Archive for the 'Social Web' Category



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An Evaluation of Web Strategy in the Musical Instrument Business

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on January 19, 2009
in New Marketing and Social Web
. 0 Comments

Crossposted at the Heavybag Media blog.

With NAMM taking place over the weekend and several of our clients in the musical instrument business, I thought it would be appropriate to evaluate the participation level in social media and web strategies of musical instrument companies. (Disclosure: a few of these companies are Heavybag Media clients, noted below.)

As part of this evaluation, we have set up a site bringing in RSS feeds from as many musical instrument related companies we could find at TheyAreTheMusicMakers.com (a reference to an Arthur O’Shaughnessy poem) using Sweetcron.

Many corporate websites are becoming irrelevant, serving as static brochures. Visitors are expecting more than just information and positive spin. Social media, blogs, syndicated news, widgets, and videos are just some of the ways these companies are participating, along with a new approach to sharing and conversing with customers. Using the network effect of social networking sites allows content to be more discoverable than being on an island (aka, your website). More searches are happening on YouTube than on Yahoo (Google being first place). For this reason, along with zero bandwidth costs to you, there is no reason to not have your brand’s content on YouTube.

The Musical Instrument industry (including makers of brass and woodwinds, guitars, basses, drums and percussion, keyboards, synths, pianos, recording and effects, live sound reinforcement, DJ, karaoke, and all related accessories and educational products and services) is using a variety tools and tactics to execute their web strategy for marketing and customer contact. They can be classified into 12 areas:

Newsletter/mailing lists with a public news archive

You can tell these companies have been using the web to engaged with their customers for years, because at one point newsletters were the easiest way to reach out to customers, back when sending and managing e-mail was easier than posting a blog. I would still recommend both newsletters/mailing lists and blogs to make content available in as many formats as possible. Feedburner allows publishers to be notified of new posts by e-mail.

Bias: news, press releases, newsletter
SKB Cases: news and mailing list
AKG: mailing list, news
Sony: mailing list, press releases

Newsletter/mailing lists with no public newsletter archive

You need to sign up for the mailing list just to see if any news is happening. This strategy means that there are fewer pages for search engines to spider, and then other sites have a better chance of receiving search traffic about a companies’ product, like Harmony-Central forum.

D’Addario
Ovation Guitars (Disclosure: Heavybag client)
Korg
Dean Guitars
Dipinto guitars
Gretsch Drums
Toca Percussion
LP Percussion
Steinberg Software
Roger Linn Design

Hosting Forums

These are a great way to get search engine queries from users that helps them find answers to product questions saving companies repeated support inquires over time. They do take some time to manage, but they are a great way to show customers that you are listening and willing to help. Several of these brands below are with the Harmon Group.

Fishman: news, forum
Jackson Guitars: news, forum
Lexicon: news, forum
Digitech: forum, news
dbx: news, forum
TC Electronic: forum (more below)

Using a blogging platform or good content, but no feed

This is coming from a good place, but for blogs to live in the blogosphere properly, they need to have feeds and comments. Wordpress is free, runs on any commodity LAMP server. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel here. Although, there is one blog in my survey that seems to be using Blogger.com but has disabled the feed. This is no way to get people to go to your site. Allowing people to subscribe to your feed makes your content stickier. (Update: I spoke to Rick at PreSonus and he is now aware of the problem).

PreSonus: blog, YouTube
Access

Blogs on Blogger, MySpace, or Wordpress

These guys are seeing the light. In some cases, maybe it is a rouge employee in the marketing department who is living the “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” rule. It is really easy and free for anyone to go on to these sites, start a presence, and link back to the main site.

Epiphone blog, Twitter
BC Rich: blog
Jomox: MySpace (no posts yet), news and newsletter
Seymore Duncan: MySpace blog

RSS syndicated press releases

These companies understand the benefits of syndication. Both musicians and publishers looking for news updates and stories can subscribe to news feeds directly from the sources by subscribing to RSS feeds. This has less management headroom in comparison to having a mailing list. But some are just putting out the same type of content they have always put out: product launches, personnel changes, partnerships, and promotions. And these sites are not using a full blown blog platform so there are no comments or trackbacks.

