Bandwidth Burnout for Online Video?

Finally found an article on that YouTube may be burning its newfound VC Capital to the tune of $1 million a month, potentially putting them out of business in just under a year. That is, unless they find solid sources of revenue and quick.

The fact of the matter is that regardless of how you look at it, videos just mean much more bandwidth. Add the fact that most Video Hosting sites let you embed videos on your site ( effectively increasing their bandwidth, while reducing the hits to their site) and it does seem to sum up a pretty worrying situation indeed.

One way out of this may be a P2P model to ease the traffic but its going to be tricky to ensure the quality and availability of the millions of videos that users may want to watch.

Till than, it seems like the ISPs may once again be the big winners of this new age of the Web 2.0 boom.

[via: Forbes]

[see also : Comparison of Video-sharing Sites ]

Creative Marketing Techniques

When it comes to marketing something, standing out is the way to good. And this is a good example of how to be different -- by turning an everyday occurrence ( smoking sewer manhole cover) into something that makes people stop and look. And hopefully tell someone else about it.

It does remind me of the anti-smoking campaign we had where sections of Orchard Road were marked out with boxes with something to the effect of "This is how much tar you accumulate in your lungs after X years of smoking". Boom, straight to the point.

By Saatchi and Saatchi, the creative brains behind local winners such as the ongoing Singapore Navy recruitment campaigns over the years.

More such innovative forms of advertising over at Marketing Alternatif.


[via : The Raw Feed]

Organisation-Self Alignment Model

Ok, not going profess to be an expert on this subject but let me just try to explain what this whole MBA-ish matrix is about. Its based on personal experience gathered from 2-3 years by being in various different organisations ranging from a military organisation to private for-profit organisation to a voluntary student organisation.

On the whole, this is what I summarise from observing people working in different organisations and what motivates them. It's also a kind of guide for anyone who wants to lead to understand what kind of people he/she may be expected to face and what to do about it. Basically, the x-axis represents benefit/detriment to the organisation and the y-axis represent benefit/detriment to the person. Hence, the 4 quadrants represent win-lose type of scenarios for people working in an organisation.

Thus, the four quadrants in detail represent:

1. Self-Interest (Personal self benefit at the expense of organisation) -- This is quite a common occurrence and I've observed it most in student organisations. In some sense, this is a result of a lot of students' need for immediate gratification for their efforts and in the cases that they do not see results fast enough, these people will cease their efforts for the organisation or worse still, do things which harm the organisation.
2. Alignment (Win-win for person as well as organisation) -- This is the optimal case where there is a synergy between what the person is doing for the organisation and how that helps to improve him/her. This stems from an alignment between the person and organisational vision and is the only substainable way for both to grow.
3. Conflict (Clash between qualities of person and organisation) -- This is rarer than having people in the Self Interest Quadrant but still may occur from a total mismatch between the person and organisation due to perhaps flawed or hasty selection process.
4. Self Sacrifice (Organisational benefit at expense of self) -- To some extent, this can be viewed as an individual with such strong personal conviction to a cause that he/she takes the proverbial hit for the greater good. It is great for organisations to find such dedication but may not be substainable in long run as people can burn out in such a manner.

Now, these are the actions which I feel leaders can take after they have identified who fits where:

1. Remove - People in the conflict quadrant are cancerous to both themselves and the organisation. It may not necessarily be a personality issue, merely a mismatch of interests so it would be best for these folks to be advised to find greener pastures.
2. Realign - Majority of people may fall in the Self Interest or Self Sacrifice quadrants. For those in the organisation for Self Interest, attempts can be made for them to see the importance of working with the organisation to achieve the common goal. This would move them to the Alignment quadrant, else they may have to leave before they create team morale issues. For those in the Self Sacrifice quadrant, leaders should help them to help themselves also in the line of their work and find self-betterment from what they do. This would prevent them from wearing out in the long run. These people are much easier to move into Alignment.
3. Reaffirm - If your organisation already has folks in the Alignment quadrant, good for you! But still, leaders have to make sure that these people are continuously advancing both themselves and the organisation. These are the best people to also start to guide and motivate others and should be groomed into future leaders.
   

Hope that I've managed to share something with all of you out there and drop me a note if you have (or not!).

Have fun over the weekend!

(PS: Can't seem to place a large enough image of the graph here but you can click on the graph to enlarge if you need to.)

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Steve Jobs, one of the most charismatic and visionary leaders today shares his life's lessons with Standard graduates at the 2005 Stanford Commencement.

"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

[Transcript of Speech]

Comparison of Video-sharing Sites

Just surfed over to DV Guru's Comparison of ten Video Sharing Sites like YouTube and Google Video. Pretty good comparison of the pros and cons of each, and frankly, I haven't even heard of 6 out of the 10 sites listed.

