Justin Timberlake’s “I Love Sports” steals the show at the ESPYs
Despite the fact that this video combines two things I truly dislike, overhyped award shows and Justin Timberlake, this musical number is fantastic.
A Social Media Success Story: Mike Arrington punks the NYT and AP
It’s telling that the New York Times and Associated Press, two companies at the top of the traditional media pyramid with unlimited resources, have erred embarrassingly in the recent AP quote policy brouhaha. This mess has cost them not only credibility but also clearly demonstrates that they don’t understand the social media phenomenon at its most fundamental level.
These two traditional media titans, recognizing they are in deep trouble, resorted to citing an “Association” that no one has ever heard of to try to lend credence to whatever crap they invented to save their hides. And in a pre-social media world they would have gotten away with it.
The difference now is that Mike Arrington is big enough to have become an insider to the traditional media’s inner circle. And Mike has the understanding of the benefits of truth and transparency that underlie social media, to let folks know what’s going on. And the balls.
Never before did the masses have immediate and widespread access to an insider looking two media titans in the face and calling “Bullshit”.
How could the NYT/AP think a “Media Bloggers Association” that didn’t already include Arrington be credible? Arrington got most of the major Presidential candidates for interviews and broke the YouTube acquisition among other journalistic successes. It would be fair to consider him the top media blogger/web journalist in the blogosphere. (Who knew coming from an unaccomplished lawyer and failed entrepreneur?) Simply put, a “Media Bloggers Association” that doesn’t include Arrington, or more specifically one that he’s never heard of, doesn’t matter.
And that makes this a great example of how social media is taking a sledgehammer to existing media practices and principles.
This is also a little analog to the “early adopter” meme and further serves to illustrate just how early we are in the adoption curve. If the NYT and AP, two large companies whose future success is directly impacted by their ability to understand and make the transition into social media can screw up this badly, just how many people really understand social media today?
Share ThisDMX Will Never Use Twitter or Friendfeed
I’ve been collecting my thoughts for my eventual conclusions (and subsequent blog post) regarding whether or not I think services like Twitter and Friendfeed will ever be adopted by the other 89%. While I find both services to be continually more useful and interesting, I’ve yet to be convinced that these tools will be adopted by the mainstream in a meaningful way in their current form. (Italicized for emphasis)
As I noted in a recent post, those who are currently avid users of these services, the 1%, have some shared characteristics most of which can be traced back to some variation of “smart”. And amongst the 89%, there are a whole lot of people who are….not so smart, to put it lightly.
To that point, I saw this interview with DMX earlier today and thought to myself, “Here’s someone who will never use Twitter or Friendfeed.” While I don’t think DMX represents any majority, I don’t think Scoble represents any majority either. To further make a comparison, DMX has sold 20 million records, which represents a lot more paying customers than Scoble and Arrington have non-paying readers combined.
Additionally, I found this interview to be not only a relevant, if not sad, cultural datapoint, but also amusing in that “can’t look away from the trainwreck” kind of way. Consider the following recent interview with rapper DMX at XXL (for those with virgin ears, look away):
Share ThisAre you following the presidential race?
Not at all.You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.
On Mixx, Plurk, Creators and the Adoption of Social Media
The A-list digerati has been all atwitter, pun intended, over a number of topics recently. And a number of them seem to be related in a roundabout way.
What these folks seem to be missing in these discussions is that the gap between social media’s “early adopters” and mainstream America is actually widening for now.
As Fred Wilson pointed out succinctly, Social media means “every single human being posting their thoughts and experiences in any number of ways to the Internet”. And to date, about 1% of Internet users are actively creating content. Don Dodge (w/ a nod to Bradley Horowitz’ illustration) calls it the “social network 1% rule”.
Well some of that 1% are doing this…compulsively. Others among that 1% are merely doing this a lot. This has created plenty of noise in the system and there are a few very, extremely premature tools for culling the signal from the noise so far.
These hyper-active social media early adopters are the ones consuming, analyzing, processing and drawing conclusions on this content in rapidly condensing time frames. The social media echo chamber consists mostly of the intelligent and hyper-curious, but the lack of perspective being regurgitated in the echo chamber is starting to get unhealthy. The early adopters are passing judgement on social media 3.0 when a good chunk of the other 89% of folks don’t know what social media 1.0 is yet.