MoTU
Akia (with bonus Digg button)
Crown Audio
ElectroVoice
Monster Cable

RSS syndicated news and newsletters/mailing list

From an infrastructure perspective, these guys have everything covered. Some are also using social media. But some are not using blogging platforms, so there are no comments or trackbacks.

Behringer has a blog posts by Uli Behringer himself and three other Behringer personnel so far. It looks like they just started the blog in December 2008. They are also on Twitter.

M-Audio: news, newsletter
Moog Music: MySpace blog, YouTube, news (no feed or newsletter)
Digidesign
Alesis
Native Instruments: news, newsletter

Blog on the company’s site, used as a channel to push promotions

These sites have a full blog platform such as Wordpress, allowing comments and RSS feeds, but still the content is not helping or teaching potential customers. In some cases the companies are well-known companies in their categories. Maybe they think they can only push awareness of promotions, which may result in a spike in sales, but does little to help build a long-term relationship with their user base. Some posts are about events and profiles on organizations that use the companies’ products. Most do not have comments or have them disabled.

Mackie
Fender
Taylor Guitars (featuring ShareThis.com links on every post)
Ernie Ball

All of the Conn-Selmer brands have at least an RSS feeds on their news pages. Some have Facebook fan pages:

Blog on the company’s site (or on Blogger/Wordpress.com), with content that helps or teaches

If a company is doing this, in my opinion, they have seen the light. They are using their brand’s influence to help their user base, teach them why they should pay more for finer features, and help them kick ass with their products after the sale. These blogs are also not afraid to put a face on the companies’ personnel. Some blogs have an actual byline from an person in the company.

Kessler:blog, written by the owner’s son
Gibson Guitars: MySpace, news, Twitter, YouTube
Dixon Drums: blog, YouTube (disclosure: Heavybag client)
Propellerheads Software: artist profiles, YouTube

Roland has 8 different content channels, all with feeds, and most with a newsletter option, each one for a specific market need. These include:

They certainly offer the widest range and best frequency of content if you count ever channel. Roland has a long history of content production with their RUG (Roland User Group) print magazines. They are also one of the only companies profiled here to have a support channel as content available in a feed. This makes sense since they are a technology company. These notifications are are mostly software updates. They specifically cater to the church musician niche with their Worship Connection content channel, offering advice on live sound that fits in well with their organ products. They have a link to Worship Northwest 2009, a conference sponsored by many audio companies.

The Best are using two or more: blog, forum, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook

These companies have embraced the tools of social media. I don’t like the content style of all of them (some are too press release-ish), but they are going to where their users are. They do not need to reinvent concepts, and are fine using open source software or free web 2.0 services. Their blog content is decent as well.

ElectroHarmonix: YouTube, MySpace blog
Ludwig: MySpace, MySpace blog, Facebook, news, Twitter
Yamaha: The Hub: podcasts, blogs, and videos
Kaces: blog (disclosure: this is our client)
Rock n’ Roller Cart: blog (disclosure: this is our client)
Line6: news, Twitter
Reunion Blues gig bags: blog, wiki (a directory for touring musicians), Twitter, MySpace (disclosure: this is our client)
Sabian: news (no feed), forum, Twitter
Taye Drums: blog, community, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook

D’Addario bands have MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and forums for most of it’s brands. They are listed on their ToTheStage.com community site along with a directory of sites that teach you how to play better:

TC Electronic has news across multiple categories available in one RSS feed, a forum, videos on YouTube, a Netvibes Widget, and a newsletter: news (on the home page), YouTube, Netvibes news widget, newsletter, forum, news page for the TC Helicon brand, and a Flickr stream. These guys really get it, and I think they are the best example of a company that is really participating in the social web, allowing their brand to be found across many platforms. I especially like how their news is part of their homepage. They understand that the context of their web presence is immediacy.

