Insights

Editor's note: Dan Zarrella has put together a viral content sharing report and below is a small part of the report focusing on content types and online content sharing.

When most people think of viral content, one of the first things they think of is humor, silly Youtube videos, hilarious cartoons and toungue-in-cheek articles, but as I discovered with my viral content sharing report, the most savvy and prolific viral sharers prefer spreading news more than humor.

When I looked at the profile segments I constructed out of the survey data, I noticed a pattern among those respondents who frequently used new and geeky social web technologies, like Twitter and Digg: they prefer sharing funny content less than their less-social-media-savvy counterparts. The same pattern appears for frequent users of less bleeding-edge technologies (like blogs and Facebook), but it is far less accute.

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Just two weeks after our interview with Pandora founder Tim Westergren, he sat down with the Washington Post today for a very serious discussion about the future of Pandora and of webcasting in general. In our interview, Tim spoke openly about the royalty and licensing issues around music and called the situation, "a real mess".

Peter Whoriskey spoke with Westergren today and if you are into music streaming online, the interview is a must read. Westergren opens with the following, "We're approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision". And he closes with, "So if it doesn't feel like its headed towards a solution, we're done". The article also notes that Pandora's royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million.

Here's the bottom line around the royalty issue from Whoriskey, "The Copyright Royalty Board last year decided that the fee to play a music recording on Web radio should step up from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2006 to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener in 2010." That's $17 million for Pandora this year based on usage. Smaller webcasters may already be out of the game due to the increased royalty rates. On the radio stations I listen to on iTunes, many of them have messages about the royalty rates throughout the day.

The question here is whether other music streaming companies (last.fm, imeem, etc.) will face the same struggle that Pandora is. And the answer so far is yes. Perhaps we will need some sort of pay model for these music streaming companies to foot the bill.

Steven Hodson also has some good insight into the issues facing Pandora and the industry at large.

On the NY Tech mailing list this week there has been a good discussion about the launch of a mobile commerce site by clothing manufacturer Polo Ralph Lauren. Dianne from mocoNews commented on the launch yesterday. Normally a mobile commerce site launch is not that exciting but in this case, Polo Ralph Lauren is using print advertising to drive shoppers to the mobile site via QR codes.

"This is about someone who's interested in our brand and interested in technology, and wherever the two meet, that's what's appropriate," David Lauren, son of CEO Ralph Lauren, said.

The image on the left is of a QR code. If you are new to QR codes, check out our coverage which includes a Japanese perspective where these codes are well received among consumers. You can think of QR codes as upc codes with more intelligence.

RL Magazine has an overview of the QR codes from their perspective which includes, “You’ll be able to walk past fruit at the supermarket, scan an apple, and see when it was picked and where it came from,” says Jonathan Bulkeley, ScanLife CEO. “While buying hair dye, you’ll be able to scan the code on the signage and see instructions. You can create your own code, put it on a T-shirt, and then let people scan your shirt and link directly to your MySpace page."

I still believe that the use of QR codes will change the mobile marketing and ecommerce landscape by allowing consumers to "pull" the marketing we want. That is, once the majority of mobile devices can handle processing the codes.

Unfortunately Alexa didn't make it. After stopping to count again yet again, Dr. Stern did all he could to bring the service back. Rest in peace Alexa, rest in peace.

It seems the new buzzword these days is Cloud Computing. Years ago it was called "ASP" then moved to "SaaS" and now it's "Cloud Computing". While some have talked about Web 3.0, it seems like cloud computing is this year's hot topic. The most simple definition of cloud computing is that it's a way to access files and services outside of your own space.

With that said, we received the following video today which I thought was worth sharing:

Ashley Norris, former co-founder of UK blog network Shiny Media has a guest post on TechCrunch where he discusses the UK blogging scene. Ashley left the company last week to create another startup. The post is a good look into why Ashley believes blog media companies haven't experienced major success in the UK as of now.

Ashley blames the following "external factors":

• Limited number of UK online eyeballs
• Lack of imagination in the ad industry
• Lack of UK media entrepreneurs
• Lack of VC support
• Too much competition
• The omnipotent BBC

When I initially read the post this morning, the reasons seemed legit but something didn't sit right with me. After re-reading the post, it hit me. Nowhere in the post does Ashley (or Shiny Media) note that perhaps "not meeting customer needs" or any other internal issues could have also led to the undesired results. It's very, very easy to blame external factors. I don't know Ashley nor Shiny Media but what I took out of his post was a good bit of education on the UK blogging market but a heck of a lot of bitching and moaning about external factors.

For example, he notes that the BBC has a huge footy (soccer) site that basically forces Shiny’s footy blog, whoateallthepies.tv to be smaller than it could be. Way to rally the troops there Ashley. Let me clue you in on a little secret, every business has external forces working against it every day.

The last interesting bit from the story comes from some of the post comments. The first few comments discuss the look, usability and the type of ads that Shiny Media utilizes. Could the fact that some users didn't come back because they were turned off by an internal factor outside of the content? One of the commenters noted that the content on Shiny Media blogs isn't "compelling". While I have no idea if it is or isn't, I would be very interested in hearing how Ashley and the team reached out to their customers to find out what is working and what isn't. Blogs need to listen to their customers just like any other product or service.

Maybe Mike will allow Ashley to write another guest post where he shares what internal factors could have led to some of the negative returns he/Shiny Media experiences. I would be very interested to read that post - and I am sure we (bloggers, entrepreneurs, etc.) would all learn more from that post.

From the alcoholics anonymous program: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

For those of you who have been following along, my mom was seduced by Steve Jobs' iPhone. This was and is an astonishing thing, since my mom is very far away from being a techie.

