The Downside

The internet publishing industry did itself a serious disservice when first designing ads for the web.  Rather than learning from the newspaper and magazine industries, they reinvented the wheel by designing ads that were as unobtrusive as possible, and they’ve been paying for it ever since.

Remember the first standardized ad size?  It was 468×60, an amazingly small ad unit by today’s standards.  You just can’t fit a meaningful message on an ad this size (especially with today’s larger screen resolutions), and to compensate ad sizes have been creeping upwards over time…from the original 468×60 and 125×125 to
250×250 to

120×600 to

728×90 to

300×250 to

160×600 to

336×280 to

300×600 to

flyovers, pull-outs, interstitials, and a whole new set of big ad sizes.

I say it’s about time we started showing huge ads.  We online publishers have been limiting our success for years, ever since that first tiny ad size was standardized.

To see why this is the case, look at print magazines.  Those guys have huge ads.  One of the most common units they sell is a full page!  They sell full pages, half pages, quarter pages with the smaller eighth- and sixteenth-page ads getting either shoved to the back of the magazine or spanning several pages so they can tell a story.   Certainly it is true that the print mag industry is hurting these days, but that pain is because of rising printing and distribution costs and an oversaturated market, not because of their advertising model.

Only now are we online publishers finally seeing ad standards that are competitive with the print mag standards (One could argue that interstitials are full page ads, but most don’t take up anywhere near the whole page.)  TechCrunch whines childishly about these big ads having a poor user experience, but I posit that TechCrunch’s alternative of a superabundance of small ads create an even worse user experience than one or two large ads would.  TC shows ELEVEN ads before you even get below the fold, 10 of which are deprecated 125×125’s that allow for virtually no design, messaging or branding benefits, and they make the whole page look messy and cluttered.

Large ads are simply better because:

1. There is more room for compelling design
2. There is more room for compelling messaging
3. Page layout is easier - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen page designs compromised by trying to fit a 300×250 ad.  Interstitials and full page-wide ads are actually easier to design around

When will web ads be this cool? When they're big enough

Print mags have much larger ads than websites, so do they have a poor user experience?  Of course not.  In many magazines the ads are so cool that they’re almost considered content.  Magazine readers realize that you need to see ads to get cheap/free content, and website readers only whine about big ads on websites because:

1. We have conditioned them to see small ads
2. Online ad creative is often poorly designed (not visually appealing, message isn’t compelling, etc.), and
3. Online ads are often poorly targeted

We have been trying to fix the Problem 1 for 15 years, and once we do fix it, the advertising folks will fix Problem 2 for us because they’ll have much more space to work with, as they do in print mags.  As for targeting (Problem 3), AdSense was the biggest quantum leap in this space, with behavioral targeting being the next wave; there is plenty of work going on in this area.

As soon as online publishers and advertisers can fix these problems, user experience will improve, ad rates will improve, and we will finally see the maturing of the online advertising model.

Rule of Product Management #675: If you’re going to post your mission on your homepage, make sure people can get behind it.  Vyoom, a new “real-time” social network presents their philosophy front and center on their homepage:

We at Vyoom believe members should be rewarded for connecting and sharing with friends, family and co-workers in a real-time environment.

Excuse me, what?  Why exactly should I be rewarded for chatting with my friends and family?  Shouldn’t the mere activity and social interaction of sharing helpful, entertaining, or personal information with my acquaintances be reward enough?  It sure is on Facebook, Twitter, email, or even in person.  Why do I need to be rewarded for this?  If I’m using your site because I want to be rewarded, I’m likely to overuse the site, flooding my friends and family with information they don’t want, and ultimately having them all block me and/or add me to their spam filters.

Further down on their homepage, they claim they have a “real-time” social network that lets me see what my friends are doing and customize what updates I want to see.  Their meta description (shown to search engines, but not on the site) describes them as a

Social network with advanced social capabilities and true real-time data streaming in both a public and a private network all in one platform

This featureset actually sounds like it might be interesting and differentiating, so why lead with the messaging about rewarding me for communicating with friends?  If you have a great new tool that will make my communications easier, lead with that.  You don’t need to bribe me.  If the product is that cool, I’ll use it and I’ll do your marketing for you by telling my friends.  This is a classic case of a split personality site - they seem to have a cool product, but their lead pitch doesn’t even mention its strengths.

