Thoughts on MySpace Acquisition of Photobucket

If you believe the reports that MySpace (Fox Interactive Media) is acquiring Photobucket (apparently first written about at Valleywag, to whom congrats are thus due. Now TechCrunch says it’s confirmed) there’s a couple take aways that come to my mind. (This wouldn’t be the first time Valleywag wasn’t quite right on timing, but really – it’s not a bad source.)

The primary takeaway is that the recent peace found between MySpace and Photobucket was obviously not a sign that MySpace is any more open than before to third party services thriving in their ecosystem.  They just bought the biggest one, bringing it in house.  You have to wonder whether Photobucket’s valuation was hosed minus MySpace anyway, I suppose. They were presumably bought for both their huge userbase and their innovative technology (see this TC story, for example.)

I often remind people that MySpace is more open to third party widgets than many other hosted social networking or blogging services.  Disabling outbound links in Flash media and freaking out if said widgets are monetized in any way, though, is a real loss.  If MySpace allowed other companies to monetize their monstrous traffic, perhaps just taking a cut, then the whole market would see far more innovation than it does today or is likely to given the people and adspace hording by MySpace.

No one company can be all things to all people and they shoot their own long term growth in the foot by failing to support the growth of ancillary services.  There has got to be a way to turn what they see now as a parasitic relationship into a symbiotic one.  They probably don’t get that though and will suffer for their hubris against the spirit of new social media.

I was excited when eBay bought StumbleUpon, but this acquisition today just seems sad to me.

Since the first Photobucket video I grabbed off the site contains an obviously copyrighted song, it also makes me wonder whether Photobucket is about to face some serious lawsuits just like YouTube does now that it’s been acquired by someone with money.

How to Create RSS Feeds for Your Organization

A wonderful friend in the nonprofit tech world emailed me this afternoon and asked how I would recommend organizations create RSS feeds for their news or news related to their topic of interest. Preferrably quick, dirty, cheap or free. Get that feed out the door. Here (after the more link) is the email I sent her, in case it’s of use to you. I wrote it very quickly, but I figure it works for now. Feel free to share your thoughts in comments.
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I’m Going to Be on Bob Parson’s Show Tonight

Life Online with Bob Parsons, the founder of Go Daddy, is a weekly live audio show on the web that’s also podcast. I’ll be the first guest tonight at 7PM PST to talk about SplashCast.

Update: Well, it ended up being prerecorded and less than fascinating. Believe it or not, sales pitches aren’t my favorite thing to do. We didn’t exactly talk about any burning issues or deeper questions. Oh well, hopefully people listen to the show and will check out SplashCast. I’m reminded again, as I was at the advertising conference I was at in SF yesterday – that engagement in social media, concerning matters of social interest or importance, is a much more fullfilling method of promoting a company than broadcasting sales messages. We’re engagers at SplashCast and I like that. Oh well!

Twittering more than blogging

Update: This post was linked to by the BBC today, it’s the second time I’ve had a pull quote linked on the Tech section and I always get the most hillariously hostile comments! This one’s my favorite from this thread: “Blogging is like wearing a coat that says I am Billy No Mates.” Is that adorable or what? Much nicer than the really crude stuff I got last time. Keep up the good work BBC readers!

I was honestly woken up last week by the fear that I would stop blogging because Twitter is so much more compelling. The desktop tool Twitterific even more so. That’s not entirely the case, but I have been Twittering many a tweet lately. I thought it was stupid when I first heard about this short messaging system but now I love it. I won’t write an ode to twitter here, but just wanted to note my current affinity for very short form writing. Believe it or not, launching the blog editor page, coming up with a title, spell checking, chosing a category – is just more work than I want to do to share many short thoughts throughout the day.

I do want to write a long post here asap about media embargoes. I think they’re fascinating and the one we’ve got at SplashCast on an announcement we’re making tommorow morning has been an interesting experience to see unfold. So I’ll post some thoughts about that here soon. Thanks for stopping by!