To see just how insulated this early adopter set really is, one need look no farther than a FriendFeed search for “stats”. In what what reminded me of show-and-tell from when I was in the first grade, a number of early adopters added links to their “stats”, which FriendFeed provides to show “who you like” and “who likes you”. Some examples are here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. A brief glance will show you very quickly that there is an unhealthy groupthink going on here, with tremendous overlap in who is interacting with whom. And some of these folks are losing their perspective.
For example, discussion about the Plurk beta made its way around the early adopters over the weekend. Plurk has an interesting visual take on microblogging and is worth a look for sure. Within hours, Robert Scoble declared it a “fail”, citing that they had better “stay up”. Never mind the fact that Plurk wasn’t even on their production server or just giving a social media application, goodness, a few days before passing judgement. What made this comment even more bizarre was the fact that Scoble is the biggest user of Twitter, a product that does the opposite of “stay up” and went so far as to blame him, its biggest user and evangelist, for their woes. (Which played out like an episode of Days of Our Lives in the early adopter scene).
Which brings me to today’s meme, Mixx’s publicity push regarding their recent traffic numbers. Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch’s headline was “The CNN.com Effect: Mixx More Than Doubles Visitors In May To Nearly One Million”. But Marshall Kirkpatrick, a very smart analyst and a good writer, came to a different conclusion.
The title of Marshall’s post was “Mixx: One Year In, Someone’s Dropping the Ball”. Matthew Ingram’s headline was “Mixx: Growing, but is it enough?”
The critical data point is that Mixx’s traffic showed a 3x increase in visitors in May, thanks to partnerships with CNN.com and other mainstream media news sites. Marshall’s point was that Mixx has a far smaller crowd than Digg, and while that’s true, it’s another example of the shortsighted outlook in the echo chamber.
Mixx is approaching 1 million users in their first year and yet that’s “dropping the ball”? Even though Digg had 800,000 users well over a year after their launch?
As an entrepreneur working on a social media application, through some early user interaction testing, I’ve found out first hand just how far behind the other 89% really is. As Reddit founder Steve Huffman said in the Washington Post’s Mixx coverage:
“The vast majority of people don’t know what social news is; they still get their news from the mainstream media. This space and this industry still have a long, long way to go.”
Most appalling to me about the coverage is the fact that Mixx has a kick-ass product and seems to be executing well. From a pure technology standpoint, their application blows each of their competitors in the social news space clear out of the water. It’s has a better design, is more functional and has a set of APIs. From a business perspective, they have deep experience and connections in both the online and offline news worlds which has translated into key partnerships (which have had a dramatic affect in a short amount of time) and they’ve done all of this with 1/3 the cash and 1/3 the employees of Digg. The Mixx team should be very happy with where they are.
Both Sarah Perez and Colin Walker posted earlier today about taking a step back from the social media echo chamber. Both of their posts noted that it’s important to step back from this giant fire hose to gain the perspective necessary to see the big picture.
So back away from the mouse, go outside and smell the roses. Entrepreneurs need to start thinking about how these tools and applications will (or won’t) be adopted by that other 89% because without their adoption, critical mass cannot be reached.
Josh Koppelman contributed a now-famous post in May of 2006 about the Techcrunch 53,651. It referred to startups whose target market included those 53,651 early adopters who were subscribed to Techcrunch’s RSS feed at that time. It’s worth pointing out that number is close to 1 million two years later, but the point remains. We are at the very beginning of social media adoption and most, if not all, judgments now are premature.
Edit: Right after I posted this, I saw that Alexander van Elsas has posted a different take on the same topic. What I call the “Social Media Echo Chamber” he calls the “Social Media Circus”, but I think we both agree on some of the underlying themes. His post is very much worth a read.
Share ThisUh Oh. The Web 2.0 Sky is Falling!
The Financial Times just put out an article with the title “Web 2.0 Fails to Produce Cash“. The crux of the piece is contained in this quote:
The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other “social media” sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. Together with the US economic downturn and a shortage of initial public offerings, the failure has damped the mood in internet start-up circles.