Newspage and newsletter/mailing list, no feeds

BSS Audio: newsletter and news
DM Pro: newsletter, news
Focusrite: newsletter, news
Mapex: newsletter, news
Marshall Amps: newsletter, news
Novation: newsletter
Peavy: newsletter, news
Soundcraft: newsletter
Sabian: newsletter and news
Zildjian: newsletter and news

Non-syndicated news page with press releases and/or collection of press mentions, no feed or newsletter, no forum

When companies can speak directly to musicians from their sites, why do they need to write a press release? It’s as if the only other place the musicians will read about new products is magazines and other niche sites. These news pages are written for them. There could also be content for end users.

Allen and Heath
Audix USA
Buffet-Crampon
Dave Smith Instuments
DW Drums
Fostex USA
Gibraltar Drums Hardware
Hosa Cables
JBL Pro
Johnson Guitars
KRK Systems
Kurzweil Music Systems
Middle Atlantic
Novation
Nord Keyboards
Numark
OC Drum and Percussion
Ovation Guitars (disclosure: this is a past client)
Pearl Drums
Paiste
Premier Percussion
ProCo Sound
Samson Audio
Shure
SennheiserUSA
Sony Professional
Tama Drums
Tascam
Ultimate Support

Some of the tools we use

For Heavybag Media clients, we use Twitter for “ambient awareness,” Wordpress as a blogging platform, PHPList for mailing lists, YouTube for free video hosting and syndication, MySpace for demographic outreach, Google Analytics and Feedburner to track visors and subscribers.

Our Favorite Picks

We are happy to see Conn-Selmer syndicate all of it’s news. TC Electronic has done a fair job using social media and RSS syndication, and YouTube. Yamaha has not only great videos that help to educate customers on their products, but podcasts also. Roland has the richest and longest running content channels.

Comments and Suggestions?

If you have any suggestions on companies we forgot to include, corrections, or would like help with your web strategy, leave us a comment.

(photos by synthesizers, psycht, Squiggle, and TCElectronic on Flickr)



937 views

Using Social Media to Market Music

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on June 9, 2008
in Consumer Electronics, DRM Rant, Disruptive Business Models in Content, I heard it on a podcast, Innovation, My Projects, New Marketing, Photoblogging, Product Support and Customer Service, Social Web and Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

My colleague at Heavybag Media, Jackie Peters has a post about the great opportunities record labels have in using social media as a marketing strategy. The challenges they are facing: they must switch from selling music in physical packages to selling musical experiences, allow fans to interact with the music in meaningful ways, and allow music to be an experience to share with friends. The convergence of downladable, infinitely available music along with the ability to learn about new music via word of mouth/social media in the form of music blogs, podcasts, recommendation (both algorithms and friend) is the perfect fit.

But for now, the transition is rough for music industry veterans. Almost every week for the past two years the music industry manages to make one puzzling move after another, while independent artists are free to make decisions who’s only stockholders are themselves along with their artistic and commercial aspirations. Increasingly, independent artists commercial strategy is not in selling CDs, but in the more scarce goods such as early access to new releases, performances, and limited edition vinyl or DVDs, reliable discovery and immediate access to files on iTune or Amazon MP3 . They now they need to sell their fans something they cannot get for free.

People love to talk about the music they love. Allowing them to share it easily and legally, and talk about it online, and put it in new contexts is the new path to commercial success.



940 views

How Open Source and Social Media are going to Eat SEOs’ Lunches

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on April 23, 2008
in Consumer Electronics, DRM Rant, Disruptive Business Models in Content, I heard it on a podcast, Innovation, Social Web and Web 2.0
. 4 Comments

(Sphinn this)
Search engines react to behavior of its users and site owners. Search engines measures these behaviors to deliver value to each, but ultimately to serve the search engines’ best interests. At first, search engines used what they could by implying relevance and rank by link behavior. But as the web evolves to the social web, social media connections are going to have an increasing weight on search result relevance. Let’s face it: social media strategy is going to cannibalize black hat and some current white hat SEO strategy. Social media strategy is the new way to do SEO (figure out how to give value to your client’s web strategy). It is Matt Cutt’s job to figure out how to measure this relevance, and he is seeing that it is social media.