And while we’re at it, Rule of Product Management #425: Avoid underlining words that are not hyperlinks.  Their homepage is riddled with underlined words that unfortunately I just can’t click on.

And you might be asking if I actually used the site…well, no.  I tried - I registered, but never got my confirmation email, and you can’t use the site at all without it.  I tried signing up with a different email address, and the registration form broke.   Sorry guys, I’m done.

If you’re on the digital airwaves at all these days, you’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about Twitter and particularly how people are starting to turn to it for bleeding edge news reporting.  (I covered the real-time news aspect of Twitter previously.)  What most pundits and even reporters are missing in this fray is that Twitter is more of a communication tool than a source of information, and they should treat it as such in their reporting.

The distinction is an important one, and it’s growing increasingly relevant.  In the aftermath of the coverage of Michael Jackson’s untimely death, the TechCrunch blowhards bellyached about how the mainstream media didn’t recognize Twitter’s role in the story coverage.  Author Robin Wauters cites the Chicago Tribune’s coverage:

Gossip site TMZ.com, owned by Time Warner, was out in front with Jackson news and digital-era pipelines spread the word, as has happened before with other major celebrity news stories. But it was old media stalwarts that did the heavy lifting, with giants such as The Associated Press and the Web site of the L.A. Times, sister paper of the Chicago Tribune, reporting the fastest, most credible information on the emergency call for paramedics and ultimately his death.

and she complains that

Chest-beating over old media doing the “heavy lifting” for blogs and Twitter, and being faster in reporting information than those new media when it was exactly the other way around is beyond ridiculous.

Wauters asserts that Twitter and TMZ did all the “heavy lifting”, but let’s be totally clear here: Twitter didn’t do anything at all. Twitter only facilitated communication between humans; in this case it enabled the distribution of links to the TMZ story.  Twitter doesn’t have a news room, and they don’t have writers.  Twitter is a pipe, a utility, a tool; it is not a source, so stop treating it as such.

Countless news stories are spread every day over email, blogs, message boards, cell phones, fax machine, or even good old word-of-mouth, but do we need to recognize the role of those tools in news coverage?  ”I just heard the news, thank you cell phones for giving me this news!”  Do we believe these tools should get recognition equal to the actual sources of news that created the stories being passed along them?  Now that’s ridiculous.  Just because the communication tool is new doesn’t mean it is anything more than a tool.  TechCrunch, please get over yourselves and stop promoting Web 2.0 for the sake of it.

Twitter is pretty sure Jeff Goldblum is dead

Jeff Goldblum, for one, can probably vouch for how little heavy lifting Twitter actually does:

TMZ alone should get credit for having feet on the ground (of some sort) and for getting the story first.  Stop thanking the messenger, and thank the writer of the message.

If you haven’t already seen Microsoft’s so-called ‘Project Natal’ in action, check it out here.  The original Xbox and the 360 were essentially me-too products that thrived due to an easy-to-learn development platform and a solid online component, but with Project Natal MS is actually pushing technology, gaming, and even user interface forward.  If the final product works as well as it does in the video (which frankly is a little hard to believe), they’re really on to something.

According to the laboriously-named Participatory Media Network, 99% of 18- to 24-year-olds have profiles on “social networks,” but only 22% of people in that age group use Twitter.  In their press release about the survey, the PMN concludes that Twitter “has yet to catch on” with Gen Y’s, and Cnet’s Caroline McCarthy parrots the PMN’s press release in her post “Young adults haven’t warmed up to Twitter.”

In what alternate universe does a service that after just over two years in existence already has a 22 percent market share count as something that has yet to catch on?  This is exactly what happens when market researchers trained in the 60’s are allowed to research things they don’t understand.  Any new online service would be thrilled to have a 22% market share of Gen Y, particularly a service that requires them to actually post content publicly to participate, rather than consuming content or having private conversations as they do on most social networks.

PMN is showing that they are hopelessly out of touch by positioning Twitter against the entire social networking space at large - it’s like saying “90% of adults 18-24 have cars, but only 20% are Toyota - Toyota has yet to catch on!”  Yet again I am severely disappointed by market researchers, as well as the press who mindlessly regurgitate these releases.