Anyhow, still trying hard to figure out the revenue model for community-based video-sharing sites. I guess that while its true that most of them found themselves able to quite quickly build up momentum (think viral through use of linked video on blogs and websites), I still cannot figure out how their mainly ad-based revenue model will substain them over the long run due to the heavy bandwidth costs incurred.

For far, I guess only Google Video with its $10 billion warchest and move towards the selling videos through its site has the most well thought out business model. Google Video's downloadable application which allows users to view and save their favorite videos was also a step in the right direction for them.

On the other hand, I'm still kinda wondering what youTube is going to do with its newfound $8 million dollar funding. Guess that will at least that will substain their burn rate for a couple of months till they find their true calling amidst a flurry of anti-piracy problems.

[via : DV Guru ]


(PS: It seems that contrary to popular thought, my rate of blogging is directly proportional to the amount of work I have to do. )

Guru-lised List of Marketing Tips

Ok, just a little rant on stuff that I personally feel from observed marketing efforts both by professionals and from some in school.

To make it a little different, I think I'll do it this way, starting from the bottom...

#5 Design well
Design is essential in creating the right mood and feel for the piece, be it a poster or website or video, but should be secondary to the information that the piece is supposed to bring across. Good design supplements the info by drawing attention to details the viewer should remember. Bad "design" for radio would most probably equate to those radio ads where you only remember the 2 irritating voices yammering about some car or condominium but you just can't remember which one they were actually trying to sell.

#4 More does not mean better, think different
More posters, more TV advertisements, more radio advertisements sadly do not equate to more sales. In most cases, viewers have been known to "switch off" their minds to the ads that come up too often. In a more school-based context, marketing is about 80% posters around school and 20% putting those posters up. It has become so saturated that a new poster becomes camouflaged in the pile of old ones. In such cases, it would be better to think of other more innovative means of marketing besides sticking to the old stuff or worse, more of the old stuff.

#3 Irritate the viewer at your own Risk
How many times have you sworn off a product just because its TV ad came with an irritating jingle. Or how about ads that insult you before they try to sell you stuff -- "You are fat and you need our help ...." Let's face it, most folks are already not too pleased with their lives as it is and anyone else rubbing salt into that is just being a glutton for punishment. 'Nuff said on this one.

#2 Pitch, pitch, pitch
Everything's an exchange and marketing is no different. Unless you're selling old stuff (which is a pretty bad deal unto itself), you gotta point out your differentiated value for your target audiences to see. And the way to do that would have to be short, simple and clear. In some cases, it trying to define the value would limit the marketing process so another option would be to invoke emotive value for people. This works great most of the time when coupled with social proof techniques like making a certain event seem to be "the one" that everyone cool is going to. That's when the house is going to get packed.

#1 Going Viral Rocks
So much has been said about this and yet so few are getting it right. In most cases, going viral becomes an accident rather than a plan. But in any case, planning for a marketing campaign to run on people power sure doesn't hurt and every little push in this direction would be a good one. Though I'm not too sure what would make good viral material, I'm guessing pretty much that controversial and ease-of-understanding helps.


And there you have it, top 5 countdown list which took much longer than I thought. Hope that has been a useful read for all you out there so be sure to bug me with comments if you have more inputs.

Unusual Businesses Ideas That Work

Here's some entrepreneurial inspiration by the bucketloads.

Pretty busy these days to update this blog too often so I'll just recommend this site today -- Unusual Business Ideas that Work. Features a list of stories of selfmade entrepreneurs who made their millions through self-motivation and tons of faith in their ideas.

Some ideas were probably considered "dumb" by some, or even "marketless" but these fellas toiled on to make it work nevertheless. In other cases, it was just the ability to spot an opportunity and the determination to follow their gut feeling that lead to success for them.

Would your story be the next on the list?

Fox jumps on the online TV bandwagon

This just in! Fox has announced that it has just signed a six year agreement with its affiliates that will allow it to place reruns of its TV shows on the Internet.

Coming right after a similar earlier announcement by ABC, it seems the we can look forward to watching popular shows such as "The Simpsons" and "American Idol" on the internet very soon. Other players in the industry have also moving in the same direction and it may mark a dynamic shift in watching of television as we know it.

What would be really interesting would be the revenue model that these networks have planned to implement for placing their hot shows online and my bet is that they be modeled after the ubiquitous advertising model.

More interesting would be the effects on both the many "content-less" web 2.0 startups that offer video hosting and conventional television programming. Conventional television sets may go obsolete faster than we thought.

[via : Reuters ]

Google Calendar Beta goes public

Yet another of Google's constant attempts at bettering lives around the globe, the Beta Version of Google Calendar was recently launched.

