This weekend our Director of Sales, Ken Gellman and I went to podcamp Boston 3, and it was an amazing event. We were one of the sponsors, and we had a chance talk to a lot of great people about matchmine and what we’re all about.
In addition to talking to people at the matchmine table, we had an opportunity to do a presentation. Since many of the presentations and panels were about podcast production and branding, I thought it would be useful to do a tactical presentation. Rather than big picture stuff, I decided to do a presentation on things people can do to promote their content. In the session, “Discovery- How People Find Blogs, Video and Podcasts They Love & What That Means To You,” I gave tips and tricks on how to effectively promote content. The powerpoint presentation is available here, and the audio is available by download here. You can also listen to the presentation by clicking the play button below:
This year’s podcamp theme was “The Conference Is In The Hallway”, and I think it was an appropriate one. To me, the most interesting thing about podcamp is that it’s full of people from a broad range of different backgrounds all looking to find out how they can use new media tools to help them accomplish their goals. Whether it’s someone from a non-profit looking to use social media for fundraising or an entrepreneur trying to build a user base, podcamp is full of people looking to learn and share.
I want to thank Christopher S. Penn, Chris Brogan, Michelle Wolverton, Doug Haslam, and all the other organizers and volunteers that put podcamp Boston 3 together. What an excellent event.
This weekend, we’re going to be at podcamp Boston 3. We’re excited to sponsor such an excellent event, and we’re even more excited to be presenting a panel entitled “Discovery- How people find blogs, podcasts, and video, and what that means to you.”
Last year I attended podcamp Boston 2, and was the unlikeliest of attendees. Judging solely by the title of the event, I thought “I have never listened to a single podcast, let alone many podcasts, necessitating an entire camp.” But I decided to go and that was a great decision.
Despite the name, podcamp isn’t just about podcasting. It’s about all kinds of media distribution, production, and promotion from blogs to video to podcasts and beyond. Podcamp is all about new media learning and sharing.
So, if you’ll be attending podcamp Boston this weekend, come by and see us. We’ll have a table outside the Rotunda room (sign up to win a Flip Video camcorder), and you’ll be seeing us in sessions throughout the weekend. And if you’re around on Sunday, our panel discussion will be held in Room 214 at 1:30-2:15 PM. We’re hoping to present an interesting panel along with some great companies in the media discovery, distribution, and promotion areas.
Sometimes you experience a new product online, and the penny drops on a whole new understanding of how media is changing. I recently had just such an experience, and you should have it too.
The product is called “Feedly,” and it’s available right here for that shiny new Firefox 3 browser you just downloaded.
Feedly rather humbly bills itself as an “attempt … to create a more social and magazine-like start page.” It’s a browser plug-in that delivers the Web 2.0 version of what we used to call a “portal” back in the day, the home page that kicks off your journey through cyberspace each time you start your browser. There are more than a few of these things out in the world already, most of which leverage Real Simple Syndication (RSS) technology to compile content from disparate sources on the Web into a single interface. There are great introductions to RSS already, so I’ll skip that to focus on what it all means for the advertising business.
What it means, gentle reader, is that the space where the vast majority of promotional spending is nestled cozily right now is starting to disappear like arctic coastline. Don’t see it? Skeptical? Let me explain… MORE
Last week I went with the matchmine crew to the Gary Vaynerchuk book signing/live show, and it was incredible. Dmirti Gunn organized a really amazing event, and we had the privilege of sponsoring the wine tasting portion of the evening.
Until I heard about the event, I’d never heard about Gary Vaynerchuk, the guy that’s trying to bring wine to the masses. He’s an internet celebrity, an author, a consultant, and a guy that turned a $4 million a year local liquor store into a $60 million a year national wine monster.
On top of that, he’s just about the most intense and excited speaker I’ve ever seen. During the taping of his show, WineLibraryTV, I remember remarking to someone “you know, I just hope that someday I can love something as much as this guy loves wine.” Now that’s one hell of a speaker.
Gary isn’t just a wine guy, he’s also a social media superstar. He’s been able to create an incredibly active community with more than 80,000 people watching his show and contributing to the Wine Library forums daily. He’s passionate about wine, and wants everyone to be able to enjoy it as much as he does. And it works.
If you’ve never seen Gary’s show, you need to know that: a) Gary is a HUGE New York Jets fan b) During his show, Gary tastes wine. He doesn’t DRINK wine. Instead, he spits the wine into a Jets bucket.
When we (the matchmine people) talked to Dmitri about sponsoring the event, he asked us if we could get a bucket with a New England Patriots logo on it. We did, and surprised Gary with it before he taped the show. As you’ll see in the video, he simply can’t bring himself to spit into the Pats bucket.
So, here’s the video from last week’s show:
I recorded the Q and A event as well (sorry the audio is so low):
For more on the event (and photos) Steve Garfield has a good recap here.
