Friday, December 29, 2006

Myspace VS WAT Episode 3

First i need to notice, that results of NNR are strange this month and i can't find the previous months audience of myspace in NNR anymore. I don't really understand. Let's see if it's corrected in January for December results.

Just a little growth for Myspace France MoM in November.
I'll try to explain it in the case those figures are good.

Audience (November UV) :

. Myspace FR : 1, 224 Millions of UV (+20 000 UV MoM only)
(officially launched in middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360 : 158 000 UV (-49 000 UV MoM!!!)
(officially launched in middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT : 205 000 UV (+ 9 000 UV only MoM)
(officially launched in middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

To try to understand i've added Skyblog :

. Skyblog : 4 827 000 UV (+ 145 000 UV only MoM)


Retention (October pages by user) :

. Myspace FR : 58 (+ 35 MoM)

. Yahoo! 360 : 7 (-2 MoM)

. WAT : 7 ( +2 MoM)

. Skyblog : 151

Myspace is growing very lower than previous months without any budget. Myspace didn't reach 1.5 millions of UU in November as i expected. Remember that NNR made a strange manipulation on Myspace entry (i can't recover previous months data). We can see that all sites except Skyblog have seen their growing reduced this month, Yahoo! 360 even lost 25% of his traffic in one month...

But note that the Retention is far higher than in October (+ 225%) even if most of the french users still in the Discovery phasis wich i think is sometimes during 3-4 months. I still confident with the fact that myspace will take the lead over Skyblog in 2007...

The WAT audience is mainly driven by Marketing ations (SEO, banners campaign...) as we can see that the retention still very low (7pages viewed by user). This product don't work, nobody wants it just as Yahoo! 360.

Bebo has no significant audience in the NNR panels (no french version launched yet).

Next Episode : RDV on 15 January for December datas!

Previous episodes :
Episode 2 : October
Episode 1 : September

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Just a little break!

As you've seen, i didn't have any time to post new articles on my blog in December.
Too much work, exams and one big thing to challenge.
I'll be back soon, maybe with an little announce. :)

Like we say in french : "Joyeux Noël"

Sunday, December 03, 2006

(Post in French) Seloger.com est en bourse!



Juste un petit message à mes ex-collègues de Kelkoo / Yahoo! Marketplace David Labrosse (Directeur Marketing, ex-Directeur Marketing Yahoo! Marketplace Europe / Kelkoo) & Matthieu Desarnaut qui opèrent maintenant au Marketing de Seloger.com, une des boites les plus profitables du Web francais emmenée par Jean-Fabrice Mathieu. Seloger.com a fait son entrée en bourse Vendredi! Il y a du avoir des frissons!

Suivre le cours de seloger.com

Bonne route à vous et prévenez moi de la prochaine soirée au Caveau je passerai avec plaisir!
(Bon j'achète moi? ;) )

The ART of START : No MBA, No consultant!

Thanks to Vicent Thome i've discovered this guy : Guy Kawasaki.
He talks about start a new business, some very important advices for entrepreneurs...



Please also find is power point prezentation in pdf

Thursday, November 23, 2006

In Japan with HEC Digital Business Strategy



Yesterday we've open a new blog related to our trip in Japan.
35 HEC students currently pursying a master degree in Digital Business Strategy, will share their discovery of japan and of japanese companies (Internet, high tech...)

Please discover the new blog : hecjapan.blogspot.com

Cheers,

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Lens : Small is the new Big

Today I want to make a Lens on a very good book.
. As i've promised it to his autor.

. As Seth Godin is a real "friendly" blogger, answering students' questions very quickly.

. As one of his last book "Unleashing the idea virus" was the basis of many discussions between my binomial (Carl Hallard) and I, during 6 months of Business planning to create a Web 2.0 platforms editor (First platform launched was a intermediation platforms between the artists and the public, a myspace-like, we started in June 2005...)

The book i'm talking about is : Small is the New Big. Please find extracts in pdf of the books and feel free to comment it as i currently reading it too. More info

. The Intro : The intro.

