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Where Yahoo’s Properties Stack Up

September 7, 2011 by 2 Comments

'Steve Ballmer signs the Microsoft-Yahoo! agreement' photo (c) 2009, Yahoo! Blog - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/It was a big day at Yahoo! yesterday, with Kara Swisher breaking the news that Carol Bartz was fired as CEO (over the phone no less).

I found the firing over the phone ironic. When I was vice president at Yahoo! during the layoffs in 2009, I was requested to lay off 6 members of my team in person on the same day across three offices intwo different states. Naturally, I did as asked despite the impossible travel day it created, as I believed it was the right thing to do to have in-person conversations with people in those tough moments. Apparently Carol wasn’t given the same courtesy.

As news broke about Bartz’s ouster, the consistent chorus of people calling Yahoo! doomed or irrelevant began to ring out. Yahoo! has indeed been troubled, but I believe it can and should be saved.

Yahoo! wants to be the “premiere digital media company”, which is the right goal based on their strengths, where the world is headed, and what their competitors are likely to focus on. Let’s take a look at those strengths.

Yahoo!’s Strengths

Let’s take a look at where their top US properties stand with competitors using data from Compete.com. Yes, I know Compete.com is far from perfect with it’s numbers and even trends, but there are few choices for public data analysis and the ranking should be correct.

Portal-Style Front Page
If we just compare against similar “portal” type front pages, Yahoo!’s front page is #1.
1. Yahoo! Front Page
2. MSN.com
3. AOL.com

Personalized Front Page
There aren’t many personalized portals like My Yahoo! left, but Facebook and Twitter seem like the new generation of this to compare against My Yahoo!, which still has a tremendous amount of traffic.
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. My Yahoo!

News
This is a gigantic category where Yahoo! crushes the competition.
1. Yahoo! News
2. MSNBC
3. CNN
4. NYTimes
5. Google News

Mail
Yahoo! Mail has been the leader in email for a quite some time. If anything there is a larger threat from Facebook messages, mobile texts, and other forms of communication than from direct competitors.
1. Yahoo! Mail
2. Live/Hotmail
3. Gmail

Search
The big daddy of properties, Search is a primary revenue driver. While the Comscore data has Yahoo! and Bing being close and flip-flopping, Compete does have Yahoo! Search at #3.
1. Google
2. Bing
3. Yahoo! Search

Finance
One of Yahoo!’s anchor properties, Yahoo! Finance is a traffic powerhouse. Google Finance traffic data can’t be pulled out, but it’s definitely not close to Yahoo!.
1. Yahoo! Finance
2. money.cnn.com
3. money.cnbc.com
4. Marketwatch.com
5. TheStreet.com

Photos
This one is tough to measure now, as Facebook’s photo data is not broken out, and mobile startup Instagram is quickly becoming a player. Twitter is also making more of a move here recently. Since it’s clear Facebook is now #1 even without the data broken out, it shakes out like this:
1. Facebook
2. Flickr by Yahoo!
3. Photobucket
4. Instagram

Instant Messenger
Tough to measure how Facebook and Gmail chat compare here since neither one is broken out in the Compete data. If I had to guess, I’d say Yahoo! is ahead of Gmail chat but I’m not sure what Facebook’s usage looks like.
1. Skype
2. Yahoo! Messenger
3. AOL Instant Messenger

Sports
Another one of Yahoo!’s outstanding gigantic properties, Yahoo! Sports is the leader in game even though ESPN calls itself “The Leader”.
1. Yahoo! Sports
2. ESPN
3. Fox Sports

Entertainment
OMG is a great example of what Yahoo! can do, as OMG launched later then competitors and is now dominating them.
1. OMG.yahoo.com
2. TMZ.com
3. People.com

Women
Like OMG, this is another newer Yahoo! property that started much later in the game but is now crushing the competition.
1. Shine by Yahoo!
2. iVillage
3. Cosmopolitan

Local
The competition is really close here on the Compete data so this order could end up being wrong.
1. Google Local
2. Yahoo! Local
3. Local.com
4. Yelp

