Software Platforms Portal Launched

Collected photos, videos, and chats for the top 200 software platforms. Latest add is the NYTimes Times Open platform. Visit http://sw.tearn.com/

Clouds, Open API, Twitter, Facebook, and Realtime Collaboration

The more we learn, the less we know. 

Despite the bad economy, innovation has been moving at accelerated pace. I have been busy innovating and not writing. Here is an announcement of our work and lots of questions.

Photokit Announcement

Regular readers have noticed the many photo channels on this blog. Here is the formal elevator pitch.

Photokit crowdsources photo and video content; automates activities such as slideshows, marquees, games, survey questions, iqtest questions, and others using public content; and shares user comments, likes, and dislikes publically over social networks like Facebook, OpenSocial, and Twitter. 

• The photokit mashup platform uses public, cloud resources - such as Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Live, Blogger, and FlickR - to host pages, photos, videos, comments, and data. This reduces capital investments to essentially zero cost. 
  
• User actions are shared on Twitter timelines, Facebook feeds, and other networks - creating a viral community for publisher controlled activities, contests, and events. Results are near realtime. 
• Users submit content using hashtags. It's online in seconds. Users tag content. Their interaction refreshes the page in seconds.
• Skins, layouts, and filtering control creates sites that complement existing template themes.
  

As one example, 'Media Life' crowdsources user interactions to compile and maintain information about the top 1000 media personalities, globally. We've recently added embedded video viewing and Twitter integration. Users recommend personality adds, upload relevant photos, and/or post to Twitter or Facebook. 

Whether personalities, companies, places, or products - the photokit platform can be applied to thousands of local and niche communities. Take a look at http://media.tearn.com. 

Market Changes

Our new leader has moved quickly to pass a huge economic stimulus package. It's time to spend - or invest - depending on the party line. Whether the plan works or not, time will tell.

Obama has also led with more social media activities - direct to his armies. This has stimulated greater interest in everything social. Not surprisingly, Facebook and Twitter, two social networks, have grown dramatically. Obama leads both with the number of fans at each.

The future is strong for web2.0 - web3.0 - semantic web - what ever we decide to call the clear trend.

Technical Trenches

There has been huge changes in the technical plumbing. Building Photokit has provided an upfront view of these developments.

• Data everywhere. RSS and API feeds abound - data is increasingly open. The NYT has opened their news archive for external use. Yahoo's strategy hinges on shared data silos. Microsoft has released their army to work on the shared web. Obama will push government data transparency. Thousands of data silos have made themselves available. 
• Integration challenge. Of course, each API is a little different. Like political parties, we can't seem to agree on the fine-print. Photokit services to unify the many languages into one consistent interface. 
• Not every API makes sense. Those that solve real problems, like Twitter, has won big. Those that don't understand the full issue, like Yahoo, loses. Ironically, Yahoo authored the mRSS specification in 2004, but failed to support it. Google and others are closer to true deployment - and Google made it simpler.
• Cloud computing is today. The Media Life website sits in the cloud, pulling resources from hundreds of computers over the Internet. We use AJAX, thus tapping the computing power of the user computer, not servers or networks. The UX is rich and simple, including transparent, embedded play of video. 
• Real time. Users expect real time results. Whether transparent photo, video streams; satisfaction from a badge that lets them join the elite community of media personalities; or comments to Twitter that immediately feed back to the site - it's real-time and simple.
• Data cloud. Photokit sources multi-media streams from many sources - like the ticker source on CNBC or sports scores on CNN. We'll also able to store user data in the cloud. Whether comments, scores, or recommendations - information streams to Twitter, Facebook, and back for consumption at the destination site. We call this the data cloud.

Complex web projects - without servers, networks, or databases - is it possible?

Conclusion

What does this mean? The more we learn, the less we know. We're doing dozens of projects - with many more to come. Yet, the consequences of the many technology changes are unclear. 

Like the Obama stimulus plan, we need to have faith that the best efforts lead to the best results.

Your thoughts?

BTW, Check out the new Google FriendConnect at the bottom. Join us.

Have some web ideas? Partner with us.

5 Hints for Personal Productivity Using the Internet

Happy Holidays. Here is my updated, email signature:

Connect! Strength through growth. 

 tEarn Exitmercial (http://tEarn.com) 

 Facebook  (http://facebook.com/p/Dash_Chang/537804000) 

 LinkedIn (http://linkedin.com/in/dashchang)

Social media strategist:  

 Niche: http://bigcatrescue.org | http://energy.exitmercial.com (show) |  http://festivalpreview.com | http://boomer.exitmercial.com 

 Local: http://aeonsafe.com | http://santaclaraweekly.com | http://slo.exitmercial.com 

 B2B: http://endcap.exitmercial.com | http://telcade.com | http://adEcon101.blogspot.com

Hundreds of friends have asked how I keep up with so many projects. The answer is productive use of the Internet. Here are the key aspects.

