Dailymotion to bloggers: what if you earned money from others’ content?–#blogbus

Luc Dumont, SVP international Business Development Manager, demoed the most recent developments at Dailymotion from their Redwood Calif. office on day 2 of our blog tour, in front of our blogger bus bloggers on the second day of the tour. Dailymotion is a video hosting platform which was created in 2005 in France. It can boast 100 million daily users per month and 25-30 million videos are hosted on the platform. There are 220 million unique viewers a month even though the company is only 113 employee big. It also now part of the France Telecom- Orange group (disclosure: I work for the Group). Dailymotion is the 2nd largest video platform behind Youtube and 80% of its audience is coming from outside France. Whereas the head-office is in Paris, US operations are based in NYC and International operations are managed from Redwood, Calif. [this post was originally composed on behalf of Orange for the http://live.orange.com blog]

the most exciting segment in digital

“This is the most exciting segment within the online business” Luc Dumont said by way of an introduction. The premium aspect of video is very visible in the US with very aggressive players like Netflix, Google and Amazon. “Increasingly, our business can be summarised by its player” Dumont said. This player runs on various platforms and works, obviously, with content. Dumont described all the developments initiated by Dailymotion and namely what they call the Dailymotion Publisher network. In essence, this is a service which enables content providers (websites/bloggers) to create video portals automatically or manually and earn money from other’s content. Applications are submitted directly to Dailymotion who screen them and validate them (in order to ensure that the platform is valid and compliant). Content can come from either other users or well established content providers like Reuters or the Wall Street Journal. Already 1,000 users and websites like msn or Starmedia (owned by Orange) are using the service. “There is still space for a second video platform player” Dumont said, and Dailymotion is determined to be that one. The Redwood office was opened in November 2011 and the California based headquarter is working on the international development of the French start-up which has already stopped being French.

Luc Dumont today at Dailymotion’s headquarter

Here are my notes (taken on the spot) from that meeting …

the various platforms that Dailymotion is running on:

• Everything was built from the inside and it resulted in the Dailymotion.com. It’s a very large site now (see above numbers). Curators are preparing videos for users.
• Social networks is the second platform. Social has been part of the DNA from day one and accounts for 1/3 of our traffic, Luc Dumont added. “It’s a great tool and there is space for a second or third player” he said. “People don’t care about who runs the video, they just consume video”
• Dailymotion Publisher networks: is a new product whereby a special relationship is struck with publishers like Yahoo!, msn and the Huffington Post
• mobiles and tablets (15-20% of traffic as of today)
• connected TVs: partnerships with as many manufacturers as possible
• consoles: ditto

5 major trends for the future of IT and the Web – #blogbus

The Orange Blogger bus tour – of which I am the organiser on behalf of Orange of which I am the Director of Internet and social media – was stopping by San Francisco today and the whole day was hosted by Orange Silicon Valley

Georges Nahon delivered a very inspiring keynote today before our panel of bloggers in which he shared his vision with regard to what is happening in IT in general, and in the Valley in particular. I will begin my account of Georges’s visionary presentation by detailing his conclusions. As I always do, I have taken detailed notes of the pitch and they are made available at the end of this piece. If there is one thing that should be remembered from that pitch is that the Web is everywhere and in everything that will be happening in the future. Something which established players don’t like according to the Head of Orange Silicon Valley. However, Nahon insisted on the fact that it won’t be the same Internet we used to know.

Facebook will be “Yahooed!”

“Social” has been going through a rough patch over the Summer, with the now infamous Facebook IPO, dubbed “IPOcalypse”, IPO meaning “It’s Probably Overpriced” Nahon said facetiously. Yet, Europeans are wrong when they interpret these issues as the end of social media, Georges Nahon said in essence. Social is here to stay, and beyond, it will change everything which takes place on the Web, even though Facebook itself will probably be “Yahooed!” Georges added.

But the worrying thing I got from his pitch is that, according to his analysis, next to the World Wide Web that we all know, an increasing number of companies, including Amazon, are creating a “non-searchable adjacent Web” which sounds very much like the end of the Web as Chris Anderson announced in Wired a few years ago. I think Georges is right indeed, there is a growing concern that Net neutrality is being sacrificed for the sake of user experience. Time will tell, but there are indeed worrying signs.

Georges Nahon, head of Orange Silicon Valley, on the first day of the blogger bus tour

Here is how I summed up Georges’s 5 trends for the future of IT:

1. Tech is all about mobile: “Twitter is a mobile-first company” and thriving he said, “Facebook isn’t and is suffering”. 10% of Internet traffic is made of mobile traffic. Yet, 25% of US users are using the Web from mobile only, but in Egypt, this number soars up to 70%, and India is close to 60%! And 68% place their mobile next to their bed while sleeping at night.
2. The default is now social: and social meets mobile (over 50% of smartphones connect to Facebook). Social graph (Facebook), interest graph (Twitter) and influence graph (Klout) are the new frontiers of the Web and “they are here to stay … for a long time” Nahon said. For many, Facebook is the new web (“find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter). What is the future of search? it is social and both Google and Microsoft are working on it… “and Facebook search is coming fast” Nahon added.
3. Another Web: At the same time, traditional web development is slowing down, and Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Mobile will continue develop their “non-searchable adjacent webs” as Nahon called it.
4. The Cloud as a new frontier: “The new guys are Amazon, Zynga, Rackspace and even people like Google were taken by surprise” Nahon said. But there are even newer guys you may never heard of such as Bluejeans, Alfresco, Joyent and many many more. Explosive data growth is also forcing companies to develop solutions for data reduction. And “the next big thing isn’t Software, it’s data” Nahon concluded on that subject.
5. All video will be on the Net: most players in that field are coming from the Internet world, not the media world. “We think that the future of TV is to be streamed” Nahon said. There is more innovation than ever before in that area he said. Nahon added though that the concept of app-centric TV on smart TVs wasn’t entirely convincing. Time Warner see their future in apps but another trend is Social TV (described by Nahon as “a descendant of interactive TV which never worked”. 85% of tablet owners use their device while watching TV he said. What are they doing? Social websites, Zynga, Search, Craigslits (an old web survivor!) according to Nielsen.