Maps
The Compete data has Mapquest being ahead of Google in web visitors, but with mobile factored in Google is the clear leader.
1. Google Maps
2. Mapquest
3. Yahoo! Maps

Travel
It’s a very competitive space, but Yahoo! still puts up a good fight against some heavyweights.
1. Expedia
2. TripAdvisor
3. Priceline
4. Yahoo! Travel

Real Estate
Quick, who’s the biggest real estate site? Answer: Yahoo!.
1. Yahoo! Real Estate
2. Realtor.com
3. Zillow
4. Trulia

Games (Web-based)
Gaming is now getting fragmented with web-based games, games on Facebook, and games on mobile. If we look at just web-based games including Zynga on Facebook, Yahoo! comes in at #3.
1. Zynga/Facebook
2. Pogo.com
3. Yahoo! Games

Movies
This is one of those “kind of silent but really powerful” Yahoo! properties. How many startups would kill to have 20M users like Yahoo! Movies does?
1. IMDB.com
2. Yahoo! Movies
3. Fandango

Music
Would you have guessed Yahoo! Music was #1 in music properties with over 18M estimated users? Me either. This is a dangerous one though as music consumption changes to become more mobile and application-based.
1. Yahoo! Music
2. Pandora
3. Last.fm
4. AOL Music
5. Rhapsody

TV
Once again, the quiet winner you probably wouldn’t have guessed is Yahoo!.
1. Yahoo! TV
2. Hulu
3. TV Guide

Shopping
When it comes to comparison shopping engines/portals, Yahoo! comes out on top again. To be fair though, Google’s “shopping” section can’t be pulled out in Compete data, but it’s not really the same type of shopping portal. Amazon.com and eBay are also larger, but are different types of sites.
1. Yahoo! Shopping
2. Bizrate
3. Shopping.com

Dating
Yahoo! outsourced Yahoo! Personals to Match.com in a move by Bartz. However, Yahoo’s Match.com subdomain is still #2 in the market:
1. Match.com
2. Yahoo.match.com
3. PlentyofFish
4. eHarmony

Fantasy Sports
This is harder to tell traffic on with Compete as Yahoo! has a subdomain for it but redirects it to sports.yahoo.com. Despite that, while working at Yahoo! in 2010 I know that Yahoo!’s Fantasy Football was #1 in the market, so I’ll hazard a guess that it’s it’s in the top 2 in this lucrative market.

Q&A
While Quora gets all the tech industry buzz these days, it’s still tiny compared to Yahoo! Answers.
1. Yahoo! Answers
2. Answers.com
3. Askville by Amazon

Video
It’s a long way off in traffic from YouTube, a long way….but Yahoo! comes it an #5.
1. YouTube
2. Facebook
3. Hulu
4. Metacafe
5. Yahoo! Video

Weather
Yahoo! is quite a bit behind market leader Weather.com, but #2 isn’t bad.
1. Weather.com
2. Yahoo! Weather
3. Accuweather

Groups
The data isn’t broken out, but we’ll assume Facebook Groups are now getting more traffic than Yahoo! Groups.
1. Facebook Groups
2. Yahoo! Groups
3. Google Groups

Health
Yahoo! Health has a strong showing in another very lucrative advertising category that also generates high traffic.
1. WebMD
2. Yahoo! Health
3. MedicineNet

Autos
Despite entries from all the portal companies as well as industry powerhouses like Autotrader, Edmunds, and Cars.com, Yahoo! Autos comes out on top.
1. Yahoo! Autos
2. Autotrader.com
3. Edmunds

Downloads
While not the sexiest category these days, it still drives millions of users. Yahoo! is #2 in downloads and is very close in traffic to #1.
1. Download.com
2. Yahoo! Downloads
3. Softpedia

Greetings
Yahoo! outsourced their Greetings to AmericanGreetings.com, but their subdomain still comes out to #4.
1. AmericanGreetings.com
2. 123Greetings.com
3. BlueMountain
4. Yahoo! Greetings

Calendar
Comparable data is not in Compete, but Yahoo! Calendar is either #1 or only surpassed by Google Calendar for web-based calendars.

