Last time he spoke here was New Orleans and it was before FM and his book. He showed an industry narrative, and calls this the third wave of tech and culture. Between 1970 and 1980 they had Digitize Back Office where companies used computers (i.e. punch cards, fortran, etc.). Then between 80 and 2000, they digitized the front office (personal computer, etc.). The screen flips out, he blames it is an Intel Mac and it is confused as to where it wants to be. Then between 95 and now we digitized the customers with web 2.0 and Google etc. He believes search is our next interface on how we interact with technology, and he is upset he did not put that in his book. Remember DOS? Then after DOS came Mac and Windows. Then now we are in 1.0 of search. Search as an interface. What might the next search interface look like?
Scenario One: He explains that when shopping for wine, you most likely will get ripped off. You pick out a $100 bottle and you then wand your phone over the product code or label or sku. You get back results for prices, stores, etc.
Before Search: Content as proxy for audience, content as packaged good. After Search: Audience declared intent, then content finds audience.
Intent drives content and content disaggregates, content as conversation.
As intent becomes a proxy for audience.
Search drives audience towards social media sites, because they are well linked. Consumers expect all participants to understand the mores of those environment. They expect businesses to know what they want.
Now there is attention over distribution. Old media, you sent out in masses. Now it is about how much attention you can get from your audience.
Conversation Over Dictation: In conversational mediums like blogs and forums, they are driven by conversation. The consumer is now in control. Let the people decide what to do with your brand. He showed some examples... MySpace, eBay, Amazon reviews, let people build your business for you. He gave a case study of Lenovo, they bought IBM's laptoo business. They were worried that the brand will be hurt when they took over the site. They made a big campaign, where you got to vote about if your laptop will be black or titanium. It is a start. He showed a Microsoft case study and a Symantec case study, etc. I'll leave this stuff uncovered for now. Symantec uses the FM network to promote their blog's RSS feed in the ads, they got Digged once... A Cisco case study, they wanted on to Wikipedia for a product, but started first at Wikia (a commercial Wiki). Dice Case study; they made a rant banner, a banner that allows you to type into the banner, anything you hate about your job, and it shows up on all banners in the network. A conversational; banner, pretty cool.
FM: (1) Self service platform (2) Big sales force
He showed a live demo, pretty impressive. He then gives more slides on the FM network...
They have a 100 sites now. They have more than 750MM ad impressions per month.
They are booking over a million dollars per month in business. They take 40%.
They have a sales force of 15 people, growing to 25, in NY, NE and SF. They have an engineering staff of 4, growing to 6. They have an author staff of 4, growing to 6. Nearly 1500 advertisers on self-service platform.