Microsoft has now officially announced the relaunch and re-branding of Microsoft Live Search as Bing.com. One of the biggest branding blunders in Internet history, “Live Search” will thankfully go the way of the dodo.

Take this as a lesson: make sure your brand sounds like a brand. If I were to tell you that Microsoft was launching a product called “Cool Search” would you guess that it was on cool.com? Unlikely. You’d probably look on Microsoft.com, or perhaps coolsearch.com, both of which would be disappointing.  When your brand sounds too much like a plain old adjective, you need to attach the .com.

They could have avoided all this and capitalized on the excellent domain Live.com by using the name Microsoft Live.com Search.  It is a mouthful, but it would give you a much better idea of where to go to search.  But now, with their users thoroughly confused, they’ve decided to give up and rebrand entirely to Bing.com.  Some may criticize the lighthearted and nonsensical nature of the word “bing”, but I applaud the move - it’s short, it’s memorable, and if their new features are competitive with the other search engines, it’ll help build brand awareness and loyalty.  Bing  won’t challenge Google anytime soon, but it would be nice to have a viable alternative.

Google today announced the impending release of their new…product, Google Wave.  I hesitate when describing it, because it’s actually pretty tough to categorize.  Techcrunch has a thorough writeup of the functionality and Mashable has a brief of their own, but neither does much analysis, so let me try to summarize.

Google Wave is:

• Like email, but won’t work (navtively) with existing email
• Like IM, but it isn’t an application
• Like Facebook messaging, but without Facebook
• Like Facebook’s application platform, but without Facebook
• Like Twitter, but without a public-facing feed
• Like IRC, but less temporal

Does that help?  Maybe not.

Let me try to sum it up in a positioning statement that I’m making up based on the proposed featureset:

Google Wave is a web-based messaging system that helps people communicate, share, and collaborate with friends, family, and business contacts both in real-time and asynchronously.

If we look at it in these terms, Google Wave is not only extremely ambitious but is also set squarely against Facebook.

You may consider this comparison invalid because Google Wave has so many features that Facebook doesn’t and Facebook has a ton of features that Wave doesn’t, but users don’t look at features, they look at problems the product solves for them.  Is it filling a need that isn’t met right now, or is it filling the need better than existing services?  It’s unlikely that people would give up Facebook for Wave, so the question for Google comes down to: will they use both? You can ask the same question about Wave vs. email, IM, and Twitter.

In order to think Wave will be successful, you have to think the problems it solves are important.  Here are some of the problems it purports to address:

• It’s hard to communicate and collaborate with friends over email / IM / other web services
• There are too many ways to communicate with people online - I want a single method
• Email, IM, and online messaging don’t allow collaboration, and allow limited use of multimedia
• Email is not a dynamic communication mechanism
• It’s hard to share my email conversations with people who aren’t in the conversation
• “When (messaging is) not live, you lose your attention on a conversation, but when you see it live, you’re engaged.” (I remember the days of using “talk” when you could see the other person typing and correcting themselves as they type - it actually kind of sucks.)
• “IM and email shouldn’t really be two separate tools”
• I want to allow “anonymous comments, or a number of different identities” in my conversations

This is just a start of what they want it to do.  One of the creators, Lars, said of Wave,

“My vision is to have the one communication tool. I want all the use cases to be covered. We made up ideas of what Wave could be used for — negotiating contracts, writing articles. Lots of things.”

Is it trying to do too much?  Very likely.

I fear that Wave breaks one of Google’s own product development tenets: fail often, fail early (or maybe fail early, fail often, I don’t remember, but I know there was a lot of failing involved.)  This project has been in development since 2007 and has 50 developers working on it, and it already has a plethora of what we product managers call “would-be-nice” features.  I encourage Google to make sure the core features work and release this thing as soon as possible to see if people like it at all.  If they like it, THEN add the silly extras like real-time wiki-style collaborative editing that lets you see what other people type as they type it.

I do like the concept behind Wave in how it aims to unify communication, but I want to see that happen in a way that simplifies my life.  Read through the comments on the TechCrunch article, and you’ll see that most people think it looks too complicated.  As a contrast, no one who saw the iPod or iPhone unveilings thought either device would complicate their lives - they are both beautiful in their simplicity, and that’s why they sell by the boatloads.  Google will have an uphill battle marketing this product until they can show an average user how it will simplify their lives. If they clear this hurdle, Facebook needs to watch out.