Address Book
Comparable data is not in Compete, but Yahoo! is in the top 3 for web-based address book with Facebook and Google. Apple is obviously a huge player with this phone-based address book now.

Data Summary
It’s actually quite shocking to run through so many important categories and see that Yahoo! is a leader or one of the top companies in that space. Any of their positions alone would be an amazing startup or growing company, but doing it across so many categories is really impressive. It may not be flashy, but Yahoo! is getting the job done in a bunch of those spaces.

Additionally you can bring in other businesses here that aren’t really “consumer” facing like Yahoo! Small Business, Web Hosting, Domain Registration, Yahoo! Ad Network, Right Media Exchange, and others.

Also not covered above is how Yahoo! fares internationally in many of those properties in other countries. It’s all over the map (literally), but some of the international regions are stronger than the USA in overall dominance. Not to mention the ownership value of various Asian assets.

Yahoo!’s Weaknesses

What makes Yahoo! vulnerable is that they are doing well in all those categories above, but primarily just from a desktop computer experience.

The Facebook Effect
Facebook has already been stealing Yahoo!’s thunder in various categories for a while now, but it remains a huge threat. Facebook doesn’t compete with Yahoo! on identical products, but does things like make a traditional front page unnecessary, or replacing email with Facebook messages and instant chats.

If or when Facebook starts making moves into running their own socially-enabled properties like “Facebook News” or “Facebook Sports”, Yahoo! may have even more trouble ahead.

Social in General
Handled above by the Facebook effect, but Yahoo! will continue to lose out to Facebook and other social applications if it doesn’t improve rapidly in this area. It’s not for a lack of trying, but Yahoo! has now essentially outsourced a lot of their social stuff to enabling Facebook and Twitter on their properties.
'knock-off iPhone 4' photo (c) 2010, Blake Patterson - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Mobile and Tablets
Compared to Google, Facebook, and Apple, Yahoo! is very far behind in the mobile world. It’s clear they’ve already lost as far as “utility applications” are concerned on mobile devices.

The question they need to ask is how they make Yahoo! News the default mobile news application across all mobile devices? How do they make Yahoo! Finance the default financial application? They don’t seem to be moving aggressively enough in their leading categories to become the “premiere digital media company” on mobile devices.

It’ll be interesting to see where Yahoo! goes next with their leadership and strategy. They have a lot to work with as you can see from above, and I know a lot of talented people are still there looking to make it happen.

Filed Under: Yahoo

Beware Of Fake Twitter Phishing Email

August 11, 2011 by 1 Comment

Fake Twitter Email ScreenshotNormally I wouldn’t make a blog post about a phishing email, but tonight I received one that didn’t get caught by Gmail’s spam filter. It had me believing it was real since I hadn’t seen phishing email pretending to be Twitter before.

The email was supposedly from the address “support@twitter.com” telling me my account was suspended for excessive following. You can see a screenshot the email to the right.

While I knew I hadn’t recently followed a bunch of people, I thought maybe someone had hacked my account and followed people and that the email might be legit, until I read that I needed to click a link to “complete some offers” for to avoid account suspension.

Further examination revealed the link to be “http://mexico.cnn.com/redirectComplete.php?url=//bit%2Ely/ouvgwt” which redirects to “http://emailus.it.tc/” where you can see offers to complete.

Obviously, not from Twitter. Beware.

Filed Under: Twitter

Google Plus Rapid Growth: Will It Last?

August 1, 2011 by 5 Comments

Google Plus growth screenshotThe above graph was created by Leon Haland and featured on Techcrunch Europe.

The tech media has been all over the rapid growth of Google’s social network Google Plus. Many have assumed that this rapid rise means that Google Plus is on it’s way to be a serious competitor Facebook and Twitter.

After my usage of Google Plus so far both sharing and reading, it’s definitely a solid product that does some things better and some things worse than other social tools.

However, I’ve yet to feel like it’s on it’s way to truly competing with Facebook or Twitter.

