Insights

We initially reviewed comment replacement system Disqus when it launched last October. Disqus is basically a "smarter" way to handle comments on a blog, microblog or traditional Web site. Intense Debate offers something similar and launched at about the same time but Disqus clearly has the "250" force in effect.

Disqus investor Fred Wilson posted an informercial for why he believes Disqus is superior to the commenting systems that blog platforms offer by default. He noted three major benefits for Disqus over the normal commenting systems:

1. threaded discussions
2. email replies/email replies for commenters
3. shared profiles

I assume these are his three top reasons for using Disqus. Let's take a look at his reasons with regards to what we use here on CenterNetworks which runs a basic out-of-the-box drupal setup.

• threaded discussions - we have that, you can click reply on any comment and it will produce a threaded discussion
• email replies - we have this as well, just check the box and anytime a person replies to your comment, you will receive an email notification straight away. Disqus also allows you to email a reply and it will be added to the comment thread. This is pefect for a personal blog - not crazy about it for a business blog (one that earns revenue).
• shared profiles - openID anyone? Drupal also supports central logins so all Drupal blogs can use the same login.

Canadian blogger Mathew Ingram throws Disqus two-thumbs up and says that the email function is his favorite. He also notes spam prevention as a major factor in his decision. I would have assumed that Fred would have the same in his top 3 reasons. Comment spam freaking sucks. We are using Mollom on CN and as I've written before, it's given me back an hour a day.

Disqus offers distributed moderation which means that you can select anyone who uses Disqus to help moderate your blog comments. I like this feature, especially for popular blogs/Web sites.

In Fred's infomercial, he forgets to note some of the things you will be giving up when you move to Disqus. Let's take a look:

• Comments are no longer attached to your blog. If Disqus goes down or out of business, you are borked. (fyi, I don't expect them to go under). There's also no data portability currently so you can't take your comments with you. I asked Daniel about this last October and he said it was coming - I assume it's still coming.
• A privacy policy must now include the Disqus privacy policy. Will the average commenter understand that when they comment on Mathew Ingram's blog, that they are agreeing to the terms of service from Disqus? Disqus founder Daniel Ha says that they will never sell or rent the email addresses, and I completely believe him today - but what about for data collection purposes later on? Clearly Disqus is sitting on a gold mine of data.
• Comments are not indexed by the search engines - the code Disqus requires prevents Google from indexing the comments on your blog as part of the article.
• Users never need to come back to your blog to be part of the discussion - this is a personal preference in my opinion. Personal bloggers and those not "earning a living" at blogging won't care about this while those that do earn a living will. Maybe not today, but eventually they will.
• Where's the business plan for Disqus? Eventually they will need to generate revenue, right? My guess is that there will be some freemium model with ads/pay for premium services. Or they will take all of the comments and bundle them and sell them as aggregated research.

Conclusion

Disqus has moved the idea of commenting forward which is a good thing. Is the service perfect? No. Is the service the right one for some bloggers? Absolutely. I've enjoyed speaking with Daniel who is a very bright guy and I think he will continue to enhance the Disqus offering over time.

The conversation about where the conversation should take place is only beginning.

At the end of the day, the decision to use Disqus (or any of the other new comment replacements) is a personal preference. In my opinion, the decision rests on whether the blog is commercial or not. I still haven't seen enough reasons to switch the commenting system on CN (or any of my other sites) to Disqus.

A couple of weeks ago Thomas Huhn and I discussed OpenID with regards to online merchants. We noticed that hardly any merchants have adopted the OpenID technology yet. Actually I don’t know of any at all. However we noticed that many online retailers in Germany don’t require customers to register for a permanent account if they don’t intend to return to the site later. Creating an account is just a matter of convenience.

From my own experience I am hesistant to create accounts at every online merchant. If I have the option to purchase products without the account creation step, I typically go for it. I would rather type in the required information again in the future. There is no specific reason why I don’t want to create accounts all over the place -- maybe I just want to keep the number of accounts I have low.

What about OpenID?

Online merchants should implement OpenID. I could then provide my details like my address, phone, etc. only to my OpenID provider. There are a number of extensions to the OpenID protocol which support this type of account: Simple Registration and Attribute Exchange (also see Dennis Blöte’s excellent article on the topic). Both extensions allow transfer of profile data from an OpenID provider to a relying party, e.g. a merchant. The first time I confirm my OpenID to a merchant, the merchant will ask for ask to retrieve the data. If I accept, all future authentication requests will be made automatically. continue reading »

Sarah Lacy appeared on Fox Business this evening on their "Happy Hour" show to promote her upcoming book. Host Cody Willard should stick to financial topics - whenever he crosses over to tech, it just doesn't work. See our previous example for another example where Cody explains how Facebook's Beacon works.

