Social Network Spending to Increase

Social Networks continue to show a strong future of growth.

Two recent Forrester reports published by my colleagues, Josh Bernoff and Oliver Young, both showing the future of social computing for the interactive marketer and for enterprise 2.0 purchasing. A very obvious trend for both of these reports is the growth of budgets by marketers and companies for social networks.

I’m not releasing any new information here, but just highlighting the public data that they both point out:

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Social technology marketers bullish in face of recession

We polled interactive marketers with the following question: “Assuming that the economy is in a recession in the next six months, how would you change your Investments in the following marketing channels?” Over 40% of them indicated that they will increase spending on social networks even in face of a recession during the next 6 months.

Josh writes: “Social networks will get the largest number of increases, over 40% of those using it, along with user-generated content, blogs, and that old standby, email marketing.”

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Forecast: Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Spend By Technology, 2007 To 2013

In Oliver Young’s report on Global Enterprise Web 2.0 Market Forecast: 2007 To 2013, or read the blog post, and the graph has been published on Read Write Web and ZDnet, Enterprise spending of social computing software (internal and external) his report provided some clear forecasts demonstrating that purchasing in social networking software (like this white label list) will increase, and take the largest segment of the budget.

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Your internal discussion
You should forward these stats to the web strategy teams within your company, and start a discussion answering each of the following questions:

Is your organization of what social networks are (believe me, many aren’t)?

Are you aware of why social networks are so important (talk about trust)?

Is your marketplace using social networks? if so, which ones?

What are you competitors or others in your industry going?

What are people doing in social networking sites in our marketplace?

That’s just the exploratory questions you’ll need to answer, there’s a much large discussion you’ll need to have, after the awareness questions are answered.

I’ve published quite a few posts on social networks, view archives.

CPA and The path to social network riches

By Mason Wiley

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Advertising on social networks can be very expensive -- with little payoff. Here's an easy solution to this cost problem.

Social networks are commanding attention -- for good reason. Millions and millions of people visit them daily (and to many an employer's chagrin, hourly). Given the sheer number of users and their length of stay, the big social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and others should be an advertiser's paradise. But they're not -- yet.

Ironically, the huge number of impressions generated by social networks poses challenges for advertisers. For example, buying all those eyeballs on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad model can be prohibitively expensive for many. And unlike sites centered around a specific interest, social networks attract so many different types of people that targeting is difficult. Behavioral targeting offers promise, but hasn't yet evolved to the point at which it can guarantee a positive ROI.

A new ad model has emerged that can. The cost-per-acquisition model (CPA) provides advertisers with a guaranteed way to ensure ad efficiency, while also opening the door for social networks to monetize more of their traffic.

The benefit of CPA for advertisers
The CPA model is ideal for social networking sites because it eliminates virtually all the risk for advertisers of buying on a CPM basis. As a performance-based model, advertisers pay a fee only for the results their CPA campaign generates. That result can be any transaction specified by the advertiser. For example, an advertiser places a CPA campaign on ESPN.com. Rather than paying for all the people who see that ad, the advertiser only pays the publisher for each user that not only clicks on the ad but also follows through and completes the desired action as defined by the advertiser -- anything from an email submit or qualified lead to a sale or paid membership.

Through its 1:1 ratio of pay-per-action, CPA changes the rules for advertisers. The need for narrow targeting to eliminate ad waste becomes irrelevant since there is no waste. Similarly, there's almost no possibility for click fraud since advertisers only pay for results. And unlike CPM, the results of a CPA campaign are directly verifiable through tracking technology, which enables advertisers to determine which ads convert and which do not. For example, an A/B test of landing pages can be measured against the actions completed via any number of creatives or landing pages as well as the conversion processes. The path to purchase is easily tracked back to the source, including the placement of the original creative.

But the single greatest appeal of CPA for advertisers is that it is performance-based. With advertising costs directly tied to results, it provides them a way to advertise with full accountability and control. Advertisers simply establish the actions -- signups, sales, leads, etc. -- they want to reward, and establish how much they're willing to pay. If online publishers think the campaign will generate sufficient response with their audience base to meet revenue goals, they can choose to run the campaign.

Certainly, by running campaigns based on the promise of a potential future reward, publishers are taking a risk. But given that CPA campaigns are more aggressively focused on generating response than the many revenue-sharing campaigns available, it's a gamble that has been paying off for them. Now, social network publishers are finding that CPA can pay off for them, too.

The benefit for social networks
Like any publisher site, social networks want to maximize advertising revenue. Cost-per-thousand is the most prevalent model they use to do it, and it seems to make sense because CPM focuses on the number of impressions generated -- and these sites generate a lot of them. The problem is that these impressions come from an incredibly broad cross-section of the population, many of which can be irrelevant to a given advertiser. As mentioned above, although these sites generate billions of impressions, targeting the right ones is challenging. While targeting users based on where they have clicked (behavioral targeting) can help improve the odds, it is by no means an exact science or a guarantee that a sufficient number of users will perform the desired action.

These inherent challenges under the CPM model have limited the appeal of social networks for advertisers. The result has been a tremendous surplus of excess inventory that despite all best efforts just can't be sold. And a lot of those billions of impressions have gone un-monetized. But now that's changing thanks to CPA.

With CPM, the advertiser assumes the risk by paying the publisher for uncertain potential results. In CPA the publisher assumes the risk by running ads for uncertain potential payments. But when its remnant inventory at issue, the publisher runs no risk; it is inventory that would otherwise go unsold. So it only stands to reason that a social networking site will make more money running CPA ads on remnant inventory than it can just selling space based on CPM alone.

Conclusion
The CPA model is not new, but it has evolved to be a highly cost effective way for advertisers to use social network sites, and an effective way for social networks to generate increased revenue. And new widgets and applications are emerging for social networks that can make CPA even more powerful in the future.