I think the graph above has been caused by the following:

  • Familiarity with Social Networking - A larger number of people are now familiar with social networking than when Facebook and Twitter launched. They also have more friends and are more connected making it easier to hear about a new social network and decide to go try it out.

  • A Desire For An Alternative - While Facebook and Twitter are massively used, there are a large number of users who don’t love them as products themselves and have the desire for an alternative. Google Plus is really the first serious alternative to launch.

  • Google “Install” Base - So many people already have Google accounts and use Gmail, that it made it super easy to explose Google Plus to users as well as make it easy to intelligently recommend Gmail contacts to invite.

Will Google Plus Keep Growing?

Google Plus was reviewed well by the tech media, and it feels pretty good as a product. However, after a few weeks now I’ve got over a 100 people in my “circles” but the only activity I’m seeing is from about 5-10 people who all have jobs as part of the tech media.

There is literally NO activity from most of my normal friends, many of whom are on the cutting edge of technology and are heavy social network users.

Why is this? I’ve asked a few of them, and the answers tend to be that they don’t know why they should use Google Plus instead of Facebook or Twitter. Their friends aren’t fully there yet, they don’t really feel the need to organize them into circles, and Facebook and Twitter just do a good enough job.

Google’s going to need to do something to differentiate Google Plus even more from those competitors and do something SIGNIFICANTLY better than the competition in order to get people to spend more time there.

It’s definitely possible, but it’s a tough task that won’t be as easy as the initial spike of growth in the graph above.

Filed Under: Facebook, Google, Twitter

Great Startup Postmortem: MyFavorites

July 16, 2011 by 4 Comments

MyFavorites LogoThe tech media is filled with articles gushing over startups that have attracted millions of users, raised millions of dollars, been acquired, or are on their way to surefire success.

However, the reality is still that the majority of startups fail. These failures are usually not written about unless it’s a high profile flameout from a company that was well known. It’s too bad, because it seems like there’s a lot more to learn from why a startup failed than just hearing about the latest success story.

It’s also not that common for the founders of failed startups to be public and forthcoming about what went wrong.

The latest postmortem of a failed startup comes from Steve Poland and his startup MyFavorites.

Steve goes over the big vision for MyFavorites while also being very forthcoming by sharing spreadsheets, mockups, and other artifacts from his startup journey.

As an entrepreneur, it’s the kind of blog post you never want to write, but I’d like to thank Steve for sharing it with the world.

Filed Under: Startups

Tech Entrepreneur Blog Directory/Rankings (2011)

July 6, 2011 by 19 Comments

Kevin Rosephoto © 2009 Eric Susch | more info (via: Wylio)As part of my mission to build a successful technology company (GuideMe), I have turned to learning from others who are also doing it or have done it before.

To help others along this path, while also being inspired by Larry Chang’s VC Blog Directory, I compiled all the entrepreneur blogs I’ve been following and used Compete traffic data to sort them by average unique visitors in 2011. While imperfect, it’s a quick way to determine that other people also find them to be great resources.

Rankings
You can also subscribe to all the blogs listed here in the Google Reader Tech Entrepreneur RSS Bundle or follow a Twitter list of all of them called Blogging Entrepreneurs.

(Name, Twitter, Company, Blog, Avg Monthly Uniques)

