Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
Why I Love Pandora
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, sharing applications, social media
I love Pandora. It has added some amazing new features and I’ve discovered some old ones as well. I haven’t written anything in a while, and something I saw on Pandora just got me motivated. For those of you who don’t know Pandora, here’s the Wikipedia: “Pandora is an automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. Users enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that are musically similar. Users provide feedback on the individual song choices — approval or disapproval — which Pandora takes into account for future selections.”
I use it all the time, when I have a long bought of work to accomplish I get a station going and I take full advantage of the thumbs up, thumbs down. Just now I noticed that when you click the thumbs up button, not only does it remember this and adjust the playlist accordingly, but it leaves a giant thumbs up in the background of the current song tile! So silly, but I loved it and it made me think about the devil in the details pitch I always try to give myself.
Pandora does it, they have all the details and they are loved by their users - over 40,000 new listeners everyday. It is a shame that the music industry is pushing them towards closing their doors soon.. (I can’t imagine that actually happens, its such a great service). I know alot of people are fans of last.fm, but I’ve never been to the site. No reason why not, just fell in love with pandora and stuck.
The devil is in the details and so is the the beauty. Keep goin Pandora, I’m pulling for you!
You can view my profile on pandora here
Head for the Hills!
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life
Ok, don’t panic. Its just me, I’m heading up to the Adirondacks for a few days to do some unplugging. I can use it and my girlfriend is going to kill me because she thinks I spend too much time on the internet.
There has been a lot of interesting data coming out in the past few weeks that I’d like to touch upon but I haven’t had a lot of time lately. Things have been moving along rather quickly, we’ve launched a new site, two more to come out of beta in the next 6 weeks and there is always more to do. On top of that I’ve been doing some heavy lifting with our business model, restructuring it and building out the formal BP. Its very exciting to go back into the basics of the business; you get to re-imagine your vision for what you wanted the business to be, but then tweak it to adjust to all the things you’ve learned and actually done. 2 years and 300 clients later…
Anyway, if you’re in Saratoga this weekend you’ll probably find me at Travers.
New Haircut
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life
I got a hair cut a few days ago, so I thought I’d give my blog a new ‘do on this BEAUtiful Sunday.
I know I’ve said before that the design of the site doesn’t matter as much as the content, but I really hated the way it looked - so Vavoom, a few Sunday morning/afternoon hours later and now I’m happy.
What do you think?
Local Online Ad Spending
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Local Search, SMBs, Search Marketing, Small Businesses, marketing, web 2.0
Local is good, and it is a significant part of the entire advertising market. Some estimates say that up to 54% of all adverterising is local, or locally based. In our increasingly localized and connected world, the power of local search, local content, and locally based interaction are unquestionably becoming key components of the advertising arena. Agencies and Local SMB’s are both very increasingly using local based targeting, or local search as an element of their campaigns. According to a new eMarketer Report, In 2008 Internet Yellow Page advertising is expected to reach $1.2 Billion in ad spending. Measurable to say the least.
Local content is largely becoming focused on user generated content; topix.com, outside.in, and others are focusing on creating a platform for people to share their reactions and feelings on locally relevant issues. The number of review sites (the likes of Yelp, BooRah, etc) seem to be doubling by the minute. While it is no question that people are extremely interestedin sharing their content locally, again how are these companies going to monetize this revenue?
Today, I saved $800 on a minor bumper repair to my car because I was researching some competition, checked out Topix, and found a video ad for a bumper repair place promising to save me hundreds. Well they did, and I had a long conversation with the owner of the business. He has totally abondoned anything in print, he created the video himself, and is advertising locally online to spread the word. Only purchasing a few text ads pointing to his website, he has designed his own viral campaign. Here’s the video:
This is how local advertising is going to be monetized. Simply, I was looking for something local, I found it and completely unintentionally I found something that I needed. Video can become a power tool in one’s local arsenal, and is quickly becoming sought after. I am now endeared to topix (they do have a ton of comments from nearly any city you visit), and I literally saved over 800 bucks to fix my rediculously expensive bumper. Local at its finest.
