Magazines as a whole are facing increasing competition from their online foes which are eating into advertising revenue. Coupled with a general economic malaise that is getting a tighter grip on the world economy and the increase in the raw material costs to print a magazine it was a bit of a no-brainer to shut down the print version. Right now the online version of the magazine generates 70% of the revenue and 80% of the profit of PC Mag.

This is a natural progression as the online edition of the publication was the first stop for news anyway. It’s kind of hard to be on top of the breaking news in any industry when you only go to print once a month. That’s so 80’s!

The magazine’s circulation is ½ of what it was in the late 1990’s. The magazine industry as a whole is suffering a 17% decrease in ad pages for December of 2008 when compared to December of 2007 according to the Media Industry Newsletter. This is the latest magazine to say goodbye to its print edition and my suspicion is that many will follow suit in the very near future.

What are some titles that you think will be online only in the next year or so? Are there any magazines that you would rather have in a print edition v. an online one? What place will magazines play in the future of media and marketing? Looking forward to some Pilgrim input for this one.

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The technology was developed for renowned fashion designer Nanette Lepore and was tested at Bloomingdale’s early this year. Aimed at young women, they can get other’s opinions on what clothes look good and what their peers are buying. They can also text message, IM and email each other about their shopping choices. Live video feeds show what they try on, send a video of an outfit, and get friends feedback. They can also try on outfits virtually. Retailers get something out of the experience too – real time feedback on inventory, buying habits, and preferences for a pretty fickle group of shoppers.

So I guess this means never shopping alone. Or viewing a sports event or anything. We can interact all the time! I find it fascinating how at the same time these technologies bring us together they decrease face time. Everyone is a text message away so why should you actually need to see one another.

Both on and offline socializing and forming communities around music, shopping, and other activities is hot. I found some data from SellPoint through a study conducted by Coremetrics that talked about how online conversions are affected by audio/video tours of products (and I think that’s what stores need – tours of products and outfit suggestions from designers – for all ages).

My friends at HookSell are doing audio tours of more complicated products and seeing a big impact on conversion rates. Even the homemade version that Dan at DVO does have increased sales on his kitchen gear. The study showed a 35% increase in sales when a video/audio tour is viewed – plus it kept shoppers online longer. Not long ago social media was seen as interesting or fun, but it can also drive business.

When you see Time Magazine recognizing a social media tactic meant to drive sales to stores, you know it’s hit the mainstream.

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Now if you have no intention of doing anything unethical, you might believe that you don’t need to understand search spam.

After all, if you don’t want to rob a house, you don’t need to know how to pick a lock, right? Well, what you don’t know most certainly can hurt you when it comes to search spam. Read on for my three-part series in Revenue Magazine for the unsavory tactics that everyone needs to know about.

Legitimate search marketers must have at least a passing familiarity with spam techniques in order to avoid them. Many companies have been tripped up because their employees unwittingly employed spam techniques, or because they unwittingly hired search marketing consultants who do. You’ll want to know enough to protect yourself, but also you’ll want to identify competitors gaining unfair advantages so you can turn them in to the search engines.

You can bone up on what you need to know (no one ever seems to "bone down") by reading my three-part series of columns in Revenue Magazine—now they are posted publicly online:

• Spiders Don’t Eat Spam. Find out what spam search tactics are, what "cloaking" is, and how to spot a spammer masquerading as a legitimate search marketing consultant.
• The Ingredients That Go Into Spam. Get the list of spam techniques that manipulate the content on your Web pages to try to mislead the search engines.
• The Tangled Web of Link Spam. One of the most popular methods of spamming the search engines involves setting up bogus pages and even entire faked sites created just to send inbound links to a site the spammer wants to promote. Learn what you need to know to identify this technique.

The stakes are high. Companies that engage in spam tactics risk having their Web sites "banned" by the search engines, which is geek-speak for having all of their pages removed from the search indexes—it’s like the phone company suddenly giving you an unlisted number. Banned sites are never found for searches, and you probably were hoping to do better than that.

Some people make a living fooling Google, but it’s probably not going to be you. Unless you are clever enough to stay ahead of the spam police, you are better off sticking to the rules and making sure your employees and your search consultants do so as well.