  1. Seth Godin (@thisissethsblog), Squidoo/Author – Seth Godin’s Blog (143,103)
  2. Jeremy Schoemaker (@shoemoney), AuctionAds – Shoemoney (74,136)
  3. John Chow (@johnchow), The TechZone/TTZ Media – JohnChow.com (53,174)
  4. Dharmesh Shah (@dharmesh), Hubspot – OnStartups (48,918)
  5. Joel Spolsky (@spolsky), StackOverflow – Joel On Software (43,762)
  6. Neil Patel (@neilpatel), KissMetrics/CrazyEgg – Quicksprout (41,488)
  7. Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), Alltop – How To Change The World (29,057)
  8. Erica Douglass (@ericabiz), Whoosh Traffic – Erica.biz (24,342)
  9. Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt), WordPress – Matt (22,737)
  10. Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee), WineLibrary – GaryVaynerchuk.com (19,249)
  11. John Battelle (@johnbattelle), Federated Media – Battelle Media (16,944)
  12. Kevin Rose (@kevinrose), Digg/Milk – KevinRose.com (16,144)
  13. Jason Cohen (@asmartbear), WPEngine/Smart Bear – A Smart Bear (15,217)
  14. Chris Dixon (@cdixon), Hunch/SiteAdvisor – CDixon (13,282)
  15. Ben Yoskovitz (@byosko), StandoutJobs – Instigator Blog (11,154)
  16. Patrick McKenzie (@patio11), Bingo Card Creator – Kalzumeus (10,742)
  17. Markus Frind (@plentyoffish), PlentyOfFish – Plenty of Fish Blog (10,344)
  18. Gabriel Weinberg (@yegg), DuckDuckGo – Gabriel Weinberg’s Blog (9,179)
  19. Eric Ries (@ericries), IMVU – Startup Lessons Learned (8,081)
  20. Jason Calacanis (@jason), Mahalo/WebLogs – Jason Calacanis (7,279)
  21. Tim Berry (@timberry), Palo Alto Software – Planning Startups Stories (6,573)
  22. Marc Cenedella (@cenedella), TheLadders – Cenedella.com (5,506)
  23. Rob Walling (@robwalling), DotNetInvoice – Software By Rob (5,137)
  24. Vinicius Vacanti (@vacanti), Yipit – ViniciusVacanti.com (4,781)
  25. Noah Kagan (@noahkagan), AppSumo – OKDork.com (4,606)
  26. Ash Maurya (@ashmaurya), UserCycle – Ash Maurya.com (4,363)
  27. Jason Baptiste (@jasonlbaptiste), OnSwipe – JasonLBaptiste.com (3,834)
  28. Ben Pieratt (@pieratt), Svpply – Varsity Bookmarking (3,568)
  29. Sean Ellis (@seanellis), CatchFree – Startup-Marketing.com (2,952)
  30. Joshua Porter (@bokardo), Performable – Bokardo.com (2,879)
  31. David Cancel (@dcancel), Performable – DavidCancel.com (2,800)
  32. Alexis Ohanian (@kn0thing), Reddit/Hipmunk – Soaring on a Pig with Bread Wings (2,715)
  33. Wayne Chang (@wayne), i2Hub – Wayne Chang (2,621)
  34. Mike Nolet (@mikeonads), AppNexus – Mike on Ads (2,621)
  35. Erin Blaskie (@erinblaskie), BSETC – ErinBlaskie.com (2,399)
  36. Tara Hunt (@missrogue), Buyosphere – Horse Pig Cow (2,287)
  37. Jonathan Mendez (@jonathanmendez), YieldBot – Optimize and Prophesize (2,275)
  38. Pat McCarthy (@patmccarthy), GuideMe – ConversionRater (2,195)
  39. Rand Fishkin (@randfishkin), SEOMoz – RandFishkin.com (2,094)
  40. Jordan Cooper (@jordancooper), Hyperpublic – Jordan Cooper’s Blog (2,080)
  41. Mike Rundle (@flyosity), 9Rules – Flyosity (1,399)
  42. Philip Kaplan (Pud) (@pud), Blippy/Adbrite – Pud’s Blog (1,038)
  43. Steve Poland (@popo), MyFavorites- StevePoland.com (1,038)
  44. Matt Mireles (@mattmireles), SpeakerText - The Metamorphosis (1,021)
  45. Joel Gascoigne (@joelgascoigne), Buffer – Joel.is (978)
  46. Steve Sammartino (@sammartino), Rentoid.com – StartupBlog (924)
  47. Dan Martell (@danmartell), Flowtown – Dan Martell (923)
  48. Jessica Mah (@jessicamah), Indinero – JessicaMah.com (922)
  49. Lisa Bruckner (@wasabinights), Hendricks Park – WasabiNights.com (674)
  50. Giff Constable (@giffconstable), Aprizi – GiffConstable.com (614)
  51. Hiten Shah (@hnshah), KissMetrics/CrazyEgg – Hiten Shah’s Tumblr (585)
  52. Tristan Kromer (@trikro), MonkeyMake.it – GrassHopperHerder.com (351)
  53. Nat Turner (@natsturner), Invite Media – NatsTurner.com (216)

