TheCustomer

YouTube has just started auctioning video positions to the highest bidder – Adsense paid search results for video. (tip o’ hat to Marshall K at Read Write Web ) Along with yesterday’s announcement that full length feature films from MGM are to run on YouTube, that’s another dent in broadcast tv’s audiences, and revenues.

There’s already a good selection of brand commercials on YouTube: there’s a high definition service too. If you were running a commercials agency, wouldn’t you put some budget into YouTube? If only as a hedge against falling broadcast audiences – and with the potential to earn larger production fees on long films.

How long before we see broadcast tv being used to trail long ads on YouTube? It’s a technique that’s already been used by advertisers like the Army (who also offered mobile video, iirc). The idea that TV may not be the prime channel, that it’s just feding others, will make some old Madison Avenue & Soho admen rotate in their graves.

The world’s changing, and fast.

As you’d expect, Teligent gives a very quick & precise heads-up on adding community to a business:
6 Things For The Community Strategist To Think About

You’d think that folk starting social businesses would get past the technology & think about what their users expect – should a start-up be fortunate enough to have any users… Last year Rapleaf upset some folk when early adopters felt their privacy had been violated. Rapleaf reacted quickly, and a crisis was avoided.
This year, socialminder managed to stir up the privacy storm.

Two things to note.
1 The storm raged faster & more intensely this time around, as Twitter spread the ‘news’.
2 Early adopters have different expectations from later mass users… they’re probably *more* sensitive to privacy abuse. (I’ve no science to back this up, just years of watching

socialminder (& indeed rapleaf) aren’t doing anything that Plaxo et al get up to – but the mass user perhaps doesn’t manage their network reputation as sensitively as tech-savvy early adopter types. That’s a challenge for any savvy startup in this area – early adopters are (probably) a vital part of your launch strategy. Their feedback can iron out many bugs & unintended design consequences.

Technorati Tags: privacy, startup, spam

Bulletin board postings more likely slander than libel, says High Court | OUT-LAW.COM

Very, very useful to know.
(tho frankly not the most exciting news of the week

Collaborative Thinking: I know it’s Friday, but can I have an online community by Monday?
Very good upsum of the mismatch between expectations & reality

Guardian.co.uk becomes first UK newspaper site to break 20 million
Good to see the Guardian online getting the readers it deserves – more importantly, these traffic rises should be set against continuing decline in sales of print editions.

Second Age of Aquarius: Facebook Connect + Facebook Payments (= Social Sign-on + Viral E-Commerce)
Dave McLure’s post has a ring of truth about it; by this time next year Facebook may well have shown us the money in Social Networking services, by making ecommerce viral. The trick will be to design a shopping process that mimics our natural herd instincts.

Color + Design Blog / As Seen By The Color Blind

7% of men don’t see your design the same way the designer did… it’s always worth testing sites for colour blindness, and is so often forgotten.

My thanks to Tracy Sheridan for posting a succinct description of VRM:

What is Vendor Relationship Management?

We live in a time when the information disparity that used
to exist between what companies know about products and services, and customers
know about those same products and services is decreasing rapidly.So that now, we’re in a position as customers to establish
any kind of relationship we want with companies, enabling them to essentially bid
on our business

This train’s a’comin!

full description, here:
The Long Blonde Tail: What is VRM?

Seth nails it: there’s two ways to market online - burn permission with frequency (make money  now, rebuild your customer base later), or engage, and dig in for a longer haul, but with permission.

I’ve always been a fan of the latter – work the customer base, with their consent, to grow your network by engaging theirs. Rather than talking about ‘permission’ which has a kinda ‘yes/no, once & for all time’ feel to it, I think of this as ‘consent’ –  it has a softer feel to the relationship, & maybe there’s more of a 2 way sense to the relationship.

It’s no surprise to find that UK managers are the most negative: over the past 12 months I’ve worked with folk for the UK (natch!), Sweden, South Africa, Australia, America, and even a Brit based in Australia… they are consistently more positive, energetic and constructive than UK management.

The ability of UK folk to sit, diss, and do nothing, is astonising.

So I applaud  UK clients who do manage to stay positive, in spite of the zeitgeist.

</rant>

How often does that negativity seep out to customers? I guess the trite answer is that “once would be too often”.