. Small is the New Big : The title essay.

. How to catch a plane : Leave a little earlier...

. How does JetBlue sound? : It matters.

. What Good Marketers Know :
The classic checklist of what good marketers already know.

. The check is in the mail : 10 lies

. Do The Never : This is really short and really useful.

. Visualizing The Satin Pillow :
What does extreme customer service look like?

. Enthusiasts : What makes a fan?

. Verbs : Verbs! Actions! Gerunds!

I'll add my comments and understanding of those extract when it's relevant...


You can buy it there :

Monday, November 20, 2006

Myspace France VS WAT episode 2

New growth for Myspace France with no Marketing Budget.

Audience (October UV) :

. Myspace FR : 1, 214 Millions of UV
(officially launched in middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360 :
207 000 UV
(officially launched in middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT :
194 000 UV
(officially launched in middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

Retention (October pages by user) :

. Myspace FR : 25

. Yahoo! 360 :
9

. WAT :
5

Myspace is growing fast without any budget. We can expect that Myspace will reach 1.5 millions of UU in November. The trend will be more and more exponential. All the 16-17 years old start to stop their their skyblog to become myspace members. Retention is far lower than on the US market cause most of the french users still in the Discovery phasis wich i think is sometimes during 3-4 months. It will result a huge growt in 2-3 months i think...

The WAT audience is mainly driven by Marketing ations (SEO, banners campaign...) as we can see that the retention is very low (5 pages viewed by user)

Bebo has no significant audience in the NNR panels (no french version launched yet).

Next Episode : RDV on 15 December for November datas!

Previous episode :
Episode 1 : September

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Brad Garlinghouse's Memo (Yahoo! Senior Vice President)

"Three and half years ago, I enthusiastically joined Yahoo! The magnitude of the opportunity was only matched by the magnitude of the assets. And an amazing team has been responsible for rebuilding Yahoo!

It has been a profound experience. I am fortunate to have been a part of dramatic change for the Company. And our successes speak for themselves. More users than ever, more engaging than ever and more profitable than ever!

I proudly bleed purple and, yellow everyday! And like so many people here, I love this company

But all is not well. Last Thursday’s NY Times article was a blessing in the disguise of a painful public flogging. While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much needed wake up call. But also a call to action. A clear statement with which I, and far too many Yahoo’s, agreed. And thankfully a reminder. A reminder that the measure of any person is not in how many times he or she falls down - but rather the spirit and resolve used to get back up. The same is now true of our Company.

It’s time for us to get back up.

I believe we must embrace our problems and challenges and that we must take decisive action. We have the opportunity - in fact the invitation - to send a strong, clear and powerful message to our shareholders and Wall Street, to our advertisers and our partners, to our employees (both current and future), and to our users. They are all begging for a signal that we recognize and understand our problems, and that we are charting a course for fundamental change, Our current course and speed simply will not get us there. Short-term band-aids will not get us there.

It’s time for us to get back up and seize this invitation.

I imagine there’s much discussion amongst the Company’s senior most leadership around the challenges we face. At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to share my take on our current situation and offer a recommended path forward, an attempt to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Recognizing Our Problems

We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything — to everyone. We’ve known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don’t talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn’t to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.

Our inclination and proclivity to repeatedly hire leaders from outside the company results in disparate visions of what winning looks like — rather than a leadership team rallying around a single cohesive strategy.

I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

I hate peanut butter. We all should.

We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massive redundancy that exists throughout the organization. We now operate in an organizational structure — admittedly created with the best of intentions — that has become overly bureaucratic. For far too many employees, there is another person with dramatically similar and overlapping responsibilities. This slows us down and burdens the company with unnecessary costs.

Equally problematic, at what point in the organization does someone really OWN the success of their product or service or feature? Product, marketing, engineering, corporate strategy, financial operations… there are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it’s not clear if anyone is in charge. This forces decisions to be pushed up - rather than down. It forces decisions by committee or consensus and discourages the innovators from breaking the mold… thinking outside the box.