Rules for Inclusion
In order to put the rankings on an even playing field I created some rules for inclusion in this list:

  1. Current or recent founder of a technology startup.
  2. Not purely a personal blog.
  3. Nobody included who is primarily an angel or VC investor.
  4. Must be written by a single author with only occasional guest posts.
  5. There had to be at least one post so far in 2011.
  6. Must have data registering at Compete for most months.
  7. No company blogs are included, even if the founder is the primary writer.
  8. I did include authors who also founded tech startups (Godin/Kawasaki/Vaynerchuk). (Although there is a clear advantage for them in blog popularity)

I know I’m probably missing hundreds of entrepreneurs who blog who may fit this criteria, so please let me know in the comments below and I will add them.

Who’s Left Off

  • Tim Ferriss (@tferriss) – Extremely successful author, but he hasn’t actually founded a “tech startup”. Although he did start and sell a supplement company and is a tech angel investor now. He’d be #1 on this list if included.
  • Mark Suster (@msuster) – Two time tech entrepreneur who’s blog is a great resource, but he’s a full-fledged VC investor at this point. There are other VCs who were former entrepreneurs who have good blogs as well.

Why is Compete the data source?
Compete definitely has it’s faults with traffic accuracy, but it is the only service that allowed me to see traffic data by month during 2011. Some of the other services didn’t have enough data to quantify the blogs. Exact numbers are less important than the trend.

Additional Thoughts:

  1. Being a book author helps tremendously for growing a blog audience. Bloggers like Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, and Gary Vaynerchuk have a lot of popularity that was driven by being published authors. Of course, the reason they are writing books is because they are also intelligent people and great writers in the first place.

  2. The majority of blogs were on a downward slide of traffic, especially in the month of April. It’s unclear whether this is just something specific to Compete’s data, or if there is some macro trend that caused it. My bet is that it’s specific to Compete’s data, but almost every blog experienced it so it’s still fair to compare them.

  3. Consistency in posting appears to have a positive effect on traffic. (Duh).

  4. The types of posts on the blogs also seem to have a positive effect. The most popular tend to have more evergreen educational posts that are likely to get shared quite a bit. The entrepreneurs who also post polarizing opinions get more traffic.

  5. The number of years they’ve been blogging is another clear and obvious positive indicator. Although some of the newer bloggers have rose to a lot of traffic quickly due to great content.

  6. A successful exit or running a well known company adds quite a bit to their blog popularity.

  7. Additionally, last year I created a private email discussion list for technology founders called FounderList. It’s a great intimate way for tech founders to network and learn from each other. Go sign up if you are a technology startup founder.

Filed Under: Startups

Cool New GuideMe Feature We Just Launched

June 29, 2011 by 1 Comment

One of the features I’ve been most excited about with GuideMe just came out yesterday.

Simply put, we’re monitoring hundreds of daily deal sites and then notifying people of daily deals that exactly match the places that they’ve saved on their GuideList as a To-Do or a Love.

This solves the problem of not wanting to subscribe to a ton of deal services and get a bunch of emails every day for deals that don’t interest you. You just see deals for places you want. Simple.

Personally, I’m not a frequent deal buyer. Although, when a deal is available for a place that I have been meaning to try or a place that I’ve loved in the past, why would I not want to know about it?

Unfortunately this isn’t available in all cities yet, just most of the big high tech cities at the moment. We’ll roll out to more cities over time based on what cities grow in popularity on GuideMe.

Filed Under: Random

GuideMe Is Open For Business!

