Websites for Traditional Media

I have been away for a while, ok not away physically but not writing the blog and I have a few posts in mind that I will be writing in the next few days.  Today I wanted to put out what i see as the biggest problem with Traditional Media websites.  First a disclaimer, I currently am not involved in website design, development, etc although I have been in the past.

What i see most lacking is the lack of focus and understanding who the customer is.  Lets look at a single type of site, one that uses advertising and is not subscription based.  In this example the customer is the advertiser and the product is cpc/cpm whatever your current metric is.  Where most fail here is they believe that the customer is the person who views the site.  This approach not only lessens the value of the site but prohibits its true potential.

When comparing the two view one is after page views the other revenue.  So you say is not page views revenue, yes it is but it is only a piece of the pie.  Do you focus your strategy on page views or cost per $ of revenue?  When looking at page views you are content driven, get page views up at any cost, be more concerned with design then the cost of the design to implement.  This leads many companies to not realizing the economic benefits that are achievable.  One must always keep an eye on margins and to attract more customers (advertisers) find way to penetrate the market faster, cheaper and with better results.

I have seen many companies not understand the web or realize that beyond just the technical and creatives involved in the actual site building there needs to be a strong business acumen involved.  Whether the same or different people these three basic roles must be integrated in any site.  Ok any site that has the intention of making a profit.

Where the creatives go off course is that they do not understand the customer.  They believe their role is to provide the greatest site experience to the viewer of the site and while a great experience is an essential component the business mind must develop the “at what cost” standards. 

Lets also look at “true costs”.  Most media companies look at the site costs as the cost to develop.  They leave out their share of corporate overhead, support, maintenance, all these cost must be included when calculating a true margin calculation, as a web segment does not exist in a bubble so not only does it need to account for its direct costs but its costs on other segments.

Not a very clear and concise blog today but rambling is what I do

Fluther

So over the last few days I have been obsessed with Fluther  At first I thought that this would be more of a techy geeky type site where folks would ask different coding questions and such, but it is not.  The questions range a broad spectrum of categories and the answers from what I have been able to gather are pretty good.  You get your occasional jackass but it is the exception not the rule here.  I attribute sites like this to the basic fact that so many people, especially those who are younger tend not to trust the “establishment”.  So a site that has UGC questions and answers has the ability to garner a level of trust that alot of the more commercial sites do not. 

My question is more “Why hasn’t a larger company swallowed this up”? Even if your company doesn’t span the full range of questions they cover.  I have seen Martha Stewart talk on a few shows about a Marthapedia type site, questions and answers to homekeeping etc, but that trust issue will be a big factor.  Hey you love her or hate her but few, at least in the US have not at least heard of her so how does a new way to search what she has generate traffic?  Or more than she already has…maybe allow her followers use their own voices to spread the word further?  Dont know the answer to all this just one more thing I am rambling about…..

Risk vs reward or CYA at all costs

Interesting things happened this week and mostly on the exchange migration project.  Seems there are those were not happy with putting Outlook 2007 with an Office 2003 product.  they huffed and they puffed and they claimed that patch management is much more difficult.  Yeah like having to do them in a certain order is something we cannot train chimps to do.  Anyhow seems the higher ups have decided that we are going to put in a lower quality product.  I am not completely happy with this decision as I have always been one who would strive to put in the best product possible for the users and make the changes administratively that were necessary to suppor it.  Seems this is not the prevailing view.  The view tends to be more along the as long as the product can meet minimum requirements then lets choose the one with the lowest possible risk factor. 

Not that either side is completely wrong, but the risks here can be easily mitigated.  Any way I look at it its irrelevant at this time the decision is made and old software has been the victor.

This whole situation has gotten me thinking about corporate life and what are the ethical dilemas that permeate it.  I have seen so many times that the safe has been the choice and it has handcuffed the inventive, the progressive.  Seems this mindset is what makes some corporations average.  Lets look at Google, out there doing great and yet we all can name a bunch of initiatives that didnt pan out.  Some large purchases too that were a flop.  Yet their culture is one of trying, experimenting and striving for the next level, somewhere few have been able to succeed.  It is with this attitude that they have built what so few have.  Now I never want to advocate throwing all caution to the wind, but the safest is not always the best and more often then not it stems the flow of true innovation.

