I think one of the great things about blogs and rich media is that they allow people to really get to know you and put a face to the things they see or hear.  Take Thomas Hawk and Kris Tate, for example.  You take any one else, and see what kind of reaction you get after promising, then missing a huge deadline that was publicly made almost a *week* ago (when the update would happen in “hours”), and they might be taken to the outhouse / woodshed / backroom for some old-style bloggish whupass.

Not Zoomr — and not these two gentlemen.

Personally, I don’t really care how long it takes to develop their next product.  It could take another month or three.  They have other concerns, strategic, financial, and otherwise.  But I really couldn’t care less.

And that’s because the product, whatever it may be, will probably be worth it.  Their past work with Zooomr is the proof of that.

But the kind of interesting thing that has rescued them from a public denouncement — after raising our hopes up?  The fact that these guys are so damn *earnest* and *personable* both through their blogs and through their live streaming feeds.

Heck, I don’t know if half of all the kind of shennanigans that are going on that are preventing the upgrade to Zooomr Mark III are true (although they probably are given the continuous live feed courtesy of UStream.TV), but their accessibility through the Zooomr blog, their transparency through the continuous live feed, and the *story* (or “brand” if you will) behind Zooomr — that of these two guys against huge Web2.0 corporations — is something that you just want to root for.

Now, that’s not to say that they would be completely immune to things — but they’ve been up front with their fans so far, and all of that has been rewarded with nothing but supportive sentiment.

I’m not sure when Zooomr Mark III is coming, but Kris and Thomas can take their time as far as I’m concerned.  I’m willing to wait for something great (and unlimited storage) — let’s just hope that it *does* pay off in a way that the community is anticipating.

(because if it doesn’t … woodshed time! — no, just kidding.)

(Or am I?)

Don’t laugh — but that’s the meme that’s kind of floating around, since Allen from CenterNetworks proposed how he might orchestrate it, with Read/Write/Web chiming in with their three cents.

Don’t get me wrong: making some strategic moves makes sense if you’re content to be the third fiddle (or fourth, or fifth) to Google’s chief fiddler (or, for the comic book geeks out there, let’s say Firelord, to Google’s Galactus). I think it would be smart to pay Firefox, for example, to make Ask.com its default search. Or, for that matter, starting a price war when it comes to contextual advertising.

Heck, as a blogger and publisher I would *welcome* the latter.

But let’s be honest here.

Google owns one thing that Ask will never have.

Or, something that Yahoo will never reclaim.

Or, that Microsoft will never be able to buy.

And that’s the “mindshare” of Internet users world wide for what “Search” means. Heck, for the minds of some people, Google *IS* the Internet. And let’s not get into its forays into web applications, dark fibre, data centers and the like.

When most people think “Search”, or what to query anything, they think of Google. And now that Google’s been in that position for so many years, it will take more than strategic maneuverings, no matter how slick, subtle, or expensive they might be, to change that.

The kinds of changes that Ask.com is trying to implement are tactical at best, but even the smartest strategic maneuverings would never do more than advertise and bring attention to what Ask.com is — and that is a Search Engine like Google.com

Leapfrogging over Google would take some massive kind of shift in what Search means, something hugely disruptive and innovative. Is *that* what’s going on at Ask.com? Maybe it is, but I haven’t heard anything about it. I mean, sure they’re changing algorithms, apparently.

Whoop-de-frackin’-doo.

Let’s say you could prove that Ask.com is a better search tool than Google, well, what then?

It still wouldn’t be good enough. Business history is littered with examples of poorer technologies that still took and never relinquished the lead even when better products or technologies existed. The Qwerty keyboard. Microsoft.

I could go on.

Do I think Ask.com could topple Google? Of course not. Could it improve its share of the search engine market with aggressive marketing and wiley strategic partnerships? Sure. But how much of the pie are they eventually going to get? And are they going to be happy with that tiny sliver of a slice? Will it be a curve of decreasing marketing returns?

But will investors ever be happy being the runty animal in the search engine family?

My feeling is probably no.

Will Ask.com have the intestinal fortitude to introduce something really game changing rather than settling for throwing marketing cash at a problem that money can’t solve? (Because let’s face it — if money *COULD* solve it, Microsoft would have already done it)

Again — my feeling is probably not.

But you know what? It could. So why doesn’t it?

Or, press release, for that matter. This past week, Adobe announced that it was opening up parts of its Flex platform under an open source license, with the intent to release its entire code sometime by the end of the year. Pretty interesting stuff, right? Somewhat important, no?

But you know how the tech community found out?

Through a video interview by Robert Scoble on PodTech.

If you monitored the blogging / news-osphere thereafter, a number of other posts started to surface, with Adobe’s official release over here.

But, ironically, the most useful post, I found, was neither of these posts (it was Nik Cubrilovic’s over at TechCrunch).

