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Reality TV Meets The Internet
Love it or hate it, reality TV is a new media phenomenon. It is obviously huge business for the television industry. It was only a matter of time before reality TV came online. And it has.
The Next Internet Millionaire is a new web-based reality television show. As far as I know, the show is only viewable over the internet. They are using Revver as their video host and embedding the videos into their website. The shows are incredibly well produced. Great editing. Same quality you would expect of any TV show. The show was created by Joel Comm and Eric Holmlund, with Joel hosting the show. The premise is very similar to most reality TV shows. Take 12 people and make them compete. In this case, it is taking 12 entrepreneurs and getting them to try to become a millionaire on the internet.
Joel Comm is an internet entrepreneur. He is one of these guys who goes where the buzz is. He’s written books selling “secrets” to networks like Adsense, Kontera, Chitika, etc. Without having read any of them, this strikes me as a way to cash in on the obvious by making it seem mysterious. But, hey, a lot of business people do that. Put the word “secret” in front of something and it’s liable to sell. It also seems these guys had some potential dishonesty in the works regarding Adsense templates that they ripped off from somebody else. But, I don’t know the whole story.
This reality show is, of course, a way to bring in viral traffic and to position Joel as an internet entrepreneur and to sell a coaching program. But, it’s a damn good idea. I don’t know how much viewership they have, and their site is unfortunately almost all Flash which makes it very SEO unfriendly for them. I found out about it from the Revver homepage and that’s probably about the only place they have any decent visibility.
Do I think reality TV can work on the internet? Mostly likely it can. The only obstacle is going to be viewer impatience. When people sit in front of the TV, they do so with the intention to vegetate and watch. When they are online, usually the intention is to get around – quickly. Viewer patience online is much less than on TV. Next Internet Millionaire episodes are long, the most recent being 45 minutes long. According to Revver, they have 36,000+ views on their latest episode. That’s not groundbreaking. It seems to me that for a reality TV style thing to really work online, it needs to combine the good production with shorter, videoblog style posts. In other words, post often and shorter.
Understanding Facebook Basics
OK, after a couple of posts which discuss the impact of Facebook on the web, let’s get down to “brass tacks” here and see what Facebook is all about at the ground level. After all, like about 150,000 people do every day, I recently created a Facebook profile. On the surface, it appears like most social network sites. I have friends, comments, and we can send messages back and forth. OK, cool, but not too impressive. So, what else? How did Facebook get to be thought of as a disruptive technology ?
Facebook Opened Up
Myspace was long considered to be the leading social networking site. But, Myspace is anything but open. As many of you probably know, getting any external content into your Myspace profile is essentially an exercise in hacking the Myspace profile page. You embed a bunch of CSS and crap into the “About Me” section and overwrite the default design of the Myspace page. That seems like a hack to me.
Facebook opened up to third party developers with the release of it’s Facebook Platform. Now anybody can create Facebook applications which are embeddable into a Facebook profile. The end effect is that one’s profile is highly customizable. There is a fast growing library of Facebook applications to choose from, including things like:
- My Questions. An app that allows you to ask questions of your friends and essentially poll them.
- Causes. Allows you to start or join in on causes and raise money for things you care about. Very powerful for non-profits.
- Sticky. Leave sticky notes on your friends’ profiles.
At this time, it looks like there are over 3,200 applications in the library. I added one, for example, which allows me to display my Flickr photos on my Facebook profile. But, what we have here is more than just cool, useless crap you can add to your profile. We have here a mechanism of centralizing your online identity and combining all of it into one big social network. As more and more companies release Facebook applications (and more and more will continue to do so), the possibilities open up even more. In fact, just as I was writing here, I got an email from Chitika saying they now have a Facebook app in order to see who in your network bought what and get feedback. That is using the power of your social network for shopping and reviews.
The Basic Facebook Profile
At it’s core, the Facebook profile has what you would expect of a social network profile. A welcome change from Myspace is that the profiles are clean (no more animated GIFs and loud background music). When you create a profile, you enter data about yourself as you see fit. You can then find your friends by city, school, college, or just by general search. You add them as your “friend” by simply clicking the button to do so. They will need to approve the request before you will end up as their friend on the network.
The wall is a place in the profile where you and others can post quick messages (similar to the comments on Myspace profiles).
Outside of these normal social networking functions, the rest of the system relies on the applications. You browse the apps list and you can add anything you want to your profile. The beauty of it is that it is so open. They have taken this social network site and opened it up in such a way that it can expand in infinite directions, all based on what the community does with it.
And people who follow this stuff (like me) are digging it big time. Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch, said of Facebook:
The payoff is two way. Not only do developers get deep access to Facebook’s twenty million users, Facebook also becomes a rich platform for third party applications.