Right now, there are a bunch of SEOs listening to what Danny Sullivan has to say about social media strategy because they trust him. But some SEOs refuse to re-evaluate what brings value to their clients, (note: this Sphinn user was not in attendance) even saying that Jason should not be allowed at conferences. These sentiments just prove to him that what he is doing is right. It is innovators dilemma. SEOs got where they are today by being great at SEO strategies. Asking them to adopt social media as a new strategy is new and foreign. As Danny tries to lead his followers to new territory, some think he is betraying them and the strategies that made them the stars they are today. Some might be too afraid to go back to their clients to tell them they are going to try some new strategies to help their clients succeeded. They should remember that this does not mean the work they did in the past did not allow for successes or was a bad idea. SEO definitely has been one of the main ways to help clients succeed on the web for the past 10 years. But, there is no need to defend past actions with future ignorance. They need to redefine their metrics. The longer they wait, the more likely they will get their lunch eaten.

Thus, the knee-jerk reaction to Jason Calicanis’s rhetoric that SEO is a dying or bad strategy. Yes, let’s admit that Jason loves to agitate people by rubbing strategy decay into SEO’s faces, bad Jason ;) . No one is going to tell an SEO that they are not giving value to their clients using SEO techniques. It just that the tactics they are using need to evolve.

Less attention is going to be paid to traditional SEO because (especially in the creation of static pages) now it is so much easier and valuable to create site with an open source blog, CMS, wiki or other application platform that may or may not rely on search engine traffic. Sure, even with these there are some ways to tweak them from an SEO perspective, but not as much as you might have needed to do 10 years ago. This is disruptive technology, bad news for the traditional SEOs that build sites from scratch, sprinkling in their elusive, magical SEO code. But, the developers of these open source CMS apps have figured out how to do the complicated SEO work for you (why else would Matt Cutts speak, attend, and endorse Wordcamp?). Here (along with social media application designers) is where good SEO needs to happen, and smart web strategists will realize that this is where it should continue to happen, because it scales and eliminates redundant work. You just need to wait for the search engines to spider your site. Now, traditional SEOs (which should now be called web strategists) should have more time available to add additional types of value for their clients by either engaging in social media on their behalf, or teaching them how to engaging with their prospects in a way that will help them efficiently meet their goals over the web. This is done by creating “meaningful relationships” (for lack of a better term) with people. At this point, SEO is just one of many tactics used by a web strategist. So calling a person an SEOs or SEM will soon be a way to show how outdated or limited that person’s strategy toolbox is. SEO competes with other value-adding strategies if all you do is SEO. Thus, SEO people see social media strategy as a threat. Being a web strategist is where it’s at.

Update 4/25/08: Oh yeah, add semantic web to the list in the title.



352 views

The Truth Emerges: Valleywag at the TechCrunch/PopSugar Party

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on April 12, 2008
in Photoblogging, Social Web and Web 2.0
. 2 Comments

Jackson West and Mike ArringtonWhat you are looking at is an ambushing of Mike Arrnington at his own party with the intention of pissing him off and creating news for Valleywag, and the real reason behind all of the drama. (Update: In the comments for this photo, Bonny says it was innocent enough, but the depiction here is probably how Arrington saw it). And here, Owen Thomas does a piece to suggest humorously Arrington’s over reaction. Whether this tactic was suggested from above by Denton or Thomas, or if Bonny and Jackson cooked it up themselves, I do not know. But now I feel we were all (or at least I was) an unintended, unwitting pawn in creating news for Valleywag.

Jackson West approached Arrnington, saying “Hi, I am with Valleywag” as Bonny shot the reaction: Arrnington storming off to find bouncers, kicking them both out moments later. In case you are not aware, Valleywag does about one disparaging pieces a week on Arrnington, and I can understand why he would not want them at his private party. But Jackson and Bonny are new to the team. They could have remained at the party without stirring anything up, but that would not be in true Valleywag form. Stirring the pot and making the news happen, it seems, was there intention, and they accomplished their mission.

