History Matters

A fascinating article in Technology Review highlights and quantifies a problem that is also an opportunity: disappearing data.

The article reports on the findings of a new research study of social media that finds that in an analysis of recent major cultural events (e.g. Arab Spring), 11% of the social media content had disappeared within a year and 27% within 2 years. Beyond that, the study authors have calculated that the world loses 0.02% of its culturally significant social media material every day.

Keep in mind that what the study authors are measuring is not the number of tweets that are disappearing, but the web pages that these tweets are linking to.

And while this study only looked at headline news events, you've probably had experiences similar to mine: links to news stories and press releases that are no longer active, businesses removing all traces of failed product launches from their websites, online stories that are undated and thus difficult to rely on, news outlets that continue to treat yesterday's news like yesterday's news - and the list goes on.

The short message is that historical knowledge is always valuable, and it becomes even more valuable as it becomes less available. And that's what we are seeing online. Whether by accident or design, more and more content is "aging off" the web, creating opportunities for those companies that hold onto it in an organized fashion.

Yes, there are amazing resources like The Internet Archive that attempt to maintain searchable, historical copies of the entire web, but as you might suspect, this is hard, and there is a limit to the amount of detail it can store. But taking on this task on a vertical market basis is do-able, and potentially quite remunerative.

Many data products are designed to provide the latest and most current data, and that's smart. But as you add new data, don't delete the old data. It's amazing what insights can be gleaned by watching the changes to a business over time, and as the art of data analytics evolves, this capability will only get more compelling. But you can't analyze data you don't have. More than a few data companies I know owe their strength and their profitability to the fact that they maintained historical data. And as you become the sole source for content that has disappeared elsewhere from the web, you create a proprietary aspect to your content, along with an often insurmountable competitive barrier.

So take a little time to think about what information (specific data points or full-text documents) you can preserve, and how valuable this information might become if it wasn't available anywhere else, because that's the trend I see. What's past isn't just prologue; it may also be a new profit center!

#hashtags

As Twitter continues to grow, so does the use of hashtags (those keywords and concepts in tweets preceded by the # symbol). But hashtags can help or hurt your goal of maximum visibility for your tweets. A couple tips based on observation and some quick research:

• Use them judiciously
• Use them authentically
• Their use/misuse reflects favorably or unfavorably upon your brand

Using one or two hashtags is about the most you'll want to use in a tweet, if their use is warranted at all. Tweets using a particular hashtag are classified together in a list. Within Twitter, clicking on the hashtag produces a list of all posts across the site. Using 3 or more hashtags means your tweet will appear on more lists, however the overall power and focus of your message is diluted and your content will look like gobbledygook. Remember, hashtags eat into your 140 maximum character count. The more you tag a tweet, the less you can say in a tweet.

Hashtags make content easily findable on Twitter, but for a relatively short period of time - which varies depending on a number of factors. This time-limited aspect means that hashtags are terrifically useful for current events - unusual weather events, breaking news, sports scores, product releases, conferences, etc.

Hashtags can be used as means of appearing on "trending" topics lists that exist to attract followers to content. For example, trending topics which appeared within the last week or so were: #thestorybehindmyscar, #mycatisajerk. As you will guess from these examples, a hashtag such as #softpaywalls (based on an actual recent InfoCommerce tweet), will never make a trending topics list. Which is to say, when it comes to social media for business, trending topics lists are generally irrelevant.

Hashtagging broad terms is not helpful either. Hashtags for generic words like #marketing, #money, #music, #internet, #ecommerce, etc. are nearly useless because the topics are so broad and so often referenced that they don't appreciably improve searchability. In this instance, hashtags mostly just gunk up a message and create the impression that the writer doesn't understand the concept of hashtags or the platform itself.

Sometimes hashtags are the rough equivalent to saying "like" or "ummm" when you speak. They seldom add to the readers understanding and reflect poorly on the writer.

Search engines being what they are - operating on ever-changing rules and keen on sniffing out baddies - are more likely to push heavily hashtagged content lower on search results pages because it has the look and feel of stuffing. "Stuffing" - in not terribly sophisticated or technical terms - is loading your message with unnecessary words in hopes one of them will trend and help your content be found. Generally, stuffing is something that: 1) people who don't know what they are doing do, and 2) something unscrupulous people do.

Finally, hashtagged posts are not necessarily read more often than posts without hashtags. Social media software provider Argyle Social researched hashtags and developed some interesting insights into their effectiveness. It is worth reading in full, but here are some key summary points:

• In 53% of the social properties analyzed, posts with hashtags actually performed worse than posts without hashtags.
• In 21%, there was no significant difference between posts with and without hashtags. And 26% of social properties had better performance in posts with hashtags.
• When averaging across the entire sample, posts with hashtags received 5% fewer clicks than posts without hashtags.

Argyle's summary conclusion of its research is one that I agree with as it relates to hashtags in any sense: Your followers are your primary source of attention. Tweets should be targeted at providing value to your existing followers, as they are the most likely to read and share your content.

-- Nancy Ciliberti

Micro-Monetization

Yes, I just made up a new buzzword, micro-monetization, which is meant to describe a huge trend online to create services to monetize things that previously couldn't be monetized because they were too fleeting, too small or too difficult to bring buyer and seller together. It's a fascinating area full of large, latent opportunities, and I believe B2B publishers can find opportunity here as well.

What they heck I am talking about? Consider one of the best-known examples of the genre, AirBNB.com. This service allows people to rent out their apartments or even spare bedrooms to strangers as a low-cost alternative to hotels. Not to be outdone, another service called Camp In My Garden actually allows people to rent out their backyards to campers. And it's not just real estate. RelayRides will let you rent out your car to strangers by the hour or by the day.