There’s a reason why a centerfielder and a left fielder have clear areas of ownership. Pursuing die same ball repeatedly results in either collisions or dropped balls. Knowing that someone else is pursuing the ball and hoping to avoid that collision - we have become timid in our pursuit. Again, the ball drops.

We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late. Without a clear and focused vision, and without complete clarity of ownership, we lack a macro perspective to guide our decisions and visibility into who should make those decisions. We are repeatedly stymied by challenging and hairy decisions. We are held hostage by our analysis paralysis.

We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silos of our company.
• YME vs. Musicmatch

• Flickr vs. Photos

• YMG video vs. Search video

• Deli.cio.us vs. myweb

• Messenger and plug-ins vs. Sidebar and widgets

• Social media vs. 360 and Groups

• Front page vs. YMG

• Global strategy from BU’vs. Global strategy from Int’l

We have lost our passion to win. Far too many employees are “phoning” it in, lacking the passion and commitment to be a part of the solution. We sit idly by while — at all levels — employees are enabled to “hang around”. Where is the accountability? Moreover, our compensation systems don’t align to our overall success. Weak performers that have been around for years are rewarded. And many of our top performers aren’t adequately recognized for their efforts.

As a result, the employees that we really need to stay (leaders, risk-takers, innovators, passionate) become discouraged and leave. Unfortunately many who opt to stay are not the ones who will lead us through the dramatic change that is needed.

Solving our Problems

We have awesome assets. Nearly every media and communications company is painfully jealous of our position. We have the largest audience, they are highly engaged and our brand is synonymous with the Internet.

If we get back up, embrace dramatic change, we will win.

I don’t pretend there is only one path forward available to us. However, at a minimum, I want to be pad of the solution and thus have outlined a plan here that I believe can work. It is my strong belief that we need to act very quickly or risk going further down a slippery slope, The plan here is not perfect; it is, however, FAR better than no action at all.

There are three pillars to my plan:

1. Focus the vision.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership.

3. Execute a radical reorganization.

1. Focus the vision

a) We need to boldly and definitively declare what we are and what we are not.

b) We need to exit (sell?) non core businesses and eliminate duplicative projects and businesses.

My belief is that the smoothly spread peanut butter needs to turn into a deliberately sculpted strategy — that is narrowly focused.

We can’t simply ask each BU to figure out what they should stop doing. The result will continue to be a non-cohesive strategy. The direction needs to come decisively from the top. We need to place our bets and not second guess. If we believe Media will maximize our ROI — then let’s not be bashful about reducing our investment in other areas. We need to make the tough decisions, articulate them and stick with them — acknowledging that some people (users / partners / employees) will not like it. Change is hard.

2. Restore accountability and clarity of ownership

a) Existing business owners must be held accountable for where we find ourselves today — heads must roll,

b) We must thoughtfully create senior roles that have holistic accountability for a particular line of business (a variant of a GM structure that will work with Yahoo!’s new focus)

c) We must redesign our performance and incentive systems.

I believe there are too many BU leaders who have gotten away with unacceptable results and worse — unacceptable leadership. Too often they (we!) are the worst offenders of the problems outlined here. We must signal to both the employees and to our shareholders that we will hold these leaders (ourselves) accountable and implement change.

By building around a strong and unequivocal GM structure, we will not only empower those leaders, we will eliminate significant overhead throughout our multi-headed matrix. It must be very clear to everyone in the organization who is empowered to make a decision and ownership must be transparent. With that empowerment comes increased accountability — leaders make decisions, the rest of the company supports those decisions, and the leaders ultimately live/die by the results of those decisions.

My view is that far too often our compensation and rewards are just spreading more peanut butter. We need to be much more aggressive about performance based compensation. This will only help accelerate our ability to weed out our lowest performers and better reward our hungry, motivated and productive employees.