Do I mind the exposure for the part I took? Not really, but now it appears it was at the expense of Arrington’s nerves, and I am not completely comfortable with that. But perhaps it is just the tax Arrington has to pay for fame and success. It would have helped if Arrnington had explained all of this to me at the time, but emotions were running high with everyone, the club was loud and dark, and it was not possible. As for Bonny, she is a sweet girl, and I guess if she wants to work for Valleywag, that is her choice. I suppose neither Bonny nor Jackson were surprised that they were personally escorted out by Arrnington and the bouncers after what they did. By the time I became involved, Valleywag already made the news, I just helped to unknowingly sweeten it a bit. I don’t wish to downplay my “heroics,” but just to say that they were uninformed. So, I really was Vallywaged, not in a good way.

Photo by Bonny Pierzina.



601 views

Drama 2.0

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on April 11, 2008
in Photoblogging, Social Web and Web 2.0
. 3 Comments

My girlfriend and I attended the TechCrunch/PopSugar meetup last night. Well, Mike Arrington had to give Valleywag something to talk about. He, along with 6 bouncers escorted Bonny Pierzina, (a vlogger who was hired to photographer the event by Valleywag) out of the venue. This took place soon after after Jackson West, a new Valleywag writer, introduced himself to Arrington. Right when Bonny happened to be talking with Hayden Black and I, we were approached. As we stood there with Arrington for a moment, who was looking smugly at us as the bouncers surrounded her, I asked them not to spare sweet little Bonny, but they would not have it.

I later learned that the ever-charming Pete Cashmore of Mashable was kicked out as well, presumably becuase his blog competes with TechCrunch? I just don’t get it. I guess the idea of friendly competition/”co-opitition” are dead. More details here along with the photos Arrington does not want you to see! Even more pwnage ensued after the event. Well, hopefully everyone can be friends afterwords. Loren Feldman, who made a name for himself by calling out Arrington, is now friends with him.

Update:
LA Times reporter David Sarno reports Pete may have fabricated the story of his ouster at the party just for fun (via Valleywag).

Update 2: The Truth Emerges: Valleywag at the TechCrunch/PopSugar Party



676 views

3 Moblogging Tools Reviewd: Twitxr, ShoZu, JuiceCaster

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on February 29, 2008
in Social Web and Web 2.0
. 2 Comments

For moblogging, you need to camera phone with e-mail capability. So, I just upgraded to a Motorola W490 specifically for the photo and video features. I was eager to connect it to my Flickr account. Flickr itself does not have this capability built-in, but since it has an open API, they did not have to build it themselves. Here are a couple sites that connect to Flickr and another that could/should.

Twitxr
The brand new player in this space is Twitxr.com. What interested me is the ability to send my mobile phone pics to both my Twitter and Flickr accounts (it will send them to Facebook as well, but I was not as excited about that). I singed up, and found it pretty easy to connect it each of these other profiles. Due to the nature of each of these connecting sites, the registration process was slightly different for each one. I took some pics, and sent it to a special e-mail address generated by Twitxr, and had it appear on my Flickr, with a geo tag (you set your location on Twitxr ahead of time), as well as my Twitxr profile which appears to have its own obligatory social network along with a user landing page and commenting, and RSS feed with a simple URL. Twitxr’s social network seems kind of pointless at first, since I am using it as a utility to send pics to my other social networks. However, the value is that you don’t need to have a profile on these other sites to make use of Twitxr. I don’t feel much like looking for friends on it, especially since FriendFeed has raised the standard for ease of friend-finding. According to TechCrunch, Twitxr is a product of Fon Labs, part of Fon Wireless, a WiFi provider with offices worldwide.