You can check out the full list of "The Searchers" columns for Revenue Magazine that I write. They are posted publicly a few months after they are available to subscribers, so if you want to get them faster, you’ll need to subscribe to Revenue Magazine in printed form or online. Some of you might even qualify for a free subscription, so check it out.

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And so far, only readers of Gizmodo and Engadget are treated to a correction.

Every publication, no matter how careful, makes mistakes. It’s part of the business. Traditionally, newspapers like to bury them a few pages in, placing corrections in a bottom corner somewhere.

But at least they’re there. This incident, though, is more of a case of piggybacking gone awry. Not that piggybacking isn’t standard fare in the news industry. It is, and it happens with the best of publications. Compare these two articles, for instance.

See, happens all the time.

Credit for unraveling the Nissan paint mystery goes to Darius at YoungGoGetter.com, who painstakingly traced the "news" back to its origin after receiving comment from Nissan that they’d only heard of the new technology.

Sure enough, it was one misinterpreted and slightly altered sentence at NextEnergyNews that started it all:

This revolutionary new paramagnetic paint is a technical wonder and is viewed by Nissan and other auto companies as an amazing innovation that would draw huge traffic to dealerships and will make it easier for consumers to get the exact option level they want on a car without the sacrifice of their favorite color.

Which, by the time it reached Wired, became:

Nissan Developing Color-Changing Auto Paint

With similar so-far uncorrected variations at Daily Tech and MobileMag.com.

But what’s most humorous about Darius’s investigative blogging is the publications’ use of the same image of a Nissan car with only the colors altered. Your choice: black, white and red; black and red; silver and black; or green and black.

More time was spent fiddling with the image than actually researching the blog posts, it appears.

So what’s the moral to this humorous tale? Darius nails it:

Bloggers and readers should do more to research the facts and original sources before jumping to the publish button. How else will we establish blogging as a credible, journalistic endeavor?

Yes, indeed. The salty, veteran journalists out there are laughing their butts off.

Businesses of all sizes are trying out the concept. According to Tradeshow Week magazine, mid-to-large-sized companies spend about $550,000 every year on trade shows.

Online marketers are fans of virtual events because it costs less and often results in more targeted leads. The virtual version of trade shows don’t usually completely replace regular trade shows but are a way to cut costs or add value. Perhaps the biggest advantage of a virtual trade show is that you can track what people at your event do. Since attendees are anonymous they are free to linger and engage with the vendor as much or as little as they choose.

Recent research by The FactPoint Group, in behalf of Unisfair found that virtual events like trade shows attract an average of 1,587 attendees which deliver an average of 348 qualified leads per vendor.

Founded in 2002, Unisfair has developed a virtual world for tradeshows. It’s a 3-D collection of booths, live and recorded presentations and most importantly for marketers, it tracks what attendees are interested in.

I chatted with Don at Unisfair today. The company was founded in 2000 in Israel and was funded by Sequoia Capital. Based in Menlo Park, they combine online collaboration tools with social networking and virtual environments. They’ve hosted everything from job fairs to user groups and sales training.

The numbers look pretty good. Most events are free to attendees and average over 3,000 people registering, and just over half (52%) actually attend. Most people spend 2.5 hours at the event, visit 16 locations and download five resources. Most virtual tradeshows run 1.5 days but are still accessible for three months following the event. You can test out a demo of a virtual trade show at Unisfair’s showcase here.

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Social media specifically refers to blogging, podcasting, using message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis. 46% of the charities report that social media is a key part of the organizations fund raising efforts (though they do not measure success by numbers – they seem to use the tools more for branding purposes).

Social media is an effective way to increase awareness of their missions and helps them connect with their constituencies. The research did not trace how this affected donations because the organizations mainly used it to build community and foster their online presence.

The findings came from the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. They conducted a nationwide telephone survey of nonprofits named by Forbes Magazine to their list of the 200 largest US charities for 2006 under the direction of researchers Eric Mattson and Nora Ganim Barnes. Seventy-six of the charities gave detailed interviews.

The charities are especially outpacing businesses when it comes to podcasting and though less utilize video, the ones who are use it heavily. They are also blogging. Charities blog at a higher rate than businesses on the Fortune and Inc. 500 lists, with more than a third of the organizations. Compare that to just 8% of Fortune 500 businesses and 19% of businesses on the Inc. 500 list.