Sarah begins by defining Web 2.0 as, "basically the collection of companies that started around 2002-2005 and the hallmark is user-generated content, social media and social networking." She names Facebook and YouTube as Web 2.0 companies.

Then Cody shows his real intelligence by explaining that Web 2.0 is a "Ponzi scheme." Sarah tries to explain that none of the Web 2.0 companies have gone public and that's why we will never be in a bubble.

Sarah then attempts to use her one line which she believes makes her look like an insider, "Facebook actually makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year." She's used this line on every video/audio interview I've seen/heard lately.

Sarah tells Cody that LinkedIn is the next Web 2.0 company to be a success. Cody then replies with the following, "LinkedIn is a crappy site, no one is going to use LinkedIn." Sarah gets very loud in explaining that LinkedIn has the best business model on the Web today. I agree with her that LinkedIn is hot without being in the 250. Check out our LinkedIn coverage including Mark's LinkedIn guide.

Overall Sarah comes across smart and knowledgeable in this very short interview. Great book placement behind her left shoulder - not sure she could have asked for a better placement!

IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) CEO Ted Murphy is on the offensive today. Last night he asked me on Twitter to review a post on the IZEA blog regarding performance of his paid blog network versus an advertising campaign on ReadWriteWeb (RWW), an "a-list" tech blog. If you read only a few posts today, his should be one of them. In general, Murphy's analysis could work for any display advertising.

He begins by explaining that he purchased a one-month advertisement on ReadWriteWeb for $3,000 and then purchased $3,000 worth of paid posts within the IZEA network. The paid posts came from 220 publishers of all sizes across the network.

His analysis then goes on to determine that 725 clicks came from RWW over the month while his paid blog posts delivered 832 clicks and that the paid blog posts will continue to return some value over time as the posts live on forever (whatever forever means in Internet years).

Murphy also notes that by posting the "job" on his network, he had at least another 500 of his paid bloggers check out the company - that's already nearly more than RWW sent. He ends the analysis with the following statement, "people clicking links in sponsored posts have a genuine interest in the site they are clicking through to." The average Internet user has no idea what sponsored means. I've tried to explain this to Jason Calacanis as well but shrugged it off.

Was IZEA's product the right one for the RWW audience? For example, last month TechCrunch ran a sponsor ad for car tires. Do people looking for the latest tech news care about car tires? Are they in the "zone" to go purchase a set of 170R15s? We know nothing about the people who visited from either RWW or the purchased blog posts. How many from either actually "converted"? Murphy leaves this out.

While Murphy's analysis isn't spot on and there are some huge holes in his theory, he is pushing the conversation of display advertising versus paid posts a step further. It's a good discussion to have. And for clarity, I am not in favor of paid reviews. I am totally in favor of advertorials on blogs. Mark my words that by the end of 2008 we will see advertorials on blogs as a normal course of business.

Murphy makes a challenge at the end to Pete Cashmore, Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis. He wants to run a paid post on one of their sites and compare the results to a wide campaign using the publisher network on IZEA. I assume he won't get any takers for the test.

Jakob Nielsen recently published two interesting research statistics that help explain why display ads don't work.

First, Jakob says we read a very small amount of the text on most pages. Apparently we only, on average, read at best 28% of the words on the page and most likely around 20% of the words.

Second, in an older article from late last year, Jakob also says users avoid anything that looks like a banner. This may seem obvious, but the interesting thing to consider is that all web pages on a given site (and even across the web on different sites) are likely to have the same pattern for what looks like an ad vs what looks like content. Your eyes quickly learn that anything that is on the sides, or anything with a border around it, or anything that looks photographic is an ad.

Newspapers and magazines generally do not have any such easily to discern pattern. Pages are generally laid out manually by a designer on an issue by issue basis. Smaller ads are blended in with the content, breaking columns and such so that advertising will have unavoidable and unpredictable proximity to content. Moreover, many ads take up the full page which requires at least some minimal scanning before turning the page. And because the ads are often so big, you almost can't avoid at least seeing a bit of it before turning the page. MORE »

Custom Communications out of the U.K. have put together a series of posts regarding the top brands on YouTube. The story isn't about how brands are embracing YouTube to effectively communicate their message. Instead the list focuses on which videos related to a brand has the most video views and how the specific video could affect the brand, both positively or negatively. Their "impact on reputation" score for each video is worth a read.

