Digital Influentials Volume 1, Issue 6: Stolen From the Headlines – Start-Ups Keeping It Simple

I always love a good quote. A quote can be a simple synopsis of a complex idea that can make it easier to convey to a new audience. It can also keep a good idea top of mind by acting as a mnemonic to assist in your memory’s recall. Either way, it’s a great way to start a day, as well as a column!

“Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.”

- Winston Churchill

Churchill was a complex man, and a wise man. From what I hear, he was also a somewhat arrogant man. The key to success in my eyes has always been to balance hubris with humility. His statement above is quite applicable to our everyday business and the age old idea of K.I.S.S (keep it simple, stupid) and if you balance this idea with the strength of conviction you can be a leader and an innovator. The companies and services in this week’s column are poised to become leaders and innovators because they have followed the path to simplicity in their solutions.

This week’s list of up and comers comes to us from a few of the recent conferences like TechCrunch 50, where a certain amount of humble hubris can be required to present and defend your ideas, as well as the more established stalwarts like OMMA Global and iMedia where smart, innovative companies walk the floor to hear good ideas and mix with intelligent people! If you scour the list of companies and attendees you can find some real keepers, such as the following!

We start with ANYCLIP (http://anyclip.com/) which promises to be a tool for movie aficionados of all kinds. It’s in private beta right now and I am one of the throngs, who’ve been waitlisted, but I’ve seen it in action and it allows you to search for any clip from any movie instantly. Remember the famously obscure line, “awww, but I was going down to toshi station to pick up some power converters”? I do, and now you can watch it too! Or check it out here in the interim (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X66jntR0MVE).

CROWD FUSION (http://www.crowdfusion.com/) provides a new and improved set of tools for custom publishing online, making it even easier to create a dynamic, updated website. It takes the best of blogging, wiki’s, tagging and other sources to patch together and create something better than the sum of its parts. They’re backed by some impressive names and you can see the CMS in action by checking out OBSESSABLE (http://www.obsessable.com/).

PERPETUALLY (http://www.perpetually.com) is a new tool that allows you to keep an archived record of your competitors, your employees or just about any website you can find. You create an account and set it to start recording specific sites; pretty easy! It’s sort of like your own personal WayBack Machine (http://www.archive.org/index.php).

INSTTANT (http://insttant.com/) uses the Twitter stream to create an aggregate of real time news data. Of course, they are really in private beta and don’t even have a product yet, but sign up and stay tuned because the mock-ups they have look great!

In the world of the iPhone… G PUSH lets you get notifications about when emails come in without having to open your mail app on the phone. YAHOO FANTASY lets you keep tabs and make changes to your fantasy football team, even when they‘re in last place like mine. And the GUINNESS PUB FINDER lets you… well… you can pretty much guess what that does.

That’s it for this week – talk to you in two!

LOST content?

Has anyone else noticed this little easter egg of LOST content to satiate us until January?

Fun Stat About Apple

Did you know...

Apple and iTunes account for about 90% of the digital song downloads in the US and 75% of digital music players sold in the US? This is pulled from a Business Week article in the September 28, 200 issue.

Wow. That's all i can say about that.

MEDAPOST: The Real Future of the Newspaper is…

The newspaper, as it is defined today, offers two distinct services. It offers local information and it offers news. The newspaper, as it is defined today, has no future to speak of, but the newspaper of tomorrow does if we examine these two divergent paths and follow them to a possible conclusion.

The newspaper of tomorrow is going to break down into two distinct paths and only one of them includes paper of any form. Local information is always of value and this is the form that printed versions will likely take. In New York City we already see this happening with the Metro and other papers that are handed out to subway riders at no cost. These papers portray themselves as news, but they are not as robust or as well editorialized in their news coverage as the longer running and more established papers of the area. They do, however, offer wide reach, strong circulation and an outlet for local businesses to advertise to a specific audience. In the future that I see, I would imagine these papers focusing their content and advertising 100% on localized business and the immediate vicinity of the reader. Locally targeted advertising is big business and local readers will read a paper when they see value. Though mobile services like WHERE and Yelp offer local information, there is and always be something said for the tactile experience of holding a paper and ripping out local content of value. I don’t see the printed form becoming extinct anytime soon, but I do see it evolving in this way.

The second path that newspapers will follow is that of a trusted, credible source for the news and related editorial that can be distributed through digital methods and syndicated wherever the reader might be. One of the great things about news is hearing the different sides and different takes so that you can form your opinion and this is one of the best services that newspapers offer. From The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal down to The San Francisco Chronicle and The Times Union in Albany, newspapers offer an outlet for opinion as well as the news. Try as they might and profess as they do, very rarely do these papers offer a 100% objective point of view. They typically offer a slightly left or right leaning insight when they report the news and I think this is ok. You read these papers as much for the news as for their opinion and regardless of what bloggers say and media pundits think, these news sources are very credible. We trust what we read from these people because we know that, opinions aside, they are reported by journalists and not just by bloggers with a high school degree and a chip on their shoulder. Blogs may very well get the scoops, but newspapers get the professionals and there will always something said for professional journalists and their ability to truly uncover the in’s and out’s of a story. It’s a matter of trust and I trust these folks!

