LB's Rambles

Glad Somebody's Still Laughing...

Just came home from Costco with a newly-discovered, 5-CD package containing seven of the Marx Brothers' late movies. It includes "A Night at the Opera" and "A Day at the Races," not to mention "At the Circus," infamous for Groucho's heart-warming rendition of "Lydia the Tattoed Lady." The link goes to Amazon.com, by the way, but the set was a couple of bucks cheaper at Costco.

Checking Amazon, I find they have another box set of the earlier Marx Brothers movies, and I've just ordered it - contains the movies made with Zeppo Marx in the "romantic" leads, including "Duck Soup," which may be the funniest of all their comedies. I didn't see this set in Costco, at least not in my Costco. I'm linking both sets on Amazon - if you know the Marx Brothers, you need no introduction; if not, be prepared to laugh. A lot. By the way, if you order through my links, I get a REALLY small commission from Amazon - just sayin' by way of disclosure...

Dealing With Disaster

Okay, you're a whiz at social media. Your company, your product, is out there. You get it. It's wonderful. And then, one day, the roof falls in and disaster strikes. It's not your fault, or maybe it is your fault. But how do you deal with it?

At Mashable, Sharlyn Lauby of Internal Talent Management (ITM) has some excellent suggestions for dealing with this kind of nightmare situation. I'd suggest that you read it and take notes now, rather than waiting for disaster. As she writes, "It’s not about 'if' something will happen; it’s about 'when.'"

Chrome-Plated Search

This is going to be an interesting battle. First, we had Microsoft, moving into the search world with Bing. Now, Google returns the favor, with the announcement of its new computer operating system called Chrome. Fasolt, meet Fafner.

Bing seems to be winning a lot of friends - even getting a very favorable write-up in the New York Times. A lot of the influencers who have tried it really seem to like it (though, of course, it's probably a good idea to keep in mind the "shiny-new-toy" factor), and this could be a serious threat to Google's overwhelming dominance in the field.

Google's path may be trickier, as the company clearly is going to need major manufacturers to sign on and include Chrome as an option for the operating system powering new computers. They're working on it; TechCrunch provides a scorecard listing some of the major OEM players already in the game. And with Microsoft on the verge of commercial release of yet another new version of Windows, this might be an opportunity for Google to move boldly into the OS arena.

Certainly those of us on the sidelines are going to find it interesting. Though perhaps it's worth remembering that, to the Chinese, "May you live in interesting times" is considered a curse...

Maybe Your Ringtone Should Just Be "Ka-Ching"?

Never one to miss a possible opportunity for shooting itself in the foot, part of the music industry is at it again. This time, it's the venerable American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers - known in the trade as ASCAP - which is looking for ways to tap what they see as a huge new source of revenue: the ringtones on your phone.

According to Wendy Davis at Online Media Daily, ASCAP wants a judge to rule that they have the right to collect royalties when their songs are played as cellphone ringtones, since that represents a "public performance" of their music. Mind, they don't want to charge consumers. Heaven forfend! They just want to collect a nice chunk of change from your phone service providers (who will, of course, immediately pass that charge along to their customers).

So some consumer groups and other organizations are getting ready to fight ASCAP in court. After all, they point out, there really isn't a law against noncommercial public performances; the industry, for example, doesn't charge people for listening to their car radios with the windows rolled down.

You know, I wish they hadn't said that. I suspect it's a bad move to offer the industry new ideas...

"Close Quarters"

This week's review on the Classic Mysteries podcast is of the first novel by mystery grand master Michael Gilbert. "Close Quarters" is set in 1937, though it was first published ten years later. It is the story of murder on the grounds of an English cathedral - or, as it is called, the cathedral close. The victim, and the suspects, are all senior clergymen. It's a highly entertaining, carefully plotted murder story, very much in the classic mode, with some ingenious plotting. To hear the full podcast review, please click here.

