Mesh Conference 07: Day 2 notes

5.31.07

Richard Edelman

– mid-level employees are the best to get blogging and will usually lead the pack
– not too many CEO’s blog or will blog
– they are too busy, cant grasp transperency, have too many tech hangups
– will often ghost write the blog, only editing at best the content
– Pitney Bowes CEO is going to be blogging soon (whoo hoo! postage news! j/k, i will prolly read it)
– he thinks that every company can employ a social media strategy into their marketing plan, regardless of product or service
– 3 rules
– make stories visual
– don’t be defeated by setback
– go into the grey area

———-

Craigslist

– told funny story about a toronto post of missed conections where a
woman spilled her grandmother(‘s ashes) on a man and was writing to see
if they could have coffee.
– they only charge in a couple markets, not really interested in expanding
– they only have sys admins and developers, no business people or designers

——-

15 minutes of fame

Wild Apricot
– web based member management system
– online payments, emails, etc
– last june launch
– wildapricot.com 

Sneaker Play
– invite only social network for urban youth interste in street culture (sneakers, graffiti, etc)
– joke about sneaker battles was the catalyst
– launched june/sept
– http://sneakerplay.com/mesh

Concept Share – http://conceptshare.com

– ConceptShare allows you to easily share designs inside Workspaces that contain designs related to a certain topic or project.
– VERY COOL! I am recommending immediately

——-

Digital Sharecropping – Are You Taking Advantage of Your Users?.

Mathew Ingram talks with Michael Sikorsky (Cambrian House), Simon Pulsifer (Wikipedia) and Jeff Howe (Wired/Crowdsourcing).

Sharecropping – negatively using user work, benefiting and not sharing

Crowdsourcing – positive

“User” – term from drug culture

cambrian prefers to use the term “members”

If the users don’t want it, it’s not going to happen

false controversey – compared to child slavery

Amazon – micro chucnks of time to transcribe for very little money
but there is enormous potential for taking advantage of people

important that the user gets something out of it – money, reputation, etc

crowdfunding.com

good models for self policing:

slashdot model – layered community management

metafilter model

1 million penguins – collective novel

important to think about where are the lines that you should not cross

My Questions:

– how do kids and teens fit into the idea crowdsourcing and do you
think there should there be special protections or considerations for
sites targeting minors who may not understand the complexities?

talked to jeff foxe re cybercamps, kids and trends, crowdsourcing

—–

Building a Community – How and Why it Matters

Mark Relph (Microsoft) talks with Will Pate (Flock, CommandN), Jordan Banks (Ebay) and Lionel Menchaca (Dell IdeaStorm).

Jordan – “our bosses are the people who use the site”

Will – having something that is awesome is the biggest shortcut to success

What are the elements to make a community:
– evangelist position is a great idea (talk to users all day)
– community success is more defined about how everyone else in the company sees the community (hell yeah it is!!!!)
– passion needs to be at the heart of the community
– do not think of community as a vertical (siloed) function – community had to have a voice at every area of the organiztion
– when they will come – we will build it how they say, not the opposite

Question regarding managing the passion on a community
– it’s ok to apologize to the community – makes you more human as a company

Reputation systems
– Jordan sees a future where that is a universal login that tracks rputation
– possibly openid is answer or at least catalyst

Best/Worst impact of community
– Jordan – kitten train via ebay.ca (and they carbon offset the whole thing, j/k)
– Will – Flock cancer story
– Lionel – Ideastorm launched 2/16

How do you illustrate to people in your org the value
– metrics for community – all about engagement, churn statistics, lifetime value of a user
– community ROI “google it” from Will
– like an unproven theory in mathematics, you know it’s there even if it’s not articulated yet

multi-lingual communities
– 12 languages
– internationalization is challenge
– dell – launcing a chinese version and spanish soon

How do you keep them, even when they get mad:
– Jordan – You are either part of the problem, or part of this discussion
– Will – Kill them with kindness, being genuine and transparency

My Questions:
– What do you think about kids in communities? What is the process you
use to think about the younger users you may be attracting? Is it a
good idea to simply try to block them out rather than determine if they
are also part of your current and future audience?

—–

Monetizing the Long Tail – Life Beyond AdSense

Andrew Goodman talks with Nancy Peterson (HomeStars), Mike Masnick, Christine Herron and Ted Murphy (PayPerPost).

No intros and went right into random questions with no apparent path or thesis to the talk

Infinite components
– scarcity of resources
– online the resources are attention, time and reputation

Web 2.0 model – “AJAX, AdSense and Arrogance”

Monetizing your content when ads are not paying anymore
– display ads, adsense
– paying people to review

PayPerPost
– could possibly post negative “overwhelming majority choose neutral” possiblilty
– clients were looking for more integrated content

Google is starting pay per action product

HomeStars (like Angie’s list)

Long Tail
– in aggregate, the niche items are the way a company makes money
– how can you make money in those specific niche areas

Freemium
– give it away and somehow magiclally they will upgrade
– Christine
– services harder than product/content
– cream puff example
– porn is good example

Who does adsense work for:
– have to have tons of traffic
– indexed for many terms in the search engines

Why is popular and what is the alternative
– it’s easy and an additional stream

Cincimoms.com
– internet made geography irrelavant, but getting back to the local being more important
– it’s a myth that local ever went away

Geosign
– ad company in canada – syndication of content?

My Questions:
– When and how do you think advertising will become more integrated
into the content of websites and, more specifically, online communities?

technorati tags:mesh07, online-community, wired, crowdsourcing, long-tail, adsense, web2.0, ads, UGC, toronto, canada, craigslist, geosign, freemium, long-tail, homestars, google, advertising, cambrian-house, kids, microfunding, flock, commandn, blogging, roi, ideastorm, dell, microsoft

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