Social Networks

Use social networks as your secretaries. The networks automate tracking of friends, emails, phone numbers, and status changes. Christmas cards become a simple post to all friends. 

Conversely, use blogs and feeds to keep your friends informed about your progress. 

For boomer friends, get over the privacy concern. Join networks, connect with friends, and save time to focus on important themes. 

RSS Feeds and Readers

 Choose a Reader

I've subscribed to hundreds of RSS feeds. 

It's simple to do. When you see the orange icon on a worthy site, click and choose your RSS reader. Content flows from the site to your RSS reader.

If the feed produces garbage, it's easy to stop the subscription. 

I use My Yahoo, iGoogle, and Google Reader - with no specific preference for any of the formats. Each allows scanning of interesting headlines, reading clips, and drilling down to more details. In a typical day, I scan thousands of articles by subject, read hundreds, and clip dozens where I've learned something new. Also, I clip content that substantiates or refutes a current personal project or theme.

I've experimented with Twitter and Friendfeed. Lifestreaming seems like a hula-hoop - too extreme and distracting for my personal productivity. That's just a personal opinion. For certain clients, these services can produce huge value. 

Team Up with Worthy Partners

Dozens of partners work together for mutual benefit. For each substantial project, one or more partners work together to start, maintain, and expand the project. 

Leveraging the ideas, execution, and connections of partners expands personal reach. 

The chinese fable says, "you can break a chopstick, but not a bundle of chopsticks." Already, cross pollination of talents have targeted bigger and better projects. 

Stay Flexible

My signature changes every month. New ideas lead to new projects. 

The Internet changes rapidly. Even leaders like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay are constantly reinventing themselves. If they succeed, they stay  in the lead. If they fail, like Yahoo, Microsoft, and eBay - they lose market share. 

These changes imply that slow-adapting enterprises and businesses need help. Web 1.0 commerce sites look old, unfashionable, and unappetizing to the massive wave of Internet users. Web 2.0 is everywhere - except enterprise sites - but we're moving on to web 3.0.

Are we ready for web 3.0?

Create IP to Protect and Automate

My unique strength is to quickly convert ideas into solution platforms. Platforms produce solutions that scale across millions of sites, not just for one client or one project. 

For example, Flash animators create interesting pages, but they don't scale. The Flash platform itself scales well. 

Content management, social media, or advertising networks - these are the 3 key themes for web 3.0; and our library of IP is growing rapidly for each theme.

Does This Work?

Our collective projects reach over 1 million UU per month. It's been doubling every quarter. The growth could accelerate. 

Cloud computing, RSS integration, microformats, semantic web, and mash-ups - drop the acronyms. Web 3.0 has arrived and we're having fun.

Suggest your ideas. Tell us why we should become partners. Let's get to work.

New Media: The Problem is Monetization, The Solution is $50.00+ eCPM, Part 2, PPT

Link to Part 1
Link to Part 2

Sharpen the Blog Focus of the New Economics of Advertising

After 60 days, 200 pages, and thousands of clips, it's time to sharpen the focus of this blog.

Quantity and Shifts of Internet Demand

• Shift of mindshare from email, news, and possibly search to social networks and possibly social media - this is worth watching. Is lean forward viewing being displaced by lean back participation?
• A measure of the global growth. Google reports 31% USA search growth. This is usage growth; not user growth. What about emerging countries like China and India where Google is blind with their minority share? Alexa levers savvy users - thus, understates growth in developing nations. comScore and Neilsen don't have visibility on emerging markets.
• The Apple iPhone kills WAP and brings the billion cell phone users to the full page web. That's the promise. How do we get there?

Quantity and Shifts in Internet Supply via IChannels

• Open platforms from Facebook, Google, Apple, Salesforce.com, and dozens of iMedia giants spawn a new renaissance of creativity. Millions of active bloggers, video producers, and photographers; 100+ million who have tried; hundreds of millions of daily social network users - are these numbers just the beginning of growth to hundreds of millions of active participants? Can millions of developers provide the glue and implicit web to enable more innovation. 
• Legacy CMS systems for building the 60 million web and commerce sites have been displaced. Why bother when modern tools are better, easier, and often free?

Supply and Demand for Online Advertising

• Will the adNet market fragment or consolidate? CPC and CPM may consolidate to one market, but will legacy media cooperate?
• Is there any difference between an exchange and marketplace? Why do the adNets like to argue?
• What are the real trends for advertising?