Michael Gilbert wrote a lot of mysteries of every sort - from the classic puzzle to spy thrillers, police procedurals, courtroom dramas, etc. In their introduction to this volume, publishers Tom and Enid Schantz note that in 2007, just one year after his death, only one of his books was in print in the United States. As they observe, "Why this should be so tells us more about the lamentable state of publishing today than it does about Gilbert's talent and his immense contribution to the genre." Agreed. And "Close Quarters" is a good way to begin enjoying his books.

A reminder: for more discussion of this book and other mysteries, please visit me at www.classicmysteries.net . Hope to see you there.

R. I. P. CompuServe

Okay, I'll admit my ignorance - I didn't realize that any part of CompuServe was still alive. As someone whose first online experiences included CompuServe (along with GEnie and the awful Prodigy services), I remember my introduction to forum memberships, tantalizing glimpses of what would explode into the Web we know today.

All gone. At Fanboy, Michael Pinto notes the final passing of a one-time giant. Lots of memory-provoking screengrabs and even some video.

Hat tip: @robinwauters via Twitter

Pet Peeves

As many of us begin the ritual of preparing to return to work after a holiday weekend, this might be a good time to stop and think about some pet peeves - ours and other people's pet peeves - that could be doing a lot of damage to your hopes for web traffic.

Writing at PopSci.com, Tom Conlon has some thoughts about the kind of thing that can, as the title puts it, "Lose Traffic and Alienate People."  I suspect that all of us have our own, very similar, list. He mentions auto-play video, for example - to which I'd add auto-play audio - with no controls to either stop the noise or a volume control. Epic fail. If the only way to avoid that kind of garbage is to close the browser, I'm gone. A lot of people may be viewing your site at work. To afflict them with noise may make your webmaster happy - "Hey, our Flash is so cool!" - but is more likely to lose potential visitors - and customers - than attract them. I'm just sayin' ...

Farewell to Medialink

Word this afternoon (via @DSSimon on Twitter) that Medialink is, in effect, being taken over by The Newsmarket. Medialink, whose stock price had dropped down into the range of just a few pennies, will get 20 cents a share from The Newsmarket.

This is all subject to approval, etc., and all the usual warnings obviously apply. But it had been clear to many of us - including those of us who worked for Medialink in the past, including me - that the company needed outside help. The changes in the PR/news distribution business over the past few years have not been kind to video news releases, and those had been at the heart of Medialink's services over the years. But the company still produced video and had moved into electronic distribution. The Newsmarket has built itself into a strong distribution platform for delivering video to TV stations around the world. It should be an interesting mix.

You can get a better grasp of what's at stake, and at how it's viewed by the major players, by reading Medialink's news release and the one from The Newsmarket. I still have a fair number of friends at Medialink, from CEO Larry Moskowitz on down, and I hope they and the company will be landing on their feet.

Interesting Numbers for Twitter

Some of this could be categorized as "fascinating trivia," but the Guardian's Technology blog has some interesting, if somewhat random, numbers for Twitter. The figures are extracted from a speech by one of Twitter's senior engineers, Evan Weaver.

I think the most interesting factoid, because of what it tells me about Twitter's overall traffic numbers, is this one: only about 20% of the traffic to Twitter comes through the website. The rest comes from third party apps running on computers or on mobile devices such as smartphones. You might remember the fuss a couple of months back when Nielsen found that a huge percentage of Twitter users never came back to the website. This third party use might explain some of the discrepancy.

Also of interest, I think, is that the average Twitter user has 126 followers. I'm not sure exactly how that works out, given the number of super-Tweeters with hundreds of thousands of followers...but it does make those of us with a few hundred followers feel better.

Hat tip: MediaPost

"The Bloody Wood"

Our book review this week on the "Classic Mysteries" podcast is of "The Bloody Wood," by Michael Innes. Sir John Appleby, now Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, is a guest at a most peculiar house party. The hostess is terminally ill, her uncomfortable guests realize that she is unlikely to survive for long. She tells them that she wants to persuade her husband to remarry after her death, marrying another family member.

