Today, with great surprise, I found out I just appeared on issue 21 of the great website YayMonday.
The thing about this site is that each monday, 9 new creatives from around the world are displayed.
Quite an honor to be there, plus, they also featured my man Veggie, so it’s a double-pointer for the chilean folks.
Also, big up to Ricardo Villavicencio who was featured on issue 19.
Link: Diego Quintana at YayMonday.
Good ol’ Barbón from the always attractive NiceFuckingGraphics recently dropped a list of the 100 best spanish-speaking design blogs, and to my surprise, my website’s in there.
A huge honour considering that my website is basically just a mix of my personal tastes regarding design, digital art and overall trends; which apparently and fortunately has been well received by the people coming in.
A big shout out to Barbón for the consideration and I invite you guys to pass by his website ’cause it’s really making a buzz around the latinamerican blogosphere.
Link: 100 best spanish-speaking design blogs.
Nick Denton, Publisher of Gawker Media is worth a lot of money. He didn’t get that way from making dumb moves. Even so, he raised a few eyebrows with his recent announcement that he would part with Wonkette, GridSkipper and Idolatar.
Here’s his reasoning:
Everybody says that the internet is special; that advertising is still moving away from print and TV; and Gawker sites are still growing in traffic by about 90% a year, way faster than the web as a whole. But it would be naive to think that we can merely power through an advertising recession. We need to concentrate our energies, and the time of Chris Batty’s sales group, on the sites with the greatest potential for audience and advertising.
The dozen sites that remain represent some 97% or our 228m pageviews per month, and an even higher proportion of our growth and advertising revenue.
Idolatar was purchased by Buzznet, a music-focused web and social network.
Gridskipper is being taken over by Curbed, the network founded by Lockhart Steele, in which Gawker Media is a shareholder.
Wonkette is being spun off to its managing editor, Ken Layne.
The Wall Street Journal had a pretty fascinating story today that I’d only heard bits and pieces of before. The story basically details how former AdAge reporter James Arndorfer is writing for the Miller Brewing Company-owned blog, “Brew Blog,” where one of the primary topics of interest is Anheuser-Busch news. He’s continuously breaking stories on A-B, which is getting under the St. Louis brewing company’s skin.
While A-B and Miller have been battling for years, the internet and the blogosphere have opened up new and creative doors through which the battle can rage on. Miller sponsoring a blog that paints A-B in a lesser light is certainly a non-traditional tactic, but interesting that such importance is being placed on internet sites. Something worth considering as the internet continues to grow.
And despite working on several A-B accounts in the past, I have to say that I’m fairly intrigued by the whole Miller-backed-blog and the way it’s playing out. I’m also eagerly anticipating more corporate tactical use of blogs in the future. Seems ripe with possibilities. Anyway, check out the WSJ article for more details and analysis.
Ad Age is running two articles about blogs stepping out of their pajamas and into neatly tailored suits.
One piece is about John Battelle’s Federated Media announcing a $50 million minority investment from Oak Investment Partners. Federated Media aggregates and packages popular blog content for marketers. The company is thought to be worth as much as $200 million.
The other article looks at music blogs being sold and in other cases making deals with mainstream media companies.
Gawker Media kicked off the round of deals this week by selling off Idolator, its music blog, to Buzznet, a social-networking site that recently added the popular music site Stereogum to its network. Now two independent-music magazines, Fader and Paste, are looking to the music blogosphere to add some reach to their online-ad buys.
Paste Magazine is looking to aggregate for advertisers via its new Paste Nation network. The new partnership brings 11 music and movie blogs to the Paste online network (including PopMatters, Spout and Virb), totaling 4.3 million unique visitors and over 28 million page views per month. Not only is it a scale play for Paste, it’s a targeting opportunity for non-endemic advertisers seeking to seeking to align their brands to different music- and movie-based activities.
I know MSM is busy blogging and playing the social media game now, but I like the recognition here that a new PopMatters can’t be easily created. Thus, working in concert with established online destinations–and popular music blogs are all of that–is a good move for a print book like Paste.
On a related note, I write a music blog, albeit one far down the long tail.
BlogHer released the BlogHer/Compass Partners 2008 Social Media Benchmark Study today, which reveals new insights into the power of the blogosphere and the significant role it plays in the lives of U.S. women.
Women are so passionate about blogging that large percentages of women said they would give something up to keep the blogs they read and/or write:
“Several recent surveys indicate that our trust in institutions is declining. We are losing trust in the government, politicians, the media and many corporations. But as it turns out, we trust each other,†said Elisa Camahort Page, BlogHer co-founder and COO.
Advertising Age Editor Jonah Bloom recently led a roundtable discussion with some prominent marketing bloggers.