the future of the World Wide Web

So, what is the future of the Web? Georges Nahon highlighted 10 trends in that area too:

1. the web is becoming data centric
2. apps will rule consumer and entreprise innovations and html5 will infiltrate apps and web services
3. non searchable adjacent webs will continue to develop and the web will be fragmented and site-less (mobile, apps)
4. the web of sites is dead and Facebook like buttons are the new hyper links
5. Real-time multi-user game cloud platforms will influence enterprise cloud technologies: the main issue will be “latency” ‘as already explained on that blog)
6. 4G/LTE (which we all were using to day via local mifi devives) will trigger innovation
7. mobile payment will kick off from 2015
8. all video will be on the web
9. Enterprise IT will shift to the cloud.
10. Facebook will rule the web during the next 2 years and Google will be in catch-up mode and within 3 years they will be “Yahooed!” Nahon said
11. Amazon will continue to diversify and will create more online commerce/entertainment clouds and mobile devices (tablets/phones). “Amazon is belittled in Europe” Nahon added, “and it should be considered as a major player, for Bezos is the new Steve Jobs”.

Started as an R&D organisation and evolved towards what they are today (scouting organisation). 60 people, 40 of  which are in a position to file patents and they file 20 per annum. Often, it’s about reviewing the strategy. Statement from Prussian general “no plan survives contact with the enemy” e.g. 5 years ago, no one had seen the iPhone coming. Even analysts. An none of these people has seen Apple becoming a major player in the Telecom industry => be prepared for the unexpected. There were times in which you telcos could go to the ITU organisation and get things sorted but this isn’t the case anymore.

Essentially Orange wants to get prepared for the future. One of the key elements for Silicon Valley is capital investment. In Bay Area only, venture investments represent $3.2 bn 46% of total investments in the USA (San Jose chronicle on Q2 results). Texas only represents $ 179 m (3%) despite the huge tech firms in that state. The core subjects is ICT and media but not only.

The software industry in Q2 of this year received the highest level of funding. (34 out of 39% other source) $2.37 bn i.e. 32% of the total.

Market capitalisation: Apple + Cisco +Oracle +Google +Intel have a total of $ 1,261.82 bn (IBM is only $236b or FTE $37b). What this hides is the myriad of small companies which help these companies become what they are.

Amex: members project case study

On March 29, at Blogwell, I attended that presentation by Pepper Roukas, American Express on the members project campaign

Amex has focused a lot about brand management on social media, but this particular business case is about how to drive business through social media.

Amex actually invented the term “cause marketing” with its restoration programme of the statue of Liberty in 1983 and many others in 93, 2003 an 2007 with the members project.

The questions was how to create a differentiated cause-campaign? The answer to that question was to educate consumers that small steps can make a big difference in their communities and provide the enablement tools.

Fish where the fish are

Facebook was the place where Amex’s fans were, so Amex used it as the main starting point.  The focus was on more engagement with members, sharing content and initiate dialogues. Members were encouraged to volunteer and earn membership points and donate them. Amex therefore helped people support their favourite charities.

Donations could be done straight from the card or by transferring membership points.

Wall postings

Wall postings were personalised by members, posting photos (right) but also videos. more videos were used by members than ever before. A number of apps were developed with which people could share their stories. The campaign was carried away in 360 format with on-air TV commercials and charity-themed sweepstakes. A partnership was set up with the Glee TV series.

All other social media channels owned by Amex were used to relay the campaign too.

takeaways

• increased brand relevancy and appraisal, namely with young people
• more engaging content
• listening and being more responsive
• learn, experiment and iterate quickly
• giving the community a role to foster advocacy

Bob Pearson’s “pre-commerce” book now available for pre-order from Amazon

Business readers, social media enthusiasts, rejoice! Bob Pearson’s forthcoming book PRE-COMMERCE is now available for pre-order from Amazon.  As it happens, the book will be released on March 10, 2011 which, by no coincidence, is on the eve of SXSW.

This book has also received contributions by  Paul Beverly (Gemalto), Lukas U. Cudrigh (Miscrosoft),  Scott Anderson (TSG Customer Comms), david.witt@genmills.com (Genmills), Kerins Raymond F (Pfizer), Kathryn Metcalfe (pfizer), Richard Jalichandra (technorati), etc. etc. there are so many it’s impossible to have them all here… and also yours truly from Orange Business Services.

Pre-commerce is packed with insights and anecdotes which – to put it in the words of Bob himself – “make this book stand-out vs. many others that talk in grand theory, but rarely get to what really matters for today’s leader”; Preliminary reaction to the concept is already quite good.  Just via word of mouth, orders are coming in, some in bulk.

>> The book is now available via pre-order on Amazon.com at http://amzn.to/precom

Andy Sernovitz: “large companies getting into social media need support and SMBC was the missing piece in that puzzle”

Last week, I was attending the Blogwell and SMBC meetings in Philadelphia. I also had an opportunity to sit with Andy Sernovitz, the founder of SMBC and well known author of the Word of Mouth Marketing opus.

It’s now more than 2 1/2 years since I joined the former blogcouncil, now known as Social Media Business Council, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge. I thought, as Hervé Kabla and myself – co-founders of Media Aces in France – are currently finalising our book entitled ‘Social Media Taught to My Boss’ (in French, but I’m open to suggestions from publishers), that it would be a great idea to sit with Andy and review the history and principles of SMBC as well as take a bit of hindsight and see how things had developed over the years. It’s hard to describe but spending 3 years of field practice in Social Media for a large company implies that a lot of work and effort has been put into these initiatives. Sometimes it’s good to put down one’s tools and muse.