In fact, I found the entire situation frustating because:

1. I knew Flex was important
2. I’m not geeked up technically savvy enough to know what Flex was
3. In general, I need information fast
4. I didn’t feel like trawling through different posts to find out what I wanted to know

What would have been really nice would have been a central repository for some nice, quick, facts in an every-day kind of language, with a bunch of *annotated* links to a variety of important resources on the web, such as interviews, videos, opinions, and examples.

Wait — I just described a social media news room! This is an idea that was championed by Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications a little while ago, and I think it might have been useful in Flex’s launch. Really Useful.

Here’s why.

Listen, I think its great that Adobe decided to go “cutting edge” with a video interview on PodTech. Scoble’s got a huge audience, and on the whole, has their attention because of the credibility he’s got.

But did anyone not find it terribly ironic that the news was all about going “open source”, while the content on the interview was “locked” into the video? I’m stretching the metaphor here, but what I mean is that it was simply maddening that the bloody show had no show notes!

Sure, there’s an argument to be made that “if they’re interested they’ll watch all the way through — and that’s good for PodTech and Adobe”. But isn’t that a kind of command-and-control attitude that is the anti-thesis of the “transparency” and “open-source” ethos?

I still haven’t watched the interview, not because its *bad* per se, but I just don’t have the time to sit down and watch something for 25 minute when I could glean the same information (which is all I’m looking for — *information*) in less than two on a single, well constructed site.

And I think this is where Adobe really could have gotten it together.

Rather (or, perhaps, in *addition* to stringing) together a traditional press release over here, which is full of jargony technical speak, forcing people to find *other* resources online, it could create a single page with a few simple lines describing a) what the technology was and b) why its important, and add a whole bunch of annotated links to other important resources on the web.

I think the word “annotated” is important, because rather than just a long list of links, it gives the reader some idea of what each link means, and more importantly, how it contributes to the over all message of the page.

Robert Scoble’s interview, for example is more than just a “PodTech Interview”, but rather “Robert Scoble Interviews David Wadhwani, VP Engineering and Ely Greenfield, Flex Architect” and another sentence or three on why its important, or different, or why it adds to the “conversation”. Other examples?

• How about Michael Cote’s extensive video and analysis over what Flex means?
• What about how one of Adobe’s own senior engineers feels about Flex going open sourcem, over at Kuwamoto.org?
• How about a man-on-the-street perspective from a long time Flash developer, over at ZeusLabs?

The best part? It doesn’t need to be static. Like any good “new media” document it could be an evolving “document”, with new links added all the time as more stuff comes on board.

Now, the scary part is exactly what new media pundits will be clamoring over, which is that there’s nothing’s authentic about this kind of bit of communication, where’s the conversation, and for the love of pete, why not just start a blog?!

Hey, I love blogging just as much as the next man / woman / person, but as you can see in Flex’s case, sometimes it just makes no sense. Starting a blog for the purposes of promoting “awareness” about a product seems fairly disingenuous, and furthermore, while there’s an argument to be made for starting a product/service oriented blog at *the beginning*, you can see here that Adobe wanted to keep things under wraps for a little while.

Note — they didn’t want to *lie* … but they wanted to keep things secret.

I think I see the flip side of this. If done the “right” way, social media news rooms (or press releases) allows for the congregation of *many* different kinds of voices, and yes, if it sticks to the transparent and open source ethos, it would even list dissenting opinions as well. Furthermore, its something that stays on a host company’s site, and would not be something “pushed” on to journalists (or bloggers), but rather, something more of a resource.

Having blogs is good. Having video is good. Podcasts are useful as well, in their own way. The announcement of Flex was interesting in the seemingly haphazard way it was done, and I think, might have served as a great example of what social news room could be. Furthermore, given the kind of technology that they were dealing with and the kinds of opinions that were proliferating in and around the blogosphere, I think it would have really been a great opportunity for Adobe. Since they didn’t have a “Flex” blog, it would have been an opportunity to at least *collect* important opinions, so as to acknowledge the conversations that were going on in a way that would have been helpful to everyone.

Resources:

• Todd Defren’s Social Media News Room Template [pdf]
• NeatReceipts: An example of a SMNR (a client of SHIFT Communications)
• GM Europe: Another example of SMNR
• Marcom Blog: The case against SMNR’s wild proliferation
• A recent forum on Social Media Press Releases (a cousin of SMNR), courtesy of Brian Solis

Forbes reports that MySpace feted marketing and PR types after the release of new data that suggests that marketing dollars spend on MySpace go far. *Really* far. All because of the power of word of mouth.

Wheeee.

Super low acquisition costs are being tossed around, with Electronic Arts used as a model — something in the range of 0.30-0.40 cents per customer, because although they actually spent over a dollar per customer, all of those individuals told their *friends*, some of whom now expressed a desire to purchase said game. If their numbers are to believed, almost four times as many “friends” who were never exposed to the advertising now wanted to buy said game, thanks, we presume to word of mouth buzz.