Ok I vented and rambled enough for a holiday morning

Thursday Thursday who loves this day?

Things are very up in the air around this week.  Still going through the process they have here for project management.  Seems silly at times, I mean if we had triple the staff and multiple project going concurrently I would understand all the formality.  But we have a staff of less than 40 tops we run three projects and we do so very inefficiently.  I just don’t get the idea of putting layers and layers of red tape on top of getting things done.  Ok I see its to protect the company from the stupid.  If you write everything down and pass it the 30 folks someone should see the err of your ways.  But is this not leveling down?  I am not sure I hold the belief that we should put so much process in getting everything done that even the most daft can’t screw it up.  It tends to make those guys who are hard chargers fall asleep because of the pace.  I did read Roberto’s book a few weeks ago on why leaders shouldn’t take yes for an answer and frankly one of the best management books I have read in a while.  Much better, in my opinion, then the vaulted Covey.  I have always thought his writing was based on a sense of Utopian organizations rather than real life situations. 

I saw a great website today that I think has the opportunity to make a move.  Its a community site for professional women, and it looks real slick.  Try it out…. Damsels in Success

Sleep has become a priority for me too this week.  With two kids under two it seems like there is no time someone isn’t in need of something.  Hopefully this weekend will get me some well needed rest.

Well that is all the rambling for today

Back Again

Seems like I went away but really I am still here.  A few things have been going on.  First , and most important, is that we had another baby on 8-14.  A strapping 7lbs 7oz boy named Austin. The pregnancy and the birth had me distracted.

The second is the turmoil here at work.  With the addition of Wenda Millard and the absolute jumbling of everyone else things have been lets say up in the air.  The stock has rtaken a hit, down today to under 13.  This is troubling since the stock has fallen considerably since the addition of Wenda, though personally I think it has more to do with Lauren leaving.  She did a great job with our publishing side, consistently outpacing our competitors.

So what is new hmm lets see….still moving to Exchange from Lotus Notes, should have that wrapped up by Dec 15.  Probably going to put the VoIP migration on hold til early next year, just cant rationalize the cost right now.  The website, which thank god is not my dept, is still blah all around form performance to design to well just everything.  The talk is that the site is going to be a push in the next year but the minds controlling the push are the same ol folks who did the last revision, so I for one am not terribly optimistic.  Be nice to see them use any technology from the last few years on it.  Maybe they will use more of the Flash, yes adobe did announce the hd flash today…sweet, but I would be surprised or rather shocked if they did any HD on the site.  For a company that strives for innovation they are technology prehistoric in their thinking.  I hear the complaints that they cant get ajax working, this seems to me to be more mismanagement than anything else.

Infrastrucutre side we are revamping all roles and responsibilities, lets see how that falls out.  Generally our problem is that we have a glut of staff who haven’t kept up with technology, and those hard chargers that we do have are being wasted in roles which limit their drive.  Yeah such fun but I am just rambling

I am back

Not sure why I didn’t blog for so long.  Maybe I was busy or maybe jsut wanted to relax or possibly afraid that some initial reactions , not suited for type.  Anyhow news is big here with the addition of Wenda Millard.  Its not totally surprising as the Internet group is littered with former Yahoo folks ever since Wenda was on the BOD.  Now I think she has a tough job of cleaning up and getting that segment to really move forward.  The question on everyones mind is can the addition of Wenda make up for the loss of Lauran Stanich.  I guess its sit back and lets see.  If I could give one suggestion to Wenda, find someone from the tech side to advise you or at least sit real close.  Previous heads of the Internet have been tech lacking in both whom they lean on for advice and their own abilities.  Be nice to see something, anything inventive or new out of that group.

For our move to Exchange, finally got the necessary signatures to really move forward.  The process here is slow, real slow.  Sometimes I wonder if the folks who are in the power positions really understand its takes three hours of process to get one hour of work done.  But hey I guess that is the problems with middle management everywhere.