So listen up advertisers, agencies, publishers: here is the lesson - keep it local, keep it relevant and make the relationship meaningful. While there is no question in my mind (and many others’) that print YP’s and newspapers are no longer a useful advertising outlet and that online local search is the place to be, if you can make the ad meaningful, important, relevant - you can make money. This is nothing new, it seems rather simple, but to truly monetize a local site you can’t rely on CPM’s from exchanges or Honda, Verizon and others (a recent Borrell report estimates the relative CPMs for IYP is $3.65 vs. $9.29 for print YP) . It’s gotta be local, because that way I (the user) can convert that page view into a handshake. And isn’t that what local is really all about?
I think so, and I can’t imagine why any business out there will over look the power of a handshake and a friendly smile.
Lets go USA!
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, advertising
Did anyone else notice that the Olympics are expected to generate about $100 Million in online Ad Spending!
Thats awesome, a huge event, millions of eyeballs and some advertisers are recognizing that money spent online is more than likely money well spent. Go ahead and see if you can triple that by 2010…
NBCOlympics.com had over 4 million visits on day one and Google has created a special medal count widget for iGoogle.
Now cheer on America and lets see if we can’t take it to China on their home turf.
A few days away…
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life
Its been a few days since my last post. I’ve been completely buried with work, working 9 of the last 10 days. Last Saturday I played golf and turned my BlackBerry off for almost 12 hrs! Its been a good week, I’ve been all over the place but we’re seeing alot of growth across our sites, both in traffic and in advertising. We are preparing to launch 4 new sites over the next 4 weeks, which is a pretty intense schedule for us. Things are great, I’m just awfully tired and haven’t had much time to put my thoughts down here.
Its getting into the heat of summer, so there really isn’t a heck of alot going on, but there are a few. Look for a post a day from me for this week, I have alot of thoughts I need to get out.
Efficiency Innovation
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, Start Ups, The Future
When I was in college I used to say that I wasn’t lazy but I was energy efficient. Now I’m beginning to worry that as a nation we are becoming more lazy.
Hundreds of new applications and devices are being introduced each year that reduce the effort it takes to do something, and people are waiting in throes to purchase these things. Take the new iPhone which combines the internet, elements of a notebook PC, your mp3 device and a camera. With the new version comes an app store that allows you to upgrade and add to the already potent functionality of it. Here is a device that allows you to take several unique actions and communicate quickly and easily in many different ways, connecting you to the world around you better than ever before. Think back 10 yrs to putting dimes (now quarters) in payphones.
Let’s move on to another phenomenon that’s taking early adopters by storm - Twitter. Twitter takes two already efficient mediums and combines them: email and SMS. Taking quick blurbs about our lives we can quickly share them with the people around us who want to know.
Don’t take my tone to be overly negative, these efficiency innovations go right to the heart of capitalism. Creating something that makes peoples lives better or easier. A good example, I’m writing this from my blackberry poolside, and I will email it to my posting address and it will appear automatically, with minimal extra effort.
Humans have come so far in the past 30 yrs, just in the short lifetime of many of the entrepreneurs leading these new developments. Its fascinating to see how far we’ve come and where it might lead, but it all truly comes down to effeciency innovation.
How can we take this thing we enjoy and do it better and faster? The question that defines much of what we do today.
Where is the future leading?
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life, The Future
The future is coming at us more rapidly than ever before. A robot on Mars is having conversations with people via SMS, GPS is becoming a new way for people to connect to each other and everything seems be advancing at a frenetic pace. With all this madness, what do the people on the forefront of the technology field have to say about their predictions and outlooks.
Darren Herman began a new project called futurememe.org. The idea behind it is that “anyone can become a futurist.” I was able to be one of those anyones and posted some of my thoughts here. From the about page:
With people contributing their visions for the future from all over the globe, we can amass all of this information in one place and hopefully take action on it for positive change, be it social, technological, or economical.