Andy keeps repeating that doing Social Media for large groups is not as easy as doing the same for an individual or a small shop. I know that many people must not believe that this is true. « You are a big brand hence it’s way too easy » a lot of people must think. Yet nothing has ever been more true. Innovating within a large enterprise is a never-ending, groundhod day-like heavy-lifting exercise. This is why SMBC is important. It enables the heads of Social Media like us to get together, to help each other and to learn from one another. This is what Andy is referring to as being the « missing piece in the puzzle ».

And this is also why there are now more than 150 members within SMBC. Hats off Andy!

here are some of the 150 members of SMBC as of now …

local vs. international social media platforms: a thorough study by Sofrecom

Carlos Jordan de Urries (left) and Chrystele Bazin (below), senior consultants at Sofrecom (a France Telecom Company) have updated us on the status of Social Media in emerging markets last Monday in Cairo. In this presentation, we’ll focus less on international Social media platforms and more on what the motivations are for people to follow – or not follow – brands like Coca Cola for instance.

aim of the study

The aim of this study was not to be comprehensive either. What Sofrecom have wanted to do is to highlight the main trends in social media in emerging countries. Chrystel started with a little sketch (right) defining a “social” network showing how (virtual) networks of people can be intertwined. With user generated content (UGC), content gets published online, and even though you are not a media, there are many chances that some people are going to see your content; your contacts will see it and then your contacts’ contacts etc.

She then replaced Social networks within the slightly larger framework of “social media” (which I had covered before in my presentation). There are different types of tools within Social Media, from blogs to microblogs and wikis and, eventually social networks proper. There are 2 types of social media platforms which make up a first axis: content centric such as youtube of Flickr, and communications centric such as Facebook, Orkut etc. The two are sort of joined at the hip though because they are both about content, but the approach is radically different. Then there are 3 more types on the second axis: collaborative such as wikipedia, community orientated or deal oriented (crowdsourcing, social e-commerce for the latter catregory). Eventually, Chrystel showed us that completed matrix showing how all these tools can be spread out across this two axes (above, click to enlarge).

Twitter is an issue because it can’t really be squeezed into the “social network” box as it is more of a tool than a social network. As to crowdsourcing, there are sites like e-Stockphoto which is reshaping the photo market, as a lot of media are using them now vs. traditional agencies (we could have added fotolia, here’s a link to my page as an example).

Main trends in local services

Different countries have been investigated, it is not meant to be comprehensive though. Commercial Services and Crowdfunding have been zoomed in in the rest of Christelle’s presentation.

• Watwet (note: the server was down when I tried it, so here is the cached version) is microblogging focused on Arab populations, it’s open, whatever country you are from. Zoopy is like youtube or Flickr. The service was launched in South Africa. Now we can see that some of the videos are coming from other English-speaking countries. They are both open solutions.
• Facebook is not providing any specific value to local countries in these regions. Veepiz for is just like that. They are using the Facebook platform but provide a local service based on top of Facebook and let users be on their own environment. They do that with Twitter as well so that users have the best of both worlds. It’s coopetition. Veepiz integrates other social networks but provides local value.
  • nov 20, 2010 adendum and clarification by the owners of Veepiz: “Just to clarify, veepiz is not built ontop of facebook platform. its all hand coded and has its own unique platform. for more goto http://www.veepiz.com or our bloghttp://veepiz.wordpress.com“
• FrontlineSMS: many services, blogs etc. in Africa are becoming social. FrontlineSMS is a Yammer-like two-way SMS platform which has developed its activity for NGOs. They have created a community. The platform helps NGO employees communicate amongst themselves. The platform is free for NGOs.
• Crowdsourcing: this is about making the user at the centre of the service. It’s up to the user to decide whether he wants to collaborate. The idea is not to just let people complain about the service but to let them be part of the improvement of that service. There are 4 domains to which crowdsourcing applies: knowledge sharing, task force, real time information and funding
  • Kiva is well known and is about micro funding. People go to the web and fund a project. You don’t win anything apart from the pride of being part of something.
  • txteagle is a task force example
  • iYammobi and Kerawa are examples of knowledge sharing. Kerawa is about small ads; say if you are looking for a flat in Cameroon. It’s working in most sub-saharian countries and enjoying good success in that region.
  • Ushahidi is a sample real time information example: it was used in Haiti after the quake to map needs for medicine and or in Atlanta to inform people about robberies being committed

For small ads, in emerging countries and namely in Sub Saharian regions, ebay cannot provide the right kind of service whereas Kerawa can.  There are still many opportunities in the Middle East and Africa for services like this to be provided for local people.

Facts and figures

there are sites on which one can find interesting data about Middle East social media usage:

• Google Ad planner is the first one
• Facebook advertising is another one (Facebook provides detailed numbers about users registered in the system)

Start-up of the month : Synthesio describes the 4 types of brands on the web (2/2)

note: this is the continuation of an interview of Synthesio’s Loic Moisand (see part one here). many thanks to Synthesio‘s Michelle Chmielewski for her help with the Englsh version of this post

Major trends in the monitoring market: consolidation and transversal moves

The market has greatly evolved since 2006 and showed signs of maturity in the consolidation actions among various actors. Scoutlabs was bought out by Lithium Technologies, Sysomos by Marketwire. The bought-out companies were easy prey “at the moment of the explosion of social media with the desire of creating true groupings”.