ShoZu
Next, I checked out ShoZu. I found ShoZu on Flickr’s mobile tools page. BarCampLA5 is this weekend, and I wanted to make use of my camera phone there. While twitxr does geotags tags (set it on the site ahead of time) but not regular meta tags, ShoZu does meta tags (set it on the site ahead of time) but not geotags. So, I set the tags ShoZu to BarCampLA5 and some variations on that. ShoZu, being the oldest out of the three sites, supports connections to the widest variety of social networking and blogging platforms that have open APIs: 28 sites including YouTube and Facebook, plus e-mail and ftp. It does not have a social networking feature, or a landing page for your profile like twitxr, but it does provide an RSS feed for my photos like twitxr. ShoZu has a blog and a support forum, and their team looks pretty solid. They are venture funded and their target user demographic is worldwide, and are based in London. I am not sure what their business model is, but they appear to have some corporate partnerships with big media companies.

JuiceCaster
The first site I checked out was actually JuiceCaster since a friend of mine was just hired there. By far, this was the most difficult site to use, and I could not even get it to work. I had to send it from my phone with the text “Profile” to [my phone number] @juicecaster.com. It cleverly sends the pic right back to my phone (I don’t think it is supposed to do this, and I do not see any value in it), but nothing changes on the site. I could not even get a picture to appear. I don’t care if there is some step I skipped or something, it should just work and be idiot-proof.

JuiceCaster lets you host both pictures and videos, lets you embed a Flash widgets on your blog or MySpace, or Facebook, but it does not seem very useful I can get the pictures to appear. The widget takes the TV metaphor a little too far by showing snow, color bars (when there is no content yet), and letting you change the channel to another users. The widget is the only way to view the content, which creates a bit of a usability problem. This means that you don’t have access to the raw jpg files. As a destination for photos and videos, there are no open APIs to allow the connection of something Flickr or YouTube, which in some ways are compititors. There are no RSS feeds so there is no real platform for others to build on. As a user, if you want your videos to get seen by a lot of people, you are far better off using the ShoZu to YouTube application than embedding the JuiceCaster widget. But, it is pretty clear that the main purpose of this platform is for mobile phones themselves (not the web), sharing with specific friends, and immediacy. However, a little web usability can go a long way in helping to build this brand via some mild SEO. They do have a Facebook application, with instructions on installing it here, but strangely, no link to the actual Facebook application on that page, which is here, listing 19 active daily users. There are four different fan groups on Facebook, the most having 26 members. All of this calls their current strategy into question.

One feature that JuiceCaster has that other services do not have is the ability to send photos and videos to your friends’ phones. However, it seems most phones today have this feature built in, and you do not need a 3rd party application. I am not sure what the core competency or business model is for JuiceCaster. In some ways they compete with Slide.com and RockYou.com’s MySpace widgets and Facebook applications. The target user seems to be the MySpace demographic. I suggest they focus more on allowing the content to be spread around the net with more than just Flash widgets, but also with RSS and an open API, and perhaps a blog. According to their about page, they were able to make their mark years ago as a white label solution, back when there was less competition and innovation in the space.

It seems they definitely want to be a platform, but the other two competitors mentioned in this post, which are simply tools to enable the use of larger platforms, seem to be ahead of them in functionality, flexibility, and momentum. I would love to see them get it together. JuiceCaster is based out of Los Angeles, Ca. They appear to have investors but do not list any of them, but they are listed here at the TechCrunch CrunchBase

I tried to embed the Flash widget, but it messed up the layout of this page to much, so here is a screen shot instead.

Mashable took a less in-depth look at around 30 of the competitors in this space last year.

Update:
If my friend is able to help me fix the problems with JuiceCaster, I’ll update it here.

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350 views

An analysis of Google’s Social Graph API

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on February 4, 2008
in Social Web and Web 2.0
. 1 Comment

Despite the valid concerns that some have with Google’s Social Graph API, I thought I would talk about the technical possibilities. My social graph may be of particular interest becuase I had used my Wordpress blog’s XFN feature to mark up the blogs I read as “muse” and my profile on at least 10 social networks as “me.” Using the Google’s Social Graph API demo you can see my extensive list of FOAF and XFN URLs. There is also a machine readable format that could be fed into a new social network to find friends on that network. (click for a larger version)
I have illustrated what the data means, and how it was derived from these other sites.

