TreeWorks Blog

I was thinking this morning that if one asks 100 people which is their favorite Beatles song, one would probably have 50 different answers. (Which probably does not happen with Frank Sinatra or AC/DC.) And I bet one can find more of this kind of information. Or writers. And just like that, wandering from thought to thought I got to Confucius’ words, “In matters of essence, all people are alike. In matters of behavior, all people are different.” It’s like: we want the same things, but for different reasons. (The fuddy-duddy could even say that the reverse is possible: we want different things, but for the same reasons.)

But I shall just abridge: the classical pattern of sale is the Pareto distribution – 20% of the clients bringing 80% of sales. That also because the information costs are high and then one prefers to focus on the 20%. In the Internet era, however, things change: that 80% that were not the best clients (because they wanted all kind of weird things that did not exist) get to generate more than 80% revenues. But the theory still says one needs some mainstream / best-seller products to move the tail. To make the people explore the niches of your shop.

I was thinking today that the reverse also works for brands that are already established. (The long-tail is the favorite start-ups’ theory, we know it.) What about using your old achievements to push the public towards the thing you want them to do at a time being.

Let’s look for instance at televisions and online video. Let’s say I am a television post that has all the rights for a certain show (call it a reality show) that has been filmed in the last 5 years. And it’s still going. If I place the entire archive on the Internet, free of charge, I may convince my potential public to watch the next episode and not the concurrence’s show. So better ratings for a show. Plus promos for shows in the same category if I feel so. Plus advertising. Plus cross-selling – the ones that want to buy DVDs (superior quality + bonuses).

Cannibalism? I do not think so. I was reading last year that the favorite before the Oscars was Spielberg’s Munich. Disney – the producer – took so many protections when making the DVD for the ones that voted that, over 25% of the persons that got the DVD were not able to open it on their players. DRM problems, encrypting etc. And Crash won, sending the DVDs unprotected, without excessive control of the lists etc. On the long term, who lost the money? Anyway the both movies were already on the file-sharing.
Let’s look on the other side also: South Park. Its longevity is based on the fact that it spread the viral way. And on the long way this means good and cheap marketing, so bigger profits.

Put in a sentence it goes like this: placing old content, that either brings little revenues, either none, as a trailer to the present content seems to me a very good way for the big content owners.

Ovidiu Petrescu, Ellen, Eric Case, Pedram Keyani all have something in common. That is the fact that they are Googlers. They are people who wake up in the morning and go to work at Google Inc. They all post on their personal blogs. The links can be found on the official Google blog.

The general impression is that any employee may write on the Google external blog: production managers, Dennis – the one who draws the Google Doodles or software engineers. That is also the impression the Tree blog leaves, isn’t it? =))

But a blog, especially an external one is rather like a communication window for the public; it needs care and competence to develop into an efficient tool.

This does not mean that the internal ones – that help the employees collaborate and develop their ideas – are meaningless. Here at Tree we do not have an internal blog (for we have already developed the telepathic communication inside the company). But if we had, Emil would be given the chance to post the Steaua football team anthem’s words and Ioana to post photos with the one and only Super Cat.

If we get back to the real purpose of the blog, there are a few things you can use to implement a blog that will help both you and your employees and, especially, your readers. First of all, you must not forget a blog is a communication tool, so the dialog has to be encourages (the comments and the contact page work in this direction). Secondly, you could use the new white paper about alternative communication tools – the blogs.

Certainly, blogs do not match every company’s profile, but they get better results in the search engines, grow the online visibility of your firm, are an alternative media form that offers a personalized voice to your company and create WoM marketing opportunities.

What do blogs really do? Allow the passing to Web 2.0. This meaning: they help you advance.

PS: Although the title may sound a senseless babbling, a flexible mind like my own can actually arrive at a coherent result.

While reading these sentences I can choose to perform from one of these actions: read the e-mail, delete it or mark it as a spam.

I usually do not open the emails that come from unknown addresses or ones that have vague headlines. I do open emails from sites I have logged on, but not always follow their links and most of the times I take a glance at the content and that’s all. From time to time I get an email telling me I haven’t visited a specific website for some time and probably someone who manages the answers evaluation is wondering if I want to keep my account. Other times I order products online and after that I keep receiving offers or just events invitations.

Thus, day after day, I open and delete newsletters, latest products offers, news of order forms. It does not really mean so much for me, but it sure does for people who generate them.

B2C Internet Direct Mail Communication - direct, personalized, targeted - is more and more used. Because an email is less expensive than a letter, a print or a tv ad, the results of a campaign can be measured, the resources are limited and the messages can be customized for a specific target.

The questions you need to answer before implementing an internet direct mail campaign are:

• Who do you send the emails to?
• Where do you get the addresses from?
• What will be the format of the message?
• What about the content?
• How will you measure the results?

For instance, HTML email strengthens the message, but are preffered by the unexperienced users. That is why it is advisable to let the users choose their desired format. ROI (Return Of Investment) is an efficient method of measuring the results of a campaign. The rate may vary depending on the product, industry and target.

You can find the answers to all these questions, as well as how you can avoid being labeled as a spam generative here.

The T-shirts that carry a message say something about the persons wearing them. Quotations, funny ideas or ironical phrases (I see dumb people / I smile because I have no idea what’s going on / Your lips keep moving and all I hear is Blah Blah Blah). This can label a person as being either ironic, funny, the fan of a band, with a fantastic imagination or not, but, above all, they can label him/her a person who wants to stand apart.