Don Dodge takes the analysis a step further adding two noteworthy points:
Bubble Cycle - Bubbles go through predictable cycles. Bubbles emerge from the ashes of despair. It takes a while to gain momentum but eventually greed overtakes fear and we are off on another bubble adventure. Stage one of a bubble is when most smart money declares we are NOT in a bubble…it is different this time. Stage Two is more dangerous. Many people agree that we are in a bubble, but it will last another year or two, and there is still money to be made. The third stage is when the bubble has burst but most people are in denial and think it is a temporary set back. The fourth stage is when everyone agrees the bubble has burst and life will never be the same. My guess is that we are now well into Stage Two of the bubble cycle.
and…
Advertising Revenue Math - How much traffic is needed to generate $1M in ad revenue? It all depends on how well you can target your audience and how much you can charge for CPM rates. For social network sites let’s assume an average CPM of $0.40. You would need 2.5 Billion page views per month to earn $1M in ad revenues. That is 2,500,000,000 page views…how many sites generate that traffic?
Now Don’s a smart guy, but how on earth does any of this jive with Tim O’Reilly’s post on the Internet Operating System?
It doesn’t. Anyone talking about a “Web 2.0 bubble” is being comically myopic. This is the first inning of a big ball game here. While it’s fine to wonder aloud about huge valuations for companies that, despite building out large user bases, have no semblance of a business model (i.e. Slide, Twitter), it’s not otherwise productive to lump the rest of “web 2.0″ into a group that came, couldn’t figure out how to make money, and will be shortly exiting.
Don’s second point about advertising revenue math points out the fallacy. Don is correct in his math that at a $0.40 CPM that you would need 2.5B page views to get to $1M per month. But what happens at $4 CPMs? Or $40 CPMs?
Of course social networks, whose target markets include….everyone, can’t effectively monetize via advertising. Take the context of the Internet Operating System, where for each problem, or vertical market, there will be a service that best serves it’s needs, $4 CPMs are easily achievable and $40 CPMs are possible.
LinkedIn is a perfect example of a Web 2.0 business model that leverages advertising. LinkedIn targets a specific audience (professionals) that can be effectively monetized via advertising. Then leveraging the network effect, they build out capabilities to repackage the data and services for additional revenue. High CPMs plus some services can make for a billion dollar company.
Clearly LinkedIn is an exception so far, but this rule could hold true for any Web 2.0 company targeting a specific market (not the part about $1B, but the model). The irony is, most of the companies going forward with the “give it away” business models are the ones going after markets that have the $0.40 CPMs. There are lots and lots of vertical markets that need web 2.0 solutions that could produce significant returns for venture investors even at high valuations early in the process.
And this most salient point was quietly buried at the very end of the article.
“The capabilities that are coming with Web 2.0 are very profound,” Thomson Reuters exec Devin Wenig told FT. “The Valley is usually right, and it’s usually early.”
Edit: John Furrier makes a similar argument: Smaller, targeted audiences are worth more.
Share ThisCavaliers and Wizards Meet Again in the First Round of the Playoffs
How great is this series going to be?
The Wizards and Cavs first postseason meeting in 2006 was epic.
Lebron and Gilbert went toe-to-toe as dueling and emerging NBA superstars. The series was complete with big shots, trash talking, controversy and dramatic game winners. The Cavs won the series in 6 games, but two of the contests were 1 point games that came down to a last second shot.
So while Lebron and the Cavs survived, it appeared to be the beginning of a great NBA rivalry.
What people seem to forget is that during the 2006-2007 NBA season, the Wizards solidified themselves as legit Eastern Conference contenders. Wizards coach Eddie Jordan coached in the All-Star 2007 NBA All-Star game as the Wizards were 27-18 and at the top of the Eastern Conference standings with a surprising surge through midseason.
And then a funny thing happened. Injuries.
