster and IceRocket valiantly stepped into the breach, neither offer anything like a comprehensive service.

But I can't help feeling that Google's missed the point somewhat.

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the major (or certainly a major) use of blog search is by bloggers themselves. And much of the reason for searching is to find out when other people are linking to your blog.

This isn't vanity at all. Well, OK, maybe it is a bit. But mainly it's so you can track conversations, respond to other posts and basically stay in tune with the Blogosphere. And it's also quite cool when some A Lister writes something flattering.

But probably the most frequent linker to any blog is the blogger themselves. We're constantly referring back to previous posts, which might embellish a point or supplement what we're writing at that particular time. But, when I do a blog search, the last thing I want to see is all those links that we've made to ourselves.

But with Google Blog Search, the first 50 or so results for "mobhappy" turn out to be links from MobHappy. Which makes it next to useless, as far as I'm concerned.

The other issue I have with it is that it's very easy to miss the RSS link to that search and I'm sure it'll be overlooked by many potential users.

So as a day-to-day tool, it's basically useless for my needs. But then, I may well have made the classic error of assuming that everyone behaves like me. So what do you think? Is it any good for how you use, or want to use, Blog Search?