It’s just a different colored box

So, let’s review.

Big tech/startup-y/social media whiz-bang hulaboo company starts up it’s business. People seem to like it. It grows customers. Social/emerging/new media spreads it wildly. More people come in. Bloggers start to write about it. Progressive tech publications pick it up. Video blogs run clips and interviews. The business grows to a larger audience. The media formally known as mainstream comes in.

But what’s still the mostly widely accepted of success for one of these companies or the individuals that run them still come down to? Newspapers - sure a WSJ or NYTimes article is great, but since most of those publications are digital now, it’s not like it used to be. Radio? Maybe if you’ve been granted life on an NPR program. But, what never fails to get people excited?

Television.

Yes, television, that flickering “box” that has displayed a pre-programmed and limited set of images every night somewhere in America (and indeed most of the world) for more than 70 years.

Regular old television, that supposedly dying media which will someday completely replaced by Hulu, AppleTV, Roku boxes, TiVo, NetFlix on-demand, Boxee, WebTV and about 50 other companies reinventing the business of television, not to mention their lesser successful rivals.

And let me say, they have. And they are. And they will.

But the minute these companies have a breakthrough on “television” - a set time, on a set channel, where someone outside of their direct sphere of influence has selected them to be newsworthy for 45 seconds. Maybe 2 minutes. Maybe even half hour. Because, it still has value to the rest of the world, including, as much as they (we) loathe to admit to this, the 2% or less of the world who lives their entire lives in the digital space.

Most of the people of the Internet age grew up watching it. Cartoons. Movies. Sitcoms. And to be on television then was by all means “making it”. Fewer channels, fewer shows, higher ratings. And many more made it, directly in broadcast, but more personally with home video cameras. Roving videos. Mock talkshows. Other sorts of silliness. But these were making videos. This was as close as we could come to television.

And we still do make video. It’s quicker, cheaper, faster than more impactful. But it’s not television. Nor is television just video.

Watching someone, who lives the same ordinary life we do, be on television is still an emotional reaction. The first response is “they’ve made it”. Anyone can be in a video - but television, is preselected. More channels, more options, and less quality as a whole, but that emotional reaction has never changed. And that’s why, at least to me, television will never be completely dead. Because it’s still being recognized. Plucked from the life of obscurity and our own realms, to be seen, heard and understand, by someone who has the ability to decide that we are ourselves worthy of the right.

The only thing that’s changed is the color of the box we watch it on.

The real iPhone fail

Since we got our first iPhone 3Gs last summer, my girlfriend and I have had vastly different experiences.  And sadly, I don’t think either one is atypical.

We both had first-gen iPhones, which we sold.  We both appreciate the iPhone platform, the always on e-mail, the application platform, the instant purchase of music, the download of podcasts, the fact that it plays video, and the three thousand other things that the iPhone OS is really good at doing.

But that’s where the similiarity ends.

It comes down to how we use our phones.  I typically use my iPhone for data and texting, and web browsing and push updates from apps using 3G and WiFi.   She does a lot of that as well, but she does a lot more actual TALKING on the phone, and will spend sometimes 30 to 60 minutes on a call back to talk to her family.  I may talk on the phone in very short spurts (it’s rare that a phone conversation lasts more than 2 or 3 minutes).

I’ve had one phone in the last year.  It’s worked mostly fine,  save for the first 6 weeks I had it when AT&Ts network was woefully inadequate, and the one time that it refused to show missed calls and voicemails and ended up pissing off the Indian Food delivery guy waiting in the lobby for 45 minutes because my phone didn’t ring (in an ironic twist of karma, I cut my finger on the foil box the food was in).  My definition of “fine” is inherently because I use the phone mostly for data, and data connections have higher failure rate for delivery.  (If your 2MB connection delivers 98% of it’s data rate, you’re not likely to notice the missing 2% because of redundancy checks).  Both of my “failure” stories are isolated by the simple fact that I haven’t had to use voice services terribly often, and both of those were probably AT&T’s fault.  But since they were simple and isolated, and I tend to give benefit of the doubt more often than not, for me, it’s “not an issue”.  I use my iPhone as a computer.

