23 Musings

Great post from Jakob Nielsen on the dangers of going web 2.0 crazy from a usability point of view!

Highly poingant as we're implementing a lot of AJAX at the moment. Overkill is deadly and could trash your conversion rate. Keep it minimal, useful, effective (AJAX is great for some things, pointless for others), simple, usable and give clear instructions where needed.

I agree with his pitch on user generated content as well. Pointless if your audience/customers aren't ready for it or if you have nothing interesting for them to talk about (that said, great in an emotive environment such as online travel if used wisely).

Since Yahoo bought Flickr it's all been relatively quiet. Yahoo have made use of it on a couple of occasions, integrating Flickr images into some of their services but other than that nothing major has happened to change the service significantly. It does what it says on the tin and is my photo upload site of choice still.

Some announcements (courtesy of Techcrunch) were made last night which could reveal a new approach, or at least a new string to the Flickr/Yahoo bow.

They are adding new functionality to their geotagging by placing the tags onto maps making it much easier to search your way around the world. This is really just a catch up to Zooomr. The really interesting piece of functionality and the one which has the most relevance to the online travel world is the coming introduction of 'places' pages on Flickr.

'Places' will be pages which pull together the most interesting photos about a destination and tag associated with it. So you will be able to view pages on for example London/buildings. You'll be able to explore over 70,000 places through photos, tags and featured photographers. Now, this is sounding like a very good source of destination content for the travel industry!

Here's an example screenshot (courtesy Techcrunch)


The interesting thing will be to see if these new pages are monetised when they launch in the coming weeks. I'm sure Yahoo will place sponsored links on the pages but will they go one step further and place calls to action to book hotels, flights or trips to these destinations?

I'd say it's a perfect opportunity for Yahoo. Yahoo Travel is a pretty good site now with their review, booking and destination information. Roll all of this into a location led service filled with great imagery and content and you could have a pretty interesting concept.

Of course the other opportunity for travel companies is what kind of access you will be able to get to these new pages through the Flickr API. Thomson and others already pull photos from Flickr, will you be able to pull content by place now? Much more useful, and less likely to be irrelevant to your users!

Here are the details of the forthcoming changes (courtesy Techcrunch via Scribd).

I love The Onion, and here once again they've hit the nail on the proverbial head with this video showing how they (the media) respond to users comments. Really makes sense if you've ever run a blog, social network or user generated content based site.

So what is the most powerful selling tool available to us to market with on the web these days? I often think that the most trusted recommendation (or advert) is another person and it seems I'm not the only one. Nielsen have completed a survey asking consumers what their most trusted form of advertising is, the results are not surprising:

To What Extent Do You Trust the Following Forms of Advertising?
Recommendations from consumers	78%
Newspapers	63%
Consumer opinions posted online	61%
Brand websites	60%
Television	56%
Magazines	56%
Radio	54%
Brand sponsorships	49%
Email I signed up for	49%
Ads before movies	38%
Search engine ads	34%
Online banner ads	26%
Text ads on mobile phones	18%

So, as suspected consumer reviews have leapt into the lead as the most trusted form of advertising. Word of mouth is still king, time for all in online travel to bite the bullet and add reviews to their sites? Maybe, but control will be important so as not to show yourselves in a bad light!

Be careful where your banner adverts appear! When you serve ads through a network it's really tricky to keep an eye on where they appear and what the content surrounding them is referring to. Yes you can specify the types and categories of sites they appear on, you can even specify the actual websites it gets placed on, but some are finding that this level of control is not enough.

We had an issue a year ago where we were running millions of impressions a day on a behavioural ad network. We were targeting the travel and leisure community and also major portals but somehow we ended up advertising holidays on a link farm site which had a rather less than decent advert for a swingers club on the same page as our advert! Needless to say as soon as this was spotted we pulled that site out of our target group. We could of course have been placed on many other sites like this during that campaign without even knowing it...

And then there's websites like Facebook. Social networks are really difficult to target for advertising as being full of user generated content you have no control over what your advert could appear next to. Vodafone has now experienced this and has pulled all advertising from Facebook after it's banner was displayed on the group profile for the British National Party. Vodafone pulled the ad straight away, but other brands such as Virgin Media and Orange have also appeared on that page.

I can't see how Facebook could possibly control to a granular level where adverts are appearing in relation to the content on the pages. It will be a really difficult task and so if a lot of their big advertisers start complaining about the content on the pages their ads are appearing on it could spell trouble for their revenue streams quite quickly.

This is the trouble with user generated content and advertising. As bad as Facebook content can be I'm sure MySpace is worse. With the increasing popularity of corporate responsibility it is only going to become a bigger issue!

