Research-Write

VentureBeat: Facebook as a portal, most popular mobile internet brands

Here are my two posts from VentureBeat for the week of February 1.

 

VentureBeat: NYTimes.com metering plan, mobile app revenue

Here are my two posts from VentureBeat this week:

VentureBeat: Nexus One beat iPhone in search volume during launch week — will the hype last?

Today's VentureBeat post - Experian Hitwise data showed the volume of searches for "nexus one" was more than double "iphone" last week, but daily Google Trends data showed a fast decline for after launch day. What do you think it means for Google?

VentureBeat: Millions of 3-D displays on the way - but what will we watch on them?

You might be surprised to know that 158 3D movies were released in the 1950s, compared to only 45 in the 2000's. It puts all the hype around getting a 3D TV in a different light.

VentureBeat: Online holiday spending for ‘09 almost $30 billion

I covered the release of ComScore 2009 holiday shopping data, which showed a 4% increase in holiday spending over 2008. I found it interesting that the heaviest spending day was December 15, and that spending on jewelry and watches was up 20% over last year. 

For the article, I converted ComScore's table of data into a bar chart. Do you think it helps make sense of the data?

VentureBeat: Android and iPhone users are the most active mobile shoppers

I'm posting on a regular basis now to VentureBeat, and will repost on this blog.

Here's the link.

It seems to me that iPhone owners and Android owners are cut from the same cloth - they want the full mobile web experience - while Blackberry, Windows and Palm users mainly want email and some basic web features like news and social networking. The Comscore report "Android: Crashing the Smartphone Party" goes into this more deeply.

VentureBeat: Will Google's real-time search help Twitter?

Here's my latest post on VentureBeat:

Google is beginning to roll out real-time search results, which will include Twitter updates, along with updates from Friendfeed, blogs, and other social media sites. This could mean Twitter’s floundering traffic over the past few months is in for a rebound. Why?

Read on...

What marketers can learn from Aol's new content strategy

On November 30, AOL announced its new content generation strategy, "betting it can reinvent itself with a numbers-driven approach to developing content, based on what Web-search and other data tell it is most likely to attract audiences and sponsors," according to Emily Steel in the Wall Street Journal.  This strategy has been successful for Demand Media, a company that pays freelance writers and video producers to produce content on topics determined by its algorithms and partner relationships.

As a data researcher formerly responsible for publishing content on corporate blogs and websites, I've always known that data can be a rich source of content ideas. At Hitwise, I looked for blog post ideas by combing through search term lists and site rankings. At Efficient Frontier, I examined incoming search terms to see what keyword combinations were driving people to the site and blog, and expanded on relevant topics in future content. It's no surprise then, that Tim Armstrong, who came from the data-driven Google, is behind AOL's new effort. According to WSJ, the new system

...uses a series of algorithms to predict the types of stories, videos and photos that will be most popular with consumers and marketers.

The predictions, it says, are based on a wide swath of data AOL collects, from the Web searches people make on its site to the sites visited by subscribers to its Internet services.

The system is designed to track breaking news and trends and identify the best times to write about seasonal events, such as Halloween or Monday Night Football.

Based on these recommendations, the company's editorial staff, which totals about 500, will assign articles to a network of free-lancers across the country via a new Web site called Seed.com.

While this can hardly be called journalism, Demand Media's success proves that search-friendly content based on popular topics and written by freelancers generates ad revenue. The new AOL needs a solid strategy for revenue generation, and is betting this will work.

I believe there are three key lessons here for marketers, particularly B2B marketers who depend on content to encourage their prospects to buy an expensive product or service.

1. Know what your audience is looking for. AOL isn't leaving it wholly up to editors to decide what should be written - they are letting the system's algorithms - based on searches and web traffic - help call the shots. Likewise, companies can't always trust executives or product managers to know what prospects will find relevant. There is almost always data that can help determine which topics are relevant to your audience. Your analytics package is a great source of this data: what search terms are people using to get to your site? What search terms do you want them to be using? What content is being viewed the most? Even if you have a 20-page B2B website, this data can help you decide what's working and what needs to be added or pushed off the home page. If you have a bigger site and subscribe to a competitive intelligence service like Experian Hitwise or Compete, check out how users are navigating to your competitor's sites and your industry as a whole. You don't need an algorithm to use data to make more educated decisions about what content to create.
2. Pay attention to the calendar and current events. AOL's system tracks breaking news. So should you - whether it's reading your feeds and newsletters every day, or setting up Google Alerts for your competitors or key industry terms and products. When a topic comes out that's relevant to your company, respond quickly by posting a blog entry or a Twitter update. The calendar is another strategic tool - just as AOL will know when to write about Monday Night Football, you know seasonality of your industry and when your industry conferences take place. Your company might exhibit at financial services or retail conferences that occur every year. Publish content accordingly, and give the leads you get at the conference a reason to go to your website.
3. Hire expert freelancers (or distribute responsibility). Just like Demand Media, AOL plans to use writers who are skilled in covering a specific content areas. They work fast because they already know the topic, and they know the system guidelines. You can have employees throughout your organization blogging on specific topics, and provide them with a basic format to help make writing easier. A look at the Official Google Blog today shows that every single post on the home page has a different author. An employee might write one or two blog posts in his or her whole tenure with the company. Google knows that the best person to write a post is the person who is closest to the topic. It's OK if the marketing team has to do some editing - as long as it doesn't end up sounding like self-serving marketing copy. For deeper content like white papers or research reports, it can often be more efficient to hire outside writers who know your industry and the writing format and just need a download on the product to write an effective paper. They'll turn it around quickly, and it will keep employees that normally build or manage products happy, because they won't have to take time away from their job to write.

