I’m going BIG this year….well, as big as much as a thrifty, planner type like me can go. That’s right my peeps, I’m going out to Nebraska to visit my BFF of 25 years. And in true honor and respect of our Friend-iversary I set up a uber-corny countdown…
and have already packed up this guy…
Wednesday, March 26, 2009 at Hyatt Regency San Francisco
Hosted by Kontangent
Agenda: Metrics, Social Gaming and fbConnect!
* Albert Lai (Kontagent,co-founder/CEO), Intros
* Andreas Weigend (Data Mining Professor at Stanford and Former Chief Scientist at Amazon) - Keynote
* Eric Ries (Kleiner Perkers, co-founder IMVU) - Metrics for Social Engagement
* Jia Shen (co-founder/CTO RockYou) - Metrics of notifications
* Jeffrey Tseng & Fredric Newberg (Kontagent co-founder/CTO & VP engineering) - Viral tuning beyond conversion + insights across applications
* Josh Elman (Facebook) - fbConnect on Web & iPhone and others
* Justin Smith (InsideFacebook, Former Head of Products at Watercooler) - Social Gaming trends
* Andrew Mayer (Media Shifters) - Casual gaming metrics applied to social gaming
* Vikas Gupta (co-founder Jambool) - Virtual Economy Optimization
* Michael Hart (Netflix) - Netflix Facebook Connect Metrics
I tweeted Josh Elman’s talk.
# At facebook developer garage in SF
# Topic: making your websites social via facebook connect
# Goals: bold traffic, engagement
# Traffic thru social distribution
# Engagement thru social context
# Too many fields barrier to registration. Like one click login.
# Isn’t this just facebooks version of openid?
# Problem: Every time you register you need to rebuild your friends list. Fb connect solves this problem.
# Does geni.com do fb connect?
# Fb connect features: 1. requests 2. notifications 3. Announcements 4. Streams
# Streams were introduced in last fb redesign release
# Feed is moving from reporting to streaming
# More elements on reporters and opportunities to respond
# You can pre-fill user generated comments but must post them back to your own site
# You should encourage comments to be social. More than just OMG!
# Btw, those were my notes from Josh Elmans talk. He works for Facebook
# It’s the next cool thing. #facebookconnect
The second half of this event was recorded and posted on ustream.tv.
Netflix and FB Connect - You can watch at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1299518. It starts at about 1 hour and 6 minutes into the recording.
It was a long day and I didn’t want to stay in the city until 9pm to see Netflix talk about their FB Connect implementation so I watched their Michael Hart’s pitch via the ustream.tv recording.
* Netflix has 10 million subscribers and distributes 2m DVDs per day
* They recognize people like “Sharing movie tastes with friends” -> Ratings is a natural way to convey tastes
* Netflix made a decision that users must share *all* of their ratings on FB Connect or none at all. They are going to see how it works out.
* Netflix validates you are connecting to the right user on FB connect because more than one user can share a netflix account - this problem is shared by CSM given users may have more than one username associated with an email
* How to measure success?
** Key proxy metrics
- how many people comment via fb on the posted rating (currently not measureable, but an ideal)
- netflix queue add rate
- netflix play rate
** Other Metrics
- how many users are FB connecting?
- how many users are FB disconnecting?
- how many ratings are being shared via FB?
– Does this increase Netflix’s sign up rate?
– Does this increase their FB connect rate?
- What is the connect abandonment rate? In other words, how many people see page that explains what FB connection is and then abandons the process?
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor –
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now –
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
After all the unsettling things I’ve heard all day long about Presumptive Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, I thought I’d do a little something to inspire me and remind me that equity, justice and peace are still possible for our future. I re-read Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech. And then, just for some light-hearted geeky fun, I created a wordle of the speech.
This feminist is voting Obama for President.
I wrote the post below 5 months ago. I couldn’t publish it because the reality of it all was all just a bit too over-whelming. So it sat in my drafts folder, until now. Rina gave me the news that her doctor said she is cancer-free several months after having the cancerous tumor removed from her body. I know she is not home-free, but she is here with me - with our friends - and not going anywhere any time soon.
