Automattic Finally Monetizes (Seven Years Too Late)
Earlier today at John Battelle’s Web 2.0 Summit, Federated Media and Automattic issued a joint announcement that they were now able to offer publishers of WordPress.com’s free blogging service the ability to run advertising on their blogs.
This is a break in tradition for Federated Media, since as an organization, they’ve never wanted to even open discussions with a blog unless they’ve been at a certain threshold of pageviews, usually in the hundreds of thousands. While WordPress.com has around 15 million pageviews a day, the average blog on the site receives just over 4 pageviews a day (yes, just four, as those 15 million pageviews are spread across 62 million individual blogs).
The advertising program will be completely opt-in, so no worries on whether or not it will be foisted upon unsuspecting bloggers.
FM Wins while Bloggers Lose
Still, this program and announcement has a ring of selling out, and for what?
When Blogger.com integrated AdSense all those years ago, folks like me were quickly excited by the prospect of financial reward for democratized media. As time wore on, it quickly became obvious to me and most of the rest of the world who tried that the only way to make serious money blogging was to gain “critical mass,” and mount up the pageviews.
Granted, this was with Google’s CPA model, which only pays when an action takes place (something advertisers love and publishers sometimes tolerate). Federated typically works on a CPM model (most of the time), and thus may give slightly higher payouts to publishing partners, but only when inventory is filled.
It’s also important to know that CPM means cost per 1000 pageviews – and that cost to the advertiser will in a perfect world go only as high as $40 on a great blog, and generally hovers between $4 and $7 CPM on your average blog. Federated Media’s standard contract takes at least 50% of the revenues, and we have to assume Automattic is taking a piece of the pie here, too (for the sake of argument, let’s say it’s only 25%, a conservative estimate).
Assuming (and this is highly unlikely) that FM sells 100% of the ad inventory, this puts the average WordPress.com publisher’s yearly salary between $2.26 and $3.09.
Meanwhile, Federated Media could potentially make between $10-19 million a year from the deal.
Automattic Sells Out Seven Years Late
After the announcement was made, John Battelle retook the stage and made a strange noise of excitement, apologized, and stated, “Sorry, it’s just good news. I’ve been working this for seven years so it just feels good.”
This would have been an attractive move for Automattic to make, if it were seven years ago. Unfortunately, the blogger math has been worked out for at least half that, and anyone with more than a month’s experience trying to monetize quickly realizes how insurmountable this is.
“Banner ads are not the future of the web, and is frankly the antithesis of what True Ventures should be investing in,” said SiliconANGLE Founding Editor John Furrier of the announcement. “The only people who make money from banner ads are blogs with volume. For everyone else, it’s a pyramid game.”
The overall theme from the Web 2.0 Summit up to this point had been one of deriving great value from big data. What Automattic has in it’s WordPress.com databases is a great deal of data with an immense amount of value – value they’re selling short by going with the second worst blog monetization strategy on the planet: CPM (what’s the first? Competitor Blogger.com’s CPA strategy).
“What would I love to see from Automattic? An innovative new ad model that rewards high quality content,” said Furrier. “Ad networks only work for the ‘big guys,’ and incentivize bad content models.”
Read MoreSpotify Mix: Good Ol’ Songs to Listen To at VMworld 2011
Good Ol' Songs to Listen To at VMworld 2011
It’s been a minute since I’ve made a Spotify mix to share, which is a little funny, since a great deal more of you have Spotify now than when I started doing this. I guess I’ve been a bit busy to actually type these up and share them, but if you friend me on Facebook (or, alternatively, click this link), you can have access to all my shared playlists.
At any rate, I put this list of songs together while I was waiting at DFW airport, before the trek to VMworld in Las Vegas last week.
The inspiration for this list of songs was that I wanted a bit of Adult Swim-ish goodness on Spotify. Unfortunately, while many of the songs that are themes to Adult Swim shows are well known, few have ever been cut to CD, and are thus mostly unavailable on Spotify. Instead, when the original theme song wasn’t available, I either took the album version or another song with a similar sound by the same artist who wrote the theme.
After I put together a few songs with that operating principal, I discovered two things: it sounded distinctly southern, and in some cases, distinctly geeky. I grabbed a few songs from some other playlists in progress, threw them in, and came out with this list.
