Weblog Business Strategies Conference: Kickoff

Had to come all the way to Boston to meet Sam Whitmore, who sat next to me at D. The gang's all here, this should be good fun. Things are about to get going momentarily. I'll update this post for the intro from Kathleen Goodwin and Michael Gartenberg's opening session.

Kathleen Goodwin, Welcoming Remarks

We've brought together the best and brightest individuals in the world of weblogs, a watershed event. Businesses quickly discovered the transformational aspects of the 'Net. Business weblogs are in their early stages of greatness. Think back to early days of the Internet: many difficulties and concerns have been overcome. Today, where would we be without it? As a marketer, I can tell you it's the greatest tool I have for managing customer relationships. (Overview of conference topics.) (Kathleen asks for questions for final panel. If you email, I'll be pleased to ask.)

Michael Gartenberg, Jupiter Research Insight: Enterprise Weblogs—Blogging For Fun And Profit

I'm always hesitant to talk about firsts, especially in a roomful of live Internet connections. (Good laugh.) But to the best of my knowledge, Jupiter was the first to incorporate research and weblogs. The Internet and the Web don't get mentioned in Wired until issue 1.4. Home pages were about the sum total of the Web Wired was covering in the early '90's.

Talks about the debate when they first started blogging about research at Jupiter (some got it, some said, huh?). Getting about 4,000 hits a day on the various sites. Palpable results, clients have renewed on the basis of weblogs. Now, Alan Meckler has his own blog, and they've started the Microsoft Monitor, first time they've tied a specific service to a companion weblog.

There are some nasty perceptions about weblogs: Lack of ethos, little value, creates Web noise, ego driven publishing. The reality is they're actually firsthand expertise. The credibility associated with a blog is directly tied to the contributing individuals. And, traditional publishing is ego driven too, but good luck if you actually want to be heard. Odds are the New York Times is not going to publish your op-ed. Blogging also provides a unique opportunity for direct audience contact. Blogs also enable customer centric communication not available elsewhere, and are the ultimate no-spin zone.

If Michael were advising Dustin Hoffman today in The Graduate, he might say "Weblogs." But careful: you might get fired. Keys are to keep it modest at first. Go internal before you go external; sounds basic, but isn't, and it's important. Ask permission, not forgiveness. This applies if you're a a personal blogger too. A disclaimer saying, "My thoughts are not those of my employer," is not going to save your job. Use common sense.

So who should be blogging at your company? Easy: anyone who has got something to say. People in your company are undiscovered great writers analysts and thinkers. Use them. Also, blog early and blog often. Third, recognize the difference between business and personal blogs. If you're blogging in a business setting, in general keep the cheesecake recipes offline.

Suggested project timeline: beta internally, commit a core group of bloggers, get a week's worth of material ready to go, open up to internal review for some beta feedback, repeat all this three times, and you're good to go. Blogs are an extremely powerful form of communication, both internally and externally. If you're looking at this from an enterprise perspective, now is the time to seize control because if you don't, people internally will do it on an ad hoc basis. Better to be involved.

Introduces Dave Winer.

It's On My Tab

Todd Dominey writes of my favorite Safari feature of all time:

[Y]ou can also do this handy shortcut – put a bunch of related bookmarks into a folder, and place the folder in your toolbar. Make sure Tabbed Browsing is turned on in the Preferences. Then, hold down the command key, and click on the folder in the toolbar. Presto! Every bookmark inside the folder is loaded into its own tab. I use this shortcut for general news, Mac sites, and any web project I'm currently developing. You can obviously click a folder, open it, and select "Open in Tabs" from the bottom, but the command-click option is much faster.

Nice!

Technorati's new Keyword Search. [via Doc] Among other things, it does yeoman's work as a blawg-spotting tool.

D: Interview With Ted Leonsis And Mark Cuban

The following are my notes from the May, 28, 2003 interview with Ted Leonsis and Mark Cuban, conducted by Kara Swisher at D: All Things Digital. As with all my conference notes (wherever, whenever), please don't mistake these jottings for a verbatim transcript or a complete portrayal. They are necessarily paraphrased and incomplete, and the product of my highly selective and imperfect notice and attention.

