Women bloggers and the BlogHer Conference

By Charlene Li

I'm at the pre-event meeting for BlogHer and my head is already buzzing -- I'm looking forward to the dinner tonight and a great day networking with other women bloggers as well as learning a lot from my fellow bloggers. My first impression -- this is going to a be a really, really fun event, as it involves a lot of both personal as well as professional bloggers. Many of the people here are blogging because they love what they do -- not because they want to make a lot of money (OK, they're here too!) So I'm looking forward to meeting and bonding with the (mostly) women who will be here.

When this conference was first proposed a few months ago, I issued a challenge for readers of this blog to name at least five women bloggers -- and many rose to the task! I've added the BlogHer Blogroll (on the left -- scroll down a bit) so that you can explore for yourself all of the fantastic, diverse voices that are out there. I'll post my impressions of some of the most interesting blogs that I come across during the conference -- and would love to hear if you've discovered some interesting sites as well.

So if you're going to be at BlogHer, let's try to meet up! And if you're not, I hope you'll take some time and look at some of these great blogs.

New Forrester reports on RSS for marketers released

By Charlene Li

We just released two new reports on RSS for marketers: "RSS 101 For Marketers" and "Using RSS As A Marketing Tool". A special thanks to everyone who contributed marketer examples -- you can see many of them in the comments of this post.

One point that's sure to catch attention is the number of people using RSS -- our Technographics survey of 68,000 North American households showed that only 2% of all online households were "using RSS". Now here's the caveat -- that doesn't include all the people who may be using RSS (for example, through My Yahoo!) and don't realize it. Young consumers between the ages of 12-21 were more likely to be using RSS -- 5% of online young consumers say they use RSS.

The second report has detailed best practices on how marketers can create effective RSS feeds for marketing purposes. There are four steps I outline: 1) Determine what content to distribute via RSS; 2) Build the feeds; 3) Market the feeds; and 4) Measure the feeds -- and their impact.

Below are excerpts of the reports:

RSS 101 for Marketers: In Forrester's February 2005 Marketer Online Survey, 57% of marketers said that they were interested in using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) as a marketing channel. Why the interest when just 2% of North American online adults use RSS? The combination of reduced email marketing effectiveness and growing consumer advertising backlash drives marketers to test RSS — from creating their own feeds to putting ads into RSS feeds themselves. This report introduces who uses RSS in North America and the implications of RSS adoption. The second report in the series looks at best practices for marketers using RSS.

Using RSS As A Marketing Tool: Despite its resemblance to the Wild West, best practices for how marketers can use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) are already emerging. In this second of two reports, Forrester outlines why marketers should experiment with RSS, especially marketers with customers who fit the profile of early RSS adopters. Even if it's something as simple as putting press releases in an RSS feed, marketers will benefit from early exposure to distributing information via RSS — and receive valuable feedback from key constituents on what types of content they would like to have.

Why Yahoo! buying Konfabulator is more than just about widgets

By Charlene Li

I’ve been on a plane all day (I’m now in hot, muggy Boston) and have been itching to write about Konfabulator’s acquisition by Yahoo!. I’ve been using Konfabulator for the past few months (since I’m not on an Apple) and have been tinkering with a few of the widgets. Widgets are little mini-applications that have primarily one purpose – to get for example, a mosquito report or reports your latest feedback rating on eBay. So why would I want a whole bunch of little things cluttering my desktop? That’s exactly what I was asking as I’ve been adding and deleting widgets the past few weeks!

The problem is I already know what the ultimate widget would be me – something that would get me up and out the door in the mornings. I’d pull together a weather widget, calendar widget, traffic widget and to do widget into one nice neat little app, and then feed it with all of the RSS data streams that I deem relevant. There’s only one small problem -- I don’t know JavaScript! So I am at the mercy of app developers who I hope will take pity on my discombobulated mornings and write the darn app!

But why should I have to wait for developers to do this? This is where I think Yahoo! gets very, very interesting with Konfabulator. As a developer tool, it may have some interesting potential for developing neat interfaces into Yahoo!’s vast stores of content and information. But if Yahoo! can put the power of widget creation into the hands of end-users, it would give us end users the power to not only create custom content streams a la RSS and MyYahoo!, but also allow us to filter, distribute, and combine that data in any way we see fit. There’s already precedence for this in the enterprise space, where JotSpot has taken wikis and built applications on top of classic wiki infrastructure. Proposed RSS extensions from Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. will provide additional structure around which widgets can be built – think shopping alerts.