While I don't believe data-driven content generation is the saving grace of web content - it lacks qualitative insight that can make a good strategy truly brilliant - data can and should be used to inform content strategy and editorial decisions. If you're armed with deep audience knowledge, prepared for unexpected disruptions in your editorial calendar, and have a rolodex of competent internal or external content creators, you create a rich web site that will engage users and gently encourage them to buy your product or service.

First Post on VentureBeat: Twitter’s stalled growth could spell bad news for Twitter ecosystem

I've started writing for VentureBeat. Here's an excerpt from my first post. Read the full post here.

October numbers are in, and Comscore, Compete, Google, and Quantcast all agree: US traffic to Twitter.com reached a peak in July or August and has begun to decline slowly.

According to Comscore, October 2009 traffic was down 8% from from September 2009, while Compete shows a more modest decline of 2.1%. Still, on a year-over year basis, US Twitter visitor counts are up 1,271% according to Comscore, and 578% according to Compete.

Twitter’s phenomenal growth over the past year can be attributed to factors like media coverage of celebrities on Twitter, Twitter founder Ev Williams’ appearance on Oprah, and Oprah’s joining the service. But its stalled growth and slight decline since September could indicate that interest in the service is limited and has reached its peak.

Nielsen reported in April that 60% of new Twitter users drop off after a month. In response to the objection that many Twitter users access the service solely via third-party applications or mobile phones, Nielsen found that Twitter drop-off rates were the same for applications. “There simply aren’t enough new users to make up for defecting ones after a certain point,” wrote David Martin, VP of Primary Research at Nielsen Online. Even though Twitter got a huge influx of new users over the summer, as the charts show, it seems most of these users didn’t stick around through the fall. Is it possible that Twitter doesn’t have the mainstream appeal to “make Twitter essential to everyone’s lives,” as Ev Williams stated in a recent BBC interview?

Of course, traffic to Twitter is not the only indication of its health, as Twitter users so adamantly informed Nielsen last spring. Let’s look at two more factors: search and traffic to third-party Twitter sites.

keep reading...

Graphical Integrity and Social Media

Today Razorfish released its 2009 FEED report, its annual study on technology and brands. While I believe the motivation behind the report to be worthwhile, I was shocked to find charts that violated the basic principles of graphical integrity.

"Graphical Integrity" is the title of the second chapter Edward Tufte's book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, a must-read for anyone in the data business. He writes, "For many people the first word that comes to mind when they think about statistical charts is 'lie.'" The continued skewing of data, whether its a "1 out 5" headline, or the charts that I found in this report, do not help increase confidence in statistical charts. The practice of skewing data is particularly rampant among Twitter fans and those wishing to promote their careers or services in social media. My years in advertising led me to a keen sense of data misuse - I was more often called upon to find data that supports the creative strategy, rather than do research that led to a target-right creative strategy. 

In the spirit of Tufte's statement "Deception must always be confronted and demolished," I present these two "charts" from the Razorfish FEED study:

If, as Tufte states, "Graphical excellence begins with telling the truth about data," do these charts tell the truth?

No.

Why do 25.5% and 40.01% get bigger circles than 74.5% and 59.9%? The circle for 74.5% should be 3X as large as the 25.5% circle, not the other way around. Is the 25.5% of the respondents who have followed a brand on Twitter 3X more important than those who don't? For an ad agency trying to promote its social media services, perhaps. But the charts egregiously mislead the rest of who want the truth, particularly the truth about where to invest our marketing dollars.

It confounds me how those charts got made and approved, when there are accurately proportioned pie charts in the "Data" section. These "Yes" and "No" circle charts abound in the report, but the circle sizes are the same whether its a 97/3 or 65/35 split. Did the Republicans present the presidential election results in a chart that showed a big circle for McCain's 45% of the popular vote and a small circle for 55% of Obama's popular vote to make themselves feel better that the electoral votes were 365 to 173? How would we feel if this was done with frequency on the news? Even Fox News couldn't get away with that. So why can Razorfish?

I won't go further about how the report takes its statistically unrepresentative sample of "connected consumers" 18-55 who live in major cities and spent more than $150 online in the last 6 months as representative of ...what? One of the interesting findings for me was that 44% of this "connected" sample did not own a smartphone, while 16.5% owned a Blackberry and 11.6% owned iPhone. (29.5% and 20.07% respectively of the 56.3% that owned a smartphone, according to the data section). It puts investing in an iPhone app in a different light if you're a brand marketer.

Data is a tricky business, since it can be so easily skewed. Because of reports like this one, you should look closely at the numbers in charts, not the shapes or sizes, as well as voraciously read methodology sections. And the next time your graphics team comes back with a chart, ask them what software they used to make it if it didn't look anything like the one you made in Excel.