I did a little research myself and found that the number one charity (measured by revenue) is the Mayo Clinic which maintains two blogs—including a blog on stress. Maybe some of usought to add that to our list of RSS feeds .

The United Way has three blogs as well as blogs at regional offices I didn’t find blogs for the Salvation Army, American Red Cross, Catholic Charities, or Habitat for Humanity (however they do link to blogs written by others associated with their organization). The ones I looked at didn’t seem to be utilizing social bookmarking or advanced functionality on their blogs.

See the full report in part three of the three-part series: http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studies/cmrblogstudy4.pdf

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FiOS is Verizon’s digital fiber optic high speed Internet for homes. It is combined with their phone service and you can also get on-demand television through the same lines. The maximum connection speeds is 50 Mbps or 30 Mbps downstream and 20Mbps or 5 Mbps upstream, depending on where you live.

PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff described it this way: “…virtually every web page I visited popped up as if the servers were sitting in my living room.”

Basically the team of technicians (2 men and a woman) go into homes to install everything, capture it all on video, and in the process outfit the families with a lot of high tech goodies. Things like a new Verizon cell phone, super fast internet, a high tech network, a theater and maybe gaming equipment – depending on the family. Plus they’ll throw a block party for your neighbors to celebrate. They get people to audition while they’re there and give away big screen televisions and other things. So the turnout is pretty good.

They have started off with three families in the Philadelphia area and two families in the Pittsburgh area. The families submit their stories and are featured on the blog. Plus they’ll be on TV – major local network channels are covering the shows or you can watch them online at FiOS TV video-on-demand at http://2pointhome.com.

What’s really impressive is that the concept is on Facebook, photos are on flickr, del.icio.us is bookmarked, and the videos are on YouTube. And the technicians try to be entertaining (two men and a woman with personality, which if were more like most technicians, they probably wouldn’t talk to you).

Here’s an example: husband and wife Lora and Scott were using a typewriter. After the crew helped them out they started blogging, Twittering, buying things online, and making their own movies on the internet. They have properly turned them into geeks.

Lora is on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/lorakaczor and Scott is at http://twitter.com/scottkaczor. Not a long list of followers but they just started.

All households will be considered for this home makeover (so couples, roommates, and singles can apply too.) While I consider high speed and high tech hip, it’s not so in an entertaining sort of way. More in a nerdy way. In the meantime, I can think of a few families I would recommend. I have tried teaching ecommerce to farmers in the Midwest with dial-ups. I think I’ll have them apply.

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Yesterday we learned that Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook for $240 Million. Today there is another large investment – it’s been rumored that Facebook got an additional $500 million from two New York hedge funds.

Part of that deal is that Microsoft will do more advertising on the site. Facebook has a jaw-dropping $15 billion valuation. This is incredible. Together the new investments are for about the percentage that Microsoft owns.

Elizabeth Corcoran from Forbes Magazine broke the story yesterday and the news spread faster than the California wildfires (which, thank goodness, are slowing).

Facebook was seeking $750 million from the get-go and are at $740 and have only given up about 5% of the company. And we don’t know their revenue but it’s based on advertising. Estimates put their revenue at $100 million for last year.

Young and Rich

Facebook was started by then-Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and was originally called The Facebook.” It’s not even four years old – being started in February 2004. It started as just a space for Harvard students. In one month more than half of the undergraduates at Harvard registered on the site. That May they got $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners that May. A year later they bought the domain name facebook.com from the Aboutface Corporation for $200,000 and dropped “the” from its name.

Fantastic Valuations

People are rightly speculating about a bubble for internet companies. eBay says they paid too much for Skype, but that hardly dampened anyone’s enthusiasm. However, some companies make it, and apparently Facebook is seen as one of them.

I like this quote by venture capitalist Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital (as quoted in the Washington Post):

“These times of overenthusiasm lead inevitably to lots of bedlam and carcasses strewn in the road,” he said this week. “But a handful of companies will live through it and become superb companies that will be around for the long haul. And that’s what living and working and investing in Silicon Valley is all about.”