That doesn’t just mean more consolidations, but also more transversal actions with integrations:

• of social CRM (integration of client relations and social media, one of the most significant trends of 2010)
• of the press (with press and social media domains becoming more and more intertwined: on the one hand press relations officers are trying to reach information producers that are not connected to the mass media, bloggers in particular, and especially using different methods to transform their press releases into social media releases)

Other actors, including early days French pioneer KBCrawl “have stayed in ‘tool’ mode and haven’t switched to SaaS dashboards” and are being overtaken by swifter players.

brands online reputation: 4 main profiles

I’ve kept the best part for now. 4 years of experience in the field have allowed Synthesio to depict the landscape of online brands in a particularly striking manner; Loic Moisand highlights 4 main types of brands (pictures in the following diagram):

1. “Under-the-radar” brands

These are the brands that…we don’t talk about, or at least not a lot. A little bit like those friends that you invite to a party that don’t show up. There is either no or very little buzz for these brands that are consequently put into a “PR intravenous drip” that could only with hope to revive interest in the brand. In this category we find a jumble of mass-produced products like dishwashing soap and some B2B brands. Here are nonetheless 2 examples of companies that managed to “break the mold” (the best way to revive interest in your brand) :

• Blendtec with their famous WebTV series “Will it Blend?” that was present at the last MediaAces conference in Paris June 22, 2010 (http://france.media-aces.org)
• “compare the Market”’s URL was too long and getting too many searches for “compare the meerkat”. Comparethemarket, a sort of “progressive.com” decided to create an online character making fun of people that were typing it wrong in order to create their own buzz.

Not only are there numerous B2B brands fitting into this category that haven’t been able to break the mold, “3/4 of brands fit into this category,” adds Loic Moisand.

Important sidenote : certain brands, depending on the country, their media, and culture, may be “under the radar” here and not somewhere else. The French insurance-comparing site meilleurtaux.com generated high levels of buzz in France but Comparethemarket, the UK equivalent ended up being less successful (hence the need to do things differently)

2. Functional brands

This is another brand category that doesn’t necessarily inspire deep passion but that can generate a large number of comments. It has to do with brands that “we just want to work, and that’s it”. These are the brands that don’t leave you indifferent, but don’t necessarily cry out for your attention, either. In these types of cases the buzz level is  rather high, but focused around the product’s/service’s functions, price, the quality of customer service, etc with levels of dissatisfaction that are often quite elevated. This category includes : e-commerce sites, washing machines, household appliances, mass high-tech goods (except for Apple) and telecommunications operators. The response in this domain has been to have a community manager for their own sites (FAQ, tech support, answering questions) as well as on third-party forums to help web users with a proactive intervention (Orange has actually just taken this step).

3. Brands we love

This segment is – of course – brand nirvana. Unfortunately very few brands are able to be a part of this group, for sometimes irrational reasons. The brands that are able to attain this segment are brands from groups 1 and 2 that have “launched an emotional movement”. Apple, video games (Wii), Sony (only for certain products), Coke, and fashion brands are a few examples of “Brands we love”. They are brands that “take up all the space” and the ones that are always examples, which can almost become slightly irritating at times…They’re incredibly popular, and you can’t do anything about it. They are the brands that knew how to create “a relationship that is more imortant than the product” according to Bernard Cova.

Not everyone can get to this stage. It is full of clans of enthusiasts and brand advocates, where brands don’t need to “create communities” because they already exist, often on their own (Apple doesn’t have one blog and supposedly doesn’t intervene in social media other than to police what’s being said, which no one really seems to find surprising and hasn’t cut down on fan enthusiasm).

The best attitude to have for this group is to accompany communities : answer questions, inform fans, encourage them, occasionally give them gifts to thank them for their loyalty. Blogger clubs are also a phenomenon of this group, which can sometimes lead to large demands. Microsoft – in order to avoid always talking about Apple – organized the launche of Windows 7 at the end of 2009 in its Windows café. All interested bloggers were invited to get a very nice gift – their own complete version of Windows 7 on a DVD just for them. The brand decided not to get involved any further in blog discussions than that. It took a respectful approach of its community, which was the right attitude in this case.

4. Sensitive brands

These are brands that are “stressful” according to Loic Moisand’s terminology. The 3 sectors that are affected the most: health, safety, and children. People are scared in this segment, the brand can be scary, or becmoe a threat; the stress is real and “you have to reassure people”. It’s the only thing that can be done. Admitting you were wrong and showing that you are correcting the problem, even if, when opinion is against you, the attempt is bound to fail. Becoming a “sensitive brand” means risking becoming a disgraced brand. Certain brands will forever be in this category, like pharmaceuticals for example (without exception according to Loic Moisand); but there are other brands that switch from other segments to this danger zone :

1. banks, since the 2007 crisis, have become scapegoats for the economic problems in the West if you believe their detractors, to the point of having lost sight of their essential economic functions (see the example of Kerviel here)
2. BP, that has now become a symbol – according to their detractors – for the environmental problems like Total in France after Erika – justified or not
3. chronically : users with worries – based on facts or not (not up to us to decide) – about electromagnetic waves from WiFi connections, Wimax, telephones, etc (here’s a link towards a show with Etienne Cendrier from the site robin des toits)
4. food brands criticized for their choice of ingredients or their methods, like Nestlé, for example, that became a Greenpeace target in 2010 for their use of palm oil in chocolate products

A dynamic brand classification

A brand can pass from one segment to another at any moment. Apple did, for example, when a rumor about exploding iPhones spread in 2009, as did Renault with rumors of stuck Vel Saltis gas pedals (2005-2006), and Toyta in 2010 with with their own technical problems, even if the rumors usually disappeared along with the crisis.

I find this classification to be particularly useful as it presents us with a point of view that is different from the classic clichés heard on the web about brands. It also allows for web and PR directors to take a step back in order to decide which direction is the best for their brand.

sidenote: this is an empirical classification and is not a result of a scientific study. It may evolve over time depending on the country and brand’s history. The opinions expressed here about certain brands are the personal opinions of the author and do not reflect a proof of good or bad quality of these brands whatsoever.

