IanSchafer.com

Want To Add Facebook Connect To Your Blog? Here's How.

If you want to add Facebook Connect to your blog, and you have access to your blogs HTML, here's a video from Facebook that will walk you through this process rather swiftly.

Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 Minutes from Dave Morin on Vimeo.

Here's a question, if Typepad (which hosts this blog) has their own 'connect' service, will they make it easy to add this functionality across their platform?

Come on, guys. You know you want to do it. Do it.

Live at NY Television and Film Festival.

Paul Kontonis @ For Your Imagination blogs it best:

It's real, it's live and its all on the line at the NYTVF's "Creativity Live" mass participatory brainstorm on Tuesday, September 16 at 2:30pm at the New World Stages in NYC. Bringing together the sharpest and most creative minds in digital media - Toby Daniels from MintDigital, Paul Kontonis from For Your Imagination and Ian Schafer from Deep Focus -  with a 150 strong audience, all will be given just one hour to develop three cross-platform entertainment concepts. Can it be done? After the event people will be able to go to the NYTVF website, where they can vote on the ideas they would like to see taken forward. This promises to be a really exciting event. See you there!

This should be LOTS of fun, so if you'll be at the NYTVF, check it out!

Television: A Gray Anatomy?

From the 'why TV needs to do more with the internet' files, according to Broadcasting & Cable, the average age of a network TV viewer is 50 years old.

50 years old.

The 50+ set does not have the same kind of value to the average advertiser as 17-34 year-olds. Historically, that's where the money is. And while there is certainly significant spending power with audiences 50+ (thanks Paula), the networks still must not be happy with these numbers.

Silicon Alley Insider has some more analysis on this, including network by network numbers. To put it in perspective, The CW has the youngest average viewer age, at 34.

The New York Times API: Coming, But Is Revenue?

As ReadWriteWeb reports, the New York Times is working on an API that aims to make the entire newspaper 'programmable'.

From the post:

In addition to the API, New York Times CTO Marc Frons told mediabistro.com that internal developers at the paper will use the platform to organize structured data on the site. Following that, the paper plans to offer developer keys to the API allowing programmers to more easily mash up the paper's structured content -- reviews, event listings, recipes, etc. "The plan is definitely to open [the code] up," Frons said. "How far we don't know."

The effects that this might have could be far-reaching. The NYT is still a morning (and throughout-the-day) mainstay for millions of readers (and bloggers), and giving others the ability to use its content as they see fit may result in even more readership.

But access to content will no doubt be limited. What the NYT really wants is for people to visit its website. Not extract content from it. It's the great Newspaparodox. News has become a commodity. Blogs are beating newspapers to the punch, often because it doesn't have to deal with a bureaucratic fact-checking system (for better or worse). Analysis, features, and 'exclusives' are still the things that set the NYT apart.

The questions that still need to be asked are:

* Will opening up an API result in more readership?
* Can that increased readership be monetized?
* Can this be an additional/incremental revenue stream, or one that just aims to offset losses from the newspaper?

The Times' facebook application has only attracted 1,200 users, but then again, the successful facebook apps tend to skew heavily towards the silly.

'Opening up' is a trend, finally. But trends can become fads very quickly without a responsible business model. If you're a content publisher or media company, the least you should be doing is API-enabling your content. The next thing you should be doing is figuring out how to turn that openness into incremental revenue.

If you're an agency, you should be proactively bringing ideas to your clients that can take this API-mentality to its advertising and brand positioning. And if directly increasing revenue is not your goal, then you should be understanding and explaining how getting more open can yield positive results in other ways. But as in any case, to quote Glengarry Glen Ross, 'never open your mouth unless you know what the shot is.'

Have We Run Out Of Viral Video Ideas? Or Just Directors?

Ok. So I'll admit. I never really saw the beauty (well, maybe 'cuteness') of the Ray Ban viral video done by Cutwater.

It lost its charm after one view, and lets not forget that it got 1.6 million views in a week, and a year later only has 1.7 million more. Doesn't say much for any kind of staying power, and a rather inefficient use of money (even though I have no idea how much Ray Ban paid for this).

Well, here's a new video by the same director, this time for Levi's.

Look familiar? Well this clip has 3 million views already, but to me, is even less impactful. And unlike the Ray Ban video (which uses Wayfarers that are iconic Ray Ban style) there's really nothing calling attention to the fact that these are Levi's jeans. Not even in the title (in which I would have used the word Levi's instead of 'jeans'.) This clip has the same director, 'Benzo', and it leaves me wondering how this was sold into the client...