And even if I never get around to writing the ultimate, personal application, I bet there is someone out there who’s also a busy, working mom/dad AND has some JavaScript skills who wrote a similar program for themselves and shares it in the Widget Gallery. And how about setting up a marketplace where I could write out the specs for my custom widget and put it out for bid?

So this is more than just about little widgets - I think it's potentially taking the power of application development out of the hands of "big" companies. Think of it as open source for the masses.

You can download and try out Konfabulator, which has already been renamed Yahoo! Widgets at widgets.yahoo.com.

Google shoots for the moon

By Charlene Li

Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” just took a flying leap from cyberspace to real space -- check out their use of Google Maps technology on Google Moon, which plots the Apollo landings on yes, the moon. Why do this? To commemorate the first lunar landing on July 20^th, 1969.

And they have a sense of humor – check out their job posting for their lunar location called Google Copernicus Center.

Hat tip to Jimmy Guterman for the lead.

Update: BTW, that sense of humor is pretty cheesy -- zoom in all the way on the moon image to find out more.

LinkedIn Gets More Revenue Streams

By Charlene Li

I’ve been in touch with Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn, over the past few days about the dual announcements they made today to 1) enable network-wide searching, and 2) charge for some LinkedIn Groups features.

My first reaction to the first announcement was that this was about time. LinkedIn’s value is that no other job site – Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs – has the quality network that LinkedIn does. And the reality is recruiters were trolling the LinkedIn network for leads, thereby reducing the quality of the experience for those of us trying to build a quality network. (SiliconBeat's Matt Marshall has more details on how it will work.)

So why shouldn’t LinkedIn monetize that network? A key aspect of the service is that all profiles available to recruiters will be anonymous, which is essential in maintaining trust in the service. Also, I’m assuming that there will be the opportunity to opt-out of being included in the recruitment service.

The second announcement also made a lot of sense – it’s somewhat confusing because it sounds like groups will have to pay up to $5,000 a year to host a private group on LinkedIn. The basic service remains free – but if a group wants their logo to appear on member’s profiles, they have to pay a fee based on the number of members. Very smart -- LinkedIn just created a brand advertising revenue stream!

So kudos to Konstantin and his team! 

Upcoming Forrester boot camp on blogging, RSS, viral marketing, etc.

By Charlene Li

Along with my colleague Jim Nail, I’ll be running a boot camp on Thursday, July 28^th in Cambridge, MA called “Social Marketing: Tapping Into The Power Of Connected Consumers”. I’ve included an overview and agenda below – you can get more details on the Forrester site as well.

You’re probably thinking that this looks like a pretty basic “how to blog” training seminar. To some extent, yes, we’ll be covering the basics, but the content will move quickly beyond the mere mechanics of how to create a blog, to how to create a coherent strategy around these new social computing tools.

If you or others in your organization are wrestling with some of the questions below, you may want to consider attending the boot camp:

- How can I build a case for these new social marketing techniques within my organization?
- RSS might be an interesting marketing channel – but how do I set on up? And won’t it cannibalize my email marketing lists?
- All of these new tools are on individual platforms – how do I tie them together and more importantly, preserve and protect intellectual property on hosted services?

And one last pitch -- we’re limiting the attendance to 40 people in order to get all of your questions answered. This is a highly interactive day, packed with hands-on exercises and plenty of give and take between attendees. You won’t be subjected to mind numbing, four-person panels like those you find at some conferences. Instead, you’ll learn just as much from each other as you will from me and Jim presenting original research. 

So if you’re interested and would like more information, please contact me or Tenley McHarg. The price for this one-day Boot Camp is $2,000.

Agenda

8:30-9:00 a.m. Breakfast Reception

9:00-9:30 a.m. Introductions And Expectations

9:30-10:15 a.m. Introduction To Social Media and Marketing (Charlene Li)

- What is so different about social marketing?
- What are the major elements of social marketing?         
- How many consumers are using social media?
- How does social media and marketing alter consumer behavior?

10:15-11:00 a.m. Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Jim Nail)
- How do consumers react to WOM marketing?
- What are the best practices marketers are using?
- What pitfalls should marketers avoid?
- How can marketers monitor their own brand, as well as competitor brands, as social marketing takes shape?

11:00-11:15 a.m.            Break

11:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Planning And Creating A Blog (Charlene Li)
- What are the major components of a blog?
- When is it appropriate for a company to create a blog?
- What process should companies follow to create a blog?
- What software should you use?
Exercise: Plan and create your own blog.

12:30-1:00 p.m.                         Lunch

1:00-2:00 p.m. RSS: Going Beyond Being An Email Alternative (Charlene Li)
- How can marketers use RSS?
- What steps are needed to set up a RSS feed?
- Are RSS ads a viable marketing tool?
Exercise: Create your own RSS feed.