Facebook’s strategy is almost the polar opposite from MySpace. While MySpace frets over third party widgets, alternatively shutting them down or acquiring them, Facebook is now opening up its core functions to all outside developers.
and Robert Scoble also got bitten by the bug.
So, go create a Facebook profile and experiment with the applications. That is where you will begin to see how the thing comes together.
Does Facebook Represent a Google Killer?
I saw a really interesting (and controversial) viewpoint by Robert Scoble that I thought was very fitting into my look at Facebook this week. He contends that Facebook, along with Mahalo and Techmeme, represent a force that will spell trouble for Google within the next four years. Here, check out these videos by Scoble:
Part I of Social Graph Based Search. 14:41 minutes.
Part II of Social Graph Based Search. 15 minutes.
And a bonus round III. 6 minutes.
His theme was very similar to that of Jason Calacanis, who spoke about Mahalo at Gnomedex. Jason’s point was that the SEO industry has reduced the value of search engine results, and that human-powered search was the answer to it. Scoble elaborated in these videos, talking about the concept of a social graph based search. The idea is to use the power of trusted community to determine what is important.
Mahalo is a human-powered search engine in it’s early stages. I still remain a bit skeptical about the model. He is paying a group of people to approve content into the search engine. It seems incredibly high maintenance and damn near impossible to pull off given the scope of the internet. And most searches entered into Mahalo illustrate to me the very incomplete nature of the Mahalo database. Some searches garner good results, but many more arcane searches generate almost nothing. I admire the point behind Mahalo, but I still doubt the ability of it to keep up with the net itself. Scoble gives his opinion of this on his third video.
Techmeme makes more sense to me. The content of the site is generated by a trusted network of bloggers. In other words, it is a social network of tech bloggers who use the trust of the network itself to determine what is important. It is not a search engine, which is what I think is the major chink in Mahalo’s armor.
Then we come to Facebook. Facebook is a huge network of people who are interconnected. Scoble says straight up, and rightly so, that many people don’t understand Facebook. At this point, I would put myself into this category. I am investigating now to get the big picture. What I do see, and what Scoble points out, is that the Facebook network is an indicator of trust. For example, if I have a bunch of friends on Facebook, it may be an indicator that things that I write are more trustworthy. If this kind of thing was coupled with a service like Mahalo, we get the basis for a social network based search. A search based on social authority, not one based on how well I fool the search engine algorithms.
Google is all computer powered. Since a computer lacks human judgement, it can be fooled by SEO specialists whose entire lives are spent trying to deconstruct Google and learn how to fool it.
So, what do you think? Do you think the social networks represent a platform that will eventually evolve to a Google killer?
This Chick Gets Around! – Stock Photography
It’s so funny. Being that I work online, I get around to a lot of different websites and am involved in a lot of things. And seeing as I am in the business, I can see what other people are doing and many times know exactly where they’re getting it from. Well, stock photography is one of them. I am a user of Istockphoto from time to time. When I need something that I have neither the time nor inclination to create myself, many times I will check out IstockPhoto for something to get me started. Let’s look at this image I used several months ago on the PC Mechanic Store. And let’s compare it to the version on IstockPhoto.
Looks pretty similar, right? It is. All I did was add a little text to it and kick it out the door onto my site. Why did I choose that image? Well, she was holding a laptop with a blank screen. It’s computer related (so is my site), and the blank screen meant I could put something of my own on top of it. Secondly, she’s a cute woman. Most of my audience are guys. Connect the dots here. It isn’t hard. 
Am I alone? Hell no. Crucial Technology is now running an advertising campaign across tech sites (PC Mechanic being one of them) that is using banners with this chick all over them. Observe:
I am also a subscriber to Website Magazine, and who did I see staring at me in one of the ads? Yep, you guessed it:
Is she modeling for all these companies? No. She modeled for one photographer who then stuck the image up on stock photography sites. Then, a bunch of us lazy business owners went and bought the image and used it in our ads. Will most people notice? Probably not. Well, the one in the magazine reaches an audience that is a lot more likely to notice. After all, website owners have a much higher likelihood of using stock photos.
Stock photography is a huge time saver. But, on the flip side, you do run the risk of lessening the impact of your ad if somebody notices that they’ve seen that image before. I mean, we’re SUPPOSED to think that this cute chick is really endorsing this company. Instead, I come off thinking that the business is just super lazy and are aware of Istockphoto.
Related Reading
Digg Effect – In Living Color
A few days ago, I posted an article saying that I got “Dugg”, meaning I got an article onto Digg.com and it sent me a big traffic spike. This was for an article called “Can Linux Replace Windows?” published over on PC Mechanic. I thought I would share with you the stats from the Digg Effect using screenshots from Google Analytics.
This is a graph which shows the visits. You can see that for a couple days ago, we had a nice traffic spike. However,
The bounce rate went up quite a bit, too. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come to the site and immediately leave. Meaning they visit only one page and then leave the site. So, while Digg sent us more traffic, they sent us primarily people who were only interested in seeing the one article and then immediately left.