3. Execute a radical reorganization

a) The current business unit structure must go away.

b) We must dramatically decentralize and eliminate as much of the matrix as possible.

c) We must reduce our headcount by 15-20%.

I emphatically believe we simply must eliminate the redundancies we have created and the first step in doing this is by restructuring our organization. We can be more efficient with fewer people and we can get more done, more quickly. We need to return more decision making to a new set of business units and their leadership. But we can’t achieve this with baby step changes, We need to fundamentally rethink how we organize to win.

Independent of specific proposals of what this reorganization should look like, two key principles must be represented:

Blow up the matrix. Empower a new generation and model of General Managers to be true general managers. Product, marketing, user experience & design, engineering, business development & operations all report into a small number of focused General Managers. Leave no doubt as to where accountability lies.

Kill the redundancies. Align a set of new BU’s so that they are not competing against each other. Search focuses on search. Social media aligns with community and communications. No competing owners for Video, Photos, etc. And Front Page becomes Switzerland. This will be a delicate exercise — decentralization can create inefficiencies, but I believe we can find the right balance.

I love Yahoo! I’m proud to admit that I bleed purple and yellow. I’m proud to admit that I shaved a Y in the back of my head.

My motivation for this memo is the adamant belief that, as before, we have a tremendous opportunity ahead. I don’t pretend that I have the only available answers, but we need to get the discussion going; change is needed and it is needed soon. We can be a stronger and faster company - a company with a clearer vision and clearer ownership and clearer accountability.

We may have fallen down, but the race is a marathon and not a sprint. I don’t pretend that this will be easy. It will take courage, conviction, insight and tremendous commitment. I very much look forward to the challenge.

So let’s get back up.

Catch the balls.

And stop eating peanut butter."

Brad Garlinghouse.

My comments :
You can't know as Mr Garlinghouse is describing the real day to day of Yahoo! ...
I won't add anything or quote some of the memo even if i would...

I will just say : "Yahoo! a new hope" ;)




Sunday, November 12, 2006

Myspace more influential than Blogosphere?

Across discussions with others bloggers, sometime they find crazy the fact that some people considers Myspace as important as the Web. They can't support the fact that the web consists of Myspace + others for someone... I think it could be realistic for some segments like 16-25 years old cause Myspace is likely to be Youtube + Photobucket + dailymotion ... in a certain way.

Myspace aggregates numerous specialized services but also events (concerts, party...) and mainly people, specialized or not (artists, public...). Myspace is likely to be the place for everything online for young boys and girls... They spend hours on, they need to stay connected... That's another social life, but not a dissociate one as secondlife.com. Real friends and Myspace ones are putted in the same place, sometimes a older friend becomes a Myspace friend only, and a Myspace friend becomes real friend... The difference between both is pretty reduced... That's one of the great success of Myspace!

Myspace is just beginning in France, (I'll publish audience results for October soon) but it's likely to become more influential and bigger than the blogosphere for sure within few months as it's now in the us. Whatever we talk about business or social impact. I'm pretty sure that's not a just a mode... You can't leave your myspace like your leave your blog. For young people, myspace is their online social visibility and they don't need be to Loic Le Meur to gain others' loyalty. Worst, it's like if you don't get myspace, you simply don't exist online...

It's very easy to stop blogging, cause the interactions with others are pretty limited in comparison to the work it needs to do a great blog. Myspace is totally different... For instance, i've never used blog on Myspace but if i stop to connect myself on, during a week, people ask why, they think i've got problems, some of them miss me...

It means there is a real link between life on myspace and real life.
You can increase your real life's fun, discovering new artists, new people, new places. It results you're having new life experiences.

I'm not saying that's not possible with a blog, i reach to meet new business partners, to discuss about business with others bloggers... I learn from that. But it's marginal as we're not 120 millions to do that with satisfaction on earth. Myspace is just piece of social life.

What about your point of view?

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

You Tube : The beginning of the End?

Ok as i allways see articles dealing with the legal issues and the monetization focus that impact fun on You Tube. Let's forget this.

