A tale of two Wall Streets

As many TNL.net readers know, I’ve been walking across two different worlds for most of the last decade: on the one hand, I’ve been working on trying to get people in the financial world to act more like startups, and on the other I’ve been helping startups understand some of the difference between wall street and the financial world.

However, it wasn’t until the 2008 crisis that I fully understood where I was wrong about my message: people outside of the financial world look at it as a single industry but there are a lot of different components to it and I would group them into two wide categories: speculative Wall Street and plumbing Wall Street.

The speculative Wall Street is the one everyone is currently mad at. Their job is to build tools that mostly make more money out of existing money and the world they live in is seldom overlapping with main street. It is a world of derivatives, stocks, and mergers and acquisition. It is a world where fortunes can be made in a very short time and value can be destroyed almost as instantly; a world where appearances and proper marketing are an important part of a product’s success.

Plumbing Wall Street, on the other hand, is touching everyone’s life several times a day. It’s a world no one really thinks of or hears about and its main goal is to ensure that money and credit still roll around properly. Plumbing Wall Street is who people face out to when they take money out of an ATM, pay with a credit card, write a check, or received their paycheck via direct deposit. Plumbing Wall Street is a world where the focus is on stability and reliability. It’s not a very glamorous world as no one really believes in the value of a strong infrastructure until it breaks.

A tale of two development worlds

The funny thing is that the speculative Wall Street vs. plumbing Wall Street divide also exists in other areas. In the development world, the frictions that exist between developers and system administrators are very similar to the frictions that exist between the two wall streets.

On one hand, you have a group that is trying to push the envelope, stretching their product to its limit and sometimes breaking things along the way. On the other, you have a group of people who see change as the enemy as it increases instability, making their jobs that much more complex.

The developers push new ideas (or work as idea marketers in that concept) and the system administrators push back while they try to figure out how to lower the risk those new ideas can pose to the stability of the existing systems.

A tale of two marketers

The amusing thing in the relationship developers have with system administrators is not dissimilar to the relationship social media marketers have with developers. In the case of social media people, they try to push the edge and are often pushed back by developers, who in this case, put on the hat of makers as they are the ones implementing whatever product or solution is pushed by the marketers. The developer as marketer of software ideas is displaced, in those cases, by the marketer of product ideas, or ways to make money that may break the software.

In those cases, one can see some of the conflicts that can arise as marketers may push for ways to make money that are incompatible with the social norms of the times. The makers generally work as a buffer in those cases, pushing for something closer to the normative models (eg. the fight within google over use of tracking cookies; or the fight within facebook over privacy; or the current fight over net neutrality).

A tale of two governments

In a similar way, there are two governments in most democracies: on the one hand, you have the marketers of ideas, who try to sell their view of how the country ought to be run to the electorate. We know those people as politicians but their role is mainly to be chief marketers of ideas, properly packaging the messages around how the country is running or should be run. And with every election, citizens get to choose which set of ideas makes more sense to them.

The marketers, in this case, set the agenda, and provide a direction for the rest of the government to follow.

Meanwhile, the bureaucrats are a group of people who generally are in working in government no matter which party is running the country. Their job is to keep the country running as efficiently as possible, no matter who’s in charge. They make laws and policies that are then sold by the politicians. Once again, we’re dealing here with the makers who keep things running, no matter what the political winds are. (on a side note, the relationship between bureaucrats and politicians was made into a very funny BBC series called “Yes, Minister”, that I would encourage anyone to watch).

A tale of two businesses

Time and time again, you see the same kind of push/pull. What happens in those case is that the makers are protecting the commons while the marketers are trying to push for business models that can protect the shareholders. This type of friction exists in every industry and the net result is that progress is made as a result of the friction, with each camp cooperating to give some ground and move things forward.

Marketers push the edge, and force us to reconsider our previous assumption. Makers build great things and ensure that it doesn’t have a negative impact. Both are equally essential to progress but, for the most part, we tend to ignore the makers.

Appreciating the makers

Our society is very focused on praising the marketers. As a result, little room is made to allow some level of appreciation to the makers. For example, as you’re reading this, consider the software program you’re reading it in. Then consider how this post went from the server on which it is located to you. It’s a jaw dropping achievement when you put your mind to it. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have worked to build out the internet, software, and hardware infrastructures that got this simple note to you. Do you know the name of any of time?

So if you know someone who makes something, instead of just marketing it, why don’t you go thank them today for their contribution.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Marketers and Makers. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

The Cultural Impact Cycle

Most successful companies go through a 6 steps cycle where their cultural impact on society as a whole can be felt. For my purpose, I call it the mindset cycle and it works as shown in the figure below:

Alphaworld

In Alphaword, the first step, a few early adopters are aware of the company and its products and test them out. This is generally a stage most companies do not get out of.