Sounds good, but I have a few questions / issues.

1. The study was produced *by* MySpace: So of course its going to be a positive study, with great results. We should all take it with a grain of salt (as I know you all are already doing).

2. We need independent confirmation of these results: Can the results be replicated if it was tracked and followed by an independent firm on MySpace? Would MySpace ever allow marketing firms this level of access to create their own set of metrics?

3. Operationability of tracking users? How are these users tracked? How do we know that there was a direct connection between individuals exposed to advertising to individuals who weren’t (but still wanted to buy?)

4. Potential customers does not equal actual customers: You cannot talk about return on investment with *potential* customers. You have to follow them all the way to check out, and even then, a great study would follow up on purchases to see how many returned the game. Customers with an intent to purchase might be different in their ability to complete a sale with respect to direct advertising and word of mouth. Would those directly exposed to ads be more likely to purchase? Or would those who were getting “buzzed”? (If you could in fact prove that they were the recipient of said buzz)

I think it makes a great deal of intuitive sense that word of mouth marketing ought to work. It ought to have lower acquisition costs. Its message should spread, and it should spread quickly. And in environments of highly networked individuals, its an attractive thought that word of mouth marketing is an idea whose time has come.

But am I the only person who is wondering about this particular study — funded and commissioned *by* MySpace *about* marketing in MySpace?

While I am utterly convinced of Google’s omnipotent base-owning and world-eating status, one does wonder if there is a message behind Matt Cutt’s (i.e. Google’s herald and wielder of the power cosmic) latest post on paid links. To summarize, it looks like Matt wants people to report to Google when they see paid links, because they want more “data” on the issue of paid links. Oh, its also the third post in a single day on paid links.

What’s the message behind the message?

Could it be that Google can’t find a way to effectively track paid links? The conspiracy theorist in me is also beginning to think that the only way Google can do this is through strictly human methods of snitching whistleblowing of reporting. Andy Beal wonders if this opens up a giant can of ethical worms, as there’s nothing to prevent individuals from reporting on their enemies “paid links” (when there might not be). GrayWolf wonders why there is such consternation and brow-furrowing when the existence of a market FOR links is propagated by Google itself.

Personally, I’m beginning to wonder whether or not if Google will EVER be able to meaningfully track paid links if they’re not overtly notified as such on your blog. Google’s worries are valid: paid links are fine for traffic, but not when it comes to alerting search engine results — or page rank. The problem is that links can be paid for and sold without any notification on your blog, and there would be impossible to tell. For example, not that I would do it (or AM doing it for that matter), but there is no way of knowing whether or not reviews of anything, including web2.0 properties, have been discretely paid for behind Google’s back. The presumption is that the link is “organic” and that its ranking in Google is based on the worth I’m placing towards the link destination.

Of course, the fact that it might be secretly paid for destroys the foundation of what link worth means. And possibly the underpinnings of how Google does what it does.

Is this Google’s Achilles Heel? Will Google ever be able to sort this out without resorting to the messy job of using puny humans to hunt for paid links? Would they resort to the FTC ruling on reporting word of mouth marketing to bludgeon bloggers into disclosing their paid links? Even if puny humans ARE sorting through blogs searching for paid links, COULD they ever find them all?

Right now, I’m thinking the answer to the latter is a resounding “no”. And if it is, it makes me wonder if the answer to the former is really “yes”.

So just moments before I was about to push “publish” on an article named “CBS is Crazy: I Love Tech, But It Makes No Sense” about how CBS was “going” to replace Don Imus’s radio show (who I presume you know was recently fired for making racist comments about a black female basketball team), with Ed Kohler of Technology Evangelist, which is a tech podcast.

Seems like I was punk’d, though. And it seems like I wasn’t the only one.

I was about to rant on and on about how much I love technology, but how silly, stupid and short sighted this was on CBS’s behalf … blah blah blah … if they were going to go from a mainstream shock jock to a niche-oriented topic, they must have been smoking some fine ganja … blah blah blah … perhaps they’d be better off going with Leo Laporte who is as mainstream as any tech personality you’d ever meet … blah blah blah.

Well, as I said, good thing I caught myself in time, because it looks like a huge joke / hoax.

And as I pause and reflect on my own twitchy blogging fingers, its clear that tech bloggers, or perhaps, all bloggers, are prone to this kind of behaviour. We’ve been criticized before about not fact checking, contributing to an echochamber of opinion, and contributing to a general phenomena of going into mass hysteria at inappropriate times (OMG! Apple’s new dongle is teh haxor!).

All of those things may or may not be true (well, probably more true than not).

