The Old Advertising Merry Go Round
Every handful of months, I get into a debate with myself, that eventually spills out into my personal advisory board. The debate is always the same: my blog gets lots of visitors, and it’s really decently rated. I could sell a sponsorship that would have value to the sponsor, and that would be beneficial to me (I have this fantasy of a special account for flying to conferences, paid strictly by sponsor ads). Because I’m always only thinking about one single sponsor, classy-like, the way Robert Scoble does it, I figure it won’t be too big a deal.
My advisory board always gives me good counsel. It splits every time on the difference between perceptions (”do I become a number if you start selling me as one?”) and opportunity (”why not? You do great stuff here.”) I’m grateful for all the perspectives, and I take each of them deeply to heart.
And just as I was fairly sure I was going to tip towards the side of trying out a sponsor ad for a few months as a trial, it comes up in conversation elsewhere.
Allen Stern wrote about it here, but gets an earful here on FriendFeed.
Of the comments that drew my attention, Dave Winer said something that resonated with me. Here’s the snip:
“i only click on ads thst interest me and only when i have the time. whcih means that i never click on ads on what you call content. never seen one that interests me and i’m generally not shopping when reading blogs.”
So, there I am. I’ve got a blog that puts out content that has nothing to do with products or services directly, and what it does, the last thing I want is for you to worry that there’s an unseen payoff.
I don’t want dyou to shop while you’re reading and participating here. If I do a project like that, I’ll do it elsewhere. That’s the ruling for now. Okay?
That said, you’re ad-free (except for the RSS ad at the bottom of each post).
What do you think about all that?
These posts are made for sharing. Feel free to repost all or portions of this (as long as it’s not for profit). If you do post it, please make sure you kindly link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and give me credit. Thanks!
Photo credit, katmere
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Why Twitter Still Wins
I just went back to check out Jaiku. It’s a clean interface. There’s a US short SMS code so it’s easy to use from my phone. There are people using it still, and it has some features that Twitter doesn’t.
I’m a bit frustrated with Twitter. They deleted my friend Dave Fisher for no apparent reason, and didn’t put him back until Jeff Pulver sent a message to the senior team. They’ve capped a few friends’ following limits with no explanations (both have several thousand fewer than me, so I can’t even understand the math). So yeah, I’m frustrated.
BUT, there are no real tools for Jaiku. There’s no Summize. There’s no Tweetstats. There’s no Twitter ANYTHING built around it.
And that’s the takeaway.
One way to win in software is to make your application fertile for building upon. Open your API. Give people tools to build an ecosystem around it. And it becomes a lot harder to pull away and go elsewhere. Other tools have enough of the same features on the surface, but once you go past being a certain level of user, it’s not a 1:1 comparison. Twitter has a software community. Jaiku just has big parents.
If I were selling software, I’d think hard about this.
And you?
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Five LinkedIn Tools I Need Right Now
Alright, Mario, listen up. I need the following five tools from LinkedIn, and I’m going to ask everyone in my community to chime in and tell you what they might need, too. Sure, you might not be able to get me these all by close of business Friday, but let’s see how much we can manage, okay?
A Cork Board
I need a LinkedIn cork board, where I can put sticky notes to remind me to write C.C.’s recommendation, and where I can put John Swords’ hiring need details. It’ll be where I remind myself to swap out my pic next time I have a moment. AND, I want to be able to allow friends to put sticky notes up there without seeing mine. (So, two boards.)
Groupings
I want private groupings within my address book. I don’t think alphabetically. Do you? I need LinkedIn to let me group my media friends together, my enterprise IT friends together, my friends who live around Philadelphia. And I want multiple groupings for the same contacts.
Commenting
What if I could add a layer of metadata to my entire LinkedIn profile? I might want to tell stories around the details, or layer in how many projects I used to do back in the old days. I got the idea by looking at the FriendFeed tools. In fact, what if the recommendation tools were a bit thinner. They’re not super difficult now, but it’d be amazing how many more “thumbs up” votes you’d get if that were a click versus a written recommendation. (Maybe layers of voting in that case?)
Visual Data
I need to SEE how people connect, and where they are the hub and where they are the node. Even if the other people don’t choose to expose all their contacts, I might get a sense of someone I need to reach being accessible in different ways, instead of you providing me just a link. It would also be instant “influencer” candy, especially if you could do things like show “velocity of connections” and “frequency of logins and updates” in a dashboard way, too.
Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that LinkedIn feels relatively static. This one dynamic would offer a sense of motion that wasn’t there before, and would provide me with data as to how FRESH someone’s efforts are.
An Open Platform
Oh, you mentioned that one back in June of 2007. I’d love to see this happen. Why? Because frankly, you’re sitting on some HUGE opportunities, and they can be monetized, and you could be generating revenue, and I would be willing to pay for features that you’ve not rolled out yet.
What’s Your Take?
As the need for better social network tools and more robust networks come about, I believe the “needs” I’ve listed above are only the starting point. What do you think? What’s your wish list for LinkedIn? Do you think I’m too far off base with my wishes?
And by the way, I really really really admire Mario Sundar and believe that LI owes him more than what they’re paying him, no matter what that number is.