On the day of the iPhone launch, she waited in line at an AT&T store (and I waited with her) to get her new phone.

My mom loves her phone, but one issue came up which triggered an interesting thought. She had a hard time using the phone initially because of her fingernails.

My mom does not have big garish fingernails, but they were longer than any man's fingernails, extending perhaps a quarter or a half inch beyond her fingertips. The problem is that the iPhone screen requires touch by skin. the tip of a fingernail will not work. This is a problem because it means that the angle that your finger touches the screen at is such that the you end up making contact with the screen with a very large imprecise area of your finger. In short, my mom kept missing the intended screen buttons.

Now in reality, my mom clipped her nails and everything was fine. But I guess my question is whether that is a reasonable expectation in the product design. Were there any women on the product team? We're there any *girly* women on the product team -- women that like the idea of painted fingernails that extend a bit beyond the fingertip?

I am sure many of you will say that is the price of technology. But I myself wonder if there were some equivalent male focused impediment if it would have been considered acceptable.

I am not sure that this is the perfect example, but this whole episode just got me thinking about design issues for men vs women. How many other, perhaps more subtle issues like this are there that I and other product designers/developers don't think about? It is indeed striking that such a basic issue for the iPhone, as far as I can tell, really has not been discussed at all. Will most of my male readers, or readers in general, argue that such issues are irrelevant?

Editor's note: In addition to Hank's findings, last winter we wrote about the inability to use the iPhone with gloves on.

This article was authored by Hank Williams who is a New York-based entrepreneur who recently launched a new blog: Why Does Everything Suck? exploring the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet.

I've written about the three leading comment replacement services (Disqus, JS-Kit and IntenseDebate) a good number of times. Today Disqus is launching the second version of their blog comment replacement service. Disqus launched last October and since then has won over 30,000 content creators who use the service on their blogs and Web sites.

I spoke with Disqus CEO Daniel Ha last weekend to learn more about the second release of the Disqus platform. We began by speaking about my last post about Disqus where I noted that they were taking some of the traffic that should have been directed to the content creator for themselves. On the post Daniel said that the issue would be fixed that day but it wasn't. However Daniel does say that the v2 release today fixes the issue and traffic should no longer route to Disqus but directly to the content creator.

The major updates in Disqus v2 are a new Wordpress plugin and a new developer API. The Wordpress plugin makes comments SEO friendly - meaning that any comments will have associated Google juice. Similar to what JS-Kit launched last month, all comments will be syndicated back to the original source Wordpress comment system - this allows you to leave Disqus at any time and not lose the associated comment data. There's a new import process which makes it easy to import and export comments into Disqus. Lastly you can moderate Disqus comments directly from the Wordpress admin - no need to go to the Disqus site. My hope is that a similar plugin will be available for other content platforms soon.

Daniel also walked me through the updated Disqus Web site which now features a page for each member that is public. What this means is that if I signup for a Disqus account, my friends can easily track all of my comments on any Disqus-enabled blog. Daniel calls this a "comment blog". Here's a sample of my comment blog on Disqus:

One of the interesting bits Daniel noted during our discussion is that he believes that he is a heavier commenter than the CEOs of his competition. He believes they went into the comment replacement business because, "it's what's hot".

There's no doubt that the comment space is hot. From the message board application FriendFeed to all of the new comment replacement and reputation services, this space is one to watch.

Nicole Ferraro has a post on the top 10 Google disappointments since they began operations. The post is 11 pages long and worth a read if you have the time. Nicole seems upset that so many of Google's products and services are crap but yet they still get so much press coverage that Google is not deserving of. I don't agree with most of her disappointments so I've included a few of my own after her list.

Here's Nicole's list from "bad to worst" with my take next to each:

10. Gmail -- yep, it's still in beta - I believe it actually can't come out of beta anymore, it's like when a place becomes a historical landmark. Of course today's Gmail outage shows that perhaps it's not ready to come out just yet.

9. Monetizing YouTube - the real monetization will come from brands sponsoring branded content on YouTube not from ads that no one will interact with on a cat video.

8. Google App Engine - it's the cloud - we all float in the cloud - and if it goes down, you just blame the cloud - not the App Engine.

7. Gphone - what's a Gphone?

6. Knol - Google can't let JC have all the fun, right?

5. Lively - Sex be selling, Nicole clearly didn't get the memo.

4. OpenSocial & Friend Connect - it's all about the data, the connections and the relationships.

3. Google's Partnership With NASA - isn't this where they land the Google party jet?

2. Orkut - it's big in Brazil!

1. Google's Culture & Hypocrisy - they are a public company - this is what they do.

Now here's my list of real disappointments:

1. FeedBurner's ad network death - see previous post.

2. Jaiku - had such a great chance to "pownce" on Twitter.

3. Google Campfire - how's about bringing the party jet to NYC for a campfire sometime? I will get us the great lawn at Central Park.

4. Google Video - why is this still up and running?

How has Google disappointed you?

Last week we were switched from FeedBurner's ad and feed delivery system to the new, more robust Google servers and the AdSense ad program.

I've always been loyal to FeedBurner, even capitalizing the B when most don't. Yet, as I predicted, the move to Google's ad program has been very disappointing. I can only hope that the program will get better over time. Immediately after Google acquired FeedBurner I was nervous that FeedBurner would ditch their awesome advertising network for Google's low paying, text ad AdSense program. Sadly I was right.

Here are some of my additional thoughts in video:

Adam Ostrow wonders what type of ad matching Google is doing based on the ads that he has seen in the Mashable feed.

We have been relatively successful in selling our own RSS ads. Perhaps there is room for a new RSS ad player to take the slot that FeedBurner's ad program occupied. We are testing the Pheedo feed advertising service and I will provide a side-by-side comparison in about a month.