Internet Tech Boston

I was happy to learn that LiveAutographs, a client I’ve worked with lately, was featured in a TechCrunch blog post by none other than Michael Arrington himself. What is LiveAutographs? I’ll let Mike explain:

LiveAutographs [is] a site that sells celebrity autographs that are guaranteed to be authentic – because they take a video of the celebrity writing the autograph and message and post it on their website.

That’s right, when you view the video of your favorite celebrity autographing event, you’re experiencing the power of online video in your hands. That’s PermissionTV’s slogan, for those of you who aren’t already in the know.

OK, so LiveAutographs is not the next internet revolution. But, it’s a fun idea and a smart use of online video. More importantly, when Mr. Arrington gets his personalized William Shatner autographed “I Love TechCrunch” T-Shirt, he’ll be “testing [PTV!] software.” Do you think his next post after that will be about PermissionTV?

In a recent article on ReadWriteWeb.com, Josh Catone describes the data from a study by PubMatic that shows online ad prices are coming down.

The report found that ad prices (based on effective CPMs) in April across all sites fell an average of 23%. This was most acutely felt by large sites (over 100 million page views per month), led by social networking sites, which saw eCPMs plummet 47% from March to April. Medium-sized web site monetization was essentially flat, while small sites (less than 1 million page views per month) saw modest gains month-over-month.

The article goes on to suggest that a possible reason for the slow down could be residual affects of the current problems with the US economy. Of course, this is a valid hypothesis and the overall economic woes probably are playing a large part in everyone’s reduced spending – from gas, to milk, to corporate online advertising.

Could it be possible that another reason for the drop in ad prices is that organizations simply aren’t getting the ROI on traditional text ads? Catone does point out that the study “didn’t differentiate between display and text ads.” The definition of “display ad” can be pretty broad, but I’d like to suggest that what he’s getting at, is the difference in performance between your standard run-of-the-mill text ad vs. a newer style video advertisement.

I’ve been a big proponent of the next generation of online video – especially as it relates to online advertising. Traditional online ad models aren’t working anymore – and studies like the PubMatic are starting to show the data that will prove it out. A recent April 23rd article by Melissa Chang of The Industry Standard describes three online video formats for the future and how they are proving to be more effective than traditional text ads. Do you think that this recent data from PubMatic suggests that advertisers are starting to pull their money from internet ads the new interactive video formats allow for Cost Per Action models?

I had my first bad experience with Blog it. After spending a good deal of time, doing some researching, creating links, and writing up an entry, the “Post” button returned error – invalid username/password. I hadn’t changed either my username or password since my last successful entry. Of course, my entry was gone, and I felt like I was 13 years old again – staring at a “Disk Read Error 0″ on my Packard Bell 8080 with 3 1/4 floppy drive, knowing I was going to get an F on my book report on Of Mice and Men.

I was really excited by Blog it when it first came out. Even though it burned me, I still used it to make this entry you’re reading now. However, after using it a couple of times, I’m starting to think a blog post is probably faster, easier, and safer, if done in good ‘ol Wordpress. I can take the extra 2 seconds to update Twhirl myself.

I was pretty loudly proclaiming to colleagues and friends how Facebook Chat would be a pretty useless addition to the platform. Well, I’m patting myself on the back because it appears as if I got it right. Facebook Chat is pretty useless – for the win.

Ok, so maybe I didn’t really need to go that far out on a limb to make this prediction. Instead, I used common sense. You see, there’s already a few instant messenger platforms that handle chat. You may have heard of Google Talk, Yahoo IM, AOL IM, Skype, Gadu-Gadu, Meebo, ICQ, Jabber, and a few dozen more that collectively amount to over 1 billion registered users. Even with their 60 million users, it’s not hard to see that Facebook has a lot to overcome to be relevant in this space.

Now, the reviews are coming in from Tech Blog big shots. Do we really need another IM? Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb thinks “Probably not.” Michael Arrington from Techcrunch also points out that with “no integration of AIM, Gtalk, or any other protocol yet,” it makes the Facebook Chat another “walled garden.”

Why then, would Facebook come late into a mature market with a technology platform that doesn’t play well with others? Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, is starting to believe some of the “can-do-no-wrong” hype around Facebook. In a 60 Minutes interview, Lesley Stahl told Zuckerberg “you seem to be replacing Larry and Sergei.” Stahl continues to refer to Facebook as, among other things, an “internet revolution” and the  “biggest thing since Google.”

The fact of the matter is – we don’t really need another chat platform. Facebook is the poster child for user generated content and Web 2.0 community, but will not surpass Google as the primary online communication, online commerce engine, and information dissementation platform used by people throughout the world. I would have rathered Facebook spend less time trying to prove how cool they are – “there’s a dude on a unicycle – how rad!,” less time explaining how unaffected they are (Zuckerberg claims to sleep on a mattress laying on the floor.), and more time coming up with new innovative ideas that might actually lend credence to all the posturing and hype thrown at the company. Then again, I’m not the one being interviewed by 60 Minutes . . .

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cEySyEnxvU]