There are many reason for companies not getting out of this space. Their product could be bad; their product could be targeted at the wrong market; their product could be too early in the market; the company might have failed to explain its relevance to users; etc…

Ultimately, the main reason a company gets out of this stage is that its team has done a very good job executing on the implementation of a product and company strategy, creating value for its investors, and delivering even more value to its users.

Those that make it out will be prosperous and those that don’t will die.

The Land of Mass Adoption

The land of mass adoption then represent a steep climb as a company starts getting noticed by people outside of the technology world and non-technologists start using the application.

The majority of companies that made it out of alphaworld spend a very long time in that area and can profit by targeting niches without having to move on to the next stage.

The land of mass adoption is an area where companies are forced to shed some of their more technical attributes (or hide them away) in order to appeal to a mass audience. The mass audience is not as forgiving as people in alphaworld so the company has to properly adapt to the market. It’s a great balancing act where the company has to show early adopters that it can continue delivering cutting edge for them while talking to the mainstream and figuring out the right timing and hand-holding to get mainstream users to start using some of those new attributes.

Mainstream Mountain

Mainstream mountain is where most companies want to be. At that point, a company achieves great economic success and is at close to the peak of its cultural relevance, impacting not only its own product but the industry it’s in. Very few companies achieve that stage and even fewer stay there for a long time. The great majority of people look to the company as the main provider of direction and believe it can do no wrong.

In the 80s, IBM was there with its personal computers. In the 90s, Microsoft was there with its Windows operating system and Office Suite. In the first decade of the 21st century, the spot was held by Google with its dominant search engine, online advertising model and YouTube video site.

Apple is currently at the apex of mainstream mountain, having redefined the PC industry (computers as consumption), the music industry (digital as default) and the telecom industry (phones as computers). Facebook, with its social network is currently climbing that mountain, having become the largest site in the world, built solely on the back of relationships.

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to stay in that arena and the fall seems to eventually come for most companies.

Disgruntled Hills

In the disgruntled hills, the public perception of a company starts to turn. What was one seen as a benevolent force for good is now being questioned. People start questioning whether the company is holding too much power and the mention of anti-trust comes up more often. Early adopters start looking for alternative providers and any misstep by the company is seen as a major example of how flawed the company is. Over time, the mass start turning their back on the company, reluctantly using its products but no longer imbuing them with the kind of magic attributes they granted to the company.

At this point, it seems the company starts having problems pleasing customers. No matter what it does, the public looks to the company as only protecting its own interest and not those of its customers. The company can claim that it loves its customers but suspicion seeps in and people get cynical about such claims.

I would venture that Google is currently in that stage as people start worrying about its dominance in the search space while making fun of its attempt at trying to get more social so it can go back to mainstreaming mountain. Questions around its privacy practices, mentions of antitrust around search and advertising, and other negatives seem to be applied to it with increasing frequency.

Canyons of Cultural Irrelevance

Of course, Google doesn’t have to worry as much as Microsoft, a company now steeply going down the hill of cultural irrelevance. At that stage, a company’s product are no longer seen as relevant to large swath of people.

Companies that reach this stage were once seen as the most important companies in the world. Oftentimes, such companies also suffered legal setback as they were taken to court and found guilty of monopolistic practices. Such was the case for IBM in the 80s and Microsoft in the 90s.

To say that a company is in that space is not the same as saying the company cannot be profitable. In fact, Microsoft an IBM are still very large players with established customer bases and diversified product portfolios. But their impact on the industry is mainly felt when they acquire a company positioned in one of the earlier mindset stages. Their ability to deliver internally-created product to an audience that finds a particular attachment to such products seems hindered and the companies take a cautious approach, offering product that attempt to mirror features created by other players (eg. Zune v. iPod, Windows phones vs. iPhones, Microsoft Kinect vs. Wii).

This stage can last decades or even centuries but, at that point, the company is no longer having a significant impact on consumers’ mindsets.

Plains of Corporate Death

In some cases, a company can flash through a lot of the earlier stages, be seen as extremely relevant for a while and then disappear because their products and ideas are no longer valid in the marketplace at all.

This is a case where companies have cash or assets that are no longer valuable in any ways (eg. Buggy Whip manufacturers) and, in those cases, companies completely fold and return money to their shareholders, stopping to exist due to cultural irrelevance.

Few companies enter that stage as the previous one allows them to morph into something different (eg. Nokia comes to mind, changing from being a fishing boots manufacturer to a phone company; or WPP going from being a wire and plastics company to one of the largest advertising groups in the world).