Ceaseless Ad Startup Funding Orgy Goes On With Ooyala

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Count 'em 11 online ad startups funded just this week and two were bought: IMMI, Covario, EVO Landing (some might not count this as online advertising but part of the biz is in ads), Germany's Adscale, AdInfuse, GoldSpot Media, Smaato, Quantcast, IGA Worldwide, Adchemy, Plus AdOn Network and Prime Visibility were acquired.
The latest funding announced is Ooyala. We had previously reported on Ooyala when it was in stealth made. It was noteworthy as its founders are Bismarck Lepe and Sean Knapp, who came from Google. Google employees who leave the company enjoy a halo effect as it is assumed that they are smarter and better connected than some jerks who left Yahoo. It will interesting to see how many failures will go down before former Googlers lose their priveledged status.
Now that has disclosed that is has raised $8.5M in 2nd-round funding led by Sierra Ventures, the curtain over the company has been lifted a bit. (BTW - Ooyala says its total funding is now at $10M. Moreover Ooyala won first place in Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge last month, taking home $100K in cash and services as well as a golden hammer symbolic of the breaking of server boxes.
Ooyala has launched a product called Backlot which allows users to measure, manage, syndicate, and monetize videos across video players. It also tracks over 20 different viewing metrics that detail the performance of online videos and syndication channels. For this Ooyala charges $0.08/hour per video served.

Read on...

also:

While E*Trade Sucks Wind, Former CEO Raises $29.6M For SocNet MOLI
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Former E*Trade CEO Christos Cotsakos left the company under a cloud but he's living large in West Palm Beach, FL and his latest startup has raised $29.6M. Mainstream Holdings did the deal with Home Depot co-founders Bernard Marcus and Kenneth Langone, and Vantis Capital Management's Steven Holzman. A local paper reports that the startup raised an initial $20M from Cotsakos and $6M from other investors.
Opening the kimono today at the Demo event, Mainstream Holdings was launched in 2004 but is launching a social network called MOLI. MOLI is led by some E*Trade refugees including COO Judy Balint who was Chief International Officer at E*trade. At launch, the firm already employees 50 heads in Palm Beach, plus others off-shore.
GigaOm has a long, thoughtful review but in our summary judgment, Moli has whiffed at launch. Maybe they will get their act together later on. The site needs to be more clear about who should use it (creative types who want to make money) and why this would be time well spent (something about creating multiple profiles for your professional and personal selves.)

It's going to be painful for the E*Trade gang to justify their valuation to investors if they can't get a handful more people to check it out soon. Call us jaded, but this is an obvious failure in the making that the rich dudes think will work just by throwing money at a trend.

Social Media Future Bright, Challenging

DECEMBER 19, 2007

What's the best way to market to a billion users?

Social media applications will attract over one billion broadband users within five years, according to Strategy Analytics' "The People's Revolution: Implications of Web 2.0 and Social Media Applications" report.

It is usually a great thing to be able to use the word "billion" in a forecast. Yet Strategy Analytics said that real pitfalls could ruin business prospects for some social networks.

"The long term financial viability of even the largest social media sites depends heavily on the ability to develop targeted advertising techniques that are as yet largely unproven, or may ultimately be thwarted by privacy regulations," said David Mercer, principal analyst at Strategy Analytics.

Social networks are attracting marketers' attention for a reason. eMarketer estimates that by the end of 2007, 38% of all US Internet users age 3 and older, or 72 million people, will have used social networking at least once a month.

By 2011, one-half of all Internet users, nearly 105 million people, will use social networking regularly, and that's just in the US.

eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson said that marketers could also miss the mark by using a one-size-fits-all mentality with social networks.

"Though the temptation for some marketers may be to look at the large audience of a social networking site and launch a mass branding campaign, that strategy also fails to take advantage of the engagement possibilities," Ms. Williamson said.

This is a more immediate risk than outside regulation or business model uncertainties; a ham-fisted approach risks squandering opportunities for customer engagement.

"The opportunity is to find your brand fan or your most likely brand prospects and have some relevant communication with them," said Art Sindlinger, activation director for social media and gaming at Starcom Worldwide, in an interview with eMarketer.

"It's about engaging with people in your inner circle and trying to radiate out from there, rather than throwing a net out and fishing for folks," Mr. Sindlinger said.

How to nurture an online community

Like gardens, online communities need weeding and feeding to grow and thrive. Prospero Technology's VP explains.

Online communities are everywhere and more are popping up every day. Why? Simple fact: Communities help brands. Research shows that online community users spend 54 percent more than non-community users (eBay, 2006). Virtual forums also promote a much higher rate of customer satisfaction when compared to other forms of interaction. According to a recent Jupiter study, customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail.

Online communities are an incredibly valuable asset. It is your chance to speak directly with your customers or, if you prefer, just observe customers speaking with each other. There is a wealth of insight and opportunity to be gained, but you must first make sure you manage your online meeting place effectively and take the time to cultivate it properly. Most forums need to be tended like gardens, with moderation (weeding) and guidelines (feeding), to be productive.

In some cases you want to maintain a narrow, targeted interaction -- to keep the discussion focused and current. An example would be Fox's "American Idol" site, where discussions revolve around the most recent shows and who was kicked off that week.

You can see an example of an alternative approach on iVillage. People participating in iVillage's parenting forums, for example, frequently jump from parenting-specific topics to current events to life events such as work challenges or family illness. These forums are less focused, but quite often are characterized by stronger emotional ties.

It's up to you to set the guidelines. But, no matter what rules you put in place, online communities require constant monitoring and some level of moderation in order to succeed. Here are some important points to keep in mind for your online community:

Maintain focus
The success of your community will rely on your ability to maintain the focus of the forums. Some suggestions include:

• Policies and guidelines should be as straightforward as possible to avoid questions and confusion. You should always have the ability to remove any content from your community area for any reason.
• Stay in touch with topical current events; mine content from daily news events, using news and topical websites to assist and guide interaction.
• Revive conversations that run out of momentum, or end them graciously.
• Keep users informed of company news.
• High levels of participation are not necessary; you just have to make sure that your community members feel comfortable within the community so they will participate when the time calls for it. Participation for the sake of participation can water down the community.
• Make sure your early adopters are appropriate community role models.
• As the community expands, begin to build niche communities of interest within the community.

Don't go it alone
To do the above for a successful, robust community can be a daunting task. In some cases, it makes sense to work with a third-party partner to help the moderation process in high traffic communities. A professional moderation team can help provide front-line support to users, as well as in-depth analysis to help you better understand the interests and needs of your customers. For instance, your moderation partner can assist in:

• Maintaining a safe and welcoming environment for all community members.
• Seeding new discussions and pruning existing ones to ensure robust interactions.
• Helping new users get comfortable and answering questions from the entire community.
• Performing regular sweeps of community content to remove offensive messages as well as members who are intentionally/habitually disruptive or abusive.
• Compiling a weekly report that summarizes ongoing conversations and interactions of the communities and analyzes trends.