Once again, the smooth and fast (which Google is so famous for) web-app offers a lot that could change the way users plan their time. It also syncs nicely and allows users to share their timetable both as individuals or as groups, which is a pretty nice thing to have since the closest that most of us can get to doing this is by using that calendar feature on Microsoft's Outlook Server.


One of the best parts I like about it is the ability to type a one liner, e.g : Dinner with Mom tomorrow at 6pm into the Quick Add box and it would automatically deduce your event and update it. Really Smooth.

The downside? I can't see how to update the calendar or view it if I'm not connected to the net so that's a pretty major flaw. Hope that they will release an offline app that will sync stuff up. Still, its pretty cool and slick and definitely recommend for user, especially for collaboration purposes.

[via: TechCrunch]

Watch Free ABC Shows online

In the latest move to garner more advertising channels, ABC has announced that it will begin to air the 4 of its most popular shows including "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost" online soon. The catch? You can only watch it a day later and have to sit through about 16 minutes of commercials per 1 hour show.

This shows the significant trend where it seems like the media content owners may be going online to recapture the ad market which they have lost to their online counterparts. ABC has also released it episodes for sale on the iTunes Music Store (no surprise there) but have yet to placed those shows on Google for sale. This may be a strategic alliance between Apple-Disney-ABC to better control the media market which is undergoing a phase of digital convergence.

This move may also spell the end of several tech startup business ideas where an online model of ad-distribution is used (via proprietary software). It would be a tougher battle for them now as the content owners decide the enter the fray themselves.

In any case, it would be interesting to see how the online advertising model plays out and I'm sure that we will see newer and more versatile forms of advertising soon.


[via : arstechnica ]

Graph Design Tip for Presentations

Tired of same ol' MS Office graphs and looking to create a smooth looking graph to add some pizzazz for your next presentation?

Here's a step-by-step guide to create the above graph in Adobe Illustrator by Wolfgang Bartelme! So join me in saying "Thank you Wolfgang!"

[ Links : Creating Graphs 1, Creating Graphs 2 ]

Time for Laughs

Found this comic over at SavageChickens by Doug Savage(brilliant guy). This one is just so brutually true

More on the official site, go check it out!

[via : SavageChicken ]

Where is Web 2.0 heading?

Recently, there have been so many new websites being set up, claiming to be the latest in what the web has to offer. Mostly, these sites dub themselves to be "web 2.0", a seemingly ubiquitous tag that no one has offered exact specifications on yet. As far as it has gotten to, even O'Reilly and Associates not placed a solid definition on it but rather endeavored to describe what it "feels" to be like and made several comparisons between what they perceive as Web 1.0 companies (e.g : DoubleClick, Ofoto, etc...) and the new Web 2.0 players (e.g: AdSense, Flickr, etc... )

Now, there are hundreds or even thousands of new players who are looking to becoming the next biggest thing to hit the web. Popular areas that have been explored are photo-hosting, video-hosting and creation of web-based sites which mimic desktop productivity software (think Writely and Thumbstacks).

In some sense, the main underlying feel to what the next generation of websites should be (from the general standpoint) along the lines of being fast, user-friendly, smooth, provide a rich user experience and having a large user base. All these translate into having to move fast to be the first player in a certain field and capturing the lion's share by offering services and features that make a difference to web users. In majority of the cases, these services are free to gobble up the market share first.

However, this draws question to the substainability of these business models. Most are heavily reliant on advertising revenue coupled with a large user base. Failing to high a critical mass of users will badly hinder this model. In the developmental order, most of the web has shifted from a "charge-the-users" model to a "charge-the-advertisers" model.

I'm guessing that there will be the emergence of a new form of revenue model for the web soon.

Unique Selling Point

This is an article inspired after reading BL's "What makes you different" in sgentrepreneurs

Let's face it, there are tons of companies offering products (when I mention product, read as "products and service" ) in the market out there. In the world of entrepreneurs and investors, it's pretty important for anyone looking to startup to fully understand where they stand on the competitive radar in their industry.

Below is a kind of list on some of the pointers I gleaned over interacting with successful entrepreneurs, investors and from doing good ol' reading:

1. What is my Unique Selling Point (USP) ?
   This is what sets you aside from the rest. In existing industries, one useful technique from the book Blue Ocean Strategy is to examine all the factors that make up your product, cut back on those which are not important and find new factors which can push you to another playing field.
   
2. Are there competitors with the same USP?
   If so, go check up the word "unique" in the dictionary and try from No. 1 again.
3. I can't seem to find competitors!
   If you hit this, be very very afraid. Because it means that either you haven't dug deep enough in your research or you are trying to meet a non-existent demand. Try harder.
   
4. VC - "But I have seen this exact idea crash before!"
   In this scenario, you would hope to have already done your homework on that failure as case study or be able to explain how your USP is different and will substain and scale your idea.
   