Wizards’ elder statesman Antawn Jamison sprained his knee causing him to miss 12 games. Ironically, as soon as Jamison got hurt, Darius Songaila made his Wizards debut after missing 45 games due to a back injury that required surgery. The Wizards went 4-8 without Jamison and ten days after he returned, Caron Butler left for 6 games with a knee injury. Three games after he returned, Butler broke his hand blocking a shot against Milwaukee, prematurely ending his season. And 3 days after that, April 4, 2007, Gilbert Arenas sprained his knee, prematurely ending his season. It’s not surprising that the Wizards were eliminated quickly by the Cavs in the first round of the playoffs.
And the 2007-2008 season? It started off with Etan Thomas and Oleksiy Pecherov on the injured list and Gilbert Arenas still recovering from his knee injury. Arenas was clearly not himself for 8 games before shutting things down and having a second surgical procedure on his injured left knee. Caron Butler, a repeat all-star, would go on to miss 23 regular season game and valuable veteran point guard Antonio Daniels would go on to miss 11 games. The Wizards would go on to finish 2-10 in games without Daniels (the only other PG on the roster besides Arenas) and 10-13 in games without Butler. The Wizards played 11 games without Butler and Daniels (and Arenas), going 3-8 in those games.
This means the Wizards were 40-27 in games in which they were ONLY missing 2 of out of the 3 of Arenas, Butler and Daniels. Let’s put that in perspective…the Wizards have been playing 50 win basketball despite often playing without TWO multiple time all-stars.
The Wizards are close to healthy for the first time since the Wizards were on top of the Eastern Conference and playing better now then they were back then. No one would deny that both Brendan Haywood and Deshawn Stevenson are playing the best basketball of their careers or that Andray Blatche is growing up quickly or that Darius Songaila and Roger Mason are very very solid off the bench. And as a team, the Wizards are not lacking in confidence.
The Wizards, based on their record when healthy over the past two seasons, are very much a threat to win the Eastern Conference.
So this matchup against the defending Eastern Conference champions should be similarly epic. With the Deshawn Stevenson/Lebron James trashtalking already including celebrity cross-overs (Soulja-boy will reportedly be sitting courtside wearing a Deshawn Stevenson jersey), the drama has already begun.
Share ThisThe Real State of the Union: A War Story
We’ve tried to get away from talking politics here at Misunderestimated Again.
Really, there’s nothing positive or constructive to say about the state of affairs in this country. While this election cycle has reminded us just how much is left to be desired by our two major political parties, it has further exposed the media for not only enabling this sad scenario but being overtly complicit. The bipartisan media effort to ignore and/or marginalize Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul has been appalling and promote their own candidates has been shameless and transparent.
But watching the parliamentary charade that was Bush’s final State of the Union Address compels me to relay a story.
It’s not exactly a war story, and I’m thankful that this is as close as I’ll get to an actual war story, but this should illustrate the State of the Union better than the disingenuous speech Bush gave last night.
There’s no link and no names, so if you choose to believe that I made this up, that’s your prerogative. Here goes:
I’m having a drink in my neighborhood bar the other night when two active duty US Army soldiers walked in for a beer.
I begin chatting up one of the soldiers over a beer and asked him what he was doing in town.
“We are escorting a solider here. He’s kinda fucked up”
…he said, pointing to his head.
“Post traumatic stress disorder?” I asked?
“No. He fell off a 3rd story window on his head. But yeah he needs that [mental help] too. We’re bringing him to the VA hospital in Palo Alto to get fixed up”.
Shocked to hear that, I ask him what he meant.
“Well, he had tried to commit suicide before he fell off the building. So now he’s got all kinds of broken bones, pins in each hip, and his head is still a little scrambled and he can’t hear anything. We have to write things down to communicate with him.
But we’re bringing him to the VA hospital to get him fixed up. They told him he’s got to fulfill his contract.
I look at him incredulous. “No fuckin way” was, I think, as eloquently as I could put it at the time.
“For real. I asked the doctor if this was really going to work and he [the doctor] said ‘He’s going to run faster than he did before’”
Wow.
Just wow.
Share This“Thank You, And Continued Good Sex in The Big East”
And he repeated it.
Just Shut Up, Gilbert
I’m a huge fan of Gilbert Arenas, both the basketball player and the person. He was one of my favorites even when he was just a 2nd round pick reserve guard for the Warriors.
For the same reason that I grew up admiring Charles Barkley, I like everything about Gilbertology. Arenas has no reservations about saying exactly what’s on his mind.