Yes, I am part of the New Kids generation. Quincy Jones worked his magic and brought the world the New Kids on the Block decades after the Jackson 5 made girls squeal.
The five boys from Boston were my first real celebrity crush. After school I would run into the house and pop in a VHS tape to record their videos off MTV. I would watch those darn tapes over and over and over again. I even remember recording a christmas special they did. I’d cry tears of joy as my 12 year heart pounded with love for Joey as he sang to me. He’d ask me “Please don’t go girl!” I promised I’d never go as I sang along.
Way too many years later, the boys are back on tour. And although I can’t claim to truly adore their latest songs. I must admit their personas and music are etched into my soul. I downloaded their greatest hits from iTunes and I am going to see them in concert when they come to town.
Valentine Girl still gets me all sentimental. It reminds me of the crush I had on the sweetest, most polite soccer-playing boy in the 8th grade. It is so silly that a songs can take you back so quickly, but it does. The bonus is that I am able share their music with my daughter. We have a good time singing Step By Step together. It is still catchy and meets the high-standards of one of Hannah Montana’s greatest fans. lol
I should mention I <3 Jon too….and you can throw Marky Mark and his funky bunch in as a bonus too (”C’mon, C’mon feel the vibration! It is such a sweet sensation!”)
I was happy to see the NY Times report that a woman, Anna Patterson, and a bunch of guys decided to take on Google search. Seems they are well-positioned to take them on since Anna was the tech lead for a couple of Google’s biggest groups and the rest of the guys aren’t too shabby either with their own lists of impressive credentials.
It is called cool dot com, but written cuil.com. I checked it out and although it seems more promising than not, it certainly as cool as I would have wished it to be. I searched my own name (of course, duh, isn’t that we all do) and found the results nicely displayed and unfortunately inaccurate.
A picture of a different Erica Rios sat beside a link to my LinkedIn profile.
Ok, so not terrible, but terrible. The other Erica Rios lost her husband in the Iraqi war. It is a bit accidentally insensitive to place her image next to my online resume. Still there is hope for cuil.com.
I then search for “chicana”. It gives you a box of associated terms. The highest of which is for things related to lucha libre. I can’t tell the difference between a noun (”chicana”) and an adjective (”sangre chicana”). To be fair, it is a spanish word, but still. I find it pretty darn funny.
It will be fun to watch how these folks in Menlo Park will give the folks in Mountain View a run for their money. And we can continue to enjoy what may become Microsoft’s eventual and inconsequential acquisition of Yahoo!
(Notes from BlogHer 2008, Day 2, Break-Out Session #1)
Presenter: Elise Bauer (elise.com/blogher)
OBSERVATION: This topic is far more popular than organizer must have anticipated. All of the seats are filled and people are grouping together on the floor to get in on the session.
This is the third year Elise has given this talk at BlogHer.
Question to audience: How many have blogging 5 years? 4 years? 3 years? 2 years? 1 year or less?
A: Most of the bloggers in the room have blogged about 1-2 years.
150,000 pageviews a day on simplyrecipes.com
Elise’s talk is at elise.com/blogher
Question to Audience: Why do you want traffic?
- Elise’s personal blog gets 100 visitors. That is the traffic she wants. People that care about her are reading it.
- SimpleRecipes is meant to fund her life and retirement. She needs lots of traffic to make it successful.
- The point is to have an understanding of what your goals are.
Themes: Community, Content, and Technology
Content should be…
1) Useful
2) Entertaining
3) Timely
Elise just focuses simplyrecipes on just being useful. News sites need to be timely. BlogsDuece is an entertaining site. If you can incorporate all three of these things great. Just different issues in managing the content.
Focus
Elise started with 6 blogs. She figured out what people want. Then she focused on it. ‘It’ being recipes.