Scribd: A Case Study in Rocking Social Media for Increased Visibility

To follow up on my last post about how blogging may have benefitted the just acquired Hitwise, I left the comment below on a post at Gigaom today about the rapid growth of Scribd. (Om: “What we have heard from multiple and reliable sources that the company was offered $5 million on a post money valuation of $10 million, but passed on that offer. “)

What’s Scribd? It’s an embeddable document viewer, particularly for PDFs! How exciting is that? Actually, it can be pretty exciting. The company’s leverage of social media, Digg specifically, is similar to but above and beyond what we’re doing at SplashCast. This is really forward looking, paradigm changing stuff. Below is my comment on Om’s post and an example of a Scribd embed in action.

One thing Scribd is doing is hitting the front page of Digg with incredible frequency. They are posting really timely, funny, crowd-pleasing PDF content (who knew such a thing existed??) and they are getting piles and piles of Digg. We at SplashCast are using a similar strategy – using content delivered through our service to participate appropriately in social media conversations – but while we’re very proud of our 14 Digg front page appearances in the last 4 months, Scribd is the leading example of this tactic. They hit page one 9 times in one month and had more total diggs in that time period than all but 9 other domains on the web. (for stats see http://elfurl.com/qvabu )

Heck, we even provide similar functionality for PDFs, but online humor isn’t my strong point and the people at Scribd are leveraging the heck out of it for big traffic and visibility. I’m sure this is only one of many factors, but the strategy does work – even for user acquisition. We’ve doubled month over month since launching and I’ll bet Scribd is seeing really awesome growth in new users. It’s awesome that some of that visibility is translating into potential financial support. It reminds me of the boost Hitwise can’t help but have gotten from blogging (see http://elfurl.com/c486t ) To some degree, these are stories illustrating a new paradigm: vendors who participate in conversations can really benefit from it.

What Role Did Blogging Play in the Hitwise Acquisition?

Megacorp Experian has acquired Australia based website traffic analysts Hitwise for $240 million, it was announced today.  That announcement really caught my eye because Hitwise has done an incredible job of using blogs and participating in social media to raise the company’s profile.  I can only assume that this has helped it raise revenues and thus contributed to its acquisition.  What other traffic stats company puts out really interesting, timely data for free on a regular basis?  What other companies write blog posts that hit the peak of Techmeme?  What other traffic companies provide the fodder for thought provoking, informative posts on blogs like TechCrunch, Gigaom, Mashable and many, many more – on a regular basis?

Three cheers for these folks coming down off the “I see the traffic, now here’s a quarterly press release” high-horse that their competitors are too often on.  Blogger Andy Beal writes similarly this morning. “All of those great charts that Hitwise so freely provide us,” he quips, “have paid off big time for the web intelligence company.”

A Google search of Techmeme for Hitwise has 2,400 results; only Comscore can come close to that among the major traffic analysts. (The little startup I work at has 3X the number of Techmeme appearances as traffic analyst leader NetRatings, for example.) [Update: The folks at Compete.com just emailed me to point out their extensive engagement in the blogosphere. Plus, I’ll add, they advertise on blogs, which is very cool. I think their numbers are funky, but whatever, they are totally raising their profile by leveraging social media. We’ll see if they can be as smart about it as Hitwise, though.] Outside numbers tracking is a crap-shoot game, no one really trusts anyone’s methods all that much – so the best you can do is to be highly visible in a positive light.

Specifically, three cheers for  LeeAnn Prescott and Heather Hopkins – two women whose ability to see what the tech world is interested in and shape the conversation by providing pertinent data, thoughtfully presented early in the conversation.  Remember when you didn’t give Photobucket a moment’s thought?  Guess who posted numbers about their huge market share and got tech bloggers talking about them?   LeeAnn Prescott.  Who blogged about it when Bebo reportedly passed MySpace in traffic in the UK for the first time?  Heather Hopkins.   Blog posts like this have changed our understanding of the web 2.0 market.  

I’m sure the smart blogging strategies Hitwise employed were just some of many factors leading to the company’s acquisition for $240 million, but I think company blogging and these bloggers in particular deserve some serious recognition.