In addition, once your company's online community is up and running, it requires a number of important roles to make it a success. Some of these roles you should consider are:

Community Manager

• Maintains the community vision.
• Develops, implements and maintains the forums' taxonomy.
• Works with content producers and business development personnel to maximize user interaction between the forums and the main site (includes promotion and marketing).
• Develops and implements user guidelines.
• Acts on forum issues escalated by hosts.
• Writes reports on community performance.
• Helps hosts with initiation and facilitation where needed.
• Is on the lookout for new topics of relevance.
• Depending on the budget, may also perform host and monitor duties.
• Has a firm grasp of the average community user's experience as the community evolves.

Host

• Welcomes new users, establishes authority, ground rules and tone.
• Begins topical discussions with the first few posts (called seeding).
• Answers questions and provides follow up (called facilitating).
• Escalates issues that can't be immediately resolved to the community manager.
• Writes reports on activity.
• Keeps discussions and chats focused, engaging, robust and informative.
• Issues warnings and disciplines users.
• Identifies and rewards leaders in the user population.
• Identifies community benchmarks, such as users scheduling face-to-face meetings or beginning to defend each other.
• Hosts may also perform monitoring duties.

Moderator/Monitor/Sweeper

• Reads every new post on an assigned schedule, i.e. every six hours.
• Makes sure each post is on topic and conforms to the user guidelines.
• Writes reports on community activity.
• Escalates issues to the host and/or community manager.
• Identifies under-utilized forums for increased promotion and host action.

Online communities, when properly tended, grow into lush, green gardens, free of weeds and producing the flowers of great customer relations and brand loyalty.

Rusty Williams is co-founder and vice president, Prospero Technologies. Read full bio.

Ad Spending On Social Networks Will Continue To Grow In '08

by Mark Walsh, Monday, Dec 17, 2007 7:00 AM ET

AD SPENDING ON ONLINE SOCIAL networks worldwide will nearly double, to $2.2 billion in 2008 from $1.2 billion this year, according to an eMarketer study being released today. Most spending will come from the U.S., where social network advertising is projected to grow to $1.6 billion next year, from $920 million in 2007. MySpace and Facebook dominate U.S. social network advertising, claiming 70% of ad dollars.

That's still a fraction of overall U.S. online advertising, which eMarketer estimates will hit $21.4 billion this year.

The ad growth is fueled by an expanding social networking population. Emarketer estimates that 37% of U.S. adult Internet users visited a social networking site at least once a month in 2007. By 2011, almost half of adult users and 84% of teens will be on social sites.

"The continued growth of social networking seems assured unless teens stop social networking as they become adults," said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson, in a prepared statement released Friday providing key findings. (The full eMarketer report, "The Promise of Social Network Advertising," will be released today.)

Converting large and growing audiences into significant ad revenue is the challenge for top social networking sites. To that end, Facebook and MySpace are diversifying ad opportunities beyond marketer profile pages to formats including search, display ads and widgets.

Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer at Fox Interactive Media, said at the recent UBS Media conference that MySpace now gets about 40% of its ad revenue from brand advertising, 30% from search, 20% from performance-based ads sold directly, and only 10% from inventory sold via third-party ad networks.

Both MySpace and Facebook have also recently unveiled behavioral ad platforms aimed at mining the voluminous personal data users provide through profile pages and other site activities for the benefit of advertisers. "If social network marketing delivers on its promise of peer recommendations, the flow of advertising dollars will turn into a flood," Williamson said.

But privacy issues raised by social advertising and "hyper-targeting," highlighted by Facebook's stumble with its Beacon program, suggest that capitalizing on social networking activity won't be so easy for marketers. And given the incremental growth of Internet advertising over the last decade, social advertising isn't likely to turn into a gusher anytime soon. In fact, it's not yet clear whether it will ever turn into a gusher.

Furthermore, the eMarketer study forecasts that global growth of social network ad spending will gradually slow to 16% by 2011, for a total of $4.1 billion.

Social Networking Research & Usage Data

Figures from EMR surveys of randomly chosen people between 13-65 in
the US and the European Union.

Massive Increase in Usage of Social Networks

•Overall usage of social networks increased to 86% in 2007 Vs
74%in 2006
•2007 results reveal massive increases in usage of such sites

MySpace usage incidence 2006 = 35%; 2007 = 55%
YouTube 2006 =17%; 2007= 53% (more than tripled)
Facebook24% have used it Vs insignificant 12 months ago
•Usage among teenagers aged 13-17 is remarkably high

77% have used MySpace
69% have used YouTube
61% have used Bebo
22% have used Facebook

How Social Networks Compare in Importance for Music

•The survey reveals the massive importance of music in social
networks (particularly MySpaceand Bebo). It is used to reflect
personality and it a short-cut to understanding the personality of
people you meet on such sites

•People express themselves via music and they often make friends
on the basis of shared music tastes

•For those under 35, MySpace is clearly the most important site
for music but its importance is correlated with age eg over 35s are
more likely to say YouTube is the most important site for music

•Bebo is relatively strong among 13-17 year olds (16% rate it
most important for music)

•Facebook is relatively weak in its association with music (only
5% say it is the most important social network for music)

Music Used in Social Network Profiles

•2 in 5 social networkers (39%) have embedded music into their
profile

•For Bebo & MySpace, levels are even higher (65% and 63%
respectively)

•Incidence of embedding music in a profile is directly
correlated with age. 13-17 year olds most likely (65%) and 45+ year
olds least likely (10%)

•Social networkers use music for public displays of their taste
and to reflect their personality –a means of self-expression
through music:76% of those embedding music in their MySpace profile
do
so “To show others what music I’m into”51%
“To say something about my personality”Above is also
true for Bebo users (70% to show off taste, 54% toreflect
personality)Furthermore, 59% agree with the statement “I can
tell a lot about someone by the music they have on their
MySpaceprofile”

The Impact of Social Networks on Music Discovery & Purchase:

•Social networks are having an impact on the way consumers
discover, share and purchase music:

27% regularly discover music on the social network they love (33%
MySpaceusers, 30% Bebo, 26% YouTube)