If you didn’t think Wolfram Alpha was useful before, here’s your proof that it can answer everday queries that everyone cares about:

• http://www65.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pi+to+20000+digits
• http://www65.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=distance+to+moon+in+leagues
• http://www65.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=rimjob

Snicker.

Have you found any other amusing queries?

As sick as I am of hearing about the underwhelming Wolfram Alpha, I’m even more sick of hearing about the product-that-shouldn’t-be, Amazon’s Kindle.  This machine is destined to be obsolete within a year, so Amazon should quick-like get back to ecommerce and leave hardware to companies that know something about it.

Here’s my problem with the Kindle: when I look at it, I think “that’d be cool if I could also browse the web on it, watch movies on it, play music on it, or use it as a digital picture frame,” but despite it being essentially a small computer, it won’t do any of those things.  A netbook can do all of these things, and it costs less.  

For a few laughs, let’s look at Amazon’s pitch for their latest model, the Kindle DX:

• Holds up to 3,500 books, periodicals, and documents - Amazon downplays the fact that this is only 4GB of storage, a pathetic number for any modern netbook.
• Beautiful Large Display: 9.7″ diagonal e-ink screen reads like real paper; boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images - Are you kidding me?  16 shades of gray?  Sure, that’s better than the Newton, but this isn’t 1992, guys.  Any modern netbook offers 32 bit color, giving millions of colors.  If I want to read a text book or a blog post on my Kindle DX, you better believe I want color.
• Auto-Rotating Screen: Display auto-rotates from portrait to landscape as you turn the device so you can view full-width maps, graphs, tables, and Web pages - We’re only down to the third bullet point, and this is the best you can do?  This is truly trivial, and easy to do on a netbook. 
• Built-In PDF Reader: Native PDF support allows you to carry and read all of your personal and professional documents on the go - PDF readers are free to download on any PC.  Just because this is better than the original Kindle doesn’t make it cool.
• Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle DX, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, no annual contracts, and no hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots - if you really need to download a book while you’re outside of wi-fi range, apparently this is the device for you.  If you don’t have a Kindle, just download the book to your smartphone, then transfer it to your PC.  
• Books In Under 60 Seconds: You get free wireless delivery of books in less than 60 seconds; no PC required - You can also download an ebook to your netbook in less than 60 seconds, no Kindle required.  Fail.
• Long Battery Life: Read for days without recharging - Who reads for more than a couple hours at a time, anyway?  Non-problem solved.
• Read-to-Me: With the text-to-speech feature, Kindle DX can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud to you, unless the book’s rights holder made the feature unavailable - Now you can have A Brief History of Time read to you in the author’s own voice.  Awesome! 
• Big Selection, Low Prices: Over 275,000 books; New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are only $9.99, unless marked otherwise - This has nothing to do with the device and will surely be available on any PC very soon.
• More Than Books: U.S. and international newspapers including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, magazines including The New Yorker and Time, plus popular blogs, all auto-delivered wirelessly - Again, I have a PC and a cool new thing called a “web browser” for this. 

• It’s lightweight with a super-compact form factor
• Um…that’s about it.  I guess this isn’t much of a bulleted list.

And Amazon wants $489 for this piece of…technology.  For that kind of money I can almost get two netbooks, each of which have 9″ full color screens, 1GB RAM, 160GB hard drive, built-in webcams and mics, wifi, memory card slots, 3 USB ports,  and weigh in at 2.5 lbs (2 times the weight of the Kindle DX.)  With the Kindle, I can read an ebook.  With two netbooks, my wife and I could video conference with the in-laws, watch movies (chick flick for her, dude flick for me), organize our photos, play online games against each other, or…we could read ebooks.  Where to spend the money is pretty obvious to me.

 

Asus Eee Top PC with 15" touchscreen

So, I’m calling it: within one year, someone else will have an ebook platform that will be far more robust and versatile, and it will be cheaper, and Amazon will exit the game to focus on selling ebooks.  Perhaps the Kindle-killer will be Apple’s rumored iPad, perhaps Microsoft will get their Tablet PC act together, or perhaps Asus will mate their Eee PC with their Top PC to create a Kindle-beating love child.  I don’t know who’s going to do it, but the PC industry is going to put the Kindle out of our misery, and the sooner the better.