Conclusion

We must support Long Tail economics to sustain the renaissance. eCPMs are too low. If web 2.0 is to avoid the web 1.0 bubble, online participants (and investors) need to be rewarded for their creativity and hard work. How?

HOW-TO: How I Use Blogger

Blogging provides unlimited sheets of paper. Here is how I use Blogger to collect my ideas.

News, Stats, Forums

News show snips of relevant content. Multiple related snippets offer reading convenience. I use copy and paste to collect snips. You can also use Yahoo Bookmarks and social media sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, Technorati, etc... to select favorite articles. Hint: the keyword/labels/topics feature sorts articles for your intended future analysis.

Stats provide the data for economic analysis.

Forums attempt to centralize user feedback. It's not working well since readers can post comments anywhere. 

How-To and Analysis Posts

The how-to posts delve deep into an application for sharing with the community.

Analysis identify industry and company trends - with links to the news, stats, and forum posts.

FYI
-Dash Chang

Requests to Remove Pictures, Clips

This blog clips text and pictures from other sites, and organizes clips into relevant conversational threads. Links to the original articles and pictures are maintained, in the spirit of referenced works on the Internet.

If you feel that your content should not be included on this blog, please leave a comment on that post. Your content will be immediately removed. 

The New Internet Roles with Social Media

Unlike mass media, users take proactive roles on the Internet. Here are the emerging roles.
Creators

Creators are entrepreneurs, writers, academics, programmers, webmasters, animators, photographers, cartoonists, videotographers, and musicians who create and use the Internet to distribute their works. Over 100 million use blogs like Blogger, FlickR, TypePad, or WordPress to post photos and writings. Huge numbers post videos on Youtube and other sites.

Most work alone. They do their own research online or offline; and post what they learned. They have hundreds of friends, but typically not the numbers of a pHub.

pHubs - personal hubs

The pHub specializes in social engagement gathering thousands of friends at social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Mixi, and LinkedIn. They are most likely to review, rate, comment, bookmark, subscribe to, forward, and post the works of favorite creators to share with friends.

Publicists, recruiters, consultants, investors, and business development personnel are most likely to become pHubs. They are the most enthusiastic from among the 300 million and growing social network users.

gHubs - global hubs

gHubs create content and engage users globally in discussion. They source information from creators, consolidate related information, publish for global view, and listen to user conversation to guide their forward publishing. Their audience can be millions.

Large technology bloggers, like Engadget, Gizmodo, ReadWriteWeb, SlashDot, TechDirt, TechCrunch, ZDNet, and others have become gHubs. Legacy publishers like Internet.com, Infoworld, and others have faded into obscurity.

Consumers

Consumers rarely search to learn. They rely on pHub friends and gHubs to learn about interesting news, trends, groups, politics, games, widgets, products to buy, and other activities. They click to join, use, buy, or read more.

The average consumer calls a friend for help - rather than solving problems themselves. Social networking makes it easy to identify the friend who would know the answer, perhaps with a quick poke or wall post.

Questions

Will social networks limit search to the creator community? Has mass media been displaced by social media with millions of circles of friends?

Should legacy gHubs use services like Ning to create their own social networks? Or take anchor roles in existing networks? Will the growth of pHubs threaten gHubs?

Who are you in this new world? Who do you want to become?

(c) Dash Chang, 2008

Profiling the Internet and Online Advertising

Millions of users view billions of pages and trillions of ads, everyday. Here is the process.

Term	Data	Metric Issues
Users	One billion - of 6 billion global population US 164.6m active of 220m	High growth in China and India Shared device at home Cookie deletion inflates unique user metrics Non-additive across domains
Devices	PC's to laptops to phones and gadgets	Multiple devices per user complicate tracking
Visits / Sessions	Neilsen says 11 per week	End of session definitions vary
Domains	Websites visited Neilsen says 27 per week; 105 per month	Changing domain ownerships and partnerships complicate tracking
Pages per user	Neilsen implies 60 minute sessions; 60 pages per session; over 700 per week 2,400/month over 20 hours	Additive across domains Videos, Open Social, and games reduce relevancy of impressions as metric RSS feeds counted separately from pages
Ads per page	comscore says 35.1 per visit TechCrunch serves dozens per page Google serves 4 per skyscraper Trillions per day	Gadgets serve ads to panels of a page Games serve many ads per session Video serves prerolls, postrolls
Clicks	User clicks on ads - 0.1% to 0.9%	Click fraud Habitual clickers Accidental clicks
Retention	Repeat user	Case, New York Times

(c) Dash Chang, 2008

Are we blind men touching the elephant? (c)ZDnet

What's the Problem with Digital Advertising?

