This article first appeared on the Three Ships Media blog.
In an attempt to declutter their ecosystem and vocabulary as well as disrupt email as the preferred method of sharing links, Facebook has rolled out a new feature they are calling “Send”. Send will allow users to send news articles or other types of information directly to a Facebook Group or to a specific friend’s inbox. The button has the same look and feel as the Like button, and Facebook is hoping that it will become a similarly ubiquitous way to share information.
If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Facebook formerly had the option to “share” a website, and it maintains the option to “recommend” a website on one’s own wall. From a cynic’s perspective, there is reason to be pessimistic about this new feature. Will its usage merely mirror preexisting clicks on things such as “share” and “email to a friend”, or will it actually promote sharing and conversation that otherwise would not have happened? There is significant room for doubt.
However, cynics doubted the Like button, and that feature has turned out to be one of Facebook’s biggest triumphs, providing an easy-to-understand lingua franca for designating relevant content in an ever-expanding Internet. Additionally, it has been an enormous boon to Facebook, providing them with an unparalleled database of consumer information–all provided voluntarily.
Should Send take off, it will provide a similar treasure trove of demographics. Want to target a user base who are between the ages of eighteen and twenty five and “Liked” a specific movie page on Facebook and “Sent” the New York Times review of that movie to their friends? In Facebook’s world, it’s completely possible.
By integrating a Send feature that looks and feels like the popular Like button, Facebook is positioning itself to steal some of email’s thunder–and collect a vast amount of information while doing so.
What do you think? Is Facebook Send a groundbreaking idea, or is it merely a fresh coat of paint on an old tool?
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Twitter missed a HUGE opportunity by not purchasing IntoNow
Twitter keeps billing itself as the "savior of live television," as its constantly-updating stream allows viewers to talk to one another in real time, encouraging live viewing instead of hours-later DVR (and commercial-skipping) playback.
If that's true, it just missed an enormous opportunity to build on this position.
Earlier today, Yahoo bought tech startup IntoNow for $20 million. IntoNow is a neat little mobile app that allows users to "check in" to TV shows the same way one would check in to a location via FourSquare. Watchers can then broadcast this information to their social graph, allowing them to easily figure out which of their friends are watching the same stuff they are.
Yahoo has made no secret about their desire to enter the television market, and companies such as Netflix are starting to get into content production instead of content curation and distribution. IntoNow provides Yahoo the capability to add a social layer on top of live TV as well as streaming video via its channels.
Perhaps more interestingly, IntoNow can recognize the soundtracks to television shows, allowing the company to send information to you before you even know that you want to use the app. While sending users a barrage of apps the minute the opening chords to "The Office" are played might be a big obnoxious, users might enjoy receiving game updates via their mobile device whenever the phone hears the Monday Night Football opening.
Twitter was also in the running to buy IntoNow, and it missed a huge opportunity by not doing so. It just lost a huge piece of its making-live-TV-relevant strategy. Imagine if you could check into a television show via Twitter and automatically be taken to a hashtag set up for the discussion of that show with other viewers, or if news anchors could more easily read viewer responses in real-time? It would certainly make Nielsen ratings a snap. It could be a huge boon to the service.
My guess is that Twitter failed to buy IntoNow simply because it does not have enough liquidity. It has been valued highly, but it does not have a great (optimistically, a more realistic description might be non-existent) revenue model yet and thus does not have a lot of spare cash to throw around. Yahoo, on the other hand, is fighting to stay on the brink of relevance to the Internet community at large and is willing to make some gambles in order to right its course.
Perhaps it's time for Twitter to sell to a company with large stores of cash (cough, Google, cough, Netflix) that can help it grow and expand into something that isn't easily replaceable; make no mistake about it, Twitter is currently a fad that could be swept over by a better idea any day now. This would give it sudden boost of capital that it could use to buy services to augment the platform, like it should have done today.
Twitter missed an opportunity today to make a buy that would help transform it into the holistic media source that its management claims it one day will be. It can't afford to miss too many more.
If that's true, it just missed an enormous opportunity to build on this position.
Earlier today, Yahoo bought tech startup IntoNow for $20 million. IntoNow is a neat little mobile app that allows users to "check in" to TV shows the same way one would check in to a location via FourSquare. Watchers can then broadcast this information to their social graph, allowing them to easily figure out which of their friends are watching the same stuff they are.
Yahoo has made no secret about their desire to enter the television market, and companies such as Netflix are starting to get into content production instead of content curation and distribution. IntoNow provides Yahoo the capability to add a social layer on top of live TV as well as streaming video via its channels.
Perhaps more interestingly, IntoNow can recognize the soundtracks to television shows, allowing the company to send information to you before you even know that you want to use the app. While sending users a barrage of apps the minute the opening chords to "The Office" are played might be a big obnoxious, users might enjoy receiving game updates via their mobile device whenever the phone hears the Monday Night Football opening.
Twitter was also in the running to buy IntoNow, and it missed a huge opportunity by not doing so. It just lost a huge piece of its making-live-TV-relevant strategy. Imagine if you could check into a television show via Twitter and automatically be taken to a hashtag set up for the discussion of that show with other viewers, or if news anchors could more easily read viewer responses in real-time? It would certainly make Nielsen ratings a snap. It could be a huge boon to the service.
My guess is that Twitter failed to buy IntoNow simply because it does not have enough liquidity. It has been valued highly, but it does not have a great (optimistically, a more realistic description might be non-existent) revenue model yet and thus does not have a lot of spare cash to throw around. Yahoo, on the other hand, is fighting to stay on the brink of relevance to the Internet community at large and is willing to make some gambles in order to right its course.
Perhaps it's time for Twitter to sell to a company with large stores of cash (cough, Google, cough, Netflix) that can help it grow and expand into something that isn't easily replaceable; make no mistake about it, Twitter is currently a fad that could be swept over by a better idea any day now. This would give it sudden boost of capital that it could use to buy services to augment the platform, like it should have done today.
Twitter missed an opportunity today to make a buy that would help transform it into the holistic media source that its management claims it one day will be. It can't afford to miss too many more.
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