(Tip o'the hat to Adverganza for pointing me in this direction.)

MySpace Data Availability: What Does It Mean?

Today, MySpace announced "Data Availability" with partners Yahoo!, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter. Check out the press release here.

To summarize:

Yahoo

Information on a user's MySpace profile may be integrated into Yahoo! services in a variety of ways. For example, users that have chosen to share their MySpace content and data with Yahoo! Instant Messenger might find their MySpace default photo, interests, and favorite music displayed to their Messenger contacts directly in the IM client. Additionally, MySpace users will be able to choose to display their data within Yahoo!'s universal profile or leverage it in Yahoo! Mail's smarter inbox, both launching later this year.

eBay

eBay profiles will be able to be enhanced with MySpace bios, interests, pictures, and videos. When browsing or transacting on eBay, the availability of external social information can help users make decisions quickly about whom they can do business (and forge relationships) with.

Photobucket

Photobucket users will be able to have a single view of their photos across multiple services, as well as opt-in to displaying their MySpace profile data in their Photobucket albums. Users will also be able to leverage their existing connections on MySpace to share their content on Photobucket more easily, without having to re-establish connections and friend lists.

Twitter

Twitter profiles at present are primarily focused on current updates and are relatively sparse on user information. Users will be able to incorporate their MySpace profile content and data points previously not included in the Twitter product suite. Once the implementation is complete, a user will be able to bring in their MySpace content and data including their bio, blogs, and photos, ultimately making the Twitter site a more enriching site with content previously unavailable in its interface.

Say want you want about whether or not anyone really wants to see MySpace information elsewhere, but this is part of the '3.0' stuff that everyone's been talking about...and other properties will follow suit.

New Post @ AdAge: When Habits Change Faster Than Ad Models.

My latest advisory, yet still optimistic tale contribution to Advertising Age's Digital Next is live. Hopefully it will be in the next print issue as well.

Here's a sneak preview:

When Habits Change Faster Than Ad Models Venture capital and big-media acquisitions can't bankroll social media forever

Posted on 05.02.08 @ 09:32 AM

Ian Schafer Ian Schafer also blogs at IanSchafer.com.
Technology is a funny thing. It enables humans to be capable of so much. It raises our potential to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

But so much of technology is hidden from plain view because it doesn't make money. Financial gain is arguably the most important aspect of technological innovation, because without it, all but the most altruistic of reasons cease to exist.

We are living in a time in which the media we consume are undergoing the most rapid technological transformation since the advent of TV. Back then, there was a lot for companies to gain by having a TV in every home in America. It gave advertisers the ability to pitch their wares to TV's captive audience. And over the years, those advertisers have shelled out billions upon billions of dollars continuing to do so because it was perhaps the best-performing media, but one that delivered a passive audience.

We are now witnessing a migration of ad dollars from lesser-performing media to online's active audience.

Even within a rapidly growing medium such as the web, there is a still more-quickly growing form of online media that we call social media. This includes social networks, blogs, virtual worlds, widgets, applications, communities and any other format where the individuals who use it create or distribute the majority of the content.

Read the rest over at AdAge.com by clicking here.

Listen to My Panel @ SXSW Here.

It's been a while, but SXSW finally got my 2008 panel titled Blogs, Buzz, and Buddy Lists posted online.

Here's the description:

Blogs, Buzz, and Buddy Lists

SXSW Interactive PodcastsUse the Internet before the Internet uses you. Thanks to blogs, web-video, and social networking sites, the online universe is a valuable (but no less intimidating) landscape for artists. How do you get the best out of blogs and other sites, to maximize your potential for an audience. Or, how do you get yourself introduced to the booming industry of online journalism and video sharing? These experts dig deep into these ever-changing trends.

Paul Harrill Lovell Films

Karina Longworth Film Blogger, Spout.com

Alison Willmore IFC

Ian Schafer CEO, Deep Focus

Victor Pineiro Writer/Producer, Second Skin

Listen to the panel here! It was most definitely a good one.

Recognizing Memeoganda.

The onset of digital media has enabled communication, information, and news to flow quicker than ever before. The sheer velocity of information has had devastating effects on the newspaper industry (at least the printed elements) and consumers have changed their behavior to adapt.