•Discovery is translating into purchase. 17% of social
networkersstate using such sites has had “massive”or
“big”impact on the way they purchase music

10% have regularly purchased music discovered on these sites
13% regularly for MySpace
15% regularly for Bebo
7% regularly for YouTube

•Users of Bebo claim that site has more of an impact on music
purchasing than users of MySpace–27% & 19% massive/big impact
respectively (MySpacehas the greatest overall impact due to its
size)

•Whilst such networks clearly influence purchase behaviour,
more needs to be done to make purchasing discovered music easier
–46% agreed with the statement “I wish it was easier to
purchase music that I find on these sites”

Attitudes Towards Social Networks

•The rapid rise of Facebook illustrates how some networks can
seemingly spring from nowhere whilst others fall out of favour just
as
quickly

•The fickleness of today’s social networker is reflected
in some of the prevalent attitudes:56% agree with “There are
too many community websites now”41% agree with “Very
popular community websites are full of idiots

•Social network sites need to consider how they monetize their
sites as 45% agree with the statement “Popular community sites
have been ruined by advertising and big business”

Sustained Massive Increases in Ownership of Personal Digital
Players

•Year-on-year, we track ownership of personal digital music
players

•Continuing massive increases in penetration
2005 = 37% own
2006 = 57% own
2007 = 77% own

•The growth of the personal digital player market hasn’t
yet reached saturation

•Penetration has increased across all demographics

•The biggest increases in brand share taken by mobile phone mp3
playersNokia -up from 4% in 2006 to 15% in 2007Samsung -up from 6%
in
2006 to 14% in 2007

PC Downloading Trends -Legal

•The survey identifies a slowdown in the increase in the
population of legal downloaders. 40% growth rate in users in 2006
reduced to some 15% in 2007
2005 = 35% had at least once purchased a legal download
2006 = 50% had at least once purchased a legal download (41%
active,
9% stopped)
2007 = 58% had at least once purchased a legal download (47%
active,
11% stopped)

•While the main purchase driver continues to be to get hold of
music immediately, the survey reveals a marked decline in the
perceived price advantage of legal downloads over CDs following the
widespread decline in the high street price of new releases

In 2006, 45% of legal downloaderscited price advantage of downloads
as
a reason for purchase but by 2007 this had fallen to 31%, providing
evidence that pricing for the record industry is currently in a
state
of considerable flux

•One measure to combat this issue might be for digital
retailers to consider introducing variable pricing models

84% of consumers agreed that older digital downloads should be
cheaper
while
48% claimed they would be prepared to pay more for newly released
tracks.

Top 10 US Social-Network and Blog Site Rankings Issued

Civic pride

MySpace.com continues to sit comfortably atop the rankings of top US social-networking sites with 58.6 million unique visitors in September.

And Google's Blogger remains the top blog site with nearly 29.6 million visitors, according to a custom list of top US social networking sites and blogs compiled by Nielsen Online, reports MarketingCharts.

In a distant second place among social-networking sites, Facebook increased the number of visitors to 18.1 million, growing some 133 percent year over year. MySpace visitors increased 24 percent year over year.

The top 3 social networks' number of visitors decreased slightly from August, whereas those ranked 3rd through 6th increased visitor numbers from the previous month. (Compare with August data.)

Among blog sites, Blogger increased its visitors a significant 50 percent from the year-earlier period, with second-place Six Apart Type Pad also growing - 46 percent - to nearly 11 million visitors in Sept.

The most significant year-over-year growth, however, came from third-place WordPress, which increased unique visitors some 290 percent, from a mere 2.7 million in Sept. '06 to more than 10.4 million this September.

(See the previous month's chart to make month-to-month [Aug. '07 vs. Sept. '07] comparisons.)

Are we already moving on from traditional social networking?

Are we already moving on from traditional social networking?

Even as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg reportedly considers a Microsoft (MSFT) investment, upstart entrepreneurs at the MIT Emerging Technology conference ponder what comes next. Digg.com founder Kevin Rose made an obvious point yesterday. “I was talking to Mark,” said Rose, who sat on a panel with StumbledUpon.com’s Garrett Camp and NetVibe’s Tariq Krim.

“He was saying he’ll rely on people like the three of us to launch applications. Well, we’ve all launched applications. But if you look at the most popular ones, it’s, like, Pirates vs. Ninjas.”

Although neither Digg.com, StumbleUpon or NetVibe purports to be a social network, replacing a Facebook, each is a leader in new forms of social Internet use. NetVibes lets users pepper a personal dashboard with widgets. StumbledUpon is social search that lets users unearth sites that might be interesting to them. And with traffic that often rivals the New York Times Website, Digg lets users vote their favorite stories to the top of the site. All three were named among MIT Technology Review’s 35 innovators under the age of 35.

Rose had news about Digg: new features will include a suggestion service (If you dug this, you might digg that…) and an image section. He’s also working on predictive features that could suggest how popular a story might become based on very early patterns of interaction between the most passionate Digg users.

Particularly fascinating was Netvibes, the Paris and London-based site started in September 2005 by Krim. The jovial Parisian entrepreneur works under an assumption: In the not-so-distant future, Web users will enter the Web in new ways. Rather than starting on Google (GOOG) and navigating through their favorite pages online, they’ll have a landing page where they’ve assembled all of their favorite sites in small page-on-a-page boxes, or widgets. It’s the same bet Zuckerberg is making, of course, and he wants Web users to enter the Web on their social networking profiles.

Krim, however, thinks people want less structure. With NetVibes, he has designed an open landing page. You title it. You drag and drop your favorite widgets onto the page. One widget might track the top headlines in the New York Times Business Section, for example. Another might track the changes in your Facebook profile. And a third might alert you when you have new gmail messages.

There are no banner ads. There is no mugshot, no top friends, no wall on which those top friends post comments. By the end of the year, Krim hopes to add some social components – the ability to share your widgets, with friends, for example. But ultimately, Netvibes is a personal widget market place – publishers (often advertisers) list them and you choose whether to pull them on to your page.

It’s an idea that has attracted interest among valley legends. Netscape founder Marc Andreesson was among Krim’s angel investors. The site has less than $15 million in venture funding, led by Accel Partners in London. But Krim is the first to acknowledge these are early days for widgets. Publishers have to create more, better designed widgets. Advertisers need to figure out how best to advertise on them and through them, and how to sell that advertising.