Travel related social network WAYN (Where Are You Now) has opened it's doors to all users and removed the access restrictions that were once in place.

This seems to be a trend at the moment. Just the other day there was the news that HotOrNot are doing great now that they've removed their paid access restrictions. There's also a rumour going around that the school reunion website Friends Reunited (which was one of the first social networking environments) is doing so badly that they are considering removing all fees for access.

This has to be a response to Facebooks current exponential growth and the already massive MySpace, neither of which have a paid for model and do extremely well for it.

Paid for sites are never as sticky as a free one because users just don't come back as often and there aren't so many users to get the mass interest a network really needs.

It will be interesting to see how WAYN do with the restrictions removed. They have the potential to be huge if they get it right and have backing from some eminent people in both travel and the online environment. Of course they still have premium accounts you can pay for but you get all the good functionality for nothing now!

A good post from Pete Cashmore on his Mashable blog here. Pete's spotted, and disseminated, what instantly becomes obvious the moment you get onto the MySpaceTV site (launched today). It looks very similar to YouTube!

I'm sure MySpaceTV will be hugely successful amongst the MySpace community, but how successful it will be outside of that will depend largely on the content that MySpace can get onto it's player. It's going to need to use it's relationships with media owners (NBC/News Corp anyone) to get prime content on it's site if it stands a chance of competing. And that's only competing on copyrighted content, how will it fair on user generated content?

As I said, they've got the social networking bonus of MySpace to play on, and you can bet that the player becomes the only video player allowed on MySpace, so they'll get UGC from there. But will it have the pull to attract the guys who are making amateur films etc as those are the ones who have embraced YouTube so completely.

I don't think this will kill YouTube to be honest. I think the connotations of being associated with MySpace won't help, it's my opinion that MySpace needs to adapt to survive beyond being a playground for teens and they currently show no desire to make that shift.

It looks like MySpaceTV has been launched as a YouTube killer, but I don't think it will cut it without a killer gameplan as well!

In a long overdue move Google have announced the addition of a reviews feature to it's Google Maps product.

This is something Yahoo announced almost two years ago for their maps product so it's about time Google has caught up. Here in the UK it seems they've syndicated some review content from other sites or are scraping it in order to kick it off with some content. I really hope this feature gets used as it will make it invaluable for me. I regularly use Google Maps to find a restaurant or hotel and having user generated content associated with the locations is extremely powerful for a user like me!

As an example, here's my favourite Japanese restaurant in Brighton (displaying a review from another website from a year ago).

The Economist Intelligence Unit and the search company Fast have collaborated on a report on attitudes to Web 2.0 in the corporation.

Apparently senior execs are latching on to the term and see it as a way to increase revenue. Concerns lie in the fact that most corporations don't actually understand the concept, what it could do for them and don't have the knowledge in-house to make the most of the opportunities it presents.

Key findings of the report include:

• Customers are helping to develop and support products. Nearly 60% of the surveyed companies say that they are inviting customers to contribute content that explains, supports, promotes or enhances their products, or that they plan to do so within the coming two years. About half of companies say they are, or are planning to, treat customers as co-developers of products that are in a constant state of improvement.
• Ease of acquiring and supporting customers provide the biggest financial benefits. Most companies cited marketing and sales as an area where Web 2.0 could help to increase revenues, primarily through customer acquisition and service. Web 2.0 technologies were seen as a way to reduce costs in the areas of customer support, advertising and public relations, and product/service innovation.
• Early adopters are to be found in many countries and industries. Companies based in the US, Germany, China, India and the UK are among the early adopters of Web 2.0 tools and methods, according to the survey. The top early-adopter industries are entertainment and media, technology, travel and tourism and professional services.
• The C-suite is more enthusiastic than lower-level executives.A full 85% of C-suite executives see the sharing and collaboration aspects of Web 2.0 as an opportunity to increase revenue and/or margins, versus 75% of middle management. The C-suite is also more inclined to view Web 2.0 as transformative, affecting all parts of the business (35% versus 28%) and having a significant impact on the company’s business model (41% versus 22%).
• CFOs are the most skeptical about the potential of Web 2.0. Compared to CEOs and the rest of the C-suite, CFOs lag in understanding and support of Web 2.0 initiatives. CFOs are less likely to view Web 2.0 as transformative, less likely to think that it will affect all parts of the business, and less likely say that it will change the company’s business model. They are also less optimistic than their C-suite peers about Web 2.0’s potential to increase revenue and margins.
  