As a side note, it just so happens that this list of songs is exactly long enough to last a brisk walking pace from the Sands convention center show floor up to a room in the Mirage and back (a walk that I had to make more times than I’d like last week).
If you want to see what we were up to at the show (aside from listening to Spotify), click here. Otherwise, as always, here’s the full track list and the appropriate Spotify links.
Good Ol’ Songs to Listen To at VMworld 2011
1.) King of the Hill Theme – The Refreshments. (from KotH)
2.) Commin’ Home – Cheeseburger (from Superjail!)
3.) Stuck in the Middle with You – Stealers Wheel
4.) You Just Can’t Beat Jesus Christ – Billy Joe Shaver (inspired by Squidbillies)
5.) Italian Leather Sofa – Cake (from Mission Hill)
6.) I’m a Human – Flashlight Brown
7.) Laser Cannon Deth Sentence – Dethklok (from Metalocalypse)
8.) Indiscriminate Murder is Counter-Productive – Machinae Supremacy
9.) George Romero – Sprites
10.) Re: Your Brains – Jonathan Coulton
11.) Mambo Gallego – Tito Puente (original to 90s [as] theme)
Here’s the HTTP link. Here’s the Spotify link.
Cover art from IF WE DON’T, REMEMBER ME.
Previously:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Soundtrack
“Modern Mix Tape, Swing Edition”
Fallout 3: GNR
Early Adopters
This is what your stats look like when you’re first to blog an earthquake.
I just happened to be looking at twitter today when the first tweets about the DC earthquake hit. I went and quickly got the stats and info from the USGS and did a blog post about it. That landed me in the #1 slot on Google for about 20 minutes.
After I’d updated the post with all the relevant info I could find, I vegged out on my real time stats (provided by Woopra).
So in case you’re wondering what it looks like to be blitzed by a natural disaster, this is it.
Thanks to Rackspace for not rate-limiting my site during the storm.
Read MoreFun with Keywords
The keywords that bring people to my website are a never-ending source of amusement.
Here’s the snapshot from today:
Update: since I posted this, even more poorly spelled gestures of Gruber’s public image have hit my stat-window. Also, disturbing quotes from sex-bots.
… In which I over-react and threaten to quit all Google products.
[This is a direct c+p from an email I just sent to Google. This letter was written to the “profiles support team” who have decided that I cannot use their service if I want to go by the name Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins. FWIW, since many people ask, I entered it into the service FN: Mark “Rizzn” LN: Hopkins. –mrh]
Dear Neil of the Google Profiles Support Team,
First of all, I think you folks are retarded if you believe I want to use your social network after this. My usage of this name predates the formation of your company. My personal domain name was registered around the same time Google.com was. For you to come in and tell me what my name is – true audacity, and I’m outraged.
For you to look at all the sites and references I gave you and tell me that not a single one of them is reputable (Mashable? #theCube? Gmail? SiliconANGLE? Archive.org? None of these are reputable in your eyes?), that is infuriating beyond belief, and demonstrates either unimaginable ignorance or gargantuan hubris. Either one causes me to lose a great deal of respect for your organization.
I can understand that you’re trying to mitigate certain unsavory elements in the nascent Google+ environment. You’re trying to prevent anonymity because you don’t want to create the next 4chat. You’re trying to stop brands from invading because you don’t want the next Myspace or Twitter. You’re attempting to mitigate impersonation because you want people to feel secure in their identities.
That’s great for you. It’s your social network, and you can run it how you like, and I won’t attempt to debate philosophy, nor will I delve deeply into how badly you’re failing in your mission (since my account has been suspended, no less than six brands have "circled" me on +).
But what you’re messing with is my identity. Since I’ve been online (and I’m counting BBS years here), I’ve been Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins. Before I was out of middle school, I received mail in that name. There are more people in the world who call me by my nickname than by my birth name. For me to divorce my identity from my nickname actually mitigates the level of familiarity people will have with who I am on your service.
Let me be clear – I’ve been a lifelong Google evangelist. I’ve known a lot of people in your organization. My entire digital life relies on your continued existence. Hell, I’m even a paying customer for your storage services.
I’m willing to throw that all away, because you’ve taken such a cavalier attitude towards suspending my account. There was no warning, and even though I provided dozens of sources supporting my own identity (including a photo ID), you’ve determined that you know better than I do who I am.