My girlfriend has constantly had problems.  Dropped calls, not dead deadzones, no voice capability with “5 bars”, missing calls, missing voicemails.   So, she’s spent many hours on the phone with AT&T and tech support, and  they’ve really been unable to help her.  In the end, it’s because she uses her iPhone as a phone.

She’s gone through two iPhones so far.   Her bad service was a result of the phone.  Both times.  Estimated nonsubsidized price - $599 each.  But, most amusing was her last conversation with AT&T.  After a lengthy conversation with a AT&T customer rep, which became a lengthy call with AT&T tech support (”it was a problem with Apple”), which became a lengthy session with the Apple tech support rep (”20% call fail rate? after which he audibly laughed”), which then went back to the customer rep when she asked to cancel her account without fee due to the high failure rate (”sorry we can’t do that, it’s $116″).   So, they then monitored her service for about a week or so, and determined, yeah, it’s a problem with the phone.  For the third itme.

So, now she has her third iPhone.  Out of pocket, AT&T’s spent more than $1800 on phones, to fix a problem that they could have handled for $116 cancellation fee.   Even prorated for the value rest of her 2 year contract (up next summer), AT&T is at best losing $600 on her as a customer.   All because they can’t admit their capacity problems and do something about it, or actually figure out the issue instead of playing the blame game with their “corporate partner”.

Am I missing something? Does this sound like good business to you?

Here’s hoping Apple wises up and discontinues iPhone exclusivity as soon as possible.  Until then, nobody wins.

Stop running

Sitting here, on my couch, looking back on the last year of my life, I’ve begun to realize - I’ve changed. And while, yes, I’m sure you’re probably thinking something to the effect of, “well, yes, Matt, we all change”, for me it’s a more pronounced change than I can remember in my recent years.

Hear me out.

For all of the talk of “quarterlife” crisis, the depression that comes at 30, the realization that life is fleeting, and the unexpected choices we have to face and deal with everyday, I’ve realized I’m not running away from these things anymore. I’m finally able to step back and embrace me, at 30, and be happy about who I am and what i’ve done and what I can offer to myself, my friends and the world at large.

But most importantly for me, is that for the first time in my life, the life I’m living after 30, is starting to come into focus. It’s starting to make sense. And it’s not scary anymore.

The thoughts of marriage and someday having a family, corresponding with professional desires and goals have built my first five-year plan for after 30. And that is amazingly exciting.

So I can stop running. I feel like the last few years have been a lot of running. Trying to figure out how to get to a place I didn’t even know I was going. But running, sometimes away from something, sometimes running towards something. But still running all the same.

But running in circles is frustrating - especially for me, who is someone who wants each day to be fruitful, to accomplish something, to learn something new.

But I’m comfortable with myself and my abilities, and instead of blindly going somewhere, I feel like I can stop running and savor what’s here. And really feel like it’s not over - rather it’s just beginning. And it’s been a long time coming. And the road ahead is just as bright.

So, come along with me for the ride. I hope I can look back on this post as the first day of the next bit of my life.

So, Matt, just where ARE you going?

In life, sometimes it’s just good to make a change, and I’ve decided to again do that in my career. In more than 10 years as a web professional, I’ve worked with an airline (JetBlue), a content network that now realistically can be now defined as one of the largest blog networks online, both as a “guide” and as a marketing professional (About.com), at an education company developing a learning management system (Scholastic), trying one of the largest content companies in the world develop social media products (Viacom), and I still do and will continue to teach the next wave of technology professionals at NYU.

I’ve always tried to take the road less traveled in an attempt to learn just about every aspect of the online space possible, and with a goal of not being labeled as any one thing.  Lots of things interest me, and being labeled has always been confining to me.  All of these opportunities have given me experience in product management, project management, online marketing, e-commerce, paid content, web production, design, information architecture, user interaction design, online privacy, community and vendor management.

I am, and always will be open to the next great opportunity in my career, and for now, I’ve figured out the next step.