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 I spend most of my time at work with my marketing and SEO hats fully fixed on my head and much of my free time researching the aspects of the latter that keep me sharp and inspired. In other words, “I don’t get out much!”

So, leafing through and trying to keep my geekdom in check (testing myself along the way), I noticed SEO as an entry (just below Robert Scoble), and thought it would be interesting to see what other “geeks” think of the art, dare I say craft, that is search engine optimization. To my dismay I found what I would consider a Jason Calacanis inspired observation of SEO:

SEO

Search engine optimization services are the Wile E. Coyotes of the Internet economy: doomed to stalk prey that repeatedly slips away just as it’s captured. SEO consulting — fine-tuning client pages to land them atop search engine results — has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar industry. But even those that attain the ultimate prize of a number one ranking can’t celebrate for long. Search engines are always tweaking their algorithms to prevent sites from gaming the system to artificially boost their results. Sure, it makes for a frustrating chase. But it also means repeat business.

It is good to see what outsiders think about SEO, but it can be disconcerting none the less.

I feel bad for those of us who have the knowledge to use their experience for good, yet rely on the dark side of SEO to gain traffic to aid their cause. I know that Danny Sullivan does a lot to aid in the purpose of search engine optimization and defends it against the onslaught of others like Jason Calcanis, but the purpose of SEO (at least in my mind, if no where else) is that we provide a service not only to our clients or companies, but to the user. “Gaming the system to artificially boost their results” is not a competent way to get or maintain customers or users.

Search engines are trying to do the same as I am, provide what users are looking for. It is the intent the purpose of SEO to provide a positive user experience, not to do what it takes to get a user to a website, as it is with the search engines. A positive user experience is what we want and need to build quality relationships, not develop a cash cow!

Oh, and SEO isn’t only one dimensional. There is a lot more involvement that just “fine-tuning client pages to land them atop search engine resuts.”

What are your thoughts?

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I have been thinking about community lately – and how community is involved in PR (and how we have lost our way in community). And the real interesting thing for me here at the TC40 is the community of TechCrunch. We all know that if your client / company is on TechCrunch (the site), you get an immediate bump of 100K+ members / views of the site. You potentially get those people to sign up for your beta preview, or to try out your service (it’s a number game). So, the TechCrunch community (CrunchNotes, MobileCrunch, Crunchgear – and all its readers) is an early adopter community – or one of a lot of MBA students – that is looking for the next cool thing.

But, well, is that community enough? Thinking back to two sites that had a big push on TechCrunch – Riya and IILWY – do you really hear much about either? As a PR person for a start-up, or Web 2.0 company, you really do need to court TechCrunch for that bump, but it is not a long term community. These are not necessarily the people that are going to continue to use your site, but are the first (albeit big) push into community. Look at Riya – they never really moved into the photo community (one I know quite well from Kodak and Ofoto) and that could have kept the company, well, relevant.

The point here, though, is to look at the TC40 companies, and to see what they are doing for the various communities and how they are doing their pitches.

Powerset: an interesting idea – real search via real words – but going up against a powerhouse in Google. Is there an opportunity for a non-niche / non-vertical search engine (there’s a reason I’m bullish on TheFind, SimplyHired, etc – they fill a need that is not fully met) – but not sure about

Cognitive Code: pretty cool AI application that responds to voice commands, and talks back to the human. Think HAL, but not sure if it’s going to kill people. (Just a joke). The demo ran through working with the AI application on the desktop, but talked about CES announcements. Om Malik picked them as a survivor on their own.

CastTV: search for video across the Intenet, up-to-date of the latest videos. Like I noted prior, I like vertical search, and this one aggregates various video sites per term. A supplementing of metadata goes into the search and program. Om thinks they are an acquisition target.

Faroo: P2P search engine. From what I could gather, it’s search powered by a P2P network (like Skype? like the UFO project?) and decentralizes the Internet. I think.

Viewdle: Another video search engine – "it’s in the cut" – that is based on video-on-demand. No more tagging, etc. It’s automatically done with the searching and recognition. So, it’s facial recognition in video, that can aggregate other videos that the person appears in. Om thinks they are an acquisition target.