June 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

GuideMe MapAfter months of hard work, it felt great to open up the startup I cofounded (GuideMe) to the public last week. Feedback and usage has been pretty good so far, although we have high expectations and know we need to keep building, listening to users, and improving the product to make their local lives better.

GuideMe is your local To-Do List. It’s super easy to build your list of places you’d like to go, where you’ve been, and what you’ve loved.

Despite all the online tools that exist, we still primarily rely on friends and people we know to get great recommendations for restaurants, bars, shops, hotels, landmarks, and everything else. We’re working on scaling those recommendations from friends, making it easier to get them, save them, and share your own.

We’re striving to make it easy to build and manage your local To-Do list, and to provide people with a ton of value that will make it seem worthwhile to use GuideMe.

I’d love for the long-time readers of this blog to sign up, kick some tires, and pass along any feedback whether it’s good or bad.

GuideMe Social Connections

Filed Under: GuideMe

Does Multiple Messaging Systems Solve Email Overload?

June 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Weird...11111 messages in my inboxphoto © 2009 Chad Swaney | more info (via: Wylio)
If you’ve spent much time working in a heavy tech related job, you’ll quickly learn how annoying email can be. No matter who you are, it’s rare that you don’t at some point feel overwhelmed by the number of emails staring at you in your inbox.

Numerous tech luminaries have written about email overload, including going as far as declaring email bankruptcy. The concept of “inbox zero” is often tweeted about as a fantasy land where you actually have replied to, deleted, or processed every email in your inbox.

There are even multiple investor-backed startups such as Unsubcribe.com or ccLoop who are working at solving the “email problem”.

This was brought up again recently in an article on Techcrunch by MG Siegler about Tumblr’s new messaging system. While it looks like a pretty standard application messaging system, MG is excited about it as another place he can get messages that isn’t his email inbox. MG writes:

Yes, all of this stuff is rudimentary for a messaging system. But again, it does offer a small email relief in that it’s a new system with a slightly higher barrier to entry (you need to have a Tumblr account, unless you choose to allow anonymous messages). Mixed with Facebook Messages, Twitter, Twitter DMs, group messaging apps (Beluga, GroupMe, etc), and soon iMessage, I have a bunch of small work-arounds to avoid the nightmare that is my email inbox.

MG’s solution actually seems like the opposite of a solution to me. I have a personal Tumblr site like MG does, a Twitter account, Facebook account, the blog you’re reading, a LinkedIn account, a Quora account, and other various applications where I can get messages. I actually feel more overwhelmed by all the different places I have to go to gather the messages meant for me, then I do from the number of emails in my inbox.

When all the messages meant for me are coming to my inbox, I can handle them without switching to different systems, I can use filters, I can use labels/folders, and can do it all on one device without switching from mobile to PC. How does breaking up my messages across all these different applications actually lessen the burden? Does it lower the quantity or increase the quantity?

If anything maybe there is mental value of getting some variety by getting out of email, but I actually think the fragmentation of messaging takes up more time and makes me more likely to miss something.

Maybe I’m wrong, or maybe I just don’t get as much email as some of those who have complained publicly about it. I’ve led numerous teams of 30 people or less, and while I was at Yahoo! there were definitely some times in which a lot of email was coming my way.

I’ve tended to be able to handle the email load through effective filtering, keeping my subscriptions to lists and commercial newsletters to a minimum, and realizing the more email I send the more likely I am to get email in return.

But, I’m also not a tech journalist or notable venture capitalist so it’s quite possible I just haven’t felt the pain as badly where breaking up messages across multiple applications seems like a welcome thing. Someday…

Filed Under: Random

Looks Like the iAd Hasn’t Cracked Mobile Advertising

June 7, 2011 by 5 Comments

Apple's iAd Hasn't Cracked Mobile Advertising

Over a year after Apple announced the iAd advertising format that was supposed to revolutionize mobile advertising, we heard absolutely nothing about it at yesterday’s developer conference in San Francisco.

Apple trotted out impressive stats about all kinds of things, but there was no mention about iAd penetration, revenue driven, or new capabilities.