Here are the top 10:

1. Nike - "Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold" - Viewed 22,581,372 times
2. Pepsi - "PEPSI (Britney Spears, Beyonce, Pink - We Will Rock You)" - Viewed 14,050,586 times
3. McDonalds - "Fast Food Freestyle" - Viewed 11,744,399 times
4. Coca-Cola - "Diet Coke+Mentos=Human experiment: EXTREME GRAPHIC CONTENT" - Viewed 8,583,526 times
5. Unilever - "Dove Evolution" - Viewed 6,727,556 times
6. Disney - "Internet is for Porn" - Viewed 3,278,230 times
7. Budweiser - "Banned Super Bowl 2007 Bud commercial" - Viewed 2,149,516 times
8. Microsoft - "Microsoft Surface Parody" - Viewed 2,068,861 times. 3,322 comments
9. IKEA - "Banned Commercial - Swedish Midsummer" - Viewed 1,483,858 times
10. Toyota - "Top Gear: Killing a Toyota Part 1" - Viewed 1,132,279 times

The Nike commercial has over 15,000 comments.

We've written about Clicky Web analytics several times including our first product review just shy of a year ago. It's my favorite medium-level analytics application on the market. Why? Speed, features, the freaking addictive real-time spy and excellent support from the one person team of Sean Hammons.

Today Sean has posted about a variety of new visualization tools that Clicky now offers. Clicky has hired the team at Open Flash Chart to create even more customizations on their charting solution. Here is one basic example chart that's now possible (bar charts were available previously):

The charts update on the fly and the "compare" feature is where the charting tool shows its strength. You can compare practically anything you want to see if there are correlations between the data. Sean has created an example displaying social media inbound traffic vs. bounce rate - perfect for checking how many Digg'rs come back a second time. The comparison possibilities are endless - I already have a list of charts to create.

In the title of this column, I included, "Clicky...Shows You How Freemium Is Done." Freemium means that the service offers a free version and then premium upgrades. I said this because these new charting features are free through this Sunday and then they move to the pro account (paid). Sean gives you the first crack rock free, gets you hooked so you keep coming back to him to buy more crack. I've written before that too many startups who employ the Freemium model give away too much for free and customers never have a reason to upgrade. But giving a taste of premium features every now and again makes perfect sense for trial.

In case you are interested, we are currently running the following analytical tools on CN:

• Clicky
• Google Analytics
• Mint
• ExtremeTracking
• A homegrown proprietary analytics tool

On the CN job board, Clicky is currently seeking a Web developer.

A good friend of mine asked me for some tips on how to use LinkedIn. I sent him a long email and figure that I should share my thoughts on this with all of you. I'm not an investor in LinkedIn, but think it's a great service. Here's the scoop.

Editor's note: After you read Mark's guide below, check out all of our LinkedIn coverage and join our LinkedIn networking group.

Why you should use LinkedIn:

1. The service allows you to see who your contacts know - something that is virtually impossible to do sufficiently through normal social interactions. LinkedIn takes the coincidence out of networking.
2. It enables you to passively keep up to date contact information for all of your contacts.
3. It facilitates introductions through your broader network.
4. It enables people to find you based upon your background and who you know.
5. It is a professional network that excludes unnecessary personal information.

Why You Should Expand Your LinkedIn Network

I find that a lot of people define 'using' LinkedIn as having a profile, but not a lot of connections. As a result, I think it's worth pointing out that the more you expand your network the more valuable the service will be for you.

As you add more contacts:

1. You will have a larger database of people to search through when you are looking for a contact. When you search for a person or a background you can only see contacts in your three degrees or contacts - more contacts means more people in your searchable pool.
2. More people will be able to find you when they search for someone with your background.