And did I mention there are no plans for banner ads? Krim says Netvibes should be entirely neutral. There will be advertising, he says, but it will happen entirely through widgets, and those widgets will be added by users. The pressure is on advertisers to come up with creative ideas that appeal to users. But the users, according to Krim, are growing – to 10 million last month.

Will Facebook’s users tire of the traditional social networking structure and leap to Netvibes? It’s worth watching.

A La Facebook, Yahoo Opens Back-End to Developers

Tearing a page out of the social networking playbook, Yahoo has decided to appeal to developers to help build stickiness for its offerings.

By releasing the source code for a number of its web properties and functionalities, CEO Jerry Yang's team hopes to generate a comeback for the brand that models Facebook's jump in traffic since it liberated its back-end code.

Businessweek reports that a beta version of the new My Yahoo site already enables users to link to Gmail. The New York Times and Netflix have also released widgets on the destination, allowing consumers to read stories from customized home pages and rent films.

Facebook Opens Profiles To Tap Into Google Traffic, While Google Grabs Facebook's News Feed Idea

Sep. 5, 2007 at 9:56am Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Facebook Opens Profiles To Tap Into Google Traffic, While Google Grabs Facebook's News Feed Idea

Google is getting a bit more like Facebook by enabling a Facebook-style news feed within its Orkut social networking site, while the king of the walled gardens Facebook acknowledges in actions (rather than words) that it really can't go it alone without search engines like Google, as it prepares to let crawlers into its public user profiles. Actually, Facebook is telling its users that existing profiles already accessible to search engines will be exposed even more. Below, more on the moves, with lots of screenshots and explanations.

Traditional marketing failing on social networks

Get interactive or get out, says analyst

Traditional marketing campaigns are proving unsuccessful on social networking sites, according to a recently published report.

The Forrester Research study suggests that most marketers still use traditional tactics like run-of-site advertising and static microsites to push messages into these networks.

However, the return on investment in these campaigns is very low, and marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value.

Promotions are good in this context, according to Forrester, but information or brand elements that users can pass on to their friends are even better.

"It is clear that successful social networking site campaigns do not follow traditional marketing rules," said Charlene Li, a principal analyst at Forrester and co-author of the report.

"Social networking sites cannot be treated as channels because their members are not passive web pages."

The report suggests that marketers should mimic how music acts promote themselves on sites like MySpace by engaging their fans with frequent backstage gossip and answering their questions.

"During the past 10 years, the evolution of the internet has dramatically changed how organisations interact with customers," said Gurval Caer, president and chief executive at marketing agency Blast Radius.

"Companies are recognising that traditional marketing approaches like advertising are less effective today, and marketers are struggling to deliver value.

"People no longer want 'interruptive' brand communications; they want interactions with their peers and true value from companies through Facebook applications or communities for sharing ideas and experiences."

Caer added that marketing needs to "turn itself on its head" with a much greater focus on building relationships that will make people's lives "easier, better and richer".

The report concluded that companies that want to advertise on social networks should embrace the interactive aspect of the sites in order to gain the full benefit of these campaigns.

• Forrester Report: Marketing on Social Networking Sites
  

The Rise of the Social Operating System

In recent months we have witnessed a number of social networking sites begin to open up their platforms to outside developers. While this trend has been exhibited most prominently by Facebook, it is being embraced by all the leading social networking services, such as Plaxo, LinkedIn, Myspace and others. Along separate dimensions we also see a similar trend towards "platformization" in IM platforms such as Skype as well as B2B tools such as Salesforce.com.

If we zoom out and look at all this activity from a distance it appears that there is a race taking place to become "the social operating" system of the Web. A social operating system might be defined as a system that provides for systematic management and facilitation of human social relationships and interactions.

We might list some of the key capabilities of an ideal "social operating system" as:

• Identity management
  • Open portable identity
  • Personal profiles ("personas")
  • Privacy control
• Relationship management
  • Directory and lookup services (location of people to communicate with)
  • Social networking (opt-in relationship formation, indirect social connectivity via social networks)
  • Spam control
• Communication
  • Person to person communication
    • Synchronous (IM, VOIP)
    • Asynchronous (email, SMS)
  • Group communication
    • Synchronous (conferencing)
    • Asynchronous (group discussions)
• Social Content distribution
  
  • Personal publishing (blogging, home pages)
  • Public content distribution
• Social Coordination
  • Event management (scheduling, invitations, RSVP's)
  • Calendaring
• Social Collaboration
  • File sharing
  • Document collaboration (communal authoring/editing)
  • Collaborative filtering
  • Recommendation systems
  • Knowledge management
  • Human powered search
  • Project management
  • Workflow
• Commerce
  • Classified advertising
  • Auctions
  • Shopping

Today I have not seen any single player that provides a coherent solution to this entire "social stack" however Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL are probably the strongest contenders. Can Facebook and other social networks truly compete or will they ultimately be absorbed into one of these larger players?

July 19, 2007 in Business, Groupware, Knowledge Management, Search, Social Networks, Society, Software, Technology, The Future, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Technorati Tags: social operating system, web operating system

Social-Network Advertising to Keep Growing — With Vigor

Advertisers are increasingly shifting ad dollars to social networking sites from portal sites, with much of that money going to MySpace and Facebook, according to a recent eMarketer report, "Social Network Advertising: Where to Next?" The two social networks together account for 72 percent of the US market for social-network advertising, according to the report, MarketingCharts writes. Advertising on social networks has exploded in recent years, with marketers predicted to spend $900 million in the US in 2007. In 2009 that figure will double, reaching 1.81 billion - and within two years thereafter, in 2011, reach $2.5 billion, eMarketer predicts. Facebook, recently dubbed an online "suburbia" to MySpace's "working class," has achieved tremendous growth since opening up its site to the general public, and now has 31 million active users, up from 8.9 million in September 2006. Three factors are driving increased revenue for MySpace, eMarketer said: It has begun beta testing a new targeted advertising tool that will significantly increase CPMs; parent Fox Interactive Media's (FIM's) deal with Google to supply search technology is providing increased revenue; and MySpace's international business has ramped up significantly. "It wasn't so long ago - 24 months - when many said we were embarking on a fool's errand. In the 12 months prior to our acquiring MySpace, the site generated $23 million in revenue. Today, on the back of its durability and success, we are forecasting that MySpace alone will generate in excess of $800 million in revenue in fiscal '08," the CEO of MySpace parent News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, is quoted as saying. eMarketer has projected that MySpace's US ad revenue would be $525 million in 2007 and $820 million in 2008, but this week said those it would likely up its forecast later this year. Facebook is projected to bring in $125 million in ad revenue in 2007, and its deal with Microsoft to sell banners will reportedly generate some $200 million in revenue for Facebook through 2008. Overall, eMarketer projects, $900 million will be spent on advertising on social networks in the US in 2007; it expects that number to increase to $1.38 billion in 2008.