This is another indication of the potential openings we will see at large corporates as they try to manage the move to a social web and engage their customers. The early forays will be agency lead, but I'd expect to see corporates trying to bring this in-house so as to control and maximise their revenue opportunity. Worth getting your CV up to scratch with Web 2.0 buzzwords!!

Google has created a new advert format for its YouTube video sharing website.

Google revealed on Friday that broadcasters and other content producers are working with Google on 30-second "pre-roll" ads to appear before content is viewed on YouTube.

The ads will start appearing next year, and revenue will be shared between YouTube and the broadcaster.

A Google spokesman said that 2008 will see "real money coming in" from video advertising.

Mozilla has finally released some details on it's long awaited development to add social networking features into Firefox.

In a nutshell this will enable you to share things with your network of friends and acquaintances. You'll be able to send content to friends and have access to content from friends in your network.

Mozilla say:

Just a few years ago, one of the most popular uses of the internet was to send jokes, cute pictures, and news stories to friends and family (social networks) via email. Fast forward to today, and you’ll find that not a lot has changed except the medium. Now one of the most common uses of instant messenger services and social networking sites is to send people links to jokes, cute pictures and interesting news stories.

This behavior isn’t at all surprising - it’s friends sharing experiences, the very backbone of social interactions and friendships. It’s also unsurprising that most “Web 2.0″ services have a feature that makes it easy for you to build a social network so that you can share things more easily, or subscribe to a friend’s activity as a way of keeping in touch.

What is surprising, however, is how little of this type of functionality has made it into today’s web browsers. The result is that when people think of tools for social interaction, email and instant messenger are at the top of their list, not web browsers.

Enter “The Coop”, a Mozilla Labs project to experiment with adding social tools to the web browser. We want to create a fun and easy way to share links with your friends, and to browse the set of links that friends have shared with you. We also want to make it easy to “subscribe” to a friend in order to make it easy to keep track of the pictures, movies, blog posts and status information that they might be posting on a variety of services.

One thing that springs to mind is that this will surely integrate the experience of visiting some social network sites directly into the browser, thus negating the need to actually visit those websites anymore. I've long thought that some social networks could become obsolete due to users being able to have the same experience on the desktop, this could be the beginning of such a trend, not the best news for advertisers then...

There's more information on the project on the Mozilla wiki here.

Google have replied to Viacoms lawsuit and their lawyers letter to the press with their own letter to the editor in the Washington Post. Glad to see they don't labour the point and make valid comments regarding DMCA safe harbour.

Still doesn't see them out of the woods I reckon, there will be many more lawsuits in the lifetime of YouTube and these things can have a habit of dragging on and dirtying reputations.

Here's the official press release on the coming YouTube competitor from NBC and News Corp.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--News Corporation and NBC Universal will launch the largest Internet video distribution network ever assembled with the most sought-after content from television and film, it was announced today by Jeff Zucker, President and Chief Executive Officer, NBC Universal and Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer, News Corporation. The video-rich site will debut this summer with thousands of hours of full-length programming, movies and clips, representing premium content from at least a dozen networks and two major film studios.

AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! will be the new site’s initial distribution partners. Their users, who represent 96 percent of the monthly U.S. unique users on the Internet, will have unlimited access to the site’s vast library of content. This media alliance will offer consumers free long- and short-form video and create a compelling platform for advertisers, targeting the rapidly growing audience of online video consumers. Charter advertisers include Cadbury Schweppes, Cisco, Esurance, Intel and General Motors.

“This is a game changer for Internet video,” said Peter Chernin, President and Chief Operating Officer of News Corporation. “We’ll have access to just about the entire U.S. Internet audience at launch. And for the first time, consumers will get what they want -- professionally produced video delivered on the sites where they live. We’re excited about the potential for this alliance and we’re looking forward to working with any content provider or distributor who wants to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity.”

“Anyone who believes in the value of ubiquitous distribution will find this announcement incredibly exciting,” said Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal. “This venture supercharges our distribution of protected, quality content to fans everywhere. Consumers get a hugely attractive aggregation of a wide range of content, and marketers get a novel way to connect with a large and highly engaged audience.”

At launch, full episodes and clips from current hit shows, including Heroes, 24, House, My Name Is Earl, Saturday Night Live, Friday Night Lights, The Riches, 30 Rock, The Simpsons, The Tonight Show, Prison Break, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader and Top Chef, plus hits from the studios’ vast television libraries, will be available free, on an ad-supported basis, within a rich consumer experience featuring personalized video playlists, mashups, online communities and video search. Plus, the extensive programming lineup will include fan favorite films like Borat, Little Miss Sunshine, Devil Wears Prada, The Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy with bonus materials and movie trailers. Post-launch, plans will be considered for acquiring additional content as well as producing and licensing original programming for the new site’s audience.