LinkedIn Best Practices

Here's my short list of LinkedIn best practices (and how you do them):

1. Customize your LinkedIn profile page URL name. Go to 'edit my profile' in your LinkedIn account and click on 'edit' next to 'Public Profile' a little way down the page.
2. Add your LinkedIn profile page to your email signature. For gmail click on 'settings' in the upper right hand corner and in the text box half way down the page labeled 'signature' enter a custom signature including your new Public Profile URL.
3. Connect with your existing contacts. Click on 'add connections' on the left side of the screen and follow the process of letting LinkedIn scan your gmail, outlook or other contact lists. By doing so you will be able to invite your contacts to connect using the very easy process provided on the site. Note that you will not automatically invite everyone in your gmail or outlook contact list.
4. Use the Browser Toolbar. The most important feature of the browser toolbar is that it adds a LinkedIn icon next to email addresses in your gmail. This icon enables you to see a LinkedIn summary (job title, position in your network, number of contacts, etc) of any person who emails you. It also enables you to invite people to LinkedIn from your gmail account - making it easier to connect with people.
5. Use the Outlook Toolbar. This application integrates into your outlook as is useful in a few ways. First, it adds a LinkedIn icon that is similar to the one described in the browser toolbar. Second, it enables you to update your outlook contacts based upon changes that people make to their LinkedIn profiles - keeping your contacts up to date.
6. Add a picture. It's always helpful for other people to be able to associate your face with your background, making it easier for people to introduce themselves at social events.

LinkedIn Etiquette

Standard for connecting. When I first started using LinkedIn I viewed a connection as an endorsement. I no longer see it that way, because I realized that my connections do not have direct access to each other - I have to approve introductions. At this point, I am willing to connect with anyone with which I would normally exchange contact information (e.g., a business card).

Appropriate use of the name field. Some folks insert additional information into the name field on their profile. The most often additions are a title or an email address. I understand that they do this because in some forms of search on the site the name field is the only thing that shows up. However, I don't like it. Not only does it seem aggressive in general, but also it screws up their contact information for everyone that uses the outlook toolbar.

It's OK not to forward an intro: People can request that you introduce them to someone else in your network. While it's a bit awkward to say 'no', I think that it's appropriate to do so if it makes you uncomfortable.

A Cartooning Experiment has created a variety of cartoons about the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. The cartoons were created using Bitstrips, a company we interviewed on video at SXSW. Bitstrips really is a pretty fun Web app.

Here are the cartoons - click for the full-size version:

Southwest Airlines re-launched their blog, "Nuts About Southwest" earlier this week. I've never been on a Southwest flight as they don't fly to NYC (LI doesn't count!). It's an interesting blog to read as it provides some insight into what goes on at an airline from the perspective of the employees. I've always believed that each of us should spend a day doing something that we find troublesome to see what it's like from the other side.

The new blog offers: videos, podcasts, Flickr photos, polls, Southwest corporate news, multimedia galleries, content ratings and personalization.

It's very interesting to me to watch a company who is willing to step outside the pressurized cabin and try something new. I still remember sitting in a large conference room with some of the executives from one of the largest insurance companies in the world in 1996 and during the discussion, I asked them what was their goal with the new Web site. One executive looked at me and said, "Allen, we need one, everyone has one, right?" That was the attitude then.

Corporate Web sites have evolved over the past 10 years but to some extent they are exactly the same as they were then but with more flash and sizzle. Companies who have blogs do it because it's the new "in" thing.

Tools like Get Satisfaction, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, millions of forums and chat rooms, countless blogs. Companies like BuzzLogic monitor where a brand is discussed online so it's easy to track and respond. If you are an Internet marketer in a corporate environment and you aren't tracking and responding, you should be fired. Yes, fired.

During my 15 years in the corporate world, the legal department was always the holdup for trying to move things forward. We certainly can't have customers interacting with us and posting comments about how crappy a product might be - sheesh no! Tonight on CNBC, Gary Vaynerchuk discussed "social capital" and the importance of word-of-mouth today. He explained that today each person's word-of-mouth travels further than it ever has. Now really think about that for a minute. And social capital costs fractions of any other form of media or marketing -- most times it's free.

The bottom line is that it's critical for brands and the companies that manage them to go to where their customers are. Customers won't come to you. Southwest has accounts on YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and LinkedIn. Are they doing it to appear cool and hip and get blogger buzz? Sure, but some percentage of Southwest customers are on these services and over time even more will be. I will have more on social capital later this week with a piece I've been working on for a week now. Stay tuned or grab the feed to be instantly notified.

Here's the newest Southwest video - a day in the life of a call center rep. It's a bit short, but it's a good start. What makes this video very, very interesting to me is that it's hosted on YouTube and if you scroll through the related videos, many of them are anti-Southwest. Wow.