How should the text on a t-shirt look, in order to be read? Short, concise and big. Because the street is a dynamic place. People move, run, are in a hurry. The texts should adapt the environment.

The online is similar to this to a certain amount. Scanning, rapidity and concision. If we analyze a concrete example, we will notice why not only the design and the usability count, but also what and how you write online.

Above we have a compact block of text. Maybe I’m just being subjective, but the design of the first text is not similar to this one:

How are they different? Lists, bullet points, one idea per paragraph, white spaces, clear structure, URLs. Just a few elements that convince the user to read the webpage or to return on it. Because he liked it and it was not difficult to get the information he needed.

But how do you write something for the online? You put yourself in the user’s position, you choose the key words (that will be underlined, made URLs etc.), you try to structure text so that it appears airy and not just a block of text. Think if some of the information can be better explained with the use of a photo, a graphic or a table. Do not insert a big quantity of information on one page. Instead, insert a URL to a downloadable file or to another webpage for the users that are really interested on the subject. More about writing online you can find here.

When I buy a mobile phone I expect it to be able to ring, to save my messages and not to run off of battery in a day; because that’s why they call it “mobile”. The same, when I am searching something on the web or when I enter a page, I’d rather not install all kind of plug-ins just to see the page. I expect to see all the characters. I’d rather the ads don’t turn the navigation process into a winding maze.

The questions is: In what amount does your product respond to the users’ needs? Satisfying the need of simplicity and organization is not just the cherry on top, which you may offer as a favor. It is the dought itself.

About the usability of websites and web based applications. In other words, about making the searching / navigation process easier for the user. So that he comes to feel the things are working on their own and he does not have to stress in order to find the home link or the word he initially searched on Google. Because, unconsciously, we all have certain representations about a menu, about the place of the Shopping Cart or the link of the foreign language version. We are familiarized with Arial and Times NR and not with Haettenschweiler or Kartika.

Do not try to re-invente the wheel. Improve it. Because our expectations are based on what we already know. And when it comes to usability: the simplier, the easier. And more visited.

Forget it all
The TV screen
TV screen makes you feel small
No life at all
Now that you have turned it off
It’s harder than you thought
No one wants to give a damn
Or even hear a thought “
This idea started from Radu and from the ProTv new website which we have launched (I’m not boasting now that our company has created it, but it is really a very complex one and people therefrom have a super-team that will update it with content from the entire trust).

The thing is that the televisions concept has really changed:

1. The TV set is gone to pot for a part of the population (those better off).
2. But television as a media force has remained (in fact, it is actually a paradox – worldwide audience runs low, but the profits rise: for instance HBO that had registered the lowest audience in 2005, but the most significant encasements – it is true that HBO works on subscriptions, but also those who live in advertising are doing as much decently.
Guys from the big league are ready to invest a pretty penny in online because they understand that television is the new radio ( to say it more euphemistic than Radu). The future is highly-personalized content with highly-targeted ads. And where you can make much pretty penny than from the one hundred way of telling „detergent” to the housewifes. Here is a cool post about TV advertising from Eugen. The combination Internet-TV allows you delivering Vacheron watches advertising as well as Swatch. And the tough guys will seize.

3. Television and generally famous media trusts will start also in .ro the competition with the online companies. It remains to be seen how much marketshare they will gain. I think they won’t loose at least on content. And my feeling is that they won’t buy. Because there is no reason for that. Or it’s better to build than to buy in their case. In my opinion, online companies hadn’t attained yet the necessary level to be safe investments (these are still much too much enterprises and can be disjointed relative easily by the media trusts that have great media exposition).
4. The PROTV strategy of introducing videos is a good idea (but it should be also introduced a little more text content for the people who are working and don’t want to play anything – for example CNN). Because the video content is completely copyrightable (namely the aggregations sites couldn’t take it as well as the textual). It differentiates from the newspapers too.

5. Applause for their trust in the developer (namely TreeWorks). I say it was a very great collaboration. For the suggestions opening too.
Well, I wish you success. And we are also waiting for other Romanian initiatives with the same complexity and content back up level.

So… soon Google will launch the PayPal’s competitor: GBuy.

Interesting is that this time, they have a precise date for future, and not just with only some few days before - 28th of June. This means that they wish as much publicity as possible for the launch, starting even from the day 0. But this thing looks quite normal if we look at the size of the pot: maybe even the long term domination in the on-line advertising area.

Yesterday I was reading about the great problem that per-click-advertising (and especially Google Words) has with the false clicks (and not just 2-3 clicks given by anybody, but high volumes made through the networks of zombie computers and other large scale operations).

http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06060927.htm?ref=foolwatch

And, obviously, the solution is combining the context targeting with demographic targeting and with the user targeting. I mean, it is clear that one who bought a cruise in the past from a specific IP, it is very probable that it will also buy a perfume. While a completely virgin IP, from the acquisition point of view, it is not too attractive for the advertisers. And I’m wondering when will we see “select the IPs that have a minimum of 500 USD spent in the past 6 months”?

But even better then the IPs would be a system of accounts so that one could calculate someone’s acquisitions made from different computers and other gadgets. Especially because this goes according with Google mantra of moving the activity from the Microsoft dominated desktop to web servers (preferably theirs).

And, from this point of view, I’d say that the portfolios of auctions from Google Finance and the paying accounts from GBay will play a very important role. The journalists already understand it.

It is interesting how much data-mining Google will do with this information. Up until now, Google operated analysis predominantly over the contents. But the similar algorithms can work on users too. Big Brother?