Best practices
* Post frequently
* Use images and photographs
* Write well, check spelling, grammar
* Compelling headlines
* Short posts easier to read than long posts
- 300 words before ‘more’/'continue reading’ link
- Detail is further down
- Otherwise it makes it easier to go to next recipe
* Polls, Top 10 lists, Contests, How-to’s, Interviews, Controversial topics…
- Elise’s observation is that interview don’t get as much traffic as you’d expect. But still fun.
- ThePioneerWoman.com gives away gives away mixers, etc.
* Keep it real. Be authentic. Show a sense of humor.
- Pitfall of corporate blogs is you lose personal voice.
Images
* Buy a DSLR camera (Elise recommends a Rebel.) and a 50mm lens, and Photoshop or Lightroom
The value is that it improves the quality of your blog.
Blog about something you care about. A lot.
Community
The difference between broadcastng your message and engaging a group.
What is community?
- fellow bloggers
- commenters
- ???
What are ways you can participate in an online community?
- link out to other bloggers, be generous always. You can tell when someone is linking to you for traffic vs. genuine interest
tip: Google has custom searches i.e. food search. it searches 2000 food blogs.
- leave thoughtful comments on their sites
Don’t be a “comment stalker”. If you just leave generic, self promoting comments.
Elise goes back and strips out their urls in comment section and a year later goes back and deletes them. They detract from the quality of the recipe.
- plan and participate in blog events
- contribute to the community
There are “blog carnivals”. People get together at a specific time on the same topic.
Examples
- foodie blogroll
- blogger blog lists (see simplerecipes where they use an iframe to pull in the recently updated food blogs they get together)
- weekend herb blogging
- foodblogsearch.com
- blogger meetups
- guest blogging
- lydia of the perfect pantry
Hints
- try to connect with blogs that are at the same stage as you. if you try to get the attention of a A list blog you will get ignored.
- Avoid being too self-promoting in your comments.
Social Sites
* Twitter
* Facebook
* Stumble Upon (this place is not sticky. true?)
* Digg (”mostly boys talking about technology”), Del.icio.us (Elise wrote article on how to use delicious to keep track of recipes), Kirtsy
Question from audience: If you are going to transform image to jpg aren’t you just going to lose the benefit anyway?
A: Yes! It makes a difference. Need to try it.
Audience recco: Use Google Share to comment. Then Twitter it.
Technology
* easy to load
* east to read
* easy to find
* on both pc and mac
Notes from BlogHer break-out Session #3
Amber Scott
- She began as a story teller. Does not believe video is end all. It is about the convergence of all methods (text, video, etc.).
Q: How difficult is it?
It is as expensive or costly as you choose to make it. Lots of inexpensive tools (i.e. cel phones and youtube)
Kathy Brooks - Career began in traditional print media. Now works at Seesmic.com which threads video like text.
Video blogging = Video storytelling
There are different formats:
* “Real life” approach - i.e. lonelygirl15 on youtube
It looked real, but it wasn’t. Planned. Produced. Shows time lapse. Doesn’t just have to be you in your bedroom with your camera in your face.
* Produced piece without professional crew. i.e. My “Man”ifest wall
* Regular person - i.e. freidawolden at seesmic. Web cam just talking about what you want. Kinda micro blogging using video.
All of these methods are acceptable. You can make them all with just a few tips.
Question from audience: Singlemomseeking.com - Concerned about people picking up her videos. How do you keep people from embedding my videos.
A: You can upgrade your membership in some services to prevent that sharing. Or you can learn how to host your own video depending on how much you want to invest in video software.
Doing two 20 minute workshops.
1) Storyboarding.
2) Audio and what you need to know about what you need.
(I’m out of here. I have a colleague that knows all this video stuff!)
(Xicanista typed this post. It was written by her daughter, aka Xicansita Jr.)
When I did the Wii I kept hear people say she is so cute! I did the Yoga and Hoola Hoop. It was like exercising without a trainer or Hoola Hoop. It was very tricky but I think I did the best out of all the people who did the Wii. I had fun! 
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