Recently in various tweets, tumbles and other conversation I’d mentioned that this week is my last at MTV Networks. I’ve shared the news with a few people, especially those who were gracious enough to serve as references, but now I wanted to share it with the rest of you. Well, the answer is:

I got a phone call a few weeks ago out of the blue, and conversations from there blossomed into a new position - Director, Emerging and Social Media Strategy at CafeMom. Who’s CafeMom? Started in 2006, and more than 40,000 groups strong, CafeMom is a well-regarded and well funded community where moms and moms-to-be can connect about issues that really matter to them.   I’ll be helping to shape the social media strategy for the company, and providing their users with ways to connect with their friends and loved ones across the web, and to be able to interact wherever they live online and the market using these tools.

Now, I understand this may not be as “sexy” a brand as MTV Networks, after conversations with leadership there, and with an understanding of their corporate culture, I decided it was time to return to the land of the smaller company. I miss the more entrepreneurial spirit they provide, and I think it will be a great place to work everyday.  And, it’s a company faced with an interesting set of marketing challenges.  I believe I have skills that can be helpful to the company and their users and I’m really excited to get started.

Looking back, I took the job at MTV Networks because I wanted to see how I would enjoy working for a bigger corporation, and at the end of the day, the experience was great, the team was great to work with, but I decided that it was really not the environment for me. I do, and will continue the rest of the social media team well as they continue to build out a great product in flux and thank them for all of their help, support and feedback as we have worked together.

My first day at CafeMom is August 12th, and their offices are conveniently located blocks away from a bunch of great restaurants (including Shake Shack of course), and it’ll be a pleasure to get out of Times Square during heavy tourist season (sorry touristy folks, but when you’re exhausted after a long day and just trying to get home, you tend not to want to deal with people having the time of their lives).

So, that’s pretty much it.  Any questions?

Here’s a thought - paid social may just not be a bad thing

Once upon a time, it was sacrilege to offer up “Paid search results” as part of any search on the web.  Go.com (then Overture -> then Yahoo! Performance Marketing -> Panama -> who cares), used to catch a lot of heat for these.  But they made a lot of money.  The industry has had a chance to mature, and people largely know the rules.  As such, dozens of companies do it (Google has made hundreds of billions doing this with AdSense and AdWords, of course), and it’s “more” acceptable for a text ad to be prominently displayed than the “clutter” of dancing, moving, resetting banner ads.

So, how is monetizing social media any different? Well, first off, it’s the people.  The biggest arguments against this is using people to deliver the message through sponsored Tweets/posts/etc.   So, if the people have agreed to shill a product or service, why do we care? Do we feel like we fail to make the distinction between people we trust and people we don’t? If so, isn’t this a bigger problem than the fact that someone on our Twitter stream is shilling for some company for money?  So, people become the delivery mechanism.  To that I say, so what.  It’s why commercial-free radio and television have subscription models.  You don’t want to listen to the ads, opt out.

If the power of suggestion is such that we lose these filters - railing against paid Tweets may just be fruitless.  From the moment the first 468 banner ads appeared on Wired and other sites in the mid 1990s, to the moment Google started their play with AdWords, making money with ads has been inevitable.     And someone will get the formula right.  But, they’ll have to play by some rules - written, or implicit.

So on to problem number two, which is defining the rules of the game.   One of the biggest concerns is that there are no rules to this game right now.  And instead of denying the fact that paid social is coming, because there are too many people with too much skin in the game for paid social to fail completely, we as marketers, but also as consumers, should focus on the rules, standards and “best practices” for how we want to interact with these.  Because, like so much else in social/emerging media, there’s a different solution for each problem.   Some users just may want to get these sorts of sponsored messages.  Some don’t.   But, the user should always have the choice to pick, right?

So how do we make the rules? Better filters? Yes.  Calling out sponsored status? Yes.  Standardizing context? Yes.  Acceptance that some people WANT to be shills? Yes.   But most importantly, the realization that we can, and should turn it off - absolutely.  Because at the end of the day, if we don’t want to be an audience, we don’t have to be.   And if the tools don’t allow us to do that we need to build better tools.   If Twitter, at it’s heart, as I believe, is just people-powered RSS feeds that we can unsubscribe and subscribe to at anytime - how is this any different than the mechanical RSS feeds we subscribe to everyday - provided by content creators, choosing to share what they want to, and often with ads?

What do you think?