I saw all the buzz on the iphone, for me its just a nice ipod and I prefer the n95..never really been a huge apple fan..this product is no different.  I laughed when I saw the Iphone Dev conference being held at Adobe in San Fran, for a device that does not support flash?  I see the lack of Dev tools being the real downfall of the Iphone if not remedied soon.

Tennis has been going well wining again and feeling good about my play.  I have another easy match tonight and the real competition wont happen til end of July and August, so I have time to peak

i promise to be more diligent in writing cause I love to ramble

Beginning the process

This week I began the process of moving from notes to exchange.  Its not th most fun part nor the most glamorous but the planning stage is upon me.  I spent most of this week gathering the team and trying to give direction and expectations.  I know from my experience here that folks tend to be real late on projects, I insisted to the team that this will not happen here.  So I am almost done with all the political jockeying and maybe next week things can actually get done.

I have not been really keeping up to date on all the tech happenings, bad me.  Seems those moments are for slow times lol

I have a few tennis matches coming up yet do not expect any real challenges this weekend.  I still am in the middle of thinking technique rather than thinking about the match.  Hopefully I can get past this soon.

well I will have time Sat to ramble more but that is it for today

Exchange migration begins

Looks like today begins the first day of planning our migration off of Lotus onto exchange.  I dont see this as nearly as big a deal as some here do, heck we only have 850 employees, but I am sure it will end up somewhere in the middle.  Now comes the tricky part of the whole thing, the massaging of egos etc to get and keep everyone playing together nicely.  At times I miss the govt or private enterprise where this stuff didnt matter.  The whole get on board or get out of the way mentality, just not there anymore. 

I swa that Roddick lost in the first round of the French again.  Whjen will this guy get his head out of his butt and develop more of his game.  It is becoming clearer and clearer that the serve forehand game is not going to get him to the next level.  You would think Connors could talk some sense into him but it does not seem to be taking.  I guess Gilbert wasnt all bad since his results have not been nearly as good without him.  Wonder if Andy regrets that decision?

I am not happy with my conditioning nor my play since my return from fla…I need to get back on this more especially with such nice weather, no excuses

anyhow just wanted to drop a quick ramble

A crushing defeat

Wow I lost my tennis match last night, my first loss in a long time and I am not happy about it.  I was a bit to tentative and not as sharp as I wanted to be, but take nothing away from my opponents they played well and deserved the W.

I recieved a comment on yesterdays blog from Ed Brill.  I have all the respect in the world for Ed and have read his blog for about a year off and on.  So I will try to be more exacting as to why I dislike notes.  First, its tough to staff Notes Administrators at an SMB.  The cost is about 30% greater than an Exchange Adminstrator and most are not well versed enough to tackle other system administrator duties especially in a window environment.  Second, users just dont like the GUI its not intuitive and has alot of real quirky things (ever try to print from a preview screen?).  I agree with Ed in that Lotus 8 is much much better, but the milk is already sour, no one wants to hear about what is on the way anymore.  Third, the Lotus DBs corrupt all the time, easy to fix but an administrative nightmare.  Fourth, the use of Lotus as a development platform is not a favorite of the development community when  compared to a LAMP, .NET etc.  Fifth, the local clients are real heavy thus making them real slow over busy wan connections.

This is just a short list of what turns most of us off to Lotus, and I do hope and even see continued improvement but its still, as a mail system, playing catchup to exchange

Goodbye Lotus Notes

Well it was a long time coming but I can now say that we will be another company throwing Lotus Notes on the scrapheap.  Personally i do not know why anyone would want to deal with Lotus Notes, cause frankly it just sucks.  I figure it will be a six month project or a four year project depending on the amount of “project management” forms we will be required to fill out.  But yes we are finally moving in the right direction.

Tonight is another tennis match and this is against probably the third best team in our league.  This just means I have to play well and should really be my first challenge since returning from tennis camp. 

Dell is making big news with the release of Ubuntu and its foray into Wal-mart.  Seems they have been a bit stagnate at best and losing ground to HP at worse.  Both I see as being good news, lets see how this plays out.

I was checking out the real estate site Trulia..not as nice as Zillowbut its not bad.  Seems pretty good not sure really why though I would use it over Zillow?

Well I know today is short but I just needed to get in a quick ramble