The future of our world can be a scary or a wonderful place, and there are plenty of varieties for those visions. In college I got really into utopian/dystopian societies and see so many similarities in todays world to those dystopian visions of the 60’s, 70’s, and even back to the 30’s and 40’s. In Fahrenheit 451 people take heavy doses of relaxants and anti-anxiety pills and tune in every night to their “wall screens” (flat screen tvs?) where reading books is illegal and information is largely distributed in “factoids” short pieces of information devoid of context (twitter?). 1984 features new speak, where people combine words into one thats quicker to say (web log=blog), and people communicate via two way telescreens (video-conferencing). These dystopian novels of so many years ago reflect with amazing accuracy current situations.
With one notable difference, the vast majority of our current technology is a result of efficiency innovation. I don’t know how often that phrase is used but I’m coining it as one that I will be using often and reflecting on frequently. Our current level of efficiency innovation is unparralled in our history - it took 500 years to advance beyond the printing press, yet only about 100 yrs to advance from radio to tv to the internet. From records to tapes to cds to mp3’s - 30 yrs. From disk drives to dvds to solid state drives ~20 yrs. Think about where cloud computing will take us, imagine what the next Mars Rover will discover.
Its a great time to have an imagination, and an exciting time to play a part in the forefront of technology. The idea of futurememe.org gives everyone a place to share and grow their ideas of the future. I personally hope it grows and gets some of the lofty and interesting contributors Darren is seeking. The future is ours…
Thank You, You’re Welcome
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life
How was your day today? How’s business? Good to hear.
I use these words everyday, in every little, seemingly meaningless conversation I have. It makes life easier, and dare I say better. Ask the cashier (if there still is one where you shop) how she is doing today. Speak to the call center guy like he is actually a real person. Engage your audience.
See how I slipped that in there? Engage your audience, thoughtfully. Make them understand that you care. It doesn’t matter who your audience is, and it doesn’t matter what you are talking about. Don’t make them think you care, show them that you do. Its all part of the story you tell; about you, about your product, about your business, about how you got here.
People are receptive to caring, especially when they are least expecting it. Make someone smile, and you will smile. See how much happier you are?
American Ramble
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under Life
Alright, I was watching CNN today during lunch and they were discussing the “Obama Children-On-TV Story.” While two panelists where discussing the incident (which couldn’t be less important to anythingI), I noticed “Iran conducts missile tests, intl community worried.”
So the ring leader of the “Axis of Evil” with a president who doesn’t believe in the holocaust, launches a missle tests and says “Our Finger is always on the trigger” and we are talking about whether or not Barak Obama bringing his children on an interview during his daughters birthday party is good for his electability. No wonder the news is losing its credibility. These people were having a serious debate over how Obama’s children will affect his public perception, while one of the biggest issues in the middle east became even bigger.
Iran is testing long range missiles to shoot at Israel and we are concerned over the vanity of who is on TV. That is what is wrong with our country, we have no idea what is going on and the majority of us get our information from major media outlets. The media has its own agenda - the people making news have their own agenda. The news media should just be reporting what happened - all of it. I watch MSNBC because I like their point of view; I listen to conservative talk radio because it gives me a middle ground to compare to the liberal news. But what about the people who only listen to one. Is it so ridiculous that some of our opinions might be slightly biased?
Jon Stewart made a good analogy to our current outlook in Washington. If we are addicted to drinking and we are all out of alcohol, getting more alcohol doesn’t solve the problem - it makes it worse. We shouldn’t be concerned over getting more oil and destroying our native earth to get more oil - even thought it won’t matter for 5-10 years - we should be concerned about fixing our problem: inefficiencies. Its the same with newspapers, its the same with oil, its the same with just about every struggling industry these days.
Stop trying to hang on to the old way and embrace the new way. And seriously America, lets take a look at what is really important to us - I love this country.