No longer do we have to wait until the 11pm local newscast to find out what happened in our city. We don't even have to respect the anchorperson's request to stay tuned until after the commercial break to hear about a news story. We can just go to any number of websites to get that news before that brief break is over.

When an online news source breaks some piece of information (with our without fact-checking), blogs swoop in to comment, and news aggregator (i.e. Digg) users vote stories up, and they become 'the news'. And the more news becomes endorsed by the people reading it, the more 'true' it feels. Fact-checked or not.

I recently saw a panel at SXSW on the online behavior of teens and tweens, and when a few of the teenaged panelists mentioned that they got their news from Digg, it made me shudder. As great of a tool as Digg is for finding interesting pieces of online content, it's not a news source. Just an 'interesting content' recommendation engine.

But even journalists and professional bloggers use recommendation engines. They're out there; techmeme is an example. And sometimes those recommendation engines are other journalists and bloggers. In this new era of online journalism, these recommendations have become known as 'memes'. Wikipedia defines a 'meme' as consisting of any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Examples include thoughts, ideas, theories, practices, habits, songs, dances and moods and terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity. Memes propagate themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner similar to the behavior of a virus.

While memes often reflect important topics, they also have the potential to create stagnant monologues that doesn't necessarily get us anywhere -- eventually just turning what should be solution-deriving conversations, into noise. That's when memes make the leap from becoming units of cultural information and legitimate conversation to being momentum-generated waves of propaganda. Or, as I will business cliche-ify, memeoganda.

What used to be called 'trend pieces' are now being ripped from the headlines of blogs and even other publications. The biggest culprits tend to be traditional (especially print) media, and overzealous bloggers (in fact, I randomly stumbled upon this post by Mark Evans on the topic of blog topics via Techmeme) looking to capitalize on popular conversations/memes.

When journalists in traditional publications stop having original things to say, or just have the same ruminations on existing problems without offering up solutions, we get classic memeoganda. Lately, I've seen examples of memoganda regarding the ad industry ranging from the 'death of ad networks' to 'facebook's demise' to 'google click volume' to 'the death of the music industry' to even the state of the economy/recession.

These trend pieces get written so quickly and so close to each other, that while they may raise awareness of important topics, they water down the depth of the coverage, and result in a stream of 'also-ran' stories.

I started writing this blog post last night, and right on cue, this morning Techcrunch tells us about a new startup called Publish2 that will make memoganda even easier by providing journalists and newsrooms with their own Digg-like resource for finding out what's hot.

You know, maybe it's just me, but I yearn for the days when journalists broke hot stories rather than write about stories that are already hot. Memeoganda is sucking the life out of investigative journalism and seems to be more about finding new and exciting ways to conjure up ad inventory than to publish content with depth and meaning. And while stories that yield more ad inventory (read: linkbaiting) can be good bottom-line revenue band-aid, they are not the solution to mainstream journalism's woes.

The long-term answer is to strive to be the best at what you do. Break the news that matters. Investigate the broken news deeper. Don't fall prey to the easiness of spreading memeoganda.

Thoughts on Modernista ’ s Website and the Future of Ours.

There's been so much talk about Modernista!'s new ultra-web 2.0 website (or lack of a site at all). It's taken me a while to get around to discussing it, but here goes...

Take a moment to visit Modernista!'s new site.

So basically, what the site is doing is using all the tools that exist at the web's disposal to turn people on to the agency.

Honestly, most of it works like a charm. I really do like it, even though the problem with using search results to provide information is that so many people have been commenting on Modernista!'s new site, that most results are talking their own site launch rather than the work they do for their clients (which is a narcissism problem that plagues many creative agencies out there, and search results only shine a light on that).

Max Kalehoff provides a really good overview of the site today over at MediaPost.

The thing with this site though, is that while it does a great job of talking about press and showing off stills and bookmarks, it doesn't tell me about strategy. Or case studies (everyone always asks me for those). Maybe it's because we're also a media agency, but there's got to be a way to tell the agency's story with personality, without going completely ethereal or puking Flash.

We're working on a new official site for Deep Focus, and are going to be doing some interesting things with it. Believe it our not, we've had the same site design for about 4 years. Hey -- it's been really busy around here.

Stay tuned for an official launch announcement, but hats off to Modernista! for getting us thinking about official agency websites again.

In the meantime, if you've got ideas for us to use for our website, just let me know. I'm listening.