Start-up of the month : Synthesio describes the 4 types of brands on the web (1/2)

note: many thanks to Synthesio‘s Michelle Chmielewski for her help with the Englsh version of this post

This past July I met up with Loic Moisand, co-founder of the start-up Synthesio with Thibault Hanin, specialised in web monitoring and analysis of social and online mainstream media. They are a great example of a French start-up that has succeeded, in France as well as abroad. I mentioned them previously in two videos filmed with Trey Pennington, who is in charge of Synthesio’s marketing in the US and the UK (video 1 – video 2). This time I wanted to take a moment with Loic in order to find out more about the creation of Synthesio, on one hand,  and about their measurement of influence on the Interneton the other. What I discovered during this interview is a real gem that goes above and beyond a simple market analysis : a very interesting and useful market segmentation that Loic Moisand has created based on his experience in the field that I found to be a fundamental and useful discovery for online marketing experts and branding experts that set their eyes on the web.

I met with Loic in the Cybervillage of Paris at Crimée, the same place where I had met him 1 1/2 years ago ; time enough for the young entrepreneur (28 years old, to be exact) to work hard on developing his start-up. His work has paid off as Synthesio has seen their revenues grow significantly, even if I can’t just yet reveal the exact numbers since the enterprise is private (you’ll just have to trust me when I say – they’re good).

The two Synthesio founders are both graduates of ESSEC (one of Europe’s top business schools), even if Thibault Hanin is the “geek” of the group, having earned his engineering degree beforehand. One worked on the software and the other on case studies, each in their “own little corners” of the school’s campus, according to Loic, before deciding to team up for a bit, just to see. “We worked on a business plan for a month and found that we complimented each other quite nicely”. They were able to raise enough funds rapidly, complete with a student loan, and were off and running. “Our first investors didn’t even look at the details of our businesses plan, they just evaluated who we were and trusted us”. A look at entrepreneurship that is very different from the usual Gaulic jeremiads. “I don’t at all agree with people that say that we can’t invest in France. There are good grants for those that are young innovative enterprise, thanks to the Research Minister,” adds Loic Moisand. Of course the two young entrepreneurs “ate nothing but pasta” for the first year while they developed their offer. But there were numerous surprises…

Business isn’t rational, it’s linked to the entrepreneur’s desires

The story behind Synthesio is interesting in and of itself. Well-positioned today for measuring social media buzz, the start-up began along a completely different route : “We started by creating a sort of Google Alerts,” explains Loic Moisand, but we quickly realized that there was something else going on in social media. Even if we didn’t begin that way”. Founded in 2006, the company took one year to prepare their offer. “I met 400 people, communications directors, research directors, agency directors, etc. during that year” adds Loic Moisand ; and that doesn’t even take into account incidental meetings. Forced to complete an internship abroad for his degree, the entrepreneur chose India for personal reasons, a choice that proved to be incredibly important for what followed in terms of their software operations, which makes the Synthesio co-founder say, “business is not rational and many things are tied to the founders’ desires”. A lesson in humilty and reailty to be taught in business schools, perhaps… “We wanted to visit, have fun, and not make something super French” continues Loic Moisand, and that’s exactly how Synthesio began “with everything in 5 languages from the very start” in order to win – little by little – international accounts that have made a very impressive list of clients: Accor, Orange, Sanofi, Eli Lilly, BNPP, etc. that use Synthesio to measure what is said about them online.

Finding a good brand name

Well-taught  marketers know it all too well : finding a good brand name is a fundamental step. The double-team took it upon themselves to create their own algorithm that spit out original names, and Synthesio came out. The domain name was free, so nothing more than to find a logo, which Loic created, partly Ying-Yang, partly a stylized “S” with “the red representing the human, and the gray, the technology” he clarifies.

25 employees in 3 countries and… 30 languages

Synthesio is comprised of 25 employees today working full-time, plus partners that bring that number up to 35, spread out in 3 countries : France, the UK and the US. “But we have people that work for Synthesio everywhere : Morocco, China, India, Russia, Portugal, Spain, etc because the company handles research in 30 languages (the dashboard is available in 6, including Chinese). The multilingual search engine is the cornerstone of their service along with the fact that the analyses are done by humans. The differentiating point is exactly that. The engine is a proprietary development that is partially protected, as only original features and innovations can be patented.

The buzz analysis market : a fusing of 3 stages (+1 or 2 for France that seems to do everything its own way)

The worldwide market is broken down into 3 segments : free, do-it-yourself and upscale, Synthesio belonging to this last group. France is a bit different as it has 2 different types of actors (ami and Digimind) that are editors as well but positioned on different price schemas. This category doesn’t fit – according to Loic Moisand – with Forrester’s and Gartner’s groupings, which would explain their difficulties in positioning themselves internationally, even if the two actors “perform well on French territory”. Digimind has opted, itself, for the third type of positioning in North America. The France, creative as always, also has another example that doesn’t fit with other models : Trendybuzz, a research company with publisher software.

coming next : Part 2 with a breakdown of Internet brands by Synthesio

Zoho CEO predicts the end of offline software

a software revolution is unfolding before our very eyes

A great deal has been already said on this blog and elsewhere on the subject of cloud computing but our meeting with Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist for Zoho and Sridhar Vembu, the firm’s founder and CEO was very refreshing and led to some very interesting thoughts and visions. Zoho is a suite of applications that run over the Internet – in cloud mode – but what makes the suite stand out is that it is encompassing all sorts of domains, not just horizontal (CRM for instance) but also vertical.

will the cloud computing industry take over from the offline industry and when?

