Yahoo Abandons More Than 20 Millions Pageviews (Closing Geocities)

5 years ago I paid 1/3 of my bills with a 1 page Geocities site. Today Yahoo takes more than 4.8 million geocities pages offline permanently. That's about 11.9 million visitors a month, who made about 21,420,000 pageviews a month, now getting some sort of 404 or "we removed this page" site instead of what they expected (data from Quantcast and Alexa).

Yahoo didn't make enough money with Geocities to keep it online because they didn't know how to, because they didn't try.

5 years ago Yahoo stock was trading near $35, today it closed at $16.87, losing 2% of it's value today. It's a shame to see a company misstep as badly and often as Yahoo has, and I'll miss the opportunity to make money with them through their Geocities sites.

TV Windows Collapsing

Traditional television viewing patterns are collapsing and the industry needs to quickly figure out how to profit in a world where people can watch TV shows anytime, anywhere, NBC Universal's TV chief said.

The challenge now was drawing viewers to network shows at designated times when people can either record those shows or turn to online outlets to watch at their convenience, said Marc Graboff, Chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios.

Networks need to figure out how to make their content more immediately available in a lucrative way, such as by charging viewers to stream episodes shortly after airing - narrowing viewing 'windows' - or providing them to multiple outlets, he told an industry conference.

The biggest U.S. networks are currently struggling with declining advertising revenue, dwindling viewership and rising production coasts [sic]

(from Reuters, via Yahoo News).

Hollywood's Present is Online

Many talk of online video as a wave of the future; they are flat wrong. It is now, right now. I know a government employee that 4 months ago discarded their TV and now watches only online. I know a lawyer that uses Tivo as an on-demand that in combination with online TV and DVDs doesn't watch broadcast, cable or satelite live, ever. I have never owned a television, yet I watched three shows tonight and also appear on TV from time to time. Anyone who thinks online entertainment is a future, and denies it is a growing present tense event, is either not paying attention, about to lose their job or both. All things are more online and mobile than ever before and they are right now (I write this post on my phone; please forgive any spelling mistakes ;-).

"Hollywood's future is in Bannen's hands" by Lisa Marks may be over selling a single show as some sort of vangard. I love that this show is being made and am excited to see it, but Sony is not first with web content that costs more than $1 million (Seth MacFarlane, Burger King and YouTube did that over a year ago) and the CEO of Sony Pictures (parent of Crackle) said he "...doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet... Period." This show may be Sony's late, half-supported-by-the-studio attempt to be in the now.

A month online is equal to a year offline, and to not learn from history a from a year ago (like 12 years online) is to retrace steps taken by many before, and risk being obselete before you've begun. In 3 months, the generation referred to as digital natives will be the largest and most important demographic for entertainment. This demographic is already watching, listening and experiencing their entertainment where and when they want to and media companies are only just now pretending this will happen? That is like acting as if the wheel or fire might catch on when it's already the year 1500. People's careers and livelyhoods as employees and stockholders are suffering because of antiquated thinking (yes, 3 month old is antiquated). Get present or be irrelevant; there is no half way.

Printed Newspapers Are Yesterday's News

The Daily Show pointed out online news is faster than print. This is part of what makes people prefer online news, and by extension, makes advertisers shift their focus and spend from print to online.

Once It's Live, Leave It Live

About a year ago a highly rated TV show built a fictional company's web site to tie in to real life events at Comic-Con, the convention in San Diego. The finale of the newest season was this week. Just a few minutes ago a friend on Twitter and Facebook changed their status to say he wanted to work for that fictional company, and I wanted to comment/reply to my friend's status with the link to the fictional site. The site is down, offline, 404.

I wanted to share a part of the show with a friend, and they won't let me. I wanted to promote their product for free, and they stopped me. Instead of allowing all the money spent on the site and its very good videos and promotions pay off forever, they took it down. Estimated annual savings in taking down the site: $2000 (which ought to be lower, but for various reasons in this case is not lower). Estimated loss of audience engagement, good-will and ability for the franchise's value to increase over many decades: infinite.

The stock of the parent company that owns the network that carries the show has lost about $20,300,000,000 of market value since mid September (admittedly this may not only result from company wide failure to understand or capitalize on the internet).

A Google-less World

Starting at about a half hour ago, I noticed that the adsense ads I have run on some of my sites weren't loading. Then I began having trouble connecting to the blogging platform blogger. Hoping to stay productive while the network hopefully adjusted, I went to YouTube planning to change the avatar image one of my various YouTube accounts. YouTube wouldn't load. Remembering these are all owned by Google, I tried to load google.com. It was also was sluggish/non-responsive. I checked my gmail, nothing.

While navigating my cable company's phone system seeking a person to see if they were having a problem keeping my cable modem connected, on a lark I tried yahoo.com and it loaded, immediately. Still holding for an operator at my cable company, I checked twitter. Others couldn't get to google services either. And not just near me but on other continents too. This surprised me. Thursday morning (in North America) is not a time anyone would chose to have their sites off-line, and while a few on twitter seemed to still have Google's sites running just fine, it highlights how enmeshed we call are with Google's systems, and how good they are at keeping them up for people like me to assume they will be up and available virtually always.

