Category — Uncategorized

A lot of media companies are talking about branching out into niches, but few have real stellar ideas about how to do that.

Well, just look at Kirtsy - the Digg-like site for women that mixes user contributed and voted for stories with editorially picked content within a number of different sub-niches. It’s beautifully done and should serve as a model for how niche sites can be put together.

(Via chrisbrogan.com)

One of the most common problems for many software engineers and content people is that at the end of the day they have little more than a hunch about what it actually is the user would find value in.

To many market research is not something you invest in. Instead you design for yourself. You develop what you would like to use. And - depending on ego - you know or pray that what you’re doing is going to be a massive hit. Unfortunately it isn’t so [Read more →]

Journalists are often complaining about the rise of user generated content and the utter amateur publishers. But maybe journalists should start focusing on a much more potent threat: The machines.

Yes, content filtering is hot. And even though Digg and del.icio.us have been around for while, new services continue to pop up which put the machines to work at creating the most compelling feed(s) of news suited to your individual taste(s). The race is on. Will man or machine win? [Read more →]

Mainstream media companies are often accused on being evil and protectionistic by the new(er) kids on the block. But if TechCrunch is to be believed, new media can be evil too.

TechCrunch have a story about American advertising network Glam, which have recently cut substantially in the fees it pays the publishers in its network. According to Glam this is a move to provide more options for publishers instead of relying on lower yielding house ads. According to TechCrunch this is a move to effectively kill revenue streams. [Read more →]

Microsoft wants to revolutionize ROI analysis for online marketing. They want to do ‘Engagement Mapping’. And I think they are dead on to something here.

It’s imperative for the future of online advertising - and hence for online services and publishers - that advertisers understand the true value of online advertising. Every move that can bring more understanding and analytics to the market is a good one. [Read more →]

Nicholas Carr har en glimrende gennemgang af, hvorfor det er, at mobile applikationer får mundvandet frem hos alle de store teknologiaktører fra Google over Microsoft til Yahoo! Det handler i virkeligheden slet ikke om at give brugerne nye muligheder - det handler om, hvad brugerne kan give de store spillere af indsigt i adfærdsmønstre:

…one of the great benefits of the cell phone as a data mining tool is that it provides raw, unfiltered information, which ends up being more reliable than information “self-reported” by people. People’s reports on their own behavior are subject to a great deal of distortion due to memory lapses, cognitive biases, embarrassment, and other factors. Cell-phone reality mining, by contrast, provides “a new method for precise measurements of large-scale human behavior.” Our cell phone know us better than we know ourselves.

Fuldstændig rigtig set. Og det hænger også rigtig godt sammen med de mange udsagn, man hører fra folk, der går på, at mobilen er det sidste, man skal røre ved, fordi den opfattes som en integreret del af ens personlighed. Sagt med andre ord: Har du først adgang til mobilen, er der ingen hemmeligheder mere. Det er et på mange måder skræmmende perspektiv, og spørgsmålet er nu: Hvem vinder kampen? Giganterne eller den almindelige lille m/k?