I’m a big fan of Netflix. I’ve had an account for a few years now and have caught up on a lot of movies I’ve had on my “to watch” list forever. One thing I really like about Netflix is how they let you see what other people are renting. Call it curiosity or maybe laziness to find stuff on my own, probably a little of both.
There’s the “Netflix Top 100” and you can even check out the Top 25 rentals in a whole bunch of genres. Number one in Sci-Fi & Fantasy right now? Transformers of course. What about Thrillers? Well that’s the Da Vinci Code (funny, I thought that got panned). Number one on the Top 100, well that’s Crash, followed by The Departed at number two. Hmmm…Best Picture winners from two and three years ago, guess it takes people on Netflix some time to catch up with Oscar Buzz.
But forget about rentals overall. This is a big country after all. I’ve noticed the “Local Favorites” section before and seen what’s getting rented in my ZIP Code. Interesting to check out, I guess. But what I have recently found even cooler is looking at random places across the country to see what their “Local Favorites” are and it has me wondering what exactly is going on.
You see, there seems to be a pattern of rentals in certain places, and I’m not totally convinced it’s because everyone who lives in the same ZIP has the same tastes. There seem to be a lot of themes in the “Local Favorites.”
Let’s take a look. Number one in Washington, DC, K Street: The Complete Series. How about Philadelphia? It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Seasons 1& 2 (And yes the movie Philadelphia was in the Top 25). Boston? Black Irish. If you couldn’t guess, it’s a movie that takes place in Southie. Chicago’s number one, H.H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer. Guess where he killed people? Guess what’s hot in San Francisco. Sucker Free City. Yup, it takes place in the city by the bay.
Of course these are just some select examples. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of movies that don’t correlate to the city of rental. I can’t tell you why two versions of Jane Eyre are in the Top 25 of Ogden, Utah. But I just find it curious. Are there that many people seeking the same thing in these cities or is Netflix recommending people in certain cities certain movies? And is that in itself perpetuating the popularity of certain titles?
If it is, what’s being missed? What isn’t being recommended? What about the bright-eyed kid in the Midwest who really belongs in New York City? What about her recommendations?
Over the weekend I was chatting with some folks totally outside the web tech gravity well. While explaining more about what we do at matchmine, it was interesting to see how they approached the concept of media recommendations. Initially, they didn’t see much differentiation between various techniques, but through some examples started to see some of the nuances.
Here are some example recommendation sets that helped get them to mental escape velocity:
In case it’s not obvious, the sets were spawned from the film The Sixth Sense, each exploring various aspects of it. For example, the first set dives deeper into the “supernatural thriller” subgenre. The films in the second set are examples of “turnaround” films (i.e. surprise endings). And the third set spreads the gamut, each touching a “key element” related to The Sixth Sense (e.g. same director or cast, similar plot structure, same genre, etc.).
In the end, sets like this help illustrate the variety of similarity types available. The set that makes sense within a specific context, and is most valuable to a particular user, is what we are doing at matchmine. While this was only a Gedanken exercise, it was useful when explaining aspects of our value proposition.
As I’m getting over a mild case of the black plague, I’m in more of a contemplative state of mind. So, with that, I thought I’d go over something that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: having everything in one place. I will warn you: this is going to be one of those rambling posts that doesn’t end in anything resembling an answer or a conclusion. But you’re used to that.
Some people do their banking in a grocery store
You can get coffee in a bookstore
You can buy Pizza Hut at Target
You see where I’m going here.
The argument goes like this: We have less time to do more things. There’s always more to do than time to do it in, so we try to consolidate. Multitask. Kill two birds with one supermarket.
The same goes for our time doing things online. We want to participate in social networks, write, get recommendations, watch videos, etc., and with new things coming out every day, it becomes overwhelming. We just can’t keep up.
But consolidation and “one stop shopping” are not the same in both the physical and virtual worlds.
Let’s go back to brick and mortar land. How often do you do all your shopping in a department store? Compare that to how often you do your shopping in ultra-specialized stores in a mall. Why is that?
The same goes for online tasks. If I want to write a blog post, I go to my blog. If I want to write a twitter message, I go to twitter. If I want to do banking, well, you get it.
To be honest, having everything in separate locations can be an enormous pain. Having one central control panel for all my stuff would be incredibly useful. I’d love to have something that lets me access all the services I use from one interface.