You Tube / Google association is not Myspace owners friendly. You tube generates value on myspace yes, but now Myspace has set a you tube player like : The myspace video player.

In September, You tube was ahead of myspace with 44% of myspace profiles including You tube video versus 38% with the Myspace video player.

After the google's aquisition announce, Myspace decided to increase the push of myspace video. It is now promoted on Home Page and the player has been redesigned. Just over the following week end, this strategy increased the competition. The user can now make myspace video easy.



In october, You tube rank has already changed. You tube growth is slower than before. Now myspace is ahead with 47% (+99% in terms of volume MoM) versus 40% (+ 44% MoM) for You tube. Others players are sharing 12% of the Myspace network.

As a significant part of You Tube traffic is directly generated by Myspace users, is that the beginning of the end for You Tube?

Yes it can be, if Myspace team keeps improving the Myspace Video user experience.
But those datas could change sensitively MoM as Myspace users change their pages' content many times during the year and so innovation still a good lever.
You Tube already get most of the content, but myspace users prefers now to publish video with Myspace video. Myspace will never block You Tube on his network or it could be a strategic error...

For my part, i think You Tube have huge potential but i've allways said, Myspace one is far bigger! Myspace is the revolution of Web 2.0 even for You Tube!

Sunday, November 05, 2006

France 2007 : What i deeply want to see!

Ok, in few months frenchmen and frenchwomen are going to vote to set their new president. This article will not show my political point of view, i think it's not this blog's objective.
But what i deeply hope is a back to basics...

In the past, France sometimes inspired all the world politicaly (Separate of powers...) but today we don't respect even what we've created. We need to promote , encourage and pay sensitively the work, in addition to some of our realistic social advantages. Work can't be devided but needs to be multiplicated.

I hope we'll not see the extremists (I don't want SEO link between my name and his name) reach to have good ranking as in 2002 anymore. France can't be a shame's country. We need to anhilate all discriminations at work and in social contexts. Cause all citizens wich are qualified for a job should get it even if they're black and called with typical names.

One more things about Research & new technologies in france : Internet seems to be a gadget for french people... France must invest more and more on E-business to generate value on this main new technology. We can't spend our time to waste opportunity...

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

What's next?

Hi all,

I'm currently searching for a 5 months mission (January to May) in a Internet company as Google, Myspace, Yahoo! or smaller company as Intermix Media, Wikio...

My way is to work with passion on product & marketing management in or for business units (new products conception, business planning, performance marketing management...). This almost for free as i just need to finance some stuff for my current school year. Let me try!

To know what i've done before and what i'm trying to do, contact me (talongregory at yahoo.fr) or simply visit my website :

> www.gregorytalon.com (updated)

The update concerns :
- HP
- PROFILE
- EXPERIENCE (Yahoo! added)
- CONTACT (new email address...)
- New resume uploaded

If you have any needs, comments, advices... Please go on!

Friday, October 20, 2006

Revenue goals VS "budget goals"

Yes this title is quite "bizarre".
I used to not understand :
1. why some companies are most of time destroying value with ROI negatives actions instead of use just ROI positives actions to create value.
2. why they don't want calcul the ROI of each action.
3. why they don't care about it some time...

After one discussion with Guillaume Le dieu de ville (www.ledieudeville.com) i understand better the work problematic of big company managers.

In a start-up, you just can't do ROI negative things... cause you don't have the money. You must monitor hardly the performance to survive.

In a big company you have more tools to do it, but many of web-marketers don't calcul the ROI, they don't control it and by experience it means ROI negative results most of the time.

Now i understand more this fact.
When you're in a big company, the company attributes (annually or quarterly) a budget to each activities (marketing, communication...) in a forecast approach. If the prevision are not relevant or simply wrong, you can't reallocate a part of activity A budget to the activity B. So when, as manager, you have a budget, you're pushed to spend it even if you do ROI negative Job. This because you don't have revenue goals...