Why have so many companies emerged despite consolidation among Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo? It's simple. CPC and CPM pays pennies per thousand to affiliates.

Traditional publishers want $10 to $100 eCPM. So do new publishers.

March 16, 2008 8:46 PM

What's This Fascination with Ad Networks? (Or, the Online Media Business Will Be About Brands First, Technology Second)

I know how the folks who no longer work at AOL, Yahoo, or MSN feel about this question. They're all brand people. And it's entirely clear how the Google-chasers have answered that question: They've collectively spent billions of dollars amassing "access to inventory" and "ad platforms" in single-minded competition with Google...

I see the logic in why AOL, MSN and Yahoo are chasing the ad network dream. They have a ton of inventory. Most of it is making money at very low CPMs - as low as 50 cents on average. If they can drive that CPM to 75 cents through an ad network strategy, their margins go way up, and they all come out looking like heroes...

And I have to tell you, neither the publishers nor the brand marketers believe that a magical ad platform will somehow address their needs online. Sure, brand marketers will spend 5-15% of their budget on lower-CPM "pray and spray" DR and awareness campaigns. And sure, publishers are happy - thrilled! - to see algorithms drive up their backfill or remnant inventory CPMs. But none of them believe that ad networks provide the same kind of engagement and brand building opportunities that a simple two-page spread or 30-second spot does in the offline world.

A blogger organization in the future?

Is it time for bloggers to have a Bloggers Guild, much like the Writers Guild of America? The National Writers Union has voted unionizing bloggers as a priority item.

With blogging being so popular now, most bloggers believe they are worth more than $5 per post standard, which was apparently set by pioneering blog networks such as Weblogs, Inc. and Gawker Media. Bloggers now want a big salary with benefits and stock options. Essentially, bloggers want to be full time bloggers and still be able to pay their bills.

A new ad network by Blogger & Podcaster could be the first step toward blogger organization. They plan on providing non-exclusive health care for long tail blogger members.

Those against a blogger organization argue that blogging is still a new development and isn't ready for a unionized workforce and that organizing would undermine the premise that "anything goes" in the blogosphere.

Also, a professional guild to represent professional bloggers raises the questions of: what exactly distinguishes a "professional blogger" from a hobbyist? And if a bloggers guild is created, what would distinguish a professional blogger from a journalist?

Source: Read Write Web through Journerdism

Ed: Freelance investigative journalism traditionally pays hundreds to low thousands per feature.

About the Author

I am an economics major from MIT with two of the first macro-economic models for forecasting the national economy. (More about AdEcon)


As a technology entrepreneur with an MBA from Stanford, I span:

• Time sharing on mainframes;


• The invention of spreadsheets on personal computers;


• The first GUI for an accounting system and sharing those innovations with Macintosh user groups;


• First ad-supported B2B supersites on the Internet;


• Social networking for writers and publishers;


• Mentor to dozens of China entrepreneurs; and


• Ad-supported real communities at local hotspots.

Ad supported media and communities - it's the heart of my career.

The New Economics of Advertising

Through these ventures, I have worked with hundreds of magazine, book, and newspaper publishers - as well as software and online publishers.

Advertising is changing rapidly. Those partners are struggling with the increasingly complex technologies that define the advertising economics. Even for experts, keeping up with developments is like the old adage, "Blind men touching an elephant." However, I personally enjoy the challenge to learn.

This forum uses a macro-economic framework for shared reporting on the events and trends impacting new media advertising. This includes reports of traditional media as they extend their reach to incorporate the many new technologies that impact advertising.

As I meet experts, I will be writing about those lessons and asking you to participate online. Together, we shall grok this elephant, the new advertising economics.

- Dash Chang (Add to Friends @ Facebook) (LinkedIn) (Blog Group at Facebook)

ANALYSIS: Supply and Demand of CPC

Opaque advertising economics where vendors provide incomplete pictures of keyword supply and demand.

Demand exceeds Supply

Top CPC categories: .

Average Search CPC Data by Category for December 2007, January 2008 - Feb 12, 2008 Search Tools Cost-per-click data by vertical category in search in the US.

High Demand Keywords

Top Search terms:

Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, January 2008 - Feb 7, 2008 Search Tools The month's top search terms in 10 categories.

High Supply Keywords

What is the supply by keyword or category?

Conclusion

For affiliates or content providers, the untargeted supply results in low prices.

NOTE: Post dated news

Many of the articles have been post dated to the actual date by the editors.

Many posts change as our group discovers and adds relevant content.