But so far, that interface does not exist. Many have tried, but I’ve seen a lot of department stores and zero malls.
matchmine founder J. Trent Adams is an active member of the DataPortability Work Group, and hosts and produces the DataPortability: In Motion Podcast show along with Steve Greenberg. It is a weekly roundtable discussion about the DataPortability Project in specific, and efforts involved in data portability in general. So far, eleven episodes of the podcast have been released:
3/28/2008: Kingsley Idehen, CEO of OpenLink Software, about his views of data portability and accessibility. Details | Listen | Comment
4/4/2008: Kaliya Hamlin, Data Sharing Summit; Joe Andrieu, VRM Project; Danny Ayers DataPortability song. Details | Listen | Comment
4/11/2008: Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate, Google and OpenSocial Project; Christian Scholz (aka MrTopf) Details | Listen | Comment
4/18/2008: Phil Wolff, Editor at Skype Journal; Eran Hammer-Lahav, Editor of XRDS-Simple Details | Listen | Comment
4/25/2008: Jonathan Vanasco, CEO of FindMeOn.com and founder of the OpenSN.org Details | Listen | Comment
5/2/2008: Paul Trevithick, CEO of Parity and the Founder of the Higgins Project Details | Listen | Comment
5/9/2008: Danny Ayers, Semantic Web Developer at Talis; Brady Brim-Deforest, founder of Human Global Media Details | Listen | Comment
5/16/2008: Plaxo - Joseph Smarr, Chief Platform Architect, and John McCrae, VP Marketing; Google - Kevin Marks, Developer Advocate for OpenSocial Details | Listen | Comment
5/23/2008: Guest: Robert Scoble, Managing Director of FastCompany.tv Details | Listen | Comment
5/30/2008: Guest: R. Mark Adams, Ph.D., Senior Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton Details | Listen | Comment
We’ll continue to add new In-Motion DataPortability podcasts here on the matchmine blog as they’re made available. To follow Trent’s work, be sure to check out Trent’s blog: Blank (Media) Slate.
The brilliant pun above (with credit to Mr. Lennon) is only one of the worthwhile things to be gleaned from this great post on the selfish reasons serial entrepreneurs need to be decent people.
Highlight:
Successful serial entrepreneurs know that each relationship they develop is a potential goldmine. As noted in Your Personal Pitch, in order to be successful, entrepreneurs must enlist the help of numerous Donors – individuals who are in a position to give their adVenture a helping hand. Most employees, investors, customers and suppliers prefer to work with people and organizations which they trust. Thus, as noted in Corporate Creed, dishonesty is a major handicap for an entrepreneur, just as honesty and integrity are significant assets.
The fog is clearing on our support for OpenID as a method for accessing your MatchKey. Like most good development practices these days, that means we’re wading into the waters rather than diving in like a cannon ball. For us, this means we’re working first on supporting the ability to log into the MatchKey.com site directly using OpenID, and will subsequently roll out integration via our partners.
Fortunately, more people every day are becoming familiar with the concept of single sign-on (SSO) in general, and OpenID in specific. This is, undoubtedly, in large part due to folks at Yahoo, Plaxo, and Google paving the way by introducing it to their users. Now that OpenIDs are in practice, within various implementations, users are encountering them with greater frequency.
Those who have used an OpenID are already familiar with the “authentication dance” that happens while logging into different sites. There are a number of permutations of this, but the process basically boils down to:
the user entering their OpenID into Site A,
being redirected to log into their OpenID provider,
being asked if it’s OK to log into Site A with the OpenID,
then being returned to Site A, now fully logged in.
It turns out not to be terribly complicated to roll this simple case into MatchKey.com. What becomes really interesting is when we explore the opportunity to extend this same concept within the context of a partner site. There are some technical hurdles, but even more importantly will be maintaining a solid user experience throughout the dance.
To make sure we do it right, we found someone who’s already hip deep in the identity management pool to help guide our effort. Asa Hardcastle is with Zenn New Media, a group working closely with Liberty Alliance, and is helping lead the charge in developing open source libraries for the Open Liberty project.
Even though we’re initially rolling out a relatively straight-forward OpenID “Relying Party”, it’s great to have someone with Asa’s wider experience on board. All gauges are green as we leverage the best of what OpenID has to offer today, while laying the foundation for emerging identity management standards.
Note:We’re fully aware that OpenID and Liberty Alliance (and by extension Open Liberty) aren’t necessarily solving the same problems (or in the same way). To many end users there are a lot of similarities, but there are quite a few differences (technically, and fundamentally). If you’re interested in the nuts and bolts, I suggest you follow the ongoing (and often heated) discussions taking place within the various communities. Feel free to ping me for a more nuanced view of the vast ocean of possibilities.
This weekend our Director of Sales, Ken Gellman and I went to podcamp Boston 3, and it was an amazing event. We were one of the sponsors, and we had a chance talk to a lot of great people about matchmine and what we’re all about.
This weekend, we’re going to be at 
Last week I went with the matchmine crew to the Gary Vaynerchuk book signing/live show, and it was incredible. Dmirti Gunn organized a really amazing event, and we had the privilege of sponsoring the wine tasting portion of the evening.
reasons serial entrepreneurs need to be decent people.