There are also numerous services that let car services sell their down time efficiently. Consider PlaneFinder.com and EmptyLegMarket.com, both of which sell empty legs on private jet itineraries. My point is that that there is remarkable activity, creativity and opportunity in this area, but the focus so far has been consumer-oriented. Can this work in business? Absolutely. Consider the example of GetLoaded.com, one of several services to help truckers find cargo to haul on what would otherwise be an empty trip home.

Companies such as LoopNet help businesses sub-lease excess space. Put your creativity to work. Does your vertical market have expensive capital equipment or facilities that typically aren't fully utilized? Are there inefficiencies you can address on a spot market basis - opportunistically matching buyers and sellers? Here are just a few top-of-head examples to get you thinking: would restaurants rent out their kitchens on the days they are closed to the growing number of people creating small batch products for sale? Could companies rent out their parking lots at night to truckers seeking a safe, hassle-free place to park overnight? Could companies rent out their conference rooms to other companies looking for a place for out-of-town meetings? Crazy ideas? Perhaps. But who would have thought that you could build a business letting people rent their backyards? And don't get caught up in liability and other legal concerns right out of the box - many of the companies cited above pushed ahead despite myriad legal vagaries.

So put your thinking caps on. You know the players in your market, and as importantly, they know you. That gives you a credible, neutral central market position that will go a long way to building out a micro-monetization opportunity in your market.

Sentimental Journey

Sentiment analysis represents a real opportunity for many data publishers to add new, high-value, proprietary and even real-time insight to their data products. But sentiment analysis has inherent strengths and weaknesses you need to appreciate when considering if there is a sentiment analysis opportunity for your data products.

A wonderful example of sentiment analysis at work is represented in a new service called the Twitter Political Index. Working with two respected political polling organizations, Twitter analyzes over 400 million tweets per day, to determine how people are feeling about the two presidential candidates. The key word here is "feeling," because that's what sentiment analysis is all about -- guessing how people feel about a topic. It's not easy, and it is particularly complex for tweets, which are short and often lack context. Moreover, most sentiment analysis tools go well beyond simply binary like/dislike assessments and try to gauge the degree of like or dislike. It's tricky stuff, but the potential applications are numerous and exciting.

This is often the point where many people will start questioning such issues as whether or not Twitter offers a representative sample, and what level of precision and confidence sentiment analysis can offer. These are valid questions, but be careful not to fall into the trap described by research industry veteran Ray Poynter, who notes that all new research methodologies are invariably measured against the standard of perfection. This implies that all current research metholodogies are perfect, which is far from the case. When using tools such as sentiment analysis, you need to consider the application, then pick the methodology, seeking the best fit possible.

That's why data publishers should be thinking about sentiment analysis. You don't need to analyze every tweet; indeed you don't necessarily need Twitter at all. Sentiment analysis can be applied to research reports, blog posts and press releases. And if you can help your customers better understand how the world currently views a company or product, for example, you can deliver a useful new layer of insight that differentiates you from the competition, makes your products more valuable, and can be acquired and implemented fairly quickly and economically.

And particularly with new research methodologies, I think it's useful to remember the saying, "don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good." Building powerful new data analysis tools is a long journey, one that both publisher and customer are taking together.

The Strategic Use of APIs

Looking for change, challenge, growth? Increased innovation across your organization? New content models and revenue? A new audience acquisition strategy? The ability to knock out the competition? Then think about giving third party developers to access to your content and data in a structured and open manner via APIs -- Application Programming Interfaces. APIs represent a way for publishers to develop new sources of revenue by increasing content distribution fueled by technology and bringing outside ideas in.

Consider Twitter and the constellation of products created by third party developers in its orbit. Twitter provides users up-to-the-minute content on a continuous basis and generates ad revenue through sales of promoted tweets. Twitter is a relate-able and familiar model to publishers.

By allowing third party developers access to its content, Twitter invited innovation from the outside in, increasing the use and value of its content and boosting its revenue. Third party development using Twitter’s API makes Twitter even more useful and draws a larger user-base to its content. Twitter’s ongoing evolution holds valuable lessons for those producing and distributing content.

Innovation, Increased Data Use, Expanding Audiences - APIs provide external talent the ability to develop novel useful new pathways to your content which increases data use and revenue and helps companies innovate and evolve past its competition. Providing access to content and data in a structured and open manner for third party development provides the opportunity to design entirely new ways for existing customers as well as new customers to experience content.

Successful publishers understand the importance of aligning content to the capabilities new technologies bring. It’s a tough job since publishing as an industry has traditionally under-valued and under-funded R&D and struggles with accepting external ideas. APIs represent the next step in developing new ways of presenting and pricing content as well as meeting the expectations of an audience which is constantly growing in technological sophistication.

Monetizing APIs, Controlling Access to and Pricing Content -APIs offer endless possibilities to monetize content which are limited only by the imagination of app developers. Technology exists for controlling the access to and securing content as well as the tools necessary for monetizing it.

Old-timey revenue and pricing models publishers are already familiar with: ad-supported, transactional and subscription as well as somewhat newer models like DaaS (Data-as-a-Service) can be implemented in conjunction with systems for tracking and billing for data usage.

APIs and Expectations - Across industries and businesses APIs are redefining how companies develop their products and conduct business and the steadily escalating growth of APIs will influence and shape expectations about how content is accessed, used and priced.

-- Nancy Ciliberti