Soon enough there will be deaths, but the plot is not as simple and straightforward as it sounds - that's never the case, in an Innes mystery. There are quite a few unexpected plot twists as Appleby moves towards understanding - and resolving - the strange events in the book, and the story is told with Innes's usual wit and wordplay. It's most enjoyable. You can listen to the full review here, and - as always - you are invited to join me at www.classicmysteries.net to discuss this and other classics.

Don't Forget About LinkedIn

A great deal of the social networking talk these days focuses on Facebook and Twitter. But for professionals, particularly those looking for new opportunities and new jobs, it's wise never to forget LinkedIn. At PC World, C.G. Lynch has some excellent suggestions (from JibberJobber CEO Jason Alba) about how to avoid mistakes and improve your profile on LinkedIn.

News Bragging Rights: Here We Go Again

Once again, we've had a significant news event - the death of pop superstar Michael Jackson - that has resulted in incredible traffic for online news sites as well as mainstream media outlets.

For now, I'm less interested in discussing whether the Jackson coverage has been excessive, an argument that certainly could be made given the number of other significant events going on in the world: the turmoil and bloodshed in Iran, the legislative trainwrecks in Washington, etc.

But it is interesting to see, once again, the significant coverage role played by online media. Certainly, first word of Jackson's death was carried by AOL's gossip site TMZ - while the sites of most major news organizations were trying to be sure the story was confirmed before they put it out.

That's certainly a responsible position to take. As it happens, TMZ had the story right - but suppose it had been wrong? All the same, there's a good deal of commentary today on the usual post-report claims and jealousies. The crush of Jackson-related tweets was enough to cause major problems at Twitter, which circulated not only accurate reports but also unconfirmed (and later discredited) rumors about other performers, nor was it the only service to have problems. Some of the claims made by established media were, to put it kindly, a bit out of line, as Robin Wauters noted at TechCrunch.

Overall, I think I'd have to subscribe to the views offered by Catharine P. Taylor at BNET media - particularly her wider observations on what worked - and what didn't. We're likely to see a great many more analyses before we get through this tidal wave of coverage.

To Target or Not to Target?

There's an interesting article from eMarketer today on the subject of targeted advertising - or, as eMarketer puts it more politely, "personalized ads." As web technology makes it easier and easier for marketers to learn more about our surfing and buying habits, privacy advocates and ethicists have grappled with the question of whether marketers should be able to target ads to us.

Apparently, we're still fairly evenly split over the question of how comfortable we are with this kind of advertising. eMarketer cites a survey from Q Interactive that found 53% of web users would view an advertiser favorably if their ads were targeted to the users' interests. Other surveys cited by eMarketer, however, suggest that more than half the population are uncomfortable with advertisers using browing history as a basis for determining which ads to serve.

Unfortunately, it's not a simple matter. I would certainly rather see ads that might have some relevance to me and my needs; it does nobody any good, for example, to run big ads for a new car if I'm not remotely interested in buying one. But in order to target an ad, the advertiser has to know - at least in the aggregate - what kind of websites I've been using or what kind of online spending I have been doing - and that makes me nervous.

I'm not sure there's a solution yet...but I do think these new studies do a pretty good job of laying out the issues.

Longer Videos, Longer Attention Spans?

There's a very interesting note today on MediaPost's Video Insider blog. Tyler Willis, Director of Marketing for Involver says there's evidence that people are watching longer videos online - including longer video ads - than used to be the case.

Whether that really means people's attention spans are improving, that's a fairly important change. When I was advising clients about ground rules for creating their online videos, the key rule used to be: keep it short. Viewers, we were told, didn't care for videos longer than about five minutes. That's changing. More people are watching the long-form videos available through Hulu and other services. Willis says that they have indicated a willingness to watch longer - and fewer - video ads as well.

He cites the case of an advertiser whose 2-minute video was watched all the way through by more than 20% of its viewers. If that marks the beginning of a trend, it could have a significant impact on the kind of video ads we are offered - and our likelihood of viewing them.

You Know You're a Communicator...

In the communications business? Over at Ragan.com, Vic Morales has posted a list of ways to tell that you really are a communicator. Highly recommended (and some of the comments are worthwhile, too).