InfoInnovation

I'm judging the eContent 100...

...and looking for nominations in the three categories on which I'm focusing: social media; mobile content; fee-based information services.  Do you know about an emerging player that will be making waves in one of these areas?  Are there some usual suspects deserving of special recognition for their achievements over the past year?  Let me know!  And thanks.

Using Social Media to Increase [B2B] Revenues

 

If you’re interested in social media in a business and professional context (and you must be since you’re reading this blog) then it’s probably worth your time to watch this recorded video of last week’s SIIA Brown Bag session on the business drivers of social networking. 

A good cross-section of perspectives was represented,: AOL’s Platform A, incorporating social media into a broad online advertising mix; IT Toolbox, an established and profitable B2B social media provider recently by Corporate Executive Board (as noted here); Spiceworks, a new company serving IT needs in small and medium businesses; and McGraw-Hill’s Construction Information Group, experimenting successfully with social media as an extension of its traditional industry publishing roles.

While all of the panelists had valuable things to say, to me the most interesting remarks were those of Jay Hallberg, co-founder of Spiceworks.  Originally launched in 2006, Spiceworks IT Desktop and Community is a free, advertising supported set of tools for managing IT assets (What do I have? Is it working? How do I fix it?”) and a robust content-generating community (much like IT Toolbox but for smaller shops) that started out as a “feature” and has become a core element (“Which tools? Who is an expert? What information do I need and where can I find it?  What products should I buy?”).  

Spiceworks seems to be evolving as a network management dog that is increasingly wagged by its B2B social media tail. And it is already partnering globally with some of the biggest names in IT media.  This can serve as an inspiration to B2B and professional publishers, but also a warning: content providers are not the only players who can aggregate and foster valuable online communities.  With the applications software industry (including Google Apps and much more to come from Microsoft and many others) showing that SaaS can work on an advertising model, the business media and information space is going to become a lot more crowded.

The Top 100 Social Media and Social Networking Blogs

A very useful list, brought to my attention by one of the listees, Social Media Club.   Not that I'm any kind of benchmark for social media blog awareness, but I've had only about 20 of these on my own radar screen (until now). 

Why widgets matter

Yesterday’s SIIA Brown Bag luncheon panel entitled “Think Small: Why Widgets are the Next Big Thing for Content Distribution” proved, as expected, very worthwhile in illuminating different facets of the new, decentralized Web.  Moderated by Barry Graubart of Alacra, with panelists Steve Touhill of Clearspring, Alex Iskold of AdaptiveBlue, and Jeff Yolen of Sphere, the panel quickly became an active discussion with an audience of about 120 largely B2B and professional content providers.  It was an ideal venue for considering whether the “widgetsphere” will become a significant part of publishing strategies for “serious” digital content, well beyond today’s amusing and outrageous video clips and trivia-related games and ice-breakers.

For those who may need a primer on widgets, rest assured that even key executives of leading widget providers were unaware of them as recently as a year ago.  “Widgets” - or “applications” (Facebook), “gadgets” (Google), etc. - are chunks of interactive content that, enabled by technologies such as AJAX, Java, and Flash, can be imbedded and shared by web users, on personal sites, blogs, and social networks.  In effect, the “applets” you may first have heard of about ten years ago (in early Java days) have grown up to be interactive, rich-media, self-contained, portable, and potentially highly-viral web applications.

Here’s what I took away:  Widgets are important to business and professional media and information companies because they:  1) offer a way to capture embedded, user-personalized presences on blogs, social networks, enterprise desktops, and mobile devices; 2 provide an opportunity to benefit from viral distribution, enabling audience reach many times that of even successful portals and other “destination” sites; 3) (on the evidence of the three companies represented) enable a wide range of monetization strategies, including contextual and rich media advertising, affiliate e-commerce, and increased value of online inventory; 4) can serve some CRM objectives, and provide form-based lead-generation and subscription capabilities; 5) are now embraced by Google as both content targets and delivery formats for contextual advertising; and in particular 6) provide an ideal vehicle for penetrating emerging business and professional social networks with a more defined vertical and/or horizontal focus than LinkedIn, Facebook, et. al.

Widgets as a mode of content distribution channel also entail some risks:  1) the need to track and control branded content once it's been released into the network (being addressed by widget development and syndication providers like Clearspring; 2) security concerns (widgets are based on very hackable technologies like Ja va, and DRM approaches are likely to be rejected by users); and 3) the risks inherent in a shift to a new distribution paradigm.  But the session served to illuminate some powerful forces: the viral growth rates of widgets on blogs and within social networks; substantial advertiser interest; Google's embrace; and perhaps especially, the degree to which widgets fit user preferences for more control, personalization, and collaboration in interacting with digital content.  Publishers may have little choice but to adapt to a world in which content distribution partners very much include the audience itself.

Back on the block

I’m back from a fairly lengthy vacation and a period of hunkering down that followed, including some focus on preparing a semi-official “launch” of SKS Advisors later this month. After a few weeks in Italy, tuning back in to the industry took more than a little knob-fiddling. At least through my particular lens, it seems that two themes have predominated (in terms of overall impact on the industry, if not sheer volume of coverage): the turn in the financial markets that is likely to slow the pace of private equity players’ taking ownership of the information industry; and the industry’s ongoing dalliance (courtship? impending marriage?) with social media.

No need to add to the tsunami of coverage of the Dow Jones deal – except to add a small footnote to the effect that tightening credit may have played a role in keeping other potential acquirers (e.g. Burkle, but also Apax et. al.) on the sidelines. Before I “tuned out,” there was beginning to be speculation about PE players’ potential to ingest some of the big players in multi-course meals. I haven’t come across any suggestions like that since returning, though. Thomson-Reuters may be large enough to maintain public ownership in any case. And Wolters Kluwer divisions, to name a perennial candidate, may still be ripe for taking private. But certainly the pace now seems likely to slow considerably, and that may place more pressure on the established players to increase value the old-fashioned way (organic growth).

Otherwise, the focus in the B2B world on social networking/social media/user-generated content seems to be intensifying on every level. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably noticed a flurry of new Facebook “friends.” Some of the most “wired” commentators are already feeling overwhelmed by it all, especially when the business value of most popular widgets is questionable at best. And considerable speculation on what Facebook and similar phenomena might represent in business terms for the “high-value-content” sector. I thought one of the best was Barry Graubart’s suggestion of industry-specific social networking applications.  But should we expect to wait for that to come from the likes of Facebook and LinkedIn, or, as Russell Perkins just remarked to me, from publishers that already serve and understand their industries? Surely some (outside of IT, where it is already happening) will grasp this grail.

Speaking of IT, imho the most under-appreciated deal of the summer may be Corporate Executive Board’s acquisition of IT Toolbox. This transaction moves CEB strongly into the IT space , where its membership model has clear opportunities, and provides a platform for extending the UGC model to other vertical/horizontal niches already served. It’s a deal that should shake up the IT trade publishers, IT market researchers, and B2B social networking providers - a trifecta!