For a few moments I had to mentally step back and assess how I'd react if Google, and all of it's wonderful products, vanished. It reminds me of an article I read years ago asking how much of your business Google controls. Between search traffic they provide, videos they host, email, and the myriad of other products they offer, what would you do if they simply stopped? I know what I would do: I'd grouse, whine and moan for a few minutes, and then swap the services of theirs I use for other, in almost every case inferior, services offered by others. The fact is Google is as successful as they are because in so many ways they do what they do better than anyone else. Yet still, with all the bright people, deep pockets and prestigious name, if they stop being what the audience expects, in minutes the audience will begin replacing them.

Not quite an hour later, the hastag #googlefail is already the number 6 trending topic on twitter, with "gmail" the number 3. That's some of the most active users of technology on earth already reacting to this hiccup. This does remind me to back up things offline ;-). I wish the best to the Googlers I imagine are already hard at work fixing things.

Update: Google's systems seem to be working again and coming back online for most people. Worth noting: spread your content widely, exploding your content makes you less susceptible to problems at any one company or on a single site.

Internet with a Side of Fail

• If your site is down for 14 hours in middle of the day, on a Wednesday: you are fail (why).
• If your page takes over 25 seconds to load at noon on a Friday, or your server is in Europe and your audience is in North America: you are fail (why).
• If you promised an episode at a given time and place, and it isn't there: you are fail.

You must delight, not disappoint. All the brilliant content and marketing in the world will never save you if you're building internet with a side of fail.

Epic Fail: ESPN Charging ISPs, Net-Non-Neutral

ESPN is sending a telegram through a phone line, as if the failure of AOL dial-up's 1990s and early 2000s business didn't clearly show that internet-provider-exclusive-content is pure failure.

If your ISP doesn't want to pay for you to watch ESPN360, there's nothing you can do about it, short of switching to a provider that pays for it... ESPN is doggedly pursuing the same strategy online that made it a success in the TV world: licensing pipes, not people.

Free Press' Ben Scott thinks the this new internet model will ultimately be bad for providers. 'My gut reaction is that it's a terrible business model,' says Scott. 'The beauty of the internet is that you put a piece of content on your server, and it's available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world that's connected to the internet. If you begin walling off your content and selling network operators [the right to distribute content], that defeats the whole idea of maximizing the exposure of your content.

(emphasis added, from Wired). This goes against the paradigm of the net, and tries to perpetuate the Broadcast and Cable TV model to a medium that is fundamentally different; the internet demands ubiquity of access. It would be better to charge customers directly since premium content is often monetized that way, and the audience accepts that reality.

The audience wants what they want where and when they want it. To ignore this is to ignore the audience.

Epic Fail: Lisa Caputo and Citibank Marketing Emails

Citibank sends many non-essential emails to their customers, and today sent this:

At Citibank, we make your e-mail security a top priority. We understand that your e-mail provider undoubtedly features a blocking or filtering system to help you cope with the problem of unwanted solicitations.

As a result, we are concerned that you may be missing your Citibank e-mails without even knowing it. If you think that might be the case, we urge you to 'whitelist' Citibank e-mails by adding us to your address book of trusted senders before delivery is interrupted

So I decided to reply, with this (please forgive my seething not-really-concealed anger):

When you send me far too many non-essential marketing messages, why would I add you to my address book? Spamy tactics on your part equal no-you-don't-get-on-my-white-list decisions on mine. If you'd like assistance with your email tactics, please let me know.

Best of luck, and thank you in advance for not "marketing" (read: email blasting like I'm a target in a war) to me just because loop-holes in the can-spam act seem to suggest you can with out prison or fines. If this email returns undeliverable, I'll blog about it.... and you. How many ads will you have to buy to undo the damage to your brand? Does Lisa Caputo, I believe the Chief Marketing Officer of Citigroup, want her name associated with such fail? Does she want it Googled, for the rest of her career? Do you? Bailouts aren't needed when companies treat customers as people. Please help me blog about your wins by giving me more.

I clearly like you, I chose to do business with you. Thank you,

David

And their systems sent this back:

You have responded to an email box that cannot accept replies.

If you require assistance, please contact us at www.citibank.com.

Citibank received $300,000,000,000 in bailout money from the US government (tax payers) 6 weeks ago. Citibank and Citigroup's failures are various and big. Treating customers better could help make bailout unnecessary in the future. Spending some of the money on retraining their marketing department could also be a wise choice.

DRM Has Problems

Yyesterday within a major media corporation there was discussion about iTunes removing Digital Rights Management (DRM) from their entire library. Upon learning that users will have to pay to upgrade tracks they'd already downloaded to DRM-free tracks, one employee said that is terrible, that is also why I don't buy.