The future of newspapers may also overlap with those of the blogosphere. The best bloggers may be journalists in their own right and they may do stories for one another, or create partnerships which are mutually beneficial. If I were The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal I would start creating a network of approved bloggers that we reciprocate content with because that kind of relationship would bring instant credibility to the blogger and access to scoops and editorial that those old stalwarts of publishing could use! If you can distribute your stories through a network such as this, then you can generate eyeballs and that is where the revenue still comes from in newspapers.

For every article about the future of newspapers you’ll find another that predicts the death of the newspaper, but if I’ve learned anything as I get older it’s that nothing ever really dies in media and that idealistic stances are rarely right in the long run. Evolution is the name of the game and though it is quite clear that newspapers have a ways to go to become profitable once again, there is a path (actually two) and it takes a strong leader with a bold vision to make it happen.

Here’s to hoping they get it right!

MEDIAPOST: Is Fantasy Football The Best Marketing Program Ever? Yes!

This past week witnessed the opening weekend of the NFL season and it reminded me of the simple brilliance that is Fantasy Football. Without a doubt, Fantasy Football is the most perfect example of integrated marketing in existence today. It marries the best of online marketing and social media with real world events and that most basic of human traits; pure, unbridled competitiveness.

If you really get down to the brass tacks, fantasy football is indicative of the future of online marketing as well. First and foremost, fantasy football is an integrated marketing platform. It takes an offline event, one that is still considered appointment viewing in television and is less likely to be DVR’d and time shifted, and marries it with online tools that allow you to keep track of the games no matter where you are and what time it is. It generates enormous page views for the sites and services that people use to stay in contact with the game and it is also one of the fastest growing online video plays, with people logging in to watch their favorite games and highlights online.

Fantasy football is also a social networking opportunity, with more and more people engaging in competitive leagues each year for money and bragging rights alike. There are numerous platforms for creating and managing a league and there are loads of services you can use, either free or paid, to give you the edge against your fellow managers. Within each of these platforms are tools for talking smack, managing and executing trades and general communications with the rest of your league. Active fantasy team managers don’t just wait till Sunday to log in to their teams. They are interacting daily; checking injury reports and waiver wires, reading local news on their star players and researching other team’s players to see where they could make trades to improve the quality of their teams. In some cases you see fantasy team managers logging in and spending as much as 30 minutes or more per session just doing research (much of which is likely done at work).

What’s most recently developing is the idea that Fantasy Football is also an open, distributed platform, much like Twitter and Facebook Connect. Fantasy Football apps are all the rage this time of the year in the iTunes App Store and there are many examples of paid services that will give you that extra leg up and that extra insight. If you manage your fantasy team on Yahoo or CBS Sportsline you can most likely download either a licensed or a third party app that will allow you access to your league and your team because these sites have an open API that allows you to pull the data into other locations. It would appear there are just as many people accessing their teams through mobile devices as there are the web and the standard PC interface. This is purely qualitatively stated research, but walk into a sports bar on Sunday and take note of how many people are looking down at their phones as compared to looking up at the TV screens. I think you’ll be pretty surprised!

And of course, Fantasy Football is the ultimate social lubricant. Just the other day I was in the elevator talking with my wife about our fantasy teams (and yes, she has a better team than I do) and the guy next to us jumped into the conversation. Fantasy sports, especially Fantasy Football, is a unifying factor in the U.S. for just about all casual sports fans because it forces you to watch and root for multiple teams beyond just your hometown. You root for individual achievement, not just the San Francisco Forty-Niners or The New York Football Giants and you share your insights with complete and utter strangers just because they care. What other sport creates that sense of camaraderie? European football creates mobs between its fans and American Baseball can do the same if you live in Boston and New York! No; Fantasy Football is a unique beast and the effect is that the NFL has skyrocketed in popularity as a result.

If I were a sports marketer I would examine the NFL and the ways they’ve embraced this pastime because it can provide valuable insight into how to engage with my consumer. Even CPG marketers can see that marrying together social and standard online media with an offline event can help tap into the innate passions of a product and help drive consumer engagement.
I tip my hat to whoever started this whole crazy train (apparently his name was Bill Winkenbach and he worked for the Raiders); though I’d be willing to bet money the poor guy didn’t make a dollar off the idea because he forgot to file a patent.

Cheers to Bill and good luck this season!