One of the main questions which was on everyone’s lips this morning was this one: will applications in the cloud be a big thing or not eventually, or just another of these missed opportunities that have been so numerous in the past of the IT market. Sridhar Vembu’s response came loud and clear in a visionary statement which was most striking: “The cloud computing software industry will have the best of the offline industry but it will take 10 years” he said. He went on describing the Oriental spirit of the firm and how his vision was in the long term rather than “flipping it” (i.e. reselling quickly in Silicon Valley parlance). But “Zoho is more into the long term” Vembu added. “Zoho is not looking for investment”, “it has no big ambition to take over the world, you don’t have to be a Google or a Microsoft to succeed”. This was a very refreshing and wise view. And he went on: “I don’t believe in a Microsoft monopoly in the cloud. There will be many actors” he said. He also stated that “3 million users is enough for [them] to live!” and that “during last year’s recession, [they] grew 100%”

The revenue made by the private company cannot be disclosed but Zoho is making profit and doesn’t have any debts. Yet, it refused publically takeover bids from Salesforce.com and wants to remain independent although he may also be looking for partnerships.

for a complete script of the June 1 presentation at Zoho check the Orange Business Live blog

Don’t be prejudiced: b2b is the future of social media!

Time and time again, I have heard people say that b2c is better suited to social media than b2b. As a matter of fact, I am not at all sure about that. The fact that there are fewer b2b brands jumping on the bandwagon is probably more due to the maturity of that sector than the fact that the medium is not adapted to b2b.

Indeed, if one wants social media to have an impact, one needs to foster collaboration and create communities, which is generally done through 3 main things: passion, mutual help and common benefit. These 3 common ingredients of collaboration and social media are in fact very commonplace in the b2b arena; communities are often smaller, more specialised, but also very focused on their abilities to deliver and

illustration & maps by Mongabay.com

always ready to debate on technical points, points of view etc.

Besides, business to business is far less exposed than consumer marketing. In the recent Nestlé example, in which the Swiss firm has not quite been able to appraise the situation and deliver appropriate responses, online fighting with Greenpeace and other activists on social network is an unfair battle for b2c brands. The leeway that brands have in such cases to defend themselves is not very significant – and the case made by Greenpeace is a bit overwhelming too (see maps on the right hand side, courtesy of mongabay.com). Indeed, Nestlé uses Palm oil, which is both an issue from an ecological and dietary point of view, granted; but all mass producers of foodstuffs use palm oil because it’s cheaper and plentiful (now we know why). When activists target a company like this one, the result can be terrible, even though I am not at all certain that Facebook will have the best of Nestlé, the effect on brand equity is still very bad at the very least. At the end of the day, the Swiss manufacturer has yielded to pressure, but instead of turning this into a customer benefit, it’s more a matter of acknowledging their “mistake” and trying to catch up with the criticisms.

As far as b2b is concerned, there is less resentment, clients are more prone to negotiate than complain online, and they also know that when complaints are voiced too crudely online, it’s not always good for your own – and your company’s – reputation either. Besides, in b2b it is also easier for clients to make their points directly to sales and/or marketing. I have heard example in the United States of software vendors (I cannot quote brands) having problems with former employees who avenged themselves by becoming trolls (that is to say online detractors on forums ands social media), but in general the b2b environment is more straight-laced and more likely to trigger responsible discussions.

One may argue that you might get fewer comments on b2b social media and blogs in particular (at Orange Business Services we got 1,500 in 2009 only, so it’s not too bad in fact) but when we get some they are a lot better and more interesting than most of the comments that you get in b2c. Most of the time, they are passionate discussions about in-depth subjects, including complex points of views and explanations. How complex can you get on a consumer product? Usually, it doesn’t get very far or it gets round in circle. In b2b, co-creation and co-innovation is already old-hat, so why not use the Internet to pursue the discussion online?

Such discussions and comments enable one to improve one’s products (it happened to us 4 times in 2009), and it can even help us improve our knowledge when an Internet reader remarks on one of our articles, corrects our mistakes and helps us improve our points of view and visions. A little counter intuitively, I would even venture to say that b2b is the future of social media, because it is b2b brands which can actually most benefit from the use of these tools. We established the proof of this with our @orangebusiness twitter account by placing our brand in the top 10 French brands on Twitter, right behind worldwide renowned brands like Louis Vuitton or Yves Saint Laurent (source:  [Fr]01 informatique, May 2010) and even above Air France. Yet, being popular on the web with a brand like Air France is a lot easier when you think about it, the competition should even be unfair. No, it is unfair; but such is the passion triggered by what we did collectively that we are on the verge of building what is the nirvana of social marketing: a community (Air France already has one, it was created by one of their fans but it’s hard to admit that you have to relinquish the responsibility for your brand even though this is the right thing to do when a community already exists).

http://twitter.com/orangebusiness is the 6th French brand on Twitter (source: 01 informatique May 2010, April numbers)

Lastly, it is difficult for a b2b firm to do traditional advertising and namely TV commercials. Often, budgets are tight and TV commercials require vast amounts of money while delivering sometimes variable results. Into the bargain, most b2b players are reluctant to spread the word about niche products on popular TVs networks. Social media, on the contrary, proves an efficient and economical way to market b2b products: in other words, Nestlé less needs Facebook than we need Twitter (mark my word, I didn’t write does not need Facebook).

B2b is really well suited to social media even though this is not what you will find on the headlines because its subjects are more technical and — if taken at face value — less pertinent for consumers. But at the end of the day, this is also what keeps trolls at bay!

And this is also why a lot of b2b marketing budgets are dormant due to the lack of new ideas whereas so much can be done.

note : the illustrations and pictures are from Microsoft clipart gallery

B2B marketing lessons wrapped up by Trey Pennington on b2bbloggers.com

I met Trey Pennington at Likeminds in Exeter at the end of February and I must admit that I’m very happy that Trey has now become a friend. Not only has he written a very nice post (see per below) about my experience regarding online b2b marketing and recorded a great video at Bovey Castle (below too) when we were there, but as he is a fast traveller it’s very easy for us to have lunch on the Champs Elysées and I don’t even have to travel Besides, I discovered that Trey is one of the world’s most connected people on Facebook. So here you go, not only is Trey a very nice chap but he is an absolute genius when it comes to word of mouth marketing; this is certainly worth knowing (contact details here). Now over to him for this interview at Bovey Castle after the Likeminds summit and I really can’t find anything else I can add to his great post (ps: Trey is a video wizard too, I have included his video interview per below).