Even those who work for the media companies agree with the sentiment that music or movies with DRM leads audience to break the law, and leaves audience to decide if they want to pay for that privilege:

Uptime Counts

Hollywood Reporter's website was down for 38 minutes on December 5th starting at about 2:06 PM (5:06 in New York). This was during primetime and I think during one of their prime seasons (awards season). They just laid off a dozen people.

If their site were accessible when I tried to reach it, they would've been able to serve ads to me. I wouldn't think twice before clicking a link to their site, or linking to their site; I worry their site may be inaccessible when I try to visit, so I may not bother. I worry their site may be down when my websites' visitors try to visit, so I may not link. I am not alone in my worry; search engines think this way too; they are also less likely to send visitors to a site that is inaccessible.

I like the Hollywood Reporter and hope they keep up the reporting they do for a long time; I'm a slightly frustrated fan. Best of luck to the recent former employees.

(An uptime tracking service I used found their site was up 99.13% of the time over the last 2 1/2 weeks. My site, a vastly different site than theirs in needs, traffic and budget, was up 99.95% of the time over the same period. Mine was down for about 12.5 minutes total; theirs was down for about 3.75 hours total.)

Forrester Under Estimates Feed Use

Forrester's What's Holding RSS Back? under reflects the number of people using syndication feeds for several reasons. The Forrester questionnaire defines RSS obtusely to anyone not particularly tech savvy; they ask in a way that will slant the numbers down:

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a technology which aggregates or collects frequently published or updated content, such as blog posts, news headlines, and podcasts. These updates are collected by software using a feed or RSS reader like MyYahoo or iGoogle, which contains either a summary of content or the full text.

RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner rather than checking for updates or new content manually. Do you currently use an RSS feed?

Forrester report also states For example, MyYahoo allows members to subscribe to content, often without showing the technical guts of RSS - users subscribe without ever knowing they are using 'RSS' technology which also points out that many survey respondents said they don't use feeds but actually do.

If children are asked "what would you put in a cupboard?" they may not have an answer, but if asked "what would you put in a cabinet?" they will have all sorts of answers. Forrester also omits atom and other feed reliant systems from their question (e.g., friendfeed).

Update March 2, 2009: There has been data about users not understanding what RSS is since 2006, though the idea of a feed is clear in the word itself: something is being fed to something else.

Epic Fail: Metrolink's Web and Twitter During Crisis

In the last two hours two trains collided and rescue is underway. Meanwhile, Metrolink's web site has lasped to an unconfigured emergency page and their twitter only corrects the LA Fire Department's twitter, doesn't tell the location (so drivers can stay clear and keep roads open for emergency vehicals). It gives no other useful information, which people have been seeking via twitter:

the_meghatron: @Metrolink So is there a service interruption other than Chatsworth area or not? Your website is useless and has a test emergency page up.

It is right now rush hour on a Friday and updating commuters could save delays and aid the rescue effort. I'd love to help them react better.

Epic Fail: Hulu's Capacity (or Lack Thereof)

As long as Hulu fails to invest in the infrastructure to serve a television show with out skips or buffer under runs on a Thursday night, they will always live in the shadow of sites like YouTube.

Fail: Direct TV ads on Hulu

Advertising your offline product online, using an online alternative to your product makes no sense. While watching TV on Hulu, the studio backed online video site who's slogan is Watch your favorites. Anytime. For free, I saw a commercial for Direct TV, the satellite television provider. If I'm already choosing to watch TV online, and not with cable, satellite or through the air, then why would I have any interest in subscribing to a satellite TV service?

I wouldn't. A dish would be installed at my house, so I couldn't watch other places, like I can with Hulu or dozens of other online video sites. So if I'm already using a service that allows me to watch anywhere, and anytime, and it's free, why would I be interested in paying to have to stay in one place, and unless I used a DVR or VCR, watch on their schedule? Again, I wouldn't be interested.

Am I, and the rest of Hulu's audience, really such voracious consumers of video content that I'll sign up to pay Direct TV every month for something I can get for free and more flexibly from the company I'm already using (Hulu)? Did I care about high resolution very much when I was watching if I'm watching on Hulu? Is there any good reason to fail to make an ad relevant to the viewer when then technology exists to match ads by geography, context and other factors (both Google and Facebook are making most of their money doing just that)? Again, no, no and no.

I think there are other reasons this ad appeared many times during the show.

I think this ad was possibly thrown in as a "freebie" during the sale of more traditional TV commercials. However, this "freebie" may be worthless to Direct TV in terms of getting more subscribers. Being able to say "we're advertising on online television too" won't help the stock holders' investment grow no matter how good it might sound in an annual report. Someone might even blog about how mismatched Direct TV's media buying is to the marketplace ;-).

This matters because once Screen Actors Guild negotiations are done, all the actors will likely have joined the writers and directors in being owed money when their work is used online. Like in a commercial. Even if the ad makes the advertiser no money and makes the advertiser look sloppy.