Its launch distribution partners will provide the biggest potential reach of any player on the Internet. Moreover, the new site will actively seek agreements with a variety of additional distribution partners.

“This new venture is further proof that the Internet is now a full-fledged entertainment medium, and we are delighted to serve as a major online distribution partner for the quality content produced by these media powerhouses, as well as a provider of strategic services to the new venture,” said Randy Falco, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AOL.

“This partnership is completely aligned with our continued investment in video on MSN and will allow hundreds of millions of our consumers to tune into a vast library of high-quality, safe and legal online video,” said Kevin Johnson, President, Platform and Services Division, Microsoft. “Our alliance proves that you can deliver quality online video entertainment and protect intellectual property and copyright at the same time. We look forward to working together to explore additional opportunities to distribute this content across other Microsoft services and devices.”

“By delivering the new site’s content to our more than 65 million users, we can build on MySpace’s position as a leading destination for online video, and enable content creators to tap into the power of social networking,” said Peter Levinsohn, President of Fox Interactive Media. “The ability to embed video clips within over 160 million profile pages will empower members of the MySpace community to view, share and truly interact with some of the entertainment world’s most popular content.”

“We are excited to be a part of this landmark partnership that connects people to the content they care about. As the most visited site in the U.S., this deal gives Yahoo!’s users unprecedented access to their favorite shows and offers them engaging content in a premium video format,” said Terry Semel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Yahoo! Inc. "We believe that this relationship underscores Yahoo!'s respect for content owners and copyrights and positions us as one of the premier distribution sites on the Web for entertainment programming."

Each distribution partner will feature the site’s content in an embedded player customized with a look and feel consistent with each site, making the offering organic to each destination. The new company will offer innovative advertising sales propositions by being able to sell cross-platform -- on-air and on-line. Post-launch, sites affiliated with founding companies, including iVillage and IGN, will also have the opportunity to become distribution partners.

The new company will be located in New York and Los Angeles. A transitional management team led by NBC Universal’s Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff, along with an experienced group of executives from NBC Universal and News Corporation, will work together to launch the site. The company’s permanent management will be announced shortly, along with branding details and additional advertising partners. Each company will devote a significant marketing and promotional budget to the new site’s launch.

News Corporation and NBC Universal are creating this strategic alliance at a time when Internet users and advertisers are embracing online video as never before. In January, there were 123 million unique video streamers and downloaders (comScore Video Metrix). In 2005, video streams totaled nearly 18 billion, and that amount is expected to triple by 2010 (AccuStream iMedia Research, 2006). And research firm eMarketer estimates $410 million was spent on online video advertising in 2006, an amount that is expected to almost double this year.

Now that sounds pretty good to be honest! This surely will impact YouTube in market share, although I still don't believe it will take over in the user generated content arena as YouTube has the head start there.

In reality, competition is a good thing and hopefully this will force YouTube and Google to be even more innovative in the future and think up new ways to utilise their huge audience.

A success story for YouTube this week following on from all the takedown requests and lack of commitment from some major US media companies.

The BBC has signed a deal with YouTube to bring specially commissioned content and news clips to the video site. The director general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, said the deal is a ground-breaking partnership between the BBC and YouTube and "fantastic news for our audiences". He added in a statement: "It's essential that the BBC embraces new ways of reaching wider audiences with non-exclusive partnerships such as these."

The main BBC channel on YouTube will include news clips along with short-form promotional content linked to popular programmes such as Doctor Who. Video diaries by stars of the shows - including tours of the sets - will also appear. The BBC Worldwide entertainment channel will show clips from shows such as Top Gear and Spooks, along with factual programmes and a "limited amount of advertising". BBC World will offer around 30 news clips per day to users outside of the UK and will also be funded through advertising.

YouTube has also announced 1000's of deals with small content owners.

Viacom, Fox and NBC however are still staying away. Viacom claims that traffic to it's websites has risen sharply since they had the content and clips pulled down from YouTube (they obviously don't understand the point of cross promotion!). A deal with CBS has also failed to appear, it's all gone very quiet from both camps on this subject.

Ultimately, I'm sure they all really want to get a deal done, it seems YouTube need to come up with a better offering for these media behemoths in order to hook them into their service.

The BBC's foray into YouTube is said to be advertising funded, perhaps that funding is not enough for the large US media companies? Or maybe they are just waiting for some proper copyright protection to come into force?