I accidentally listed PaidContent.org as another site of mine (I have it in my blogroll, I intended to mark it as “muse”, not “me”, I am not affiliated with them),  so it then goes on to show links to colleagues and acquaintances of PaidContent.org that it attributes back to me. I have fixed this in my blog roll, but the Google cache has not updated yet.

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346 views

To Big Media All Media is Commercial, to Normal People Media is Part of a Conversation

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on December 20, 2007
in Disruptive Business Models in Content, First Amendment and Social Web
. 0 Comments

All forms of media and broadcasted conversations were at one time only producible by Big Media companies. And most of it was for commercial use. This is the broadcasting, music selling, book selling; the licensing and permission paradigm.

When you are having a conversation with a friend at your home, you might talk about a piece of corporately owned media, and you might use that corporately owned media in the conversation. The conversation is private and non-commercial.

Now, when you try to take your conversation about media online (in a blog, video, or mp3 for example) and use the media in this conversation, Big Media sees this conversations as their exclusive right to have. And if you did not get the proper licenses, copyrights, and permissions to have an online conversations about the media while using (in it’s original form, in its partial form, or in a re-purposed form except in the case of parody), you are a pirate or a thief. And since it is online, it is assumed to be commercial or have commercial value.

This is the fundamental problem with IP and Fair Use today. To Big Media, all media is big media, and to regular people having a conversation, media is a conversation piece that will be used. Big Media is at odds with normal people’s use of corporately owned Media as part of commentary or conversation if it is online or in the public and for non-commercial purposes.

What Big Media fails to realizes is that conversations about corporately owned Media is not a substitute for media, is not a law enforceable business opportunity, and does not decrease or destroy the ability for corporately owned Media to produce more corporately owned Media. What normal people fail to realize is that Big Media assume they own all the rights to all forms of conversation about their media. But that is where Fair Use should and will be allowed present its case.

The way it looks today is that whoever has the money for a lawyer is allowed to exercise Fair Use. This means that most regular people, despite the ability to broadcast messages on the internet for free, are not allowed to comment by using corporately owned Media.

My favorite books on this topic are Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig (who is featured in the video above). You can buy it on Amazon, read it on Google Books, download the free audio book version, or check out all of the other free formats.

Update: 5/27/08
Techdirt shows how Viacom suing YouTube shows this difference perfectly. YouTube is about communication. But Viacom sees it as a broadcast, and so the laws governing broadcast should apply. YouTube sees it as freedom of speech and fair use.

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348 views

Counter Facebook/Beacon FUD Roundup

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on December 2, 2007
in Social Web
. 2 Comments

A couple of Facebook experts explain that Beacon is not as bad as MoveOn.org and others wants you to think (as far as privacy invasion). Coincidently, Facebook’s founder Mark Zukerberg has had his social security number published in a Harvard-targeted magazine.

Dave McClure: Facebook Beacon & Privacy Settings for External Websites (ex: BustedTees.com)

Sean Percival: Facebook Beacon is Sexy

Sawickipedia: Facebook’s beacon program isn’t the spawn of the devil – why you’ll grow to love it too

These posts address the privacy concerns regarding the sharing of your activity about other sites with your friends. However, what about the sharing of your browsing habits with Facebook’s Beacon partners regardless of your Beacon privacy settings in Facebook? The data could still get collected and shared between Facebook and their partners, it is just not published by your newsfeed. In other words, Facebook is leveraging its users cookies’ for its partners to mine data. This will make advertising more targeted and relevant, and this could still be a concern for some people. This is the future, but most people are not ready for this today.