But I think that’s the beauty of blogging as well. While we are all prone to going off half cocked when we smell some tantalizing aroma of something particularly dishy (Microsoft alive / dead; Google making another acquisition; Mark Zuckerburg turning down even MORE money for Facebook; a new release date for Apple products; A-list blogger saying something smart / stupid), there is also a self-correcting phenomena where we usually are able to just as quickly turn around and correct ourselves.

It doesn’t always happen, which is unfortunate, but for the most part, the blogosphere does fact check *itself* — if for no other reason than there is a vested interest for bloggers who are able to point out a legitimate contrarian opinion, the incorrect facts, and debunk formerly-accurate news. That is to say, that in an economy of attention (which we bloggers trade in), there is a good reason to fact check itself.

But, it first starts with that piece of news. And at the end of the day, though, the very nature of blogging — news blogging, and I would argue Tech blogging in particular — does lend itself to twitchy bloggers who are dying to get the first word out about that particular issue.

And in doing so, we’re pathetically easy hoax bait if the bit of “news” is plausible enough, or it happens to get enough publicity through a well known news site or a-list blog.

What does this mean for online marketers or SEO types? Well you can add “hoax-bait” as a kind of “link-bait” as a means of content creation to try and create inbound links. As a strategic methodology, we can look to Lonelygirl15 as one of the first really big pieces of “hoax bait” that had the blogosphere in a frenzy trying to debunk.

But on the other hand, its one thing to be done once in a while in a tasteful fashion, and deliberately tongue-in-cheek. Its quite another thing to be done deliberately and purposefully, with nothing but a mercenary goal of links building in mind.

Because that way courts another feature of the blogosphere (often seen in the techie side): the predilection for a public lynching. And if you’re wondering what that feels like, heck, just ask Tim O’Reilly.

Update: blogging hoaxes aren’t new and it seems not limited to online bloggers either.

So, early yesterday, I wondered how the Myspace/ Photobucket Fracas was going to turn out: details had yet to emerge, but the ball was in Rupert’s corner — was he going to relent on blocking Photobucket? Fox *claimed* that Photobucket was serving ads through their shared online videos … but what were the REAL reasons for the blockage anyway? Other questions are emerging, like is Photobucket done for, or will they be able to survive? And is MySpace ever going to relent?

Well, it looks like Om Malik has the goods.

To summarize, it looks like Photobucket isn’t directly selling ad space through videos that are shared, either pre-roll, post-roll, or inside the video. Rather, what they are doing is participating in a general marketing strategy that involves Photobucket users being able to create videos that mashup parts of the upcoming movie, Spiderman 3.

Photobucket isn’t *directly* making a dime off of these mashups, because while they might be tracking the mashups, the mashups don’t have any ad inventory in them.

It seems like what Fox *is* concerned about, is whether Photobucket is making *any* money off of these deals; and in doing so, it seems like they put definite value and worth in another widget company being able to make similar branding deals with other companies.

If you take it at face value, this is Fox saying that in a world of online advertising governed by direct marketing principles and an obsession with ROI, there is still worth and value in branding as a marketing strategy.

On the other hand, the conspiracy theorist would say they’re looking for *any* reason to shut down a site which had previously bragged that it was looking to be sold at a valuation of over $300, while admitting that they’ve never had a good relationship with their host, MySpace.

It remains to be seen whether all of this back and forth bragaddocio amounts to simply saber rattling, or something more. But as the hours and days go by, it seems less and less like that Fox is going to relent on its Photobucket embargo.

If its really about whether Photobucket is making *any* kind of revenue through participating in Sony’s branding strategy for an upcoming film, then Om Malik is right on the money here: its time to pay up, or shut up. Google paid in the realm of 9 figures (900 million) to pay in MySpace’s playground, and as I said previously, those walls are getting higher and steeper.

While I’m sure Mr. Murdoch has a mean streak, this not about what’s right and wrong – its about business. And despite what some educated observers believe, Mr. Murdoch has Photobucket by the proverbial balls. Sure, Photobucket’s gotten enough publicity over the past 48h to deliver as much traffic as it has gotten within the past year, but by Photobucket’s own CEO’s words, almost 40% of its registered users also use MySpace. If 40% of its usage comes from MySpace, in the long run (and I use that loosely — like in two weeks when the hype has died down), Photobucket had better capitalize on the fact that it now has the machinery to *be* like a stand alone concern.

Besides, its one thing to get transient tech hype, and its another thing to actually capitalize on that. Just ask Bambi Francisco and Vator.tv

Because if we presume that Photobucket *won’t* change its strategy, issue a mea culpa, and/or cough up cash to calm down the Fox, it will need to change its own marketing strategy to not *just* survive, but thrive. And now that its pony (named “one-trick”) has just left town, it’ll be interesting to see what that will be. After all, if they’re looking for investors, they won’t be looking for a company that’s just treading water, but a company that’s got potential to continue to grow exponentially.