The LikeMinds 2010 conference in Devon, England brought some of the sharpest marketing minds throughout Europe together in the ancient Roman city of Exeter. One bright mind there was Yann Gourvennec, who is the director of Internet and digital media forOrange Business Services. Orange is a pure B2B play who is investing into innovating through new media. He says, “social media is an enabler.” I had the opportunity to sit down and interview him at Bovey Castle in Devon, England.

read more on b2bbloggers LikeMinds 2010 Interview: B2B Marketing Lessons from Yann Gourvennec of Orange Business Services

My 10 Ingredients For Change Management

some of the Likeminds Summit attendees

note: this post is the unabridged version of a piece which was written for Bnet.co.uk of which I am a regular contributor

One of the interesting things happening after the Likeminds conference on 25 February in Exeter, was the Likeminds Summit which actually took place on the following day at Bovey Castle in Dartmoor. Obviously, there were a bunch of like-minded people around the table dealing with the issues of how to implement social media properly for businesses.

One of the recurring issues surrounding the implementation of social media was change management; a topic often touched on but rarely explained properly. For the benefit of our readers, I have put together a list of the 10 ingredients which I think are of the utmost importance when you want to set up change in your company. This list is based on my experience of implementing change at various companies throughout the world in the past 20 years:

1. The serenity prayer: the first ingredient is to always know what you can change and what you cannot change, and to ensure that you always will be able to tell the difference,
2. Think big, start small: obviously if you are trying to implement change it is because you have great ideas; but try and be reasonable and start small and then move on to bigger changes one step at a time,
3. Choose the path of least resistance: avoid these people resisting change at all cost and try not to waste time convincing them. On the contrary, focus on these other people who are more favourable to your project and work with them all the way up (they are what one calls change agents),
4. Ask your boss to set an example: when you want to change things, management has to show the way and to prove others that things can be done not only by ordering them around but by actually doing things by themselves,
5. Don’t think top down: on the contrary, don’t believe that just because top management is going to send an e-mail to all, things are going to start changing by themselves. They simply won’t,
6. Seek a mandate once (some) results have been proven. Or, if you already have a mandate, don’t show it until we have implemented a few results either. This will show people that you care about their opinion,
7. Respect people: the human factor is one of the most important in change management. Don’t underestimate people and try and convince them humanly,
8. Expect the best, but prepare for the worst: as always in project management, Murphy’s Law applies. Be prepared for the worst so that you can avoid it,
9. Act swiftly: change is best implemented in my eyes in a 3 to 6 month period. If nothing has happened before then, chances are that nothing ever will,
10. In times of trouble, don’t stop and speed up the change process on the contrary: times of chaos can be perceived as periods of danger by most people; yet, to most change managers they will be used as periods at which anything is possible. It’s mostly when things are uncertain that change is implemented and accepted, not the contrary.

Lastly, adhering to these 10 simple rules might not guarantee success but overlooking them will certainly mean failure.

what the cluetrain manifesto teaches us on social media … 11 years later

the manifesto's trademark armadillo picture

this is the unabridged version of an article published and written originally for Bnet.co.uk of which I am a regular contributor

OK, “markets are conversations” but keep on reading anyway …

How many times have I heard consultants open their presentations with the ultimate quotation from the 1999 cluetrain manifesto to justify the need to jump on the social media bandwagon: “Markets are conversations”; QED (or so they think).

I have been a long time admirer of the manifesto myself (if we except its pseudo French translation to make it sound international). 95 theses (not just one) such as the one quoted above, make up the manifesto. In this piece, I will take just five of them which I think are most important and should be remembered … at least as much as the obligatory conversation motto.

thesis #3: “conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice”

•    in social media, it means that you have to have real people and real life interaction– including behind-the-scenes — when discussions are triggered in tools like twitter for instance. Automated responses will not do.

thesis #7: “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy”

•    this doesn’t mean that your boss should be replaced. It means that websites are driven by linkage, not menus and that they aren’t designed like software. Unfortunately, I haven’t witnessed any progress in that direction. Too many discussions – not to say feuds – in businesses are triggered by the relative position of a menu within a home page. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the Web is working and the way that SEO is done.

thesis #24: “Bombastic boasts “we are positioned to be the pre-eminent provider of XYZ”—do not constitute a position

•    in social media, what matters is directness, truth, honesty, disclosure, real information from real people, not preformatted pitches in corporate speak.

thesis #26: Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are deeply afraid of their markets.

•    as per our previous post on Paul Argenti’s latest opus on the subject of Corporate Communications, it’s not so much that PR doesn’t do that at the moment which matters, but the sheer necessity for PR to reinvent itself and become human again. It’s not as obvious as it may seem when you are behind the company firewall so to speak.

thesis #66: We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

•    clients, ecosystems, visitors at large want information, and they want information that is useful to them, not company brochures which mean nothing. when I see most Corporate websites 16 years after the launch of the first ones I realise how little progress we have made in that direction. this is also because Corporate Websites have become the new bone of contention between entities, the area for which all business units are battling and that most of the time, people lose track of what could be of interest to visitors. At the end of the day, this is also what makes blogs easier to manage than corporate websites, as blogs are real opinions from real people.

links and further reading

• the cluetrain manifestoat http://cluetrain.com,
• the 10-year anniversary version of the book which you can buy from Amazon,
• a review of that 10-year anniversary version of the Cluetrain Manifesto which can be found on boingboing.

(3/10) My top 10 tips for implementing social media

Social media landscape - Fredcavazza.net

note: this is the unabridged version of a post originally published at http://bnet.co.uk of which I am a regular contributor

Tip No. 3: avoid social media proliferation and do away with renegade initiatives

As Social Media is becoming more popular, it seems that everyone else wishes to create one’s twitter account. But how many twitter account does a company need? More than once, I have seen such efforts fail anyway, because communities aren’t created without effort and one has – as Tara Hunt would put it – to work on one’s whuffy first. Those who forget about these fundamentals are bound to fail anyway. They will also cause aggravation and havoc amongst social media enthusiasts and there will be a price for this.