Contributors included Power 150 founder Todd Andrlik of Toddand; Paul McEnany of Hee Haw Marketing; Anna Farmery of The Engaging Brand; David Armano of Logic & Emotion; Matt Dickman of Technomarketer; Daryl Ohrt of Brand Flakes for Breakfast; Ann Handley of Mp Daily Fix; Mark Goren of Transmission Marketing; Rohit Bhargava of Influential Marketing Blog; Lewis Green of Biz Solutions Plus; Servant of Chaos’ Gavin Heaton; Sean Howard of Crap Hammer and Geoff Livingston of Livingston Buzz.
Here are a few moments worth lingering on:
SEAN HOWARD: The conversation that needs to be had with big brands is this: They are looking at how media is changing, they are talking about fragmentation, about spend, about all these things. That’s not the game. The game is that behaviors are changing. So the discussion we generally get into is to focus on understanding the shift in behavior. Once we start to understand the shift in behavior, then we can start talking about things like context and relevance, which is really what we’re talking about.
LEWIS GREEN: The Fortune 500 is never going to lead anything. The Fortune 500 [are] going to be the last adapters. I work with what I would call midsize companies ($100 million companies). It’s uphill with their marketing people, but they are willing to listen because their margins are thinner, and some are public and some aren’t.
MATT DICKMAN: The other conversation inside the agencies that I’m seeing now is there’s so much confusion. Really, because the PR shops, Fleishman, Ogilvy and all those guys are doing the digital stuff, but the client may have a digital agency, and then they have an ad agency that also has a digital group, and there’s all this confusion on who has control of that space. And it’s worse for the client, the marketer. Trying to educate them on how to deal with that situation to get the most out of their money — it’s very confusing.
Ãœber stay at home mommy blogger, Heather Armstong, a.k.a. “Dooce,” is often profiled in MSM.
Today, it’s Career Journal’s turn to mine for material.
Here’s what I learned this time:
Heather is also a really gifted photog, but that’s been established.
latest image from Dooce.com’s daily offering
Perez Hilton is taking over. His site drew 2.8 million unique visitors in February, according to comScore Inc., making it the ninth-most popular entertainment-news site in the U.S.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the ubiquitous purveyor of celebrity gossip on the Internet, is now expanding his empire to the airwaves.
Starting May 5, the blogger, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, will have his own twice-daily miniradio show.
“Radio Perez,” marks the debut offering from “C” Student Entertainment Corp., a radio and mobile-focused programming provider.
“We’re going to prove that [the blogosphere] is a place where you can find talent,” said Andy Schuon, former head of programming at MTV and one of the backers of this new venture.
Hilton’s radio show is part of a strategy that includes more television appearances; the release this summer of a feature movie, “Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild,” in which Mr. Lavandeira stars as himself; a coming book; and a possible development deal with Warner Bros. Records.
Brian Morrissey is a journalist in the employ of Adweek.
Anyone who has spent significant time blogging can tell you what an obsession it can become. It’s an obsession I’m looking very closely at these days, as peering into this screen for hours on end is not the smartest thing I’ve ever chosen to do.
But there are people, like Fred Wilson, who are much more obsessive than me. Wilson’s in Hawaii on family vacation right now. To squeeze in a post, he takes his Crackberry on the eliptical trainer with him and types while he sweats.
I’m not going to judge Fred Wilson’s activities, but I am going to ask what kind of world we live in where a man on vacation in Hawaii needs to update his blog, which isn’t even his job, while working out?
Michael Arrington says that $25 million was invested in blogs and blog networks in 2007. He doesn’t see it as a good sign.
I believe the money is being, for the most part, wasted.
If a VC hands you a check, their intention is not to hang around for 20 years while you build a nice lifestyle business for yourself. What they want to see is an exit, preferably a 10x or higher exit, within 3-4 years. But something tells me that few of these networks are going to be able to grow quite as easily as they think and reach those liquidity events. The talent is, increasingly, locked up. Even when new talent is discovered or trained, every niche has serious heavyweights already there with page views and advertising dollars to back them up for a long fight.
At some point it’s going to become painfully obvious that the only way to get to a massive valuation is for the top talent to band together in a company where they each have an equity stake and therefore a reason to work all night on that next great story. They’ll each have their own space to stretch their legs and let their personality run around a little. Someone needs to pony up a big round of financing around an existing blog, or perhaps a new entity, and then start rolling them up into a big fat CNET crushing $200 million/year in revenue business.
At some point the word blog may lose all relevance. Maybe it already has. For sure, Arrington’s not describing blogs above, he’s describing startup media businesses in the tech sector.
David Armano is at a conference in New York City this morning. As you can see, he’s getting extraordinary value from it.
Fast Company interviewed Evan Williams, a.k.a. “Ev” about Twitter.
Here are a few highlights:
Q. Am I admitting my age if I ask why anyone would want to be that connected?
A. I don’t think it has anything to do with age. That’s the most common response from everybody: Why would I want to use that? Once they start using it, they kind of get into it. It’s something you have to experience.