Interview

Swisher: Digital issues and sports, where's it headed? The Sharks in San Jose just put WiFi in the stadium.

Leonsis: The great thing about sports is you get paid for your content, and games are a commercial to bring in more customers. Sports teams are really underleveraged assets, will be of quite high value in the broadband universe.

Cuban: My philosophy with the team's arena was technology is first. One of the things I learned is that we don't sell basketball, we sell sore throats—the chance to stand up and scream.

Leonsis: We're in the bricks and mortar business, we bring people in. It's about the whole experience. We get 8-12 million hours of our community's time every year. For the audience, going to these games, it's about their shared experience.

Swisher, to Leonsis: You gave the players laptops.

Leonsis: Oooh! (Audience laughs.) We're not doing this for the technology, we're doing it for the customer service. Email is normal now. It creates intimacy, and because there's this intimacy, even when the fans are mad at you the fans will say, "I love what you've done with the team. But..." The relationship somewhat inoculates you. (Missed bit here; he's talking about time shifting.) I wanted to catch the 11:00 p.m. SportsCenter about the Mavs game last night, and couldn't. But this morning on AOL for Broadband, I was able to do this on my own schedule.

Cuban: We've been doing that since 1999! (More laughs.)

Leonsis: We want to extend the time of the event to before and after the game, and bridge through the off season.

Cuban: One of the things we've learned is we compete not with other sports, but with other people. Technology enables us to pull people in, grab them by the throat, reinforce their passion for the sport, use up as much of their time as possible. (Talks about an important game that had a 6 p.m. start time. Cuban sent an email to employers asking permission for fans to leave early. Due to the timing they expected the lowest, but had the highest, attendance of the season.)

Leonsis: Sports is being priced out of the realm of the normal fan. One thing we'd like is to have flexible ticket pricing to fill seats, get a new generation in for games. Get the word out about reduced prices using our portals.

Cuban: (Talks about the fact he participates in his team's interactive online forums.)

Swisher: Probably a really intelligent discussion: "You suck!"

Cuban: I write under a pseudonym...No, I'm not going to tell you!

Swisher: What do other team owners think of using digital tools to enhance the sports experience?

Cuban: You have to be creative in this market. Many don't get it.

Leonsis: We're constantly looking at building asset value.

Swisher: Do you see bypassing the networks?

Cuban: One of the reasons we created HDNet is to help create an entirely new viewing experience. Not doing network deals at some point is something you look at.

Leonsis: Just like the Internet, you need multiple revenue streams.

Cuban: (Talks about dilution of audience.) There's not enough bandwidth for all the networks in a high definition universe. Means there will be more value to each broadcast, and an increased value to sports. It changes the economics.

Swisher: What about just broadcasting over the Internet?

Cuban: A couple of years ago I would have said yes to that, but high definition is now too compelling. HDTVs cost sub-$1,000, and will make that broadcast method too attractive.

Leonsis: People are not just fans of the teams, but of the players.

Cuban: If I sold a Webcast of Dirk Nowitzki getting his hair cut, people would pay. It's a passion. What kind of hair gel does he use?, this is the kind of email I get. In sports, it's a different universe. They're talking about my hair yesterday on ESPN. What the hell is that? Shows you how crazy it is.

Leonsis: We essentially bought 4 blocks of downtown Washington, D.C., and two sports teams, for less than we paid for ICQ. These sports investments are one of the few recession-proof, stagnation-proof assets. People vote with their time, money and passion. I'm pleased with the investment I made. I just wish we could make a playoff series.

Swisher: Is there an ideal device for sports delivery?

Cuban: This may be self-interested, but high definition TV ubiquity.

Leonsis: Technology is getting fans and teams to be more connected and intimate. While it sounds trite, it goes a long way toward giving fans that personal touch. We get emails all the time, my son is going into brain surgery and has always wanted to meet Michael Jordan. That's a small gesture. There's something heroic and special about these players. It's our duty to bring these people closer together.

Audience Questions for Leonsis and Cuban

Audience member: What do you see ahead as far as 802.11g? 3D?

Cuban: We've got access points we've used and tested. The bigger issue is not detracting from the communal experience. No reward now for being the first in 3D, but we're looking at it.