2:00-2:30 p.m. Podcasting’s Future (Charlene Li)
- How does podcasting work?
- What are the opportunities for marketers?
Group exercise: Create a podcast.

2:30-2:45 p.m.                           Break

2:45-3:30 p.m. Creating A Social Marketing Plan (Jim Nail)
- What social marketing tools should marketers use – and when?
- What vendors can help execute a social marketing plan?
- What customer scenarios do marketers typically face?
Group exercise: Create your social marketing plan.

3:30-4:45 p.m. Panel: Social Marketing Pioneers
Attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions of a panel of social marketing pioneers – marketers who are using social marketing successfully to connect with their customers. Hear first-hand how leading companies are taking advantage of social marketing opportunities.

Confirmed panelists:
Michael Wiley, General Motors

4:45-5:00 p.m. Wrap-Up

The future of online classifieds: HotJobs and Jobster show the way

By Charlene Li

Yahoo! announced today that its job service, HotJobs would be crawling company Web sites for job listings and adding those listings to its “index” of jobs. One the surface, this seems silly – why would they want to cannibalize the service’s main source of revenues, paid jobs?

I spoke with Dan Finnigan, who runs HotJobs, about their plans. He said that the #1 goal for HotJobs and Yahoo! is to provide a comprehensive job search experience. They were noticing that consumers were starting to conduct job-related searches on the general Yahoo! search pages, and advertisers were buying up job-related keywords. According to Dan, Yahoo!’s long term plan is to have another tab appear on search.yahoo.com for “Jobs”, in much the same way vertical search engines already exist for shopping and local searches. Job listings would also appear in general search results.

The twist is that HotJobs plans to put the paid listings first in the search results, and first in the integrated search listings. As anyone knows from general search results, it’s rare that people will venture beyond the first few pages of a search results. Here’s an example of a search for “RSS” in San Francisco – when I did this search, there were a total of 41 jobs, with 31 of them featured listings. Those ten “scrapped” listings came from just two companies – Juniper and Ask Jeeves – but I fully expect to see a more comprehensive list.

The “free” listings will benefit jobseekers who are looking for very specific jobs or jobs in locations that don’t have a lot of online recruitment listings (here’s another example). The secret to Yahoo’s revenue preservation is that if a company has problems filling a position, they will feel the need to pay for placement in the featured listings – as well as access to resume database.

So Yahoo! really doesn’t have much to lose in terms of revenues – and they also have a great deal to gain as they are third place player to Monster and CareerBuilder. Also, I think Yahoo! sees the writing on the wall with meta-job search engines like Indeed.com, Simply Hired, and WorkZoo that were scraping all of the major job search engines. And Google isn’t far behind – although they have made no announcements, I fully expect Google to unveil a comprehensive classifieds search engine within the next few months.

It's inevitable that job listing prices will feel pressure, yet Yahoo! has alternative ways to monetize job listings throughout its network.

Can Monster and CareerBuilder follow in Yahoo!'s footsteps? It's unlikely as they both lack the greater context of a general portal and search site -- they aren't in as good a position to make up any shortfall in revenues that will inevitably result.

The problem with Yahoo!’s approach is that it’s crawling company job sites and building a great index – but it simply means more jobs for candidates to apply to and get no reply.

Enter Jobster. I first spoke with Jobster in March and was impressed by their business model, which is combination of applicant tracking system and social networking. Recruiters can send out an email to their contacts notifying them about a job opening, and those contacts in turn can either apply for the job or forward it on to other people. The beauty of Jobster is that it turbo-charges one of the top ways people find jobs – referrals. One sure way to make sure that you get an interview is to have someone walk your resume (OK, it’s really done via email) to the hiring manager. While I don’t expect Jobster to beat the job boards in terms of quantity of jobs or number of job seekers, I do expect that candidate quality and the candidate experience will be extremely high.

Now it turns out that Jobster is buying WorkZoo, which it announced today as well. I spoke with Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg on Monday, and he described their vision of how WorkZoo will allow users to expand their search beyond their network of jobs on Jobster proper and see “every” job. WorkZoo has its cut out for them – in previous testing, they lagged significantly in their parsing ability compared to Indeed.com and Simply Hired. But this combination of Jobster and WorkZoo makes sense as a combined service – it’s also is similar to the partnership that currently exists between professional social networking service LinkedIn and Simple Hired.

I expect that Yahoo! will eventually loop its social networking service into HotJobs and enable a similar type of service to Jobster, especially since it also has an applicant tracking service for small and medium sized businesses. But one thing it should do is to be truly comprehensive and scrap jobs from its competitors, Monster, CareerBuilder, and other newspaper sites. Otherwise, they leave the door open for Google, Indeed.com, and Simply Hired.