So what is it that can build loyalty with our customers and get them coming back over and over again to our travel websites (if not to book then at least to research with the possibility of turning them into a booker in the future)? Is it having the best designed website with loads of aspirational imagery? Is it having loads of Web 2.0 features and and user generated content widgets? Is it having the biggest range of ways to book your travel (dynamic packaging, component packaging, component only, package, tour etc)? Actually, it appears it's much simpler than that!

A new survey from PhocusWright and Burst Media shows that the key features of a travel website that will make a user become a repeat visitor are:

• Having the ability to check rates and book online
• Having access to good quality destination content
• Having a good range of clearly priced and regularly updated offers and promotions

Here's the list:

How's that for common sense? The most basic features of a bookable travel website are still the most important as far as the user is concerned. So to all those travel websites who are branching out into adding in flashy Web 2.0 features I say; get the basics right first! Work on your bookability and usability; make it easy for a user to find a price and compare that with other products, and then make it easy for them to continue and book their chosen product. Give the user really good, informative destination content; this saves them having to go elsewhere and makes it more likely they will come to you for their research. Get your offers online regularly, make them clearly priced (a price the user can actually book if they want to), make them tempting and as good as (if not better) than anyone elses.

Of course I would add one more technicality that will help ensure these three things keep people coming back... Get the architecture right! Make it easy for users to find this content, don't funnel them down a journey they can't find their way out of, navigation is still king!

Everybodies favourite travel review website TripAdvisor has now added a feature to allow users to upload videos of their trips, hotels and anything else of relevance. A great new addition to the site, you can be sure this will see all sorts of videos of damp rooms, poor hygiene and awful food.

Joking aside this adds a really good new dimension to the world of travel reviews. While it's possible to view videos on holiday websites, they are obviously created with the idea of selling the trip to the customer so show the best aspects of a hotel. The content that gets uploaded to TripAdvisor will be a warts and all expose of the best and worst aspects of your destination. Really useful for consumers and a potential headache for tour operators and hoteliers alike!

Working in travel I have a vested interest in anything interesting that crops up online especially when it has a social or information sharing aspect and is to do with travel.

So I was very pleased this morning to come across Wikitravel while browsing the site from my post below.

Not only is it a collaborative effort by people from all over the world to create a useful repository of travel and destination information, it's also really really good! I'm off to Rome in a few weeks and the information on Wikitravel is better than any other destination guide I've looked at (online).

Really good effort! Some great user generated content and I love the social network and info sharing nature of Wiki's, and it's all copyleft under Creative Commons which is good to see!

Viacom have told YouTube to take down all of its content. This raises a big question around the ability of YouTube's management team to build lasting relationships with big media, from where it gets most of it's content.

Viacom had been in months of negotiations with YouTube and Google to try to come to a deal around content. Viacom owns brands such as MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central which it says account for more than 100,000 video clips on the YouTube site, which had generated more than 1.2bn video streams.

Apparently the break down is over disputes about splitting advertising revenues. Viacom execs are also frustrated that YouTube has failed to implement a copyright checking system, as it had previously promised.

Maybe YouTube's announcement that it would share the wealth is not enough for Viacom?

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the use of tagging is growing fast among US web users. The December 2006 survey has found that 28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.

Tagging has always had this perception that it's a step towards a semantic (read more intelligent) way to traverse the web, but in reality it is proving a common sense approach to cutting and dicing information to make it easier to manage/find. Although it does have it's detractors who say tagging is too simple, I'm of the opinion that it's an incredibly useful tool when used correctly. Roll on the day when all content management systems come with a built in folksonomy function!

A recent poll by Harris Interactive on the habits of YouTubers suggests that the average user will not put up with adverts being inserted into video clips. The figures from the poll show that when asked if the inclusion of short commercials before every clip would change how often they will visit YouTube, nearly three-quarters of adults who frequently visit the site say they would visit it a lot (31%) or a little (42%) less often as a result.

Telling for YouTube, it seems viewers will put up with adverts on a TV network, but when it comes to user generated sites on the web, they're less keen to put up with any interruptions. I can understand this completely; the web is awash with advertising but it is mostly avoidable either by simply ignoring it or with the use of adblocking software. However, stuff a 20 second video advert in at the start of every YouTube video and it will get annoying very quickly! If you use YouTube a lot (and this same survey suggests 32% of respondents watch less TV due to YouTube) then you will see an advert every clip you watch. A lot of those clips are short and very quickly you will have seen a huge amount of advertising. Repetition will then occur which makes the experience even more annoying.

Forcing advertising on web users is never going to work unless the offering is so good that they really can't miss out on it. With other ways to view the same content, YouTube must be careful not to alienate it's users!