It’s fun and sometimes useful to have a mechanism to send and receive these status updates. If you hear from someone — even something as mundane as eating a sandwich at this restaurant — then you get a picture of this person you’re interested in and what they’re doing at that moment in contrast to what you’re doing. It’s interesting in itself because of the real time factor. You get what some people call ambient awareness.
Q. Why did you call your company Obvious?
A. The best ideas are always those that are obvious in retrospect. It’s not about being clever, it’s having the breakthrough to see the obvious thing that wasn’t obvious to everybody. We want all our products to be very obvious. In the case of Twitter, it’s not quite obvious why to use it, but eventually it will be.
I attended a SXSWi panel with a dubious title yesterday, “Online Adulation: Use Don’t Abuse Your Fans.” Look at those verbs. “Use.” “Abuse.” Not good.
There was one true blogebrity on the panel and sadly she conveyed, perhaps unintentionally, what a hassle it is to be so popular. I don’t doubt for a second that it is a hassle, for blogebrities don’t have people around them to deflect the constant stream of requests on their time and attention like an actor or rock star might.
Yet, because blogs are the centerpiece of social media today, we expect bloggers to be social. Thankfully, the moderator of this panel, Tom Merritt of c|net, provided a nice counterbalance to the blogebrity.
Merritt said he responds to critical emails, which often makes for better fans. He also said, “Good audience relations is good customer service.”
Of course, Merritt is representing a business, not just himself, so he has the additional responsibility of speaking for the c|net brand. But I get the sense that he’d go the extra mile, even if he wasn’t.
In the wake of Paul Tilley’s suicide, advertising industry blogs are getting a closer look, including some quotes from George Parker.
After Mr. Tilley’s death was reported, the comments beneath the AgencySpy blog posting turned sharply to recriminations from people identifying themselves as friends, colleagues or relatives of the DDB executive. “You should all be ashamed. Because you contributed to this,†a message from someone who signed as LSA said.
A similar post on AdScam said: “I knew him. And I know that the vile attacks inflicted on him by you and others tortured his soul. He told me so.â€
Advertising blogs have a reputation, even among bloggers, of being particularly wounding — in part, Mr. Parker said, because of conditions in the business.
“They do tend to be a little more acidic than general informational blogs,†Mr. Parker, a former ad executive who now works as a consultant, said. Since many agencies are now part of publicly held companies, he continued, employees are under increasing pressure to show short-term results, where in the past they might sometimes have had more than a year or two to build a successful campaign.
Asked if posters on ad blogs sought to gain competitive advantage by disparaging rivals, he replied: “It’s more than possible. It wouldn’t surprise me at all.â€
It’s worth noting that the NYT article also has a section for open and anonymous commenting.
Talking Points Memo is the first Internet-only news operation to receive the George Polk Award, an award for Internet reporting given by the Center for Public Integrity.
the TPM newsroom in Manhattan
I like how The New York Times frames the story:
Of the many landmarks along a journalist’s career, two are among those that stand out: winning an award and making the government back down. Last week, Joshua Micah Marshall achieved both.
On Tuesday, it was announced that he had won a George Polk Award for legal reporting for coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys, critics charged under political circumstances. The “tenacious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,†the citation read.
Also last week, the Justice Department put him back on its mailing list for reporters with credentials after removing him last year.
The Times notes that TPM operates a long way from the clichéd pajama-wearing, coffee-sipping commentator on the news. TPM has a newsroom in Manhattan and seven reporters for his sites, including two in Washington.
Dan Kennedy, a media critic who teaches at Northeastern University, has followed the site from its inception. What Talking Points Memo does, he said, “is a different kind of journalism, based on the idea that my readers know more than I do.â€
I’m a big fan of Steve McKee’s articles in BusinessWeek, but I often wonder if anyone takes his advice to heart. His new one is called “Get the Most Out of Your Ad Agency” and it’s full of tips for small business owners who work with agencies. Here’s one tip:
Value risk. For advertising to be attention-getting, it has to be different. And anything different is risky. In every other avenue of your business you know reward is associated with some level of measured risk. If you want advertising that looks like your competitors’, you don’t even need an ad agency. But if you want to lead the category, you’re going to have to do something that, at least from the outside, appears risky.
Good agencies aren’t reckless. They have a sense of what risks are appropriate and how to mitigate them. But they can only do it for clients who value the benefits of a little calculated risk-taking. Of course, the risks you and your agency take won’t pay off every time. If your agency knows as long as it’s acting in your best interests it’s O.K. to make a mistake, it will treat the responsibility you give it with great care.
Keep your eye on the big picture, not the small print. Some ads will be better than others, and others may downright flop. But if your focus remains on the overall trajectory of your brand you’ll learn that for every “one step back” there will be two or three steps forward. If your agency knows you’re committed to it and you’re in this together, it’ll do anything to make those risks pay off.
So how do clients approach their ad agencies when they first start working together? Do small business owners think dynamically about their advertising? Would any client really take advice on how to work with an ad agency from an ad agency owner? Can a client who doesn’t treat his/her agency well change habits?
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