(2/10) My top 10 tips for implementing social media

continued from part one, this article will be published in 10 instalments

two: do not confuse comments for collaboration

Comments mean reaction, not action nor pro-action. On the contrary, collaboration is about working together (cum-laborare in Latin). And it is about working from the bottom up (Howard Rheingold talked about the guy in the basement). This includes encouraging people from the shopfloor to come forward and also letting clients talk to one another. Not all companies are prepared for this, and it may take a while before they are. Besides, if this is incompatible with your core strategy, check the following rule.

to be continued …

increasing brand advocacy with Social Media

On Nov 10th, 2009 I was in Atlanta presenting at Blogwell on behalf of Orange Business Services, presenting our social media strategy and explaining how, why and what we did online to increase our brand advocacy. Yesterday, the video recording of that presentation was posted by SMBC and – assuming your firewall isn’t going to block Vimeo – you are kindly invited to click the following image in order to view the recorded session.

And if your firewall does block Vimeo, or that you find the quality a bit flaky, you are now left with the possibility of contacting me via the comments section of this post and then I can tell you how video can be made available to all easily and qualitatively, which is what I explain in that recording.

here is the introduction to the video by the SMBC representatives:

In his BlogWell Atlanta case study presentation, “Succeeding in Social Media Initiatives,” Orange Business Services’ Head of Internet & Digital Media, Yann Gourvennec, explained how they’re finding success in social media as a business-to-business brand.

Yann’s case study covered how they’re finding passionate buyers online that advertising can’t reach, how they’re using video, and how they’ve used social media feedback to improve their products.

—

BlogWell is the only conference where social media executives from large companies come together to share their case studies, offer practical how-to advice, and answer your questions.

To learn more about BlogWell, visit gaspedal.com/blogwell/

BlogWell is produced by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council.

Learn More: gaspedal.com and socialmedia.org

popular myth about duplicate content debunked by Google

as stated in my previous SEO piece, there are quite a few myths flying around the Web and namely about what Google does and doesn’t with your data. Webpronews has this story about “duplicated content” and God knows there are many people tallking nonsense about that subject. A must-read:

[...] Greg begins by clearing up a popular myth about duplicate content, and that is that Google penalizes sites for having duplicate content. This is not the case. That’s not to say that duplicate content can’t have a negative impact on your rankings, but Google itself is not penalizing you for it. [...]

• read on at Webpronews

A Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) survival guide for marketing managers (part 2) – unabridged

note: this is part 2 of 2 in a series of articles on the subject of SEO and marketing, originally published at Bnet.co.uk. This piece is the unabridged version of the article.

10 steps for improving your SEO dramatically and simply

including a slideshare pictorial guide for SEO marketers (see bottom of article)

Important notice: it is reminded that this is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to SEO. All steps have been voluntarily simplified in order to help marketing managers, not to turn them into bespectacled anoraks. My method described here is simple, it is certainly not scientific, it is bound to make any SEO guru scream in dismay I’m sure, but I’ve tried it and it worked time and time again, so I believe there must be something good in it.

Step 1: define your SEO niche

Trying to be all things to all people is a bad thing in Marketing in general, but in web page optimisation it is a lethal mistake. First and foremost, one has to target a so-called SEO niche in order to be well positioned in search engines. Reaching number one rank is a nice to have but can rarely be achieved from day one. On the contrary, it is easier and more effective to aim at niches, one at a time for each page you want to index, and eventually, your ranking will improve.

1.       Target 3 keywords (or combination of). I don’t mean that one cannot index a page for more than 3 keywords, I have seen counterexamples. What I mean is

a.       It’s difficult to target more than 3 keywords from a resource viewpoint,

b.      If you want to be consistent, these keywords will have to be repeated all over your text, so imagine if you have 10 of them!

c.       Your website has probably more than one page so do use other pages to target other keywords, based on relevance (the more the keywords are repeated in the page the more relevant because it means that this page really is about that),

d.      Don’t try and spam search engines, their designers are really shrewd, so spamming a page with repeated keywords may sound very clever but I assure you it’s not plus your readers might not appreciate your style.

2.       Analyse popularity AND competition and focus on that KEI

a.       keyword popularity will tell you how much a keyword combination is sought after,

b.      competition will tell you how often your competitors have tried to use this combination of keywords for their own SEO,

c.       the right combination between a & b is called the Key Efficiency Indicator index (aka KEI), a very effective way of balancing the two factors,

d.      bringing realism using personal judgement is also advised. Some of the numbers given by some keyword generation tools (see last section about useful tools) will not make much sense unless you interpret them properly and eliminate irrelevant keywords. For instance, networks appears as if it were a relevant keyword for telcos but in fact it’s not because it’s too vague as it mostly refers to social networks. A simple search engine query will prove the point very quickly and therefore, the ambiguity can be removed by qualifying the keyword better (network security is more relevant for instance, etc.)

e.      each page can/must be indexed with a different strategy in mind. This is how you can ensure that different targets are reached from the same website.

note: “The Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) was developed by search engine guru Sumantra Roy. it compares the daily searches with the number of competing Web pages to pinpoint exactly which keywords are good enough so you can use them while optimizing your site.” (source: sitepoint)

Step 2: fine tune your page title

As said in our previous post about Internet content, good content shows in the title. Good SEO too, and this is rather obvious so I won’t expatiate.

Step 3: implement keywords in the URL

Adding your keywords to your URL is also very effective as it will improve the search engine friendliness of your website. It also means generic keywords. Business people are always obsessed with their brand – and this is natural to an extent – but Internet visitors aren’t forcibly. What you have to do is get them to associate your brand with the good content that you are providing. It’s just the same objective but it works the other way round.