Leonsis: The video game business is much bigger than the sports business. Sports teams are small businesses, but all the ancillary businesses are really big. Sometimes the teams should own the games, rather than licensing the rights out to others. The next generation of sports team ownership will be thinking along these lines.

Cuban: (Nods.) You can't be dependent on your league office to make the best deal.

Audience member: (Questioner says his company can deliver DVD quality video via broadband, but it involves a time shift.)

Cuban: It's got to be real-time. Once they can get the score on the Internet, that's it.

Leonsis: This is why TiVo isn't that big for sports.

Cuban: Look at what happened with NBC and the Olympics. (More.)

Audience member: (Asks about HDTV, other players.)

Cuban: Competition and growth in this field is great for everyone.

Leonsis: In sports, there's this unbelievable clarity about winning and losing, and the opportunity for redemption and renewal. Your fans, like great consumers, forgive you, let you come back next year and try again. There are great lessons in sports that you can apply to business.

Swisher: How do you look at the Internet right now?

Cuban: It's maturing, and that's great. I think I was Novell's third reseller back in '83. Used to be, the more you knew, the more you could identify what would be the next big thing. Now, you can't rely on that, you need to be looking around and paying attention.

Leonsis: I feel like a mayor of a city: you have to make sure the water is clear, the street is paved, the lights are working, there are no power outages. After you do all that very well, people will let you introduce them to the new theater, the new mall. (In response to the question about being 17 and starting over...) I'm right where I want to be, making products that tens of millions of customers enjoy every day, and owning a couple of sports teams.

D: Interviews with Terry Semel, Sergey Brin and Larry Page

The following are my notes from the May, 28, 2003 interviews with Terry Semel, conducted by Kara Swisher, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, conducted by Walt Mossberg, at D: All Things Digital. As with all my conference notes (wherever, whenever), please don't mistake these jottings for a verbatim transcript or a complete portrayal. They are necessarily paraphrased and incomplete, and the product of my highly selective and imperfect notice and attention.

Terry Semel

Swisher: There have been some remarkable changes at Yahoo since you came on board. (Mentions articles that initially expressed skepticism about Semel's suitability for the role.)

Semel: For me, it was time for a life change. I examined things, invested in some Internet related things. I wanted to be involved with a business that had great products. I was attracted to Yahoo because it was the best brand on the Internet, and it had a huge audience. There are now some 112 million active registered users.

Swisher: What is Yahoo now?

Semel: That's a very simplistic question. Not sure if there is an answer. Some people would refer to Yahoo as a portal, or a platform, or a network. Probably it's the most relevant place to come for anything you want. The premise is if services and products are great, you'll spend more and more time there. It's not just search, travel, sports, or finance, but getting more personalized, so you the user can design what you want when you want it.

Swisher: Is it a media company?

Semel: I'm surprised you'd use such a traditional word, but it fits if you like.

Swisher: (Asks about Yahoo's success in maintaining advertising revenue.)

Semel: Yahoo's advertising sales now exceed AOL's. Traditional advertising required a lot of handholding. You're starting to see more creative advertising, more use of rich media. Some similarities to TV advertising, but there will be great differences. Broadcast television remains the most effective way to reach the masses. The Internet is the second most effective. In the last year we've seen an enormous change of attitude on both sides. We have a much deeper list of clients starting to believe they're getting their money's worth. We have seen growth for five quarters in a row in our traditional advertising business.

Swisher: (Asks about sponsored search.)

Semel: Sponsored search is auction oriented, very effective for small and medium sized businesses. Works well for all three sides: the advertiser, Yahoo, and the user. Yahoo still is committed to pure search, but users find it a little more organized and relevant when they're getting a "recommendation." It's like the yellow pages. There's a stronger temptation to go to a company you've heard of with a big ad.

Swisher: Let's talk about premium services and extras. There's no proof people want to buy these things. What do you think?