Apple doesn’t really miss opportunities to talk about their success, so it’s probably safe to say that the iAd has been a bit of a disappointment so far.

The Hope

When Apple launched the iAd, people had high hopes for what they might be able to do for the mobile advertising industry. A lot of the common thinking was that Apple had revolutionized so many other industries, that perhaps they could do something new and amazing with these high quality mobile ads.

While Apple wasn’t in the advertising business like other companies, people thought their creativity and successful ad campaigns of their own might allow them to take mobile advertising to a new level.

Not so fast my friend.

The Results

Dan Frommer from AlleyInsider did an article about the iAd progress in March. Some notable things in it were that the price of iAds was cut in half, there was a mixed reaction from agencies, and that the iAd sales team had lost a bunch of people.

Outside of the advertising industry, I don’t feel like the iAd has had much impact either. As a user of many iPhone apps, I can’t ever recall even seeing an iAd. Perhaps I have, but if so it definitely wasn’t memorable. And I’m somebody who actually cares about advertising!

The Future

Apple can obviously choose to do what they want and experiment wherever they want. However, I’m not sure advertising is in their core DNA. After all, at the developer conference yesterday Steve Jobs himself said in reference to their mail product:

“No ads,” he boasted. “We build products that we want for ourselves, too, and we just don’t want ads.”

That doesn’t sound like the CEO of a company that really is 100% behind mobile advertising.

Has Jobs learned that “mobile display ads” don’t work? Has Apple just struggled to gain traction?

Or perhaps, is mobile advertising just going to really take off when it’s entirely different and more of the form of location-based deals? But doesn’t that only work for local businesses? How do national brands get in front of people on their mobile device?

The answers still aren’t there, but as more of people’s computing time AND entertainment time shifts to their mobile devices, you can bet there will be a lot of companies trying to figure out how to get in front of people. Just don’t expect Apple to solve it.

Filed Under: Advertising

Sitting All Day Is Killing Us: How To Fight It

May 27, 2011 by 2 Comments

There’s been a lot of recent discussion in the tech blog world about how sitting all day working at a computer is really bad for us. This fact is something I’ve known for a long time as the son of an ergonomic office furniture business owner, so I’ve watched these discussions with interest.

The following is an infographic created that provides some interesting and startling facts:

 
If you’ve got a computer-based job like me, what do you do about this? There are two main things I’d recommend:

Swopper Stool
1. Swopper Stool
I’ve used a Swopper Stool on and off over the years, and we currently have two of these being used in my house now. They are a fantastic way to stay active while you’re sitting. You can bounce on the chair, move forward and back, side to side, and keep your body moving and more active. It also promotes good posture.

Many people use one of the inflatable ball chairs for the same purpose. While they provide some of the same benefits, they are definitely not as sturdy, well-made, as comfortable, or as stylish as the Swopper.

The Swopper isn’t cheap, but it’s a really high quality made chair/stool that has a great warranty and I’ve never had any problems with ours. There are lots of colors available and the price is different depending on what type of fabric (or leather) you get on the seat.

ErgoTron WorkFit2. Standing Desk Option
If we can’t sit all day, why not stand most or part of the time? A company called ErgoTron makes a bunch of different devices in their WorkFit line that securely clamp to normal desks that allow to easily move from sitting to standing. You simply raise and lower your keyboard/mouse and monitor(s) when you want to stand. One of our GuideMe team members has one, and I’m planning on ordering one now as well. He reports that his back feels so much better at the end of each day than it did when he sat all day.

The Swopper combined with a standing desk option like the ErgoTron WorkFit should really fight against the problems associated with sitting all day. While some people may balk at the money involved in creating a setup like this, how much is your health worth to you?

Besides your actual work setup, here are some other tips:

  • When talking on the phone, get a wireless headset so you can walk around.
  • Take breaks every 15 or so minutes to stand up and move your body a little bit.
  • Take the stairs, bike/walk to work, or eliminate sitting time in any other way.
  • Get regular exercise
  • As the infographic points out, extra TV time is really dangerous.

Good luck, get off your butt!

Filed Under: Personal
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