If you don’t see how that’s insulting to me, you’re not human, and frankly, I don’t want to know you.
Incidentally, I’ve been one of your most ardent defenders when people make the allegation that "Google doesn’t get social." Yeah. That’s right out the window.
Here’s what I want:
- Before I initiate the appeals process, I want to know if you can delete my account without negatively affecting data I have stored in Picasa and Google Reader.
- Since my account was suspended, I’m no longer able to share posts or interact on Picasa. If my account is deleted, will I still be able to use these services?
- If the answer is that you can’t shut down my Google+ account without destroying or harming access to other Google services (Buzz, Picasa, Reader), then I will begrudgingly keep my profile for now with my now edited legally given birthname.
- If the answer is that you can decouple Buzz, Picasa, and Reader from any Google+ account, then please do so immediately and/or point me to how to do it myself.
- You can feel free to reach out to me once you get a better and well thought out policy regarding names, and I might consider re-joining the fold. Truth be told, though, is that you guys aren’t the only game in town when it comes to commodity-priced cloud and virtualized services. I’m going to be looking at "the other guys" pretty closely, and probably leaving, so you should probably act fast if you give a crap at all.
Honestly, you probably don’t care at all. I’m probably talking to a bot (which is why I’m cross-posting this to my blog), so, in conclusion (and tl;dr), you guys suck at customer service, your naming rules are fscking stupid, answer my bulletpointed questions so I know how badly you’re going to screw me on getting my data out of your service, and I’m probably going to over-react and quite Google altogether over this.
—
/mark "rizzn" hopkins
rizzn.com
editor-in-chief for the siliconANGLE network
siliconANGLE.com
903-253-0143
skype:madshow
"Social science meets computer science."
My real-time email load (and ways to get faster response time).
My profiles: 
Contact me: 
rizzn.dourden 
madshow 
markalexanderhopkins 
yim_stinks
#tw: I’ve got word back from Google+ review team. They’ve determined that my name can no longer be Rizzn. No, I’m not soliciting new name ideas.
Follow @rizzn 
Reply 
Retweet 14:41 Jul-29
Signature powered by WiseStamp 
On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 2:12 PM, Google Profiles Support <profiles-support@google.com> wrote:
Read MoreHi,
Thank you for contacting us with regard to our review of the name you are
trying to use in your Google Profile. After review of your appeal, we have
determined that the name you want to use violates our Community Standards.
Please avoid the use of any unusual characters. For example, numbers,
symbols, or obscure punctuation might not be allowed.
You can review our name guidelines at
http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271
If you edit your name to comply with our policies in the future, please
respond to this email so that we can re-review your profile.
Sincerely,
Neil
The Google Profiles Support Team
New Media Pioneer Don Lemon accepts a Reddit “IAmA” invite.
The Daily Dot reports today that CNN anchor Don Lemon is headed for internet fame after accepting a Reddit “IAmA” invitation (hot on the heels of being featured on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show.
The spur of the newfound popularity comes from a comedic but most likely accurate observation by Stewart that Don Lemon “doesn’t much care for CNN,” or at least some of the goofy stories they force him to cover as anchor of CNN Newsroom Weekend.
As the Dot notes, Lemon would be “the first national news anchor to grace the IAmA stage,” but Lemon is no stranger to new media. We at SiliconANGLE first ran into Lemon at Blog World Expo in 2009. It was there that filmmakers Marc Ostrick and Michael Sean Wright found him mingling with the rank and file at the seminal New Media conference (first appearance, below, at 1:46).
“Don is interesting in that he sees no difference between the tools that everyone has and the tools that CNN have at their disposal,” said Wright this morning.
I was impressed by the depth of his geekery, as were his peers. Hugh Hewitt, a longtime Heritage Media personality who most consider to be an early adopter of New Media tactics, praised Lemon highly while also making sure to clarify that CNN clearly tries to piggy-back on Don Lemon’s early adopter status.
In Lemon’s second segment in Wright and Ostrick’s feature on that year’s Blog World Expo showed a propensity for the anchor to open up very easily to interviewers. If Lemon is as candid with Reddit as he was with us, this could be quite an interesting encounter.
Read MoreFollow Me, Find Me, Contact Me