Semel: Look at the track records in other fields, like cable television. People are accustomed to spending money for certain things. Conservatively, 50% of AOL users are regular Yahoo users. Yahoo is essentially "free" to them, so maybe they're willing to pay for certain basic extra services (extra email storage, centralized data access). Yahoo is co-branding with SBC to provide access and services. There's not a single doubt in my mind that people are getting accustomed to paying for certain specific services or products, while still getting certain quality services for free. If we continue to improve the quality of our free services, they will support the pay services, and vice versa. We thought it was important to offer access to listings for personals, jobs and real estate. We decided we needed to buy the jobs segment and personalize it. In the case of personals, we decided we can build it in house and do it really well, but I gave it an advertising budget of zero. The goal was to become #2 in that market with no advertising beyond our own network.

Swisher: What about entertainment? (Mentions AOL, People Magazine online.) As a content maker, what do you think of that happening? What about music?

Semel: 10-11 million people use Yahoo's Music Launch service. There have been 125 million music videos downloaded. Music can and will be successful in its own right. So many people use the 'Net to legally listen to the music they want. There are music clubs. These are perfect examples of the kind of extra services people will pay for.

Swisher: (Asks about whether the music industry will cooperate with online services to give users what they want.)

Semel: As former chairman of one of the five major labels, I see a shift in attitude. The tone used to be, "let's sue them." The industry has done a good job moving away from this. What Steve Jobs has accomplished in obtaining cross-licensing is great. As times change, repackaging and repricing make the most sense. [I missed a bit here...] They're going too slowly though. Now is the time to bring the Internet in, before it becomes too late. The industry should get involved sooner rather than later.

Audience Questions for Semel

Audience member: Jack Warner once cautioned the movie industry not to sell to TV. The result was to encourage innovation in the new medium. Will this happen on the Internet?

Semel: I'm a total believer in the changed medium. Things start out looking like what you're used to, you begin by slicing and dicing what's there. HBO started by broadcasting movies, then moved on to do its own series and other things. The Internet too will begin with slicing and dicing what we've seen before, but that won't be the big killer app. That's going to be original hits that take advantage of the unique aspects of the Internet, and they'll be very different from what we usually see. Music, games. Companies like Yahoo have enormous communities, posting and talking to each other all the time. There's no doubt the Internet will become a major vehicle for games, all over the world. If all you do is copy what came before, you're going to look like an old newspaper. These new ideas could come from Hollywood, but they're just as likely to come from users.

Audience member: Is there a role for Yahoo in convergence, everything coming into the home through one box?

Semel: Yes, it's important to deliver what you want, where and when you want it.

Audience member: Yahoo's cash position is huge. Are you thinking about media properties, your own programming?
Semel: Yahoo has north of 2 billion cash right now. Three years out, broadband will be in 50% of households, and more and better content and programming will do well. We don't need a studio now, but we'll be involved in helping people who are doing things we feel are good for the Internet. HBO started out with 100% licensed content, now probably 50% of what they offer is original. And they're thriving.

David Kirkpatrick (from Fortune): Will traditional media throttle Internet content? (Referencing things like Diller's HSN.)

Semel: On the Internet, anyone with a good idea can do it tomorrow. Individuals can and do create stuff. It's much more open to the creation of thriving businesses. The Internet world offers another opportunity to reach masses. As a citizen I worry about countries where one person controls the whole thing. The Internet helps, generally speaking doesn't take positions on issues.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Mossberg: You've created great technology that works, but you're sort of the oddball in the search industry. Take sponsored search results. You don't do that.

Page: We've taken a hard line on that. Our search results are the best things we can produce. You can tell our advertising is advertising. It's even more evil when you can't tell if a result comes up because of paid inclusion.

Mossberg: I think this is one of the best things about Google. But from a business point of view, you're not a public company. Why would someone buy a Google ad?

Brin: It's important to us and the users that ads be identified as ads. We think it makes them more effective. (Gives example of purchasing a green laser pointer from one of Google's advertisers.) The ads themselves work well. They're a good revenue stream for Google and for the advertisers. In fact, the ads work so well they're being run on non-search properties, like the Knight Ridder sites. Instead of having a flashy banner you'll see a set of text links, related to the news story you're reading. It's not a perfect product; sometimes you have unfortunate subject-ad pairings—headline, "Boy drowns in washing machine," next to a washing machine ad.

Mossberg: How do you guys make any money?

Page: We license our search technology to other sites, and to the enterprise market. Advertising is a very large source of revenue as well.