Would You Let These People Friend You?

Half the Biz Is Jumping on Facebook Fanwagon, for 'Research,' of Course

By Matthew Creamer

Published: August 13, 2007

Want to send Julie Roehm a virtual beer or lychee martini? Need to connect with Tom Ajello, star of the ill-fated Subway viral-video pitch and famous fist-bumper? Or give Stuart Elliott a "poke"?

One of the benefits of working in the communications business is that all manner of new-media dawdling can be justified as research, so it's tough to separate out just how much is business-business, how much is business-social and how much is social-social.

Related Item: VIDEO: Madison Avenue Stampedes Onto Facebook Social-Networking Site Becomes Virtual Frat House for Marketing Pooh-Bahs

Then it's time to join the ad hordes who have been crowding Facebook this summer, helping to spike the average age and income level of the social network once limited to college kids. This ain't about selling stuff for clients. Not since the advent of blogging four years ago have ad and media types so jumped on a new-media bandwagon for their own communications and networking purposes.

It's as though the ad business, frustrated with voyeuristically looking on at the rampant growth of younger-skewing sites such as MySpace, finally has a network of its own and has responded with an eruption of self-expression. And unlike the very serious LinkedIn, the industry's previous network of choice, Facebook is spewing a strange blend of content, part high-minded engagement with marketing topics of the day -- such as consumer-generated media and, natch, social networks -- and part dillydallying with mundane exercises such as the microblog Twitter and games such as Food Fight that are almost Beckettian in their embrace of pointlessness.

Explosion
Newsmakers such as Ms. Roehm, the former Chrysler Group and Wal-Mart executive, are there. Groups organized around marketing topics are proliferating. Networks created by agencies, marketers and media companies are spreading. Procter & Gamble's network -- open only to folks with P&G e-mail accounts -- is more than 6,400 strong. Unilever's has more than 5,300 members -- not counting the separate "Hot Unilever Interns" group, with 18 members, most of them Middle Eastern men. There's even a MySpace network.

Why the sudden rush to a platform that's been open for some time? "A lot of marketing people felt they were too late on blogosphere 1.0, which was very generous to those who moved fast, so they're trying to avoid that this time around," said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Nielsen Buzzmetrics. "Also, they're realizing what all the college kids did: that Facebook is a solid platform with sticky appeal."

Eric Bader, senior VP at MediaVest, the Publicis Groupe-owned media agency, compared Facebook to an open-source intranet. "It bridges the gap between business-business and business-social and allows us to bring in insiders so it's not just us talking to ourselves," he said.

Of course, one of the benefits of working in the communications business is that all manner of new-media dawdling can be justified as -- cue finger quotes -- research, so it's tough to separate out just how much is business-business, how much is business-social and how much is social-social. Thanks to Facebook's ever-growing host of applications, it's also pretty clear something besides "research" is going on here. And that something is some rather serious pimping of profiles.

Personality profiles
We get a fairly good sample of Mr. Elliott's cinematic tastes, which, if you read his New York Times column, you'll know trend to mid-20th-century classics such as "The Apartment." We see a dashing photo of agency new-business honcho and former Israeli army officer Avi Dan atop a tank during the Yom Kippur War. From the whole universe of users, we get a never-ending wave of book and movie recommendations, declarations of political affiliations, and status updates that represent the range of human experience, that is, from sleeping to vacationing. On an even more micro level, we get Twitter entries, very brief blog-like postings that are like an RSS feed to the haltingly ordinary, like this one from social-media expert and Ad Age columnist Steve Rubel: "I am enjoying a light frappucino."

(Full disclosure: In its three months of existence, this 30-year-old reporter's profile has been at various times the locus of inane poll questions, mundane status updates, song dedications, Scrabble games, poker games, food chucking, book chucking, zombie biting, fantasy stock trading, snippets of songs by '80s pop duo Wham and dumb wall exchanges, some of which are about Wham. Another Ad Age reporter's profile is studded with a virtual aquarium. Yet another is part of a Harry Potter-related group titled "'NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!': Mrs. Weasley Appreciation Group.")

Ms. Roehm, an avid user of LinkedIn, is new to Facebook, and has used it to connect with young family members. "Overall, it's a terrific networking site that has a social bent, which makes it more fun than businesslike," she said.

'Hooked'
Mr. Dan's experience with Facebook is representative of a lot of users interviewed for this article. Even after Facebook's decision to open membership beyond college students, he dismissed it as a kids' hangout. Despite being initially intimidated, Mr. Dan jumped in. "When I got into it, I became completely hooked," he said. "I spend a couple of hours a day on it. ... I mostly use it for chats and groups."

Where it all goes from here is unclear. Certainly, the network could still use some more CEO participation. Though Digitas Chairman David Kenny is on, the C-suite is under-represented. Asked about his absence, BBDO chief Andrew Robertson quipped, "I don't personally have an entry because I don't want my mother to be able to see what I am up to."

One thing for sure is that all the interest among marketing types isn't going to hurt Facebook's bid to improve ad sales. Mr. Blackshaw even speculates that Facebook's balance of permission-based communications and openness might be "a model for Web 3.0. "

Mr. Blackshaw, operating at the height of meta-ness, has pretty much turned over his Facebook to an examination of the marketing community's obsession with Facebook, even posting a video blog or two on the matter. In the video, he wears a curious bandage on his nose, where, he discloses, his kid smacked him.

Consider the business and the social properly bridged.

Advertisers find new headaches in lawless world of social Web sites

By Doreen Carvajal

Sunday, August 12, 2007

PARIS: First came the soaring ascent of online social networking sites and now comes old fashioned soul searching about a sprawling universe where staid advertisements can scrape up against profiles of giddy young professionals and pages devoted to self-proclaimed angry "straight, white men."

While sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Habbo Hotel have a powerful allure, the companies that run them are finding themselves on the front lines of criticism about fast-evolving standards. Some of the criticism in Britain involves advertising for junk food that is migrating to the sites from children's television programming, where such ads are now banned, and corporate concern about employees distracted by time-sapping virtual networking.

For traditional advertisers rushing headlong into this new territory to reach tantalizing, young users, the ultimate nightmare is the surprise of sharing virtual real estate with risqué material or racist rants.

"Ultimately there are going to be mistakes and unfortunate incidents," said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with the research firm, eMarketer, and the author of a report predicting that global advertising spending on social networks would grow to $3.6 billion by 2011 from $445 million this year.

"Social networking content is very dynamic and it's always changing," she added. "We're moving to a world of user-generated content and it's changing on a minute-by-minute basis. I think marketers are just going to have to get used to it."

Online advertising is a vital part of development for social networks, which have grown dramatically in the past two years with MySpace attracting more than 114 million visitors internationally in June, followed by Facebook with 52.2 million and Bebo at 18.2 million, according to comScore, an Internet tracking service. And all of those sites are feeling some growing pains.

In London, with the number of Facebook users swelling, government agencies and six companies, including Vodafone, Virgin Media and First Direct, made a jumpy, temporary exodus from the site this month. The companies withdrew advertising accounts from Facebook after their brands surfaced in blind purchases alongside a page for the anti-immigrant, right-wing British National Party.

Now the party's Facebook profile has been whisked clean of advertising, but the government's Central Office of Information has temporarily pulled advertising until it receives assurances about appropriate placements.

Other companies are jittery for other reasons; Credit Suisse and Dresdner Kleinwort cut off company access to such sites because of concerns about unproductive use of work time.

"Access to Facebook is denied by our automatic Web site filtering software as it may contravene our Internet use policy," said Murray Parker, a Dresdner Kleinwort spokesman. "Dresdner Kleinwort only provides Internet facilities to staff for the purpose of conducting company business."

MySpace and Bebo, which has evolved into the most popular social site for European users, have already given their assurances to British government authorities. Facebook, as well, announced last week that it was developing new systems to allow advertisers more control.

But the controversy in Britain has had an impact on all companies in the social networking category, many of which have been taking steps to highlight their ethical responsibilities, by hiring special "safety officers" or to refuse ads for profile pages.

"Bebo, unfortunately, gets tarnished with the same brush as Facebook, which is very new in the U.K. market," said Mark Charkin, head of Bebo sales for England and Ireland.

The British flap happened just after Bebo rolled out an edgy new series called KateModern, which it had commissioned from the producers of infamous and fictional Lonelygirl15, a Web series about a young girl named Bree. The ambition is to attract more users to the site, but also to tap a new revenue pool by integrating products into the story line to give advertisers greater exposure instead of click-through advertising banners.

The advertising is just starting to surface, like a glimpse of a Microsoft brand on a computer. But Charkin said no ads would appear in the more serious and dramatic scenes. Orange, Proctor & Gamble and Buena Vista, have all signed up to give their products bit parts, according to Charkin.

Bebo and Habbo House, an animated world with sites in 19 countries that draws users between the ages of 10 and 16, are both integrating candy and food advertisements into their sites, which has drawn particular criticism in England, where authorities banned junk food advertisements in April for television programming aimed at children aged 4 to 9 years. At the start of next year, the ban will extend to programs for viewers younger than 16.

Bebo has been running a campaign for Skittles candy, "A World of My Own," that offers users a chance to create their own ads. Habbo Hotel, with its headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, incorporates brands like Burger King or Juicy Fruit gum, into the public spaces where players hang out in rooms with shiny tile floors and counters that look very similar to a fast food restaurant. "We think the future is having users acting or interacting with your brand. How do we solve that?" said Henrik Hoglund, who leads advertising sales for Habbo. "By setting up a competition, a quest and other things that can activate brands."

Habbo, according to Juhani Lassila, a company spokesman for Sulake, the parent company of Habbo, has adopted a code of following the rules in different countries; in the case of Britain, it is not showing the Burger King advertisements on local sites.

A Bebo spokeswoman, Sarah Gavin, said the company was working with the British regulator Ofcom and was following guidelines from the U.K. Advertising Standard's Authority.

Some institutions have reacted by building their own walls. A number of schools, companies and government authorities are filtering out social networks by blocking access. That counter-reaction has been building over the past three months, said Greg Miller, the head of sales for Email Systems, a Web services company, which also filters billions of mail messages a month for hundreds of private and public clients.

"Social networking has come into the fore in the work space," Miller said. "People knew it was there, but they were quite happy to not necessarily ignore it, but to accept it. But now it's gotten to the point where they can no longer tolerate it."

But the desire to communicate about personal issues is a powerful force. One of the newest entrants into the field is an international Web site called Respectance, which is creating a virtual memorial for the dead that enables surviving friends and relatives to create and share user-generated tributes and obituaries.

Ultimately, the company's founders and investors want advertising, but they are moving into untrammeled territory while striking the right dignified tone. "This has to be handled very carefully," said Barend Van den Brande, a partner in Big Bang Ventures, a Belgian venture capital fund that has invested in Respectance. "What you don't want to see is an ad for a BMW on your grandmother's obituary."

Social Network Ad Spending Keeps Rising

AUGUST 13, 2007


Debra Aho Williamson, Senior Analyst

Last week, News Corp. announced that Fox Interactive Media turned its first annual profit on revenue of $550 million. With an estimated 80% of FIM revenue coming from MySpace, that translates to about $440 million in MySpace revenue for the fiscal year, which ended June 30. Almost all of that comes from advertising.

To those who had their doubts about MySpace, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch had this to say during the earnings call: "It wasn't so long ago — 24 months — when many said we were embarking on a fool's errand. In the 12 months prior to our acquiring MySpace, the site generated $23 million in revenue. Today, on the back of its durability and success, we are forecasting that MySpace alone will generate in excess of $800 million in revenue in fiscal '08."

eMarketer has projected that MySpace would generate $525 million in US ad revenue in calendar 2007 and $820 million in 2008. Both of those figures will likely rise when we issue our next social network ad spending forecast later this year.