Indeed.com and Simply Hired will have a hard time fighting off giants like Yahoo! and Google and are ripe acquisition targets. MSN will likely take a look at Indeed.com and Simply Hired, as will Google, but they are likely to pass and build their own crawlers as Yahoo! did that will integrate better into their core search algorithms. The most likely buyers for these sites include IAC/InterActive Corp, which also owns Ask Jeeves and social networking site ZeroDegrees, as well as newspapers chains who are not CareerBuilder affiliates (like MediaNews Group or Belo) who are struggling for relevance in the online recruitment space.

Monster may dust off some of the technology it has lying around from its Flipdog acquisition, but it's likely dated. CareerBuilder and its newspaper partners are still coming to terms with the cannibalization of print classifieds -- it will have a hard time understanding that even online recruitment revenue is coming under assualt.

The result: Look for the emergence of what I call "social classifieds", where the ability to connect people to each other will be the hallmark of success. In a world where listings are a commodity and easily crawled, the true differentiation will be the quality of the experience. It is for this reason that Jobster's model will ring true, and why Yahoo! 360 and MSN Spaces will be core to the success of their respective classified strategies. Google may have the best technology around, but it's Achilles’ heel will be its lack of a robust social network.

Humorous aside:

What I didn’t realize (thanks to my technology blackout) was that the Yahoo! Job Search service had already been quietly launched the previous week, and in fact, had been written about in Yahoo’s own search blog. So throughout Monday afternoon, I kept getting phone calls from reporters and industry colleagues who were sniffing around for some sort of “big breaking classifieds” news. I was told by Yahoo! that the news was embargoed until Tuesday morning, which I steadfastly insisted on honoring. It was only later after business hours that I embarrassingly discovered that everyone already knew about it and that Yahoo! was just formally announcing it. Lesson learned – read the RSS feeds asap after vacation!

Comments on media coverage of the London bombings

By Charlene Li

I’ve been on a blissful vacation for the past week in the Sierra foothills, hiking trails, jumping into water holes, and eating tons of good camp food. And also, totally unplugged with no access to cell phones or the Internet. Withdrawal symptoms from RSS feeds and eBay auction depravation lasted all of about 30 minutes.

When I came home on Sunday night and started checking my personal emails, I noticed a short “We’re all right” email from friends who had moved recently to London. Odd, I thought – it was nice to know that they had survived the move, but that was over three months ago! Then my husband came and told me about the London bombings. We had had absolutely no idea that they had happened. We'd lost a friend in 9/11 and my first thought was "not again."

I then realized that I was in an interesting situation – I could experience a major news event “from scratch”, so to speak. My goal: to find out as much information as quickly as possible. So I sat for a full minute to figure out my information strategy.

First stop: CNN.com. Nice timelines, good photos and videos. I noticed that there were plenty of requests for stories, photos, and videos, but for the most part, it was company-produced content. There was a link to a compilation of emails sent in by readers. The most poignant – one pointing out that the bus bombing took place just 50 meters from a park where a statue of Gandhi stands. .

Next stop: news.BBC.co.uk. Great overview and also some fantastic compilations of comments, photos, and videos from witnesses to the attacks. At this time they are up to four pages of content.

But where are the blogs? Next stop: the blog/feed search engines. Only Technorati highlighted a special section they had developed around the London bombings. Lots of great links, but it was hard to shift the wheat from the chaff. One interesting link found on Technorati -- thanks to links contributed by Furl/Del.icou.us -- went back to the BBC...a story on blogs covering the bombings.

Last stop: Several of the blogs I found through Technorati pointed me to Wikipedia which has a very comprehensive overview.

Observations: Traditional media outlets were able to give a quick overview with great graphics, professional coverage, and good analysis. The people on the street perspective provided the personal connection to the fear, shock, and pain experienced by Londoners, while Wikipedia provided tremendous context.

Which one is the best? It’s like asking me which one of my children I love the most. Each news source has unique features that I treasure, and I couldn’t imagine my news experience being complete without them. My only wish – that the traditional news outlets would do a better job providing links to alternative sources so that it’s easier to get that comprehensive point of view. It’s likely that I will still begin my next intensive news experience with traditional outlets, but if Technorati and Wikipedia continue to do such an outstanding job pointing me to great resources, traditional media will soon find themselves with one less regular viewer.

Update: The original title of this post was "Getting plugged into the London bombings". Thanks to the comment from James, I realized that this was inappropriate, hence the title change.