On Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Twilight of MySpace

A week ago, Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 wrote about declining pageviews on MySpace as recorded by Alexa. Declining or not, NY Times picked up the story today, so now what was a blog post last Sunday is a nationally broadcast piece of news. What will follow is more blogs linking to Scott's blog and NY Times, and then more mainstream publications writing on how everybody is talking about MySpace going the way of Friendster.

Anyway, it's not like MySpace will not fade out. GeoCities, anyone? Kids who are on the site now will grow up, go to college and move on, and the next generation will find a new hangout place that hasn't been used by "old farts". It's the same with toys -- each wave of kids has its own plastic heroes.

What's to be done? I'd say, don't go after the amorphous "teenager" demographic. Cater to a well-defined group that happens to be "teenagers" today, but will be "college students" tomorrow and "young professionals" the day after. Change your product in sync with the natural evolution of the audience's needs. If the product is a social networking site, then today it has the flavor of MySpace, tomorrow it's like FaceBook, and LinkedIn after that. And since the technologies behind such sites are fairly similar and can be easily recycled, you could replicate a separate MySpace for each new wave of users.

Bridgestone Presents Thin E-Paper

Bridgestone Tire showed off what the claim is the world's thinnest (0.29mm) two-color e-paper. The company calls it Quick Response Liquid Powder Display (QR-LPD).
-- Akihabara News, Engadget

Also see earlier articles on e-paper.

Commodity Advertising

An interesting story from NY Times on the rarely discussed side of our business -- commodity advertising:

"Economists classify advertising into two broad types: informational advertising and image advertising. There is a third, lesser known type of ad called commodity advertising. These ads focus on generic products like agricultural commodities. Well-known examples are the "California Raisins," "Got Milk?" and "Real California Cheese" campaigns.

The economists calculate that each dollar spent on advertising agricultural products like eggs, milk, beef, prunes and almonds yields $3 to $6 of additional revenue to producers."

If you want to learn more, there's a fairly expensive book on Amazon called Commodity Advertising. The review from a specialized site says: "Over $750 million are spent annually to promote agricultural commodities. Here, for the first time, is a book that explores how that advertising money is raised and spent, the economic effectiveness of commodity promotions, and the differences between commodity and brand advertising."

Study: Old Ads More Memorable

"A new study into the memorability of television adverts found that those from the 1970s have proved to be more memorable than their modern-day counterparts. The researchers believe this is because so many now rely on visual graphics, style and big budget effects rather than clever catchphrases and snappy slogans." "Beanz Meanz Heinz", created in 1970s, today shows an impressive 53% recall.
-- Scotsman

Commentary: Internet in 2016

PBS published an interesting piece on the future of Internet:

"By the year 2016, no one under the age of forty will remember a world without personal computers. The average twenty year old will find it hard to imagine a time when there wasn't any email to check or Web sites to visit. When we reach this point, even the novelty of the term 'Internet' will have long since faded to join such golden buzz-words of yesteryear as 'space age' and 'atomic'."

They predict that packaged media forms -- DVDs and CDs -- will follow cassette and video tapes into oblivion as all media becomes downloadable, which is something I would disagree with. They also write: "As the bulky footprint of personal computers becomes smaller, the desktop computer as we know it will disappear." Speaking of which, check out this Jack PC computer announced last week that fits into a wall socket:

"Choose Your Own Adventure" Books Are Back

Wired: "After a generation out of print, the original Choose Your Own Adventure series is back. First published in 1979, the books let readers remix their own stories – and face the consequences. A quarter-billion copies sold worldwide as kids raced to discover lost civilizations, navigate black holes, and go in search of … the Yeti. This summer, eight of the original titles return to bookstores, revamped with 21st-century references (cell phones!)."

Flashback: Advertising When TV Was New

WPP's Martin Sorrell in Times today reminisces what it was like to be in advertising when this cool new medium -- television -- had just arrived, and draws parallels to today's media evolution:

"Setting up a television capability was a significant extra cost with little possibility of immediate equivalent return. Personal confidence was low: senior agency people found themselves ill-equipped to recommend the television medium or even to debate it with clients. And, of course, in the early years, television in the UK enjoyed nothing like national coverage, which made it of doubtful (and totally unproven) value to national advertisers. To all of that, we can add an all-too-human resistance to novelty and change."

I just finished re-reading two great books that explore how media that once were new gradually found their niches in our society. It's a more academic reading and not something you usually find on advertisers' bookshelves, but if you liked Sorrell's piece, you'll find these books eye-opening.

Lisa Gitelman's New Media: 1740-1915:
"Examining a variety of media in their historic contexts, it explores those moments of transition when new media were not yet fully defined and their significance was still in flux. Examples range from familiar devices such as the telephone and phonograph to unfamiliar curiosities such as the physiognotrace and the zograscope."

Carolyn Marvin's When Old Technologies Were New:
"This book uses two innovations, the telephone and the electric light, to show how technology reshaped social relations. Quotations and anecdotes from the popular press illustrate how professionals struggled to control the new media and preserve the social order by excluding "outsiders," particularly the lower classes and women."

Collection of Grocery Lists

Gareth Kay has stumbled across a huge list of over 1000 discarded grocery lists, all scanned. Examining it would make a nice summer project. Can you figure out who wrote a particular list? In what circumstances? (Some, for example, are written on company stationary.) How important is the item order? Awesome find.

Offtopic: Targeting Spam

Why would you send a spam about fake diplomas to a .edu address, especially during the graduation party season? Or are they offering people like me still struggling through their theses an easy way out? I called them up to see how much an MSc diploma would cost, but they had their voicemail on.

Speaking of spam. Radar Waves reports about a new technique of spamming people through "send-this-article-to-a-friend" links on major news sites such as NY Times.


Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 11:44:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Chester Hendrix"
To ***@mit.edu
Subject: Fwd:

Contact us NOW to receive your diploma within days, and start improving your life!

Bachelors, Masters, MBA and/or Doctorate (PhD)

NO ONE is turned down.
Call Now 7 days a week.
1-206-984-0002
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, with the following degrees, here is how much you can
expect to make in your lifetime:
High School Diploma: $1,100,000
Bachelors Degree: $2,100,000
Masters Degree: $2,500,000
Doctorate: $4,400,000
You Need a Better Degree, and we can Help!
Obtain degrees from Prestigious non-accredited
Universities based on you life experience.
NO ONE is turned down.
Call Now 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.
1-206-984-0002

Regards,
Professor. Brandon Pollard

Regressive Tracking for LinkedIn Advertisers

"LinkedIn has developed a tool that helps advertisers better understand their audience. Now you can see exactly who responds to specific products and creatives based on many factors, such as seniority (income), industry, company size, geography, and gender. You can use this information to precisely target ads on LinkedIn or across our advertising network, as well as better direct your non-LinkedIn advertising."
-- LinkedIn Advertising (thank you, David)