But in Gilbert’s most recent NBA.com blog entry, he really blew it.
Clearing Up My Contract
I want to get a six-year deal. I want to be a max player. If my team decides that they don’t want me here any more and they’re going to go in a different direction, then I got to look elsewhere. For me to look elsewhere, I want to go find a championship team who’s a championship contender. I’m going to have to take less money, but I’m willing to do that to win a ring. If my team doesn’t want me, then I’m going to another team and I’m going to take less money to go there.
So to Gilbert, it’s about ego over money OR championships.
If the Wizards don’t offer Gilbert a max contract he’d take less money to go elsewhere? Talk about selling your teammates down the river. The Wizards must hamstring themselves financially to keep him, but any other to-be-named franchise wouldn’t have to make the same commitment?
Gilbert, please think before opening your mouth (or using the keyboard as it were). You owe Ernie Grunfeld and your teammates an apology.
Share ThisWizards and Caron Butler Starting To Make Me Look Smart
Since my preseason prediction of 55 wins was not-so-subtly mocked, I think it’s only fair that I get my due after the Wiz kids swept a home-and-home series with the Boston Celtics.
Even though the Agent-Zero-less Wizards had already won in Dallas, these victories over Boston were signature, statement wins. The Wiz didn’t play particularly well offensively in either game, but they were tough, poised, smart and showed a ton of heart in closing out two victories in crunch time. What’s most shocking, is that they played lock-down defense at times.
Don’t look now, but the Wizards are now 14-7 with Antonio Daniels in the starting lineup. (I’m discounting the 3-4 record the Wizards compiled when both Arenas and Daniels were injured). That’s a 54 win pace on it’s own.
Surely the addition of Gilbert Arenas (and Etan Thomas) (and Antonio Daniels) (and Oleksiy Pecherov) would be worth an additional game or two over the course of a season. So it’s looking like my prediction was quite prescient.
But that’s not what I want to gloat about. As a blogger and more importantly, a fan, I’m more excited about my prediction that Ernie Grunfeld would win Executive of the Year. While it looks like that award will end up going to the Greg Oden-less-Trailblazers’ Kevin Pritchard, there is no question Grunfeld is right there in the running.
The Wizards franchise has never been in better shape.
It’s now clear that the Wizards have not one but two max-contract-worthy, franchise-type players in Arenas and the streaking Caron Butler. Butler not only outplayed Paul Pierce, but upstaged MVP frontrunner Kevin Garnett. Not many franchises can say they have two franchise players just about to enter the prime of their careers.
Antawn Jamison continues to improve in his veteran leader role, averaging 20 and 10 on his way to his 2nd all-star appearance, which makes it almost mind boggling that he’s supposed to be the 3rd wheel. The underrated Antonio Daniels is everything a coach wants in a point guard and floor general and there’s no mistaking why his teams consistently win. DeShawn Stevenson’s play is catching up to his mouth and Brendan Haywood has emerged as the second best center in the East.
With the exception of Jamison, who signed a max contract before he got to the Wizards, every player listed above is playing far above the value of their contract, a true testament to Grunfeld’s work in building the roster.
As is often said, “the best deals are often the ones you don’t make”, so it should be noted here that Grunfeld declined the opportunity to match deals offered to Larry Hughes and Jared Jeffries. To further illustrate Grunfeld’s mastery, Hughes and Jeffries will get a combined $18 million from the Cavs and Knicks respectively, while the Wizards will be paying Arenas and Butler about $20 million this season.
But in addition to the two franchise players entering the prime of their careers and four solid, smart veterans (which is to say nothing of the improving Roger Mason or the smart and steady Darius Songaila), Grunfeld has also loaded the roster with young talent. In Andray Blatche, Nick Young, Oleksiy Pecherov and Dominic McGuire the Wizards have a solid nucleus of young players on the verge of big things. Of course, all four are in varying stages of development, but Blatche and Young, in particular, show flashes of big things that might arive sooner rather than later.
Assuming that Grunfeld can keep this roster in tact for 2008-2009 (and the bet here is that he will), the Wizards will be a legit title contender for years to come.
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