Takeaway

There are many stages in the cultural impact of successful companies but ultimately, every large tech company has found itself displaced and replaced. Today, Apple sits at the apex of the tech industry, having achieved economic and cultural dominance, but the Antennagate brouhaha (around claimed issues that the iPhone 4 antenna fails when the phone is held without a bumper) and the gizmodo incident seems to point to some anxiety within the early adopter community. Perception of the company appears to be turning and, for the first time since Steve Jobs came back to Apple, there seems to be some level of unhappiness with its products. Will the release of free bumpers help the situation? Only time will tell.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title 6 Stages of Cultural Impact. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

That, to me, is amazing customer service. In a world where I, as a consumer, usually find myself wondering why companies are not putting more emphasis on servicing their existing customers, I am extremely impressed with the level of customer service I’ve received from T-mobile. As a result, I would highly recommend them to anyone who is in their coverage area. I don’t usually do so but considering how much they’ve done, it’s the least I can do to repay them.

I would like to applaud this level of customer service and prompt other companies (either in technology or other fields) to take this as an example of how to do business. Customer service is very expensive but taking care of your existing customers is how you can reduce churn and ensure that your customers become your marketers. To me, T-mobile is a clued-in company.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Impressive customer service. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

On a related matter, the blog world is now abuzz with a description of the Internet as an agreement. While the document provides an interesting set of concepts that are sound from a purely technical standpoint (yes, the underlying standards of the Internet are based on an agreement), it does not cover the variety of choices of what is on the Internet. If the goal is to say “hey, the Internet is just an agreement to tie networks together” then World of Ends succeeds. But the contention that this makes a difference does not really matter much in today’s world. What world of ends does NOT address is what is ”

on

the Internet” and therein lies the usefulness of a conversation.

So the problem arises from the fact that we keep coming up with new definitions of the Internet that end up referring or reiterating the initial one. However, we seem to do little to figure out the next step. Companies, government, and individuals co-exist on the Internet. Each of those can be considered an entity. Each of those entities makes statements. Each of those statements is either provable or not. And if it is not provable, each of those statements can be assessed as trusted or not (my basic assumption being that a provable statement can only be trusted if it is true). The question remains as to how we can parse those statements quickly (can machines do a better job than we do individually? can smart mobs do a better job than the individual?) and judge their trust-worthiness.

Chris is right: marketers are not necessarily bad. The question is how do we make the difference between the ones we can trust and the ones we can’t?

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Blog, Internet, and Marketing. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Declaration of bloggerdom

1. We are bloggers.
2. We are individuals.
3. We are not for sale
4. We are not a target market.
5. We link to sites because we find them interesting, not because we think we’ll get free goods or money out of our links.
6. If we have a relationship with a product/company/service/person we link to, we will disclose it in the same post.
7. We believe in contributing.
8. We believe in truth.
9. Our writing is our own. Our words are our own.
10. Like them or not, our opinions are our own, too.

It’s a start. But does it need more?

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title A declaration of bloggerdom. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

I don’t watch TV so television advertising doesn’t work on me. I listen primarily to public radio so, apart from placements in the form of contributions, I can’t be targeted there. I read a paper (the New York Times) every day and a bunch of technical magazines. What I get of pop culture is from flipping through magazines at the supermarket cash register, or reading about it online.

Online, I not only read the mainstream sites but also a number of blogs. I could have been blissfully unaware of the existence of raging cow, had it not been for the pointers to it from several blogs. Does the existence of the blog matter to me? Not really since it’s not a product I would buy. But what about a product I might buy? Would my perception be affected? THIS is the question that I have.

There is no doubt in my mind that marketers have a presence in the blogosphere and will continue to increase. As a result, the line between shills and individuals is going to grow increasingly hazy. If someone goes to a product launch (let’s say a new piece of hardware) and get a goodies bag and some free food and drinks, and then goes and blogs about the event, are they shilling? It’s not clear and that’s what I’m trying to solve with the full disclosure feed. I want to try to establish a way for people to be able to tell that there is a relationship between the writer and the product or site or whatever written about. How can we do that?

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title astroblogs. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

Here’s how it works:
First, there’s an XML definition to say this is an XML feed:

This is followed by the tag which says this is my full disclosure feed.

Generic information similar to an RSS feed includes the weblog title, weblog URL, the RSS URL (this is important because some people may only read a site through an RSS reader), the type of site (this can be either personal (for a personal site), corporate (for a site run by the corporation pushing the product), or marketing (for marketing agencies, advertising agencies, public relations companies, and other outside agencies promoting a product on behalf of a client), and a contact part (this can either be an email address or the URL of a web form to contact the person or company).

We then go into the section For every type of ad, we include a „ , and . Let me go into more details on this:

Type

: There are a number of ways in which a marketing placement can appear. It can be through the form of a banner, a button, a pop-up ad, a text-ad (similar to Google textads or metafilter’s), a links (within a blogroll, or navigation area, or an entry. If you want to make it clear, you might want to include all of them, or you can pick and choose which ones you will include.