Look at the bounce rate on that one article. Amazing.
I’m not going to show screenshots of my Google Adsense account in this forum, but needless to say that the daily revenue did not significantly increase.
So, yeah, the Digg Effect basically means:
- Nice traffic spike, but short lasting
- No real increase in revenue
In short, it’s cool. But, it doesn’t pay the bills and doesn’t lead to anything long term. Digg can be part of your strategy, but don’t depend on it.
The Digg Effect
I have written in the past about how to use StumbleUpon to promote. Shortly after I wrote that article, I got over 10,000 page views to one of my articles on PC Mechanic in one day. Just to one article. Since then, I have hit a few other little “sweet spots” with StumbleUpon and gotten good traffic. Not as big as that 10,000 visitor spike, but still nice. So, StumbleUpon has proven itself to me as a very viable way to bring traffic to your site.
Yesterday, I posted an article over at PC Mechanic entitled “Can Linux Replace Windows?“. It made it’s way onto Digg. I had nothing to do with that. On the 10,000 page view one, I did seed StumbleUpon myself with the article. With Digg, somebody else did it. Well, this one did good as well, and Digg is about to surpass StumbleUpon in terms of the volume of traffic brought to a single article on the site in one day.
Yesterday, Digg brought in 4,620 page views to that article. Today, so far, I’ve had 4,970. That number is sure to be higher by the end of the day. So, all in all, Digg is outperforming StumbleUpon.
No doubt that the subject matter plays a large role in this. What I’m finding from that post and other I wrote on the subject is that people REALLY take their operating systems seriously. And Linux-users are particularly defensive about professing how perfect Linux is and how crappy Windows is. So, I’ve had over 50 comments on that post – some agreeing with me and many giving me a hard time. It’s OK, I can take it. 
One thing I have noticed is that Digg users are not as likely to surf around as StumbleUpon users. Most Digg users come, read, and bolt. And that article is currently seeing a 95% bounce rate. Last month, StumbleUpon gave me a bounce rate about half that. So, Digg users are much more fickle.
Digg is good for a nice spike, but I know that it isn’t going to be a long lasting one.
Wordpress and Curing High Server Load
So far, my recent conversion of PC Mechanic to Wordpress has been relatively trouble free. Of course, that is a matter of context. Switching publishing platforms on a site as large as PCMech isn’t exactly cake. It doesn’t turn on a dime. So, relatively speaking, it has been relatively pain free. However…
One of the things I have been dealing with is the seemingly much higher demand Wordpress places on a web server. Miraserver ran pretty smoothly and it powered a site like PCMech quite well while keeping the server load down. Wordpress, on the other hand, seems to work the server MUCH more than did Miraserver. We’re seeing average server loads anywhere from 4X to 6X higher than the pre-Wordpress average.
What the hell?!
Now, I will be the first to mention that I am using a bunch of plug-ins here. I currently have 25 active plug-ins in Wordpress for PCMech. It is quite probable that Wordpress would perform better if it were running stock. That said, nobody runs Wordpress stock. Wordpress is more of a platform than a full-fledged product. Yes, it does blogging very well. But, the capabilities are somewhat limited in and of itself and that is why the plug-in capability is so important. However, all those plug-ins do increase the work being done by the server. It is more code to execute.
Thinking of it at the server level, you can see why. Wordpress plug-ins work by using PHP to include files from the plug-ins directory. And then sometimes those plug-is include other PHP files. So, essentially, each and every request to Wordpress is including a BUNCH of files when you are using a bunch of plug-ins. And, many of those plug-ins are called up and included even when they are not being used. For example, maybe you use a particular plug-in only for one page of your site. Well, chances are the file that powers that plug-in is being included on every single request to the site – even when it is not being used.
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How I Converted a Non-Blog Site to Wordpress
This post may have a few follow-ups – because it is a big subject. However, I just last night launched PC Mechanic as a Wordpress -powered website. Easy right? Not so much. PC Mechanic is not really a blog. In fact, it doesn’t even resemble a blog. WebbyOnline (this site) is also Wordpress powered, but it has the classic blog look and feel. It took some doing to get PC Mechanic to be powered by Wordpress. It’s taken me a few days of pretty solid work to get the job done, and I still have some things to test and fine-tune. But, its never easy switching publishing platforms on a site with over 1,000 articles and large amounts of existing traffic.
Wordpress Versus Other CMSes
Well, a pretty obvious question: Why go through all this work? PC Mechanic was being powered by Miraserver. Miraserver is my own creation and it has been a great platform for PCMech. Moving away from my own product wasn’t a light decision, and it in no way is because Miraserver is not a capable product. However, there is a big difference between a blog and a traditional CMS. Yes, Wordpress can be used as a traditional CMS (which is the point of this article), however blogs have certain things that “normal” websites don’t. Blogs, by design, are built around community interaction. RSS feeds. Pinging. Plus the fact that blogs are LOVED by search engines (namely Google) – especially if updated often.