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365 views

An Intro to Web Strategy for Creatives Seeking New Success

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 2, 2007
in Disruptive Business Models in Content, Innovation, New Marketing and Social Web
. 1 Comment

I am having dinner tonight with an old friend whom I have not spoken to at length or hung out with for a couple years. He is in the creative field (an illustrator). He does not follow social media and new media as much as I am and I wanted to tell him about all of the opportunities that are available, so I made this list. This is also especially relevant to any striking Hollywood writers that might now turn to the web to make a living. This is relevant to filmmakers, musicians, writers, designers, visual artists, and analyst, and consultants.
So, here is my advice (all from observation, none learned first hand) for all creatives who are new to the Internet an need to know the key points success with the web:

1. Give away what is free to make infinite copies as a way to get noticed. License some of it Under Creative Commons, and encourage your fans to remix these works. Example: Cory Doctorow’s books, Ze Frank’s online community.

2. Sell/license most of your works that are free to make infinite copies of, and when multiple parties can pay you multiple times for it. Examples: the preachings and teachings of Mike Masnick at Techdirt.

3. Sell (don’t give away) the resources that are scare at a premium, regardless of the time they take to create (short amount or long amount of time).

4. Use social networking sites, blogs, podcasting, Twitter, blogsearch, and IM to stay in contact with fans. Use some of the ideas they suggest to you (the good ones, of course). Take the time to thank them individually and/or publicly. Meet with them in person if you can. Never poo-poo a fan’s idea publicly. If you don’t make time for these things, you limit your visibility to the market and it will be much harder for you to succeed. Examples: Ask A Ninja, Ze Frank.

5. Partner with a contemporary or friend using the these sames strategies and talk about each other in the social media space every once in a while. Example: the Chris Brogan/JeffPulver mojo combo.

6. Never get into any exclusive licensing deals for the brand you create, (unless it is no longer fun AND you can retire and live off the payout for rest of your life and/or you are ready to start your new venture). Never get into any exclusive licensing deals for ALL works you create.

7. When starting out, never order 100’s of physical goods to resell. Use a service that makes one-off’s on demand. example: use lulu.com

8. When you need to get work done that you cannot do and you cannot hire anyone or have no enthusiastic fans to do the work, partner with others at the same level but with different skills and cross promote each other. Example: almost all open source projects.

9. Take smart risks in areas where competitors will not. Break the rules. Break some laws. Be remarkable or don’t bother (hat tip to SethGodin). Example: Jet Blue, YouTube, Perez Hilton

10. Try not to compete with others, try to work with them, differentiate, harmonize. Example: Nintendo Wii

11. When you are dead sure you know how to appeal to a niche in a big way, never fall under the pressure to compromise by trying to appeal to a broader audience. That spells mediocrity. Example: BoingBoing.net, Anti-example: G4TV.

12. If your dayjob is in the creative field or is interesting to a lot of people at any level, suggest to your company that you blog about the work of your company, publicly disclosing the name of the company. If and when you leave, you will take the personal brand you have built with you, and now you have more value in the market. Use your position to lead innovation in your area. Examples (most are now freelance consultants or entrepreneurs): Micki Krimmel (formerly of Revver), Tara Hunt (formerly of Riya), Chris Messina (formerly of Flock), Jeremiah Owyang (formerly of Podtech.net and Hitachi Data Systems, coined the term “Web Strategy/Strategist” as far as I am concerned), Robert Scoble (formerly of Microsoft), Niall Kennedy (formerly of Technorati and Microsoft), Tantek Çelik (formerly of Technorati, Microsoft, and Apple).

13. Be ready and willing to embrace an opportunity, market, strategy, audience, or demographic that you had not planned on or did not expect unless you are certain it will make you miserable. This means you don’t have to plan to far ahead because there is no way you will know what is going to happen. Examples: Slide.com, RockYou.com, iLike.com who all jumped on the chance to make the first Facebook F8 apps and found success. Anti-example: Friendster who deleted fake profiles people were really having fun with (circa 2003) which drove users to MySpace.

14. Unless he or she is a social media superstar, never follow a lawyers advice against any of these guidelines. If this happens, the lawyer is thinking too much about his or her short term financial gain and not about your long term successes. Anti-example: RIAA, MPAA.

(digg please)

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