5. How do I continue to stay ahead of the pack with my USP?
   This is a pretty good question and it seems so far that the only answer to this one is to continue to innovate and evolve. Case in point, just think of how far Google would have gone if they only stuck to perfecting their search engine?
6. Most importantly - Does your USP make a difference to your consumers?
   Back to the product-centric VS customer-centric argument. The best product in the world, packed with a gazillion features, that does not have a demand makes for a pretty lousy business idea.
   

Definitely not a complete listing so do drop me a comment if you think anything's missing!


(PS: Guy Kawasaki has a good post on Cialdini's Influence on his blog)

Yet Another Friendster Wannabe

Good Grief! Found posters plastered everywhere in NUS today advertising yet another Social Networking Website. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty pleased to see folks who want to make a difference and start something to call their own but hey, notice I used the word "difference"? Don't think I've managed to spot a viable competitive edge from them yet (or I'm not trying hard enough but hey, neither will potential users!)

Apparently this new kid on the block (CampusJoint) lets you register, join groups, keep in touch with friends, upload photos ... etc. Thing is I'm sure that these are more than amply covered by my e-mail, instant messaging and handphone. Perhaps if they looked a little closer and did their due diligence, they would have noticed their path ahead littered with the deaths of dozens of similar sites which tried to offer the exact same stuff.

Generally, I feel that finding a niche segment to target is a good idea but when you restrict your user base to just folks from Singapore Universities, network value of the system is going down a gazillion times. And in the Internet age of demo-ing before using, forcing users to actually sign up first before even seeing a single screenshot of the interface just ain't going to cut it.

Think that more effort was put into the marketing than into the thought process behind this whole startup.

Guess its may be another case of "We do because we can". Yippeeeeee.

Play at work!

Just managed to squeeze some time off for this book named "FISH! - A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results". Actually I managed to read the sequel "FISH Tales" before this so this tiny book was a great short read to recap.

Basically, it tells of a tale of a company's operations department (boring workplace) and Seattle's World Famous Pike Place Fishmarket (fun workplace). I actually was fortunate enough to visit the Fishmarket and the energy and fun they have there is incredible! Through the transformation of the dreading "toxic energy waste" department, it relates the story of how injecting fun and play as way to improve the morale in any workplace.

Here are the takeaway points :

1. Choose your Attitude - You can't change the external factors, but you can determine how you want to face them, positively or negatively.
   
2. Play - Inject fun and love what you do and you'll find yourself rushing to work each morning!
   
3. Be Present - Don't multitask your personal interactions, be 100% there for everyone you work or play with.
   
4. Make Their Day - Don't just have fun internally, play with your customers and interact with them too. Make a difference to them!
   

As I always say -- "Life's short enough as it is; if it ain't fun to you, don't do it!"

Simplicity in Branding

When it comes to branding and marketing, you don't want to tell your users when, what, how, where and who to use your products. If you do, congratulations on cutting down your user base on those factors.

Nothing beats the power of simplicity. 'nuff said

[via romph on youTube ]

2005 Technology Brand Scorecard

This report just in from Forrester Research - 2005 Technology Brand Scorecard.

The survey was done on 2 scales of "Brand Potential" and "Brand Trust amongst regular users". And boy are the results interesting.

Bose, Dell and Apple seem to widely recognised as winners in the combination of these factors and their individual branding efforts have paid off in their beoming well-known and trusted brands. In terms of potential, seems like the gold medal goes to Bose and Dell. Personally, I think Bose managed to build some scarcity around it and niched it as a high-end audio device maker. Dell may rank highly also due to the unique scalability of their business model as well as the recently announced takeover of Alienware, signalling their break into the high-end computer gaming market.

On the other end of the spectrum lies big-boy Microsoft. Their marketing executives should be feeling the heat now with popular distrust amongst their users. Their brand potential also scored on the low end, proving the theory that "whatever goes up must come down". Seems like the repeated delays for Vista and the annoucement of their new OS subscription model are not sitting too well with us end users.

[via: arstechnica ]

Marketing with Influence

A big part of marketing includes not only the presentation of a product of service but also being able to influence the end consumer to make that final step to purchase it. Influence is at work here and here's a way to learn more about it and its effects on our daily lives.

Extracted from Robert Cialdini's book, Influence - Science and Practice , here are the 6 principles (in a teaser list) :

1. Consistency - Eco-Friendly Packaging will attract the environmentally inclined
   
2. Liking - Having friendly salespeople who build rapport and relationships.
   
3. Authority - "Recommended by Doctors worldwide"
   
4. Social Proof - "9 out of 10 cat lovers can't be wrong"
   
5. Scarcity - "While stocks last"
   
6. Reciprocity - Giving out free samples at the supermarket before asking you to buy