So, why did I convert to Wordpress?
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vBulletin Maker Purchased by Internet Brands
In a rather shocking turn of events (at least for me), I found out today that Jelsoft Enterprises Limited, the makers of the famous vBulletin forum software, has been acquired by Internet Brands. In a word – whoah.
This acquisition begs many questions, chief among them is whether the software will continue to develop as it has. Jelsoft’s founder say that it will, however it is true that with new management often comes new direction. vBulletin is very highly regarded in the forum world. I myself own and use it. The fact that this announcement caused angst in the internet world is testament to the popularity of the software. In response to the concerns, the managing director of Jelsoft said:
As a technical note about the structure of the deal – Jelsoft will continue to exist as a stand-alone company. All Jelsoft staff, including management, will remain the same, and the headquarters will continue to be in the UK. The ongoing development of products will continue as planned.
There have been a couple of points raised about the possible conflict of interest between IB’s existing communities and sites that may be run by our customers. I can assure you that there are no plans to restrict access to vBulletin for sites with topics that compete with other IB companies, or to add additional functionality to the IB communities that is not included in the product. Doing either of these would be anti-competitive, and is certainly not in keeping with the culture of Jelsoft or IB. In fact, it is more likely that custom code created by IB for their communities will also be included in vBulletin!
Onto the subject of product pricing. Since the first release of vBulletin 1.0 in 2000, we have never raised the price of vBulletin licenses. The key strategy moving forward is not to shift prices markedly upwards and make buying vBulletin an unattractive proposition, but rather to offer a broader range of products and services to better cater for all audiences. We are in business to serve our customers, and we will continue to do just that in order to remain competitive.
I am not so quick to be concerned about this. If they promise not to abandon their loyal base and not change too much (which would be idiotic in their situation), then it can actually be good. And from their perspective, this kind of thing is the logical next step to a company formed around a single script. If I were in their shoes, I think I’d be quite pleased.
How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote
A few months ago, I signed up for StumbleUpon. I downloaded and installed the toolbar on Firefox and started surfing. Pretty cool. However, I had seen a few people talking about using StumbleUpon for promotional purposes on their websites, with apparent success. Some were talking about driving thousands of visitors PER DAY to their sites using the system. But, I could not find any clear information on what needs to be done to make that happen. I mean, I can use StumbleUpon as an end user all day long, but what do I really need to do to use it to drive traffic to my own site?
I did some research into this and I thought I’d pass it along.
What is It?
StumbleUpon is a social website which allows users to share and recommend websites that they find in a networked setting. When you sign up for the service (for free), you will install a toolbar to your browser. The network of sites is organized by user-generated tags, not by a search engine spider. So, it provides a way for you to view what others have found cool, organized by tags so surfers can find sites in their own interests. The primary way of getting around is the “Stumble” button in the toolbar. When you press that button, you are taken to a random website that was “stumbled” by others and that fall within the areas of interest you define at StumbleUpon.
From an end user perspective, its a huge time waster. I can spend hours “stumbling” around the net randomly and discovering all kinds of great sites I knew nothing about previously. Getting started is easy. Just head on over there and create an account and install the toolbar. Nothing more to it.
What About Promo?
StumbleUpon is known for being able to generate massive amounts of traffic to a website. It all starts with somebody “stumbling” your website. Essentially, this is done by one of your readers clicking the “I Like it!” button on the toolbar while on your site. They’re giving you a thumbs up when you do that, and that puts your site in the network. If they are the first ones to vote for your page, then they will get a dialog box saying that they discovered the website. They will be prompted for a quick review and for a series of tags which best fit your site. Once they have “discovered” your site, your site is then available for other StumbleUpon users to surf into using the toolbar.
It should be noted here that because of the somewhat random nature of the network, visitors that you get from StumbleUpon are likely to give you a high bounce rate. The toolbar essentially allows the reader to “channel surf”. And just like on television, you tend to flip quickly through the channels until you find something that grabs your eye. Well, its EXACTLY the same with the Stumbleupon toolbar. You will find that StumbleUpon visitors are:
- Fickle as hell with a very high chance of moving on quickly (but you can minimize this with some work…see below)
- From all over the place
- Won’t really click on any ads
So, I’m certainly not saying that StumbleUpon viewers are high-value, qualified traffic. But, its still traffic and you can do what you can to make them more qualified once they arrive. A couple of things you have going for you are the fact that SU users come in based on interest. Plus, unlike one trick ponies like Digg that are good for a spike of traffic, SU can actually provide a pretty steady stream of traffic.
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