Mossberg: What about the simplicity of the ads, why is that important?

Page: We felt like banner ads slowed down our sites and weren't relevant. The click-through rates on the search-relevant text ads are much higher.

Mossberg: There are companies that are pissed off at you guys because you've become the gateway to the Internet. There are people who think Google disadvantages them and their business.

Brin: We were sued in one case I think and I believe it was dismissed. People tend to get really upset when they used to have a big flow of traffic from Google, then they don't. There's another set of people who are getting that traffic. There's not a great deal of stability in our search results. A site might be down when we crawl it, for example. The more important issue is that we continue to develop our algorithms and have a rapid development cycle. People can't necessarily rely on search results remaining static.

Page: We've earned people's trust this way through the quality of the search.

Mossberg: Do you think your average users understand why some results are ranked higher than others?

Brin: The whole system is very complex. I couldn't tell you why in a given set of results one thing is higher than another. I would not recommend following those spams that promise to increase your search result standings.

Mossberg: Have you got this figured out for the next few years?

Page: There's a lot we can do. I still think using Google's terrible. There's still a huge number of things we can't answer. There's probably something out there that explains every complex query, and Google can't give you the exact right answer instantly.

Mossberg: (Asks about specialized searches and features, like Froogle.)

Brin: Most of the products we develop are suggestions by enthusiastic researchers. True of Google News, true of Froogle. We encourage this, and ultimately it's highly motivated people on our teams who conceive these things. You look at our track record on things we planned to launch that were successful, and the correlation is pretty weak.

Page: Innovation in general is like this. You try a lot of things, some of them work out really well.

Brin: We have a list of that we call the Top 100, research projects in development. It's really more like 200. Some people work on them whether we want them to or not. (Audience laughs.)

Mossberg: It sounds like summer camp.

Brin: People create much better things when they're inspired and feel they have ownership, it's what they want to do.

Mossberg: Let's talk about browsing. This doesn't just mean the Web, but the way you interact with the PC, search as more of a metaphor than it has been. Is the kind of thing you do at Google something that could unify all this?

Page: No, Google works best on a large universe of data. With smaller universes, something like the Apple Music Store, you may not even need search. It will be nice to have better search functionality for your own information, but software can provide other alternatives.

Mossberg: What about searching other documents: PDFs, images. AlltheWeb includes music and videos. Will there be a way to use Google to search things that are not on the public Web?

Brin: You can now throw away all your junk mail catalogs because you can search for and browse them on Google. Regarding music and video, there are legal issues, issues with the results really working, issues with player compatibility; generally, usability issues beyond search that make these problematic.

Page: We do have a fair amount of influence now. We try to consider what it means to make all this available.

Audience Questions for Brin and Page

Audience member: Do you help users with queries on things like health care issues to narrow down their results?

Brin: There are great sites about diabetes, and we don't have the ability to give you better information than they can. In the future, who knows?

Audience member: Why search? Why does it work?
Page: It was obvious for us because we didn't really want to form a company. There were 10,000 searches a day at Stanford on Google, it was working and growing. We didn't fully understand what would happen, but had strong indications.

Audience member: Google vs. bookmarks. Why don't you let people put their bookmarks on your home page? You'd do serious damage to Yahoo and AOL.

Page: Would you like a job? (Good laugh from audience.)

Same audience member: As one of the two unemployed people here, yes! (More laughs)

Brin: This is the kind of thing people work on on the Top 100 list. It sounds like a good idea but would need to be tested.

Esther Dyson: Asks about Google's purchase of Pyra: what have you discovered, been surprised by, found out?

Brin: We've let those guys go at it, continue to develop their product. They have so many ideas on their own, and there's a whole industry of third party applications to tack onto Blogger. I'm just trying to make sure we don't add too much "value!" (Big laugh.)

Audience member: What are the implications of being able to find just about anything on Google?

Brin: Larry told me this some time ago: people's interests are, and have become, esoteric and diverse. The wealth of information has enabled people to specialize in much narrower interests. It makes it easier for someone to specialize in a localized sphere of knowledge.

Page: I've been waiting for them to start teaching searching, alongside spelling, in school.