Cubic Telecom: Roaming for mobile phones, but gets rid of the mobile roaming costs via Max Roam that charges only the local rates for international calls, no matter where you are. Cool idea, but can see the carriers killing it. It’s minute stealing, as noted by Om – and an outside chance that they are going to be around.

Yap: Speech-recognition for the cell phone, that does involve an aspect for vocal search. So, think of text messaging that can be done via speech to the phone – so convert to text your speech (like for Twitter or to friends). Prety cool idea but not sure the viability, or how it can be done with other speech recongition companies.

Ceedo: Mobile virtualization. See all your images, etc from a PC-based program (like Picasa). Or, make edits from your phone on PC-based applications, a full browsing environment on your mobile phone. You can use PC’s as a terminal for your usage, via your mobile phone. First thought is that unless you’re on an iPhone, isn’t the screen too small to really do anything?

Loudtalks: Walkie Talkie for cell phones. It’s a wanna-be Skype. I think. Or, an IM program that is voice / talking. Ryan Block noted that it can just be a plug-in, or maybe as a widget on web pages as push-to-talk.

Trutap: Targeting teens – I love when middle-aged white men target teens (okay, sounds creepy) – in an all-in-one social network that extends all carrier networks, so all your friends are in one community. Mobile-based, only – but with a Web-based aggregating of the information, logs, etc. A sorta Facebook Mobile competitor, with more instant chat capabilities. Om notes them as most likely to be acquired.

Storyblender: Videos together – how to create videos with a bunch of other people. Comes from the creators of Cyworld, so, there is some street cred (and a US-client for disclosure). It’s online video collaboration, where you can add text, information, etc.

Tripit: The goal is to make travel "dead simple" and make the itinerary simple and easy – without all the pages to print. It’s not about booking, but managing your travel information. You email your confirmations to the site, and it aggregates all your information for one travel itinerary – and then does weather, directions, etc for the user. It’s a personal travel assistant online.

Flock: Um, why are they are here? I thought it was a start-up only conference, and Flock can’t be considered an unknown startup. I stopped listening, because it continues to be half-vapor. Ohhh, they are finally in a 1.0 version.

Musicshake: It’s about user generated media, in an easy way that belies any musical skills. You can add different sounds, vocals, guitars, etc to create your own music, as well as record your own voice for vocals. And, you can sell the music if someone finds it on one of the sites, as shared revenue.

8020Publishing: The rebirth of the published magazine, and modern publishing is the best of Web and the best of print to come together. They are the founders of JPG Magazine. Launching the new Everywhere magazine, a group travel magazine.

AOL (special preso): Share multimedia memories in a new way with Bluestring. The way I read it is as online scrapbooking, with the AOL twist. I have a special place in my heart for AOL, so I think I’ll give it a benefit bc they are an amazing community that gets the short shrift online.

Cake Financial: The power of the community to invest. What are your friends investing in, and should you. Also aggregates all your investment information onto one page (if you have multiple accounts at various brokerage houses). Business school guys will go nuts for this, the average consumer would likely not want to get involved in opening their own kimono.

Docstoc: Finding the documents you need quickly and easily. For free. The examples given were sample business plans, presentations, etc. Most likely user: college students looking for papers. Think of it as the online file cabinet from the fraternity house.

Teach The People: Peer to peer collaborative education. Running a learning community that shares in the advertising revenue generated, or charge people for classes. Interesting way to do things – the collaborative nature of education where people share their knowledge (or them smarts) with others.

CrowdSpirit: Crowd sourcing from France, but for products rather than just Websites. It’s all about consumer electronics rather than just Web 2.0 / Websites. Interesting take on crowdsourcing, but going up against the large manufacturers and new economies.

Ponoko: Make your own products, toys, jewelry, etc and have them delivered to your house. You upload the images, etc and you get the final product. So you create it, we build it for you. You can also sell your idea / designs to other people, so they can order the product.

The interesting thing to note from the first day at the event is that many of the companies emphasized the community aspects of their sites. Community has become a comfodified buzzword (like they were all told to emphasize their community aspect), and not sure if they really understood what the community should be. Yes, these companies today are going to get a bump at the conference in users, but at the same time, can they keep that interest for the long-term beyond the bump….

Oh, you can check out the rest of the Flickr photos here.

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