Three factors will drive increased revenue for MySpace in the near term. It has begun beta-testing a new targeted advertising tool that will significantly increase CPMs. Parent Fox Interactive Media's deal with Google to supply search technology is providing increased revenue. Lastly, MySpace's international business has ramped up significantly.

At Facebook, which lately has stolen a lot of MySpace's thunder, revenue may also surpass our projection of $125 million in 2007. It now has 31 million active users, up from 8.9 million in September 2006, and generates 40 billion page views a month.

Clearly, its deal with Microsoft to sell banner advertising (reportedly contributing $200 million to Facebook's coffers through 2008) is a big revenue driver. (A flap last week over some banner ads appearing on the Facebook page of a British extreme-right-wing group will likely blow over.)

So, all is rosy in social networking, right? Well, not exactly. With banner ads and search deals plowing in a good chunk of revenue for these sites, what happens to the original promise of social network marketing: delivering a message to one person and having that person spread the message to his or her network? That part is still a work in progress.

Marketers are still grappling with how to measure the effectiveness of forming groups; as one commenter recently wrote on the Valleywag blog, "is simply joining a group really driving sales, profits, and metrics that actually matter?"

eMarketer projects that marketers will spend $900 million advertising on social networks in the US this year.

That figure will likely increase, at least in the near term, but if advertisers simply go for the low-hanging fruit of banners and search instead of reaching for the exponential effect of pass-along, much of the promise — and potential — of social networking will be lost.

Hearst Ups Digital Ante: Buys Kaboodle

by Erik Sass, Thursday, Aug 9, 2007 8:30 AM ET

HEARST CORP. WENT DIGITAL SHOPPING--AND it came home with Kaboodle Inc. Billed as a "social shopping community," it allows members to browse and share product recommendations. The new acquisition will be jointly managed by Hearst Interactive Media and the Hearst Magazines digital media unit. Kenneth Bronfin, president of Interactive Media for Hearst, predicts that "Kaboodle will bring to social shopping what MySpace has brought to social media." He added that the acquisition "will enable Kaboodle to further expand its content and service offerings, while also significantly increasing its advertiser base." Kaboodle's novel take on social networking brings together consumers on the basis of their product tastes. It combines the social network function with an e-commerce platform. The site, which launched in 2006, attracts over 2 million unique visitors a month. Cathleen Black, president of Hearst Magazines, touted the synergies that will result from the purchase: "We think Kaboodle has terrific potential for many of our brands, especially in the fashion, beauty and consumer technology categories. Our readers will be able to find the products featured in our magazines, shop electronically with their friends and get their feedback." The Hearst-Kaboodle deal is just the latest in a series of acquisitions of online-only companies by magazine publishers that want to increase their online audience and build online distribution platforms for their content. In July, Hearst bought Ugo.com, described as "a first-stop destination for the latest news and content on games, movies, television, film, DVDs, music, sports, women and comic books." It mostly targets a young male audience, including more than 11 million unique visitors in the U.S. In January, the company acquired eCrush.com, along with related sites eSpin.com and HighSchoolStyleBoard. The first two sites currently have about 3.4 million registered, active users. Other magazine companies have followed suit. Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated bought FanNation.com, a social networking and news site for sports enthusiasts, in February. The site will serve as a model for social networks built around Time Inc.'s other magazine brands. And in April, Hachette Filipacchi purchased JumpStart, an online automobile ad network, which is being integrated with the publisher's CarandDriver.com, RoadandTrack.com and CycleWorld.com properties. JumpStart's network of sites, which include NADAguides.com, Vehix, and J.D. Power & Associates Autos, reach 5 to 7 million potential car buyers a month.

The Crowded, Crowded World of Social Networks

MAY 14, 2007

Hello, hello, hello!

Since eMarketer published its first report on social network marketing, companies have latched with almost religious fervor onto the notion that consumers want to be socially connected online, whether on mass-appeal sites such as MySpace, on targeted niche sites and video sites, or on mobile phones — in fact, almost everywhere.

As a result, eMarketer has increased its estimate of US ad spending on social networks to $900 million in 2007, up from the previous estimate of $865 million.

Furthermore, between 2007 and 2011, US ad spending on social networks is expected to increase 180%, to $2.5 billion.

"The lead players, MySpace and Facebook, continue to perform strongly, and will account for 72% of all US revenues in the category this year," says Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, Social Network Marketing: Where to Next? "Beyond that, hundreds of new social networking ventures are coming online and existing Web sites are also adding social networking capabilities."

This burst of activity in the category brings up the question, "Where does social networking go next?"

The answer? "Everywhere," says Ms. Williamson.

Even outside of the US, social networking will ramp up significantly this year and into next year.

"eMarketer has raised its 2007 forecast for spending outside of the US to $335 million this year, up from $260 million previously," says Ms. Williamson. "In 2011, marketers will spend an estimated $1.1 billion on social network advertising outside the US."

Consumers continue to flock to social network sites. Based on market share of visits, MySpace ranked as the most popular site in the US in February 2007, according to Hitwise.

Cisco: Social Networks Are the Future of Media

Consumers go to marketers
Dan Sheinman, SVP of Cisco's Media Solutions Group (via CNET), recently noted social networks are the best way for media practitioners to understand where media is headed in the digital age.
Cisco acquired Linksys for $500 million and set-top box maker Scientific Atlanta for $6.9 billion last year, marking a pricey leap into the consumer electronics and home entertainment markets, unfamiliar territory for the company. In the near future they hope to reap the rewards of that commitment.
Its eyes are set on social networking, which it believes is the ultimate marketing portal to consumers.
With the aim of reaching consumers where they play, the tech industry is focusing a number of resources on further developing consumer-powered technologies - evident in such companies as Google, Skype, MySpace, and YouTube.
Additionally, the position of user-generated video in advertising has changed from something generally avoided to something sought-for. The Coke-Mentos experiment on YouTube is a case in point.
Cisco is also developing products for the user-driven mediaworld. At present it is poised to launch a line of branded set-top boxes, anticipating the connected living room of the future. The notion of a next-gen connected household has been in the works for some time, but Scheinman notes that broadband adoption is bringing the idea increasingly closer to home.
Broadband use is presently at 35 percent in the United States.
"A giant IP network is what's between content and user," said Scheinman. "That's one of the reasons we acquired Linksys and Scientific Atlanta."
Sheinman was a keynote speaker at the Digital Living Connections Conference in California.