Compensation

: This covers what kind of compensation you received. It can be none (if you just want to say we don’t run this type of ad), goodwill (if you think you’re going to get good karma out of it), cash (the hard stuff), product (if you got a free product out of it) or link (for example if you link to a friend and they link back to you).

Value

: This is a free form field where you can list what is the value of the goods, services, money you received. Some of it could be free traffic, for example.

Entry

: This one is in the off-chance that one day, you did decide to do a one-off deal on a particular entry or if you want to section off particular types of marketing to a particular section. It can be all (for all entries), none (for no entries at all) or a URL (which would be the permalink of the particular entry this applies to).

That’s about it. I just mocked it up in a few minutes so I expect a lot more fleshing out to happen. In that attempt, I invoke the LazyWeb to discuss further.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Marketer, Marketer, where have you been?. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.

For years people have claimed that “content is king.” If so, there are many things that go into the king’s proper care. Since 1992, I’ve been working on profitable online content models, and, while a few failed, eventually struck gold with iWORLD (now internet.com) in 1996. In the process, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. Here they are for your use.

Hire Zealots

The first rule — and hardest –is building a great staff. People who believe in what you’re doing make for the best workers.
If people believe in the basic idea, they’ll work harder to make sure that it succeeds. This is why zealots make for the best workers. They want the thing to succeed above anything else, even if it means putting in 20 hours days from time to time.

Create a Good Environment

On a content site, intellectual capital is the most important thing, so your most valuable asset is people (no, this isn’t just an empty phrase). As a result, you need to create a fun working environment. Allow flexible hours and atmosphere– as long as the work gets done!
When it comes down to it, the office should be a place workers don’t really want to quit. Foster creativity and try to encourage making the office a more pleasant place to work in. The more pleasant it is, the longer your employees will stay. The longer they stay, the more they’ll get used to the company. The more they get used to the company, the least they’ll want to leave.

Watch the Bottom Line

Many content sites fail because they spend too much money. This is a business. Find the lowest costs everywhere and instill this discipline in everyone working with you. A few dollars saved here and there add up to a lot.
However, do not be a pinch penny when it comes to your employees. Make sure that those who go above and beyond the call of duty get rewarded for it. While the wild parties thrown by companies on Silicon Alley and Silicon Valley only last one night, the bonuses you put in employees pockets get more recognition (and usually end up costing you less).

Automate

As part of your fiscal consciousness, always try to automate. This will allow you to use your staff to its fullest instead of forcing them to do repetitive menial tasks.

Nowadays, with tools like Active Server Pages, Cold Fusion, PHP or Story Server, you can easily create web interfaces that allow you to dynamically generate your pages from the web itself. Instead of trying to create every single page by hand, make sure you templatize.

Quality AND Quantity

People scoffed when Alan Meckler said we had acquired more sites than anyone in the world. We had the last laugh. Smart consolidation of content created higher traffic that we could spread across our other properties. For every site we acquired we would look at two things: the value of the content as an add-on to our offerings and the traffic numbers. Often, after acquisition the original creator created content for us while we sold advertising as part of a network package.

Interestingly, this strategy seems to have become more popular nowadays, with everyone wanting to become a portal. While we didn’t call it “portal,” Internet.com really became the first vertical portal about the net on the net.

Grassroots Marketing is Important

Many people were surprised at how much time we spent in newsgroups, on mailing lists and on talking to people who linked to our sites. This allowed us to develop a strong presence on the Internet at a very low cost. We treated every partner, from large corporations to one-man operations, in the same way and in turn got a lot of loyalty.

Partner, Partner, Partner

Money follows from traffic, and the way to get traffic is through partnering. We considered anything that would bring even a single extra user as beneficial. However, don’t spend too much time on contracts minutiae: they’ll lengthen the partnership process and you’ll miss certain opportunities.

Be There First or Don’t Jump

By the time the two largest players have been established in one arena, there is little room for anyone else. Know your field inside out and jump on new opportunities. Some may fail, but jumping in early means you won’t miss out on potentially huge rewards. If an area fails (a six-month reevaluation cycle works), pull out.

Community Matters

Creating newsgroups and email lists related to your site get readers to come back again and again. Develop a sense of community around your site and you will see your traffic constantly increasing.

Trust YOUR Instincts

Lists like this are great but don’t tell the whole story. Only you know how your site should be built. Don’t take anything for granted, dare defying common conceptions and change often. After all, the commercial Internet is still in its inception.

Tristan Louis is the founder and CEO of Keepskor and writes the influential tnl.net weblog, where this was initially posted under the title Succesful Web Content. You can follow him on twitter here or receive his weekly newsletter by subscribing here.