I think it's not relevant to work in that way most of the time. First give me revenue goals, let's estimate together the budget we need to achieve them. The dream case is when you've done similar actions in the past with financial performance analysis. Then the ROI objective is known.

One exception : You're launching a new product.
When you need to take the market shares ASAP.
If you got the money, you've got to spend your budget, to deploy your product /service ASAP in order to make profits of your advance against future competitors.
Don't care about ROI in your plan cause you can't know. Make your plan with affinity optimization. Let's test your subjective opinion. Then you'll optimize when you get first results. It doesn't mean you'll not be ROI positive at the end. :)

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Myspace VS the poor WAT and Friendset

Let's do a quick post on myspace progress in france in September 2006.

Myspace FR :
1 022 000 UV (1 month after the FR launch) and a 0$ marketing budget.

WAT (TF1) :
123 00 UV (2-3 months after the FR launch) and with big marketing budget.
The traffic is almost buy with campaign ads, sem...

Friendset (Superlol) :
not enought volume concerned in the panel to estimate correctly the audience...

Skyblog :
4 354 000 UV

This to answers to business guys that told me few months ago :

"Myspace isn't beautifull, it will never succed in FR"

"Myspace need to buy skyblog"
"Myspace has no chance in FR"

Friday, October 13, 2006

This guy is going fast... so fast!



Interview of one of You Tube Founder : Karim Jawed.
Please look at his site : www.jawed.com
I don't know what to say. It's huge. Congratulation karim.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Google buys You Tube!

It’s over. Google bought YouTube. All the details were as reported this morning : $1.65 billion in stock, with $100-$200 million going to each of the founders. The announcement is on google news.

Source :
http://mashable.com/2006/10/09/confirmed-google-buys-youtube/

I think the value is justified by the you tube effective growth and potential.
But let's remember that myspace, which is bigger and form my side, has more potential, is now a News corp company, acquired for 580 million dollars... Yes intermix was undervalorised. Good job Rupert Murdock!

I think the deal Yahoo!/Facebook will follow shortly. If Yahoo! don't move, a media group will do... Facebook is the last big player as social network...
It will be also good for yahoo!'s stock wich is actually very low after Panama delays announces.

Milgram Experiment about human obedience




Have you ever heard of Milgram experiment?
It's a huge experiment of 1962... and it reveals some dramatical facts.

Reconstitution in a french movie :



Maybe we can link it to the way some managers make their choices. They believe in something cause they've heard information from respected administration about it, wich justify their current choice. So they deploy the solution and if it doesn't work, they continue to invest on it because they need justify what they have already done until now and they can't accept that it might be wrong.

Other example, many times managers don't assume their responsabilities accross partners selection. They took the leader by default only to limit the risk, because if there are problems, they can says : "how could i knew? they're the leaders!"

Friday, September 29, 2006

Internet & Marketing investments

Ok the post i'm gonna do is quite ambitious for me. I think i'll update and correct it several times.

To try do to relevant things, i'll start to say that it mainly concerns Marketing investments for Internet companies : as Yahoo!, Kelkoo, Msn, Myspace, Google... In few words, companies which do Internet as core business. This is my vision of Marketing in 2006 just before to have my new courses with Mr Julien Levy (writer of Mercator and also director of my master program at HEC)

Let's dissociate 2 parts in the Marketing :

. The Product design/conception (Marketing in the product/service).
. Marketing actions as acquisition/loyalty for the product
(Marketing around the product/service = Messages).

1. Marketing in the product (conception) :

It's the way to design the product/service taking care to his market keys factors of success.
This in order to propose a solution answering to the target needs and to generate value.
From my side : Myspace.com is the best example of excellent marketing approach in the product conception. All features and options which make the product success are activated by default. We have to know that 90% of users never change default configuration of the product.

On the Internet, this part is mainly manage by US where the product is developed. That's one of the things i've understand at Yahoo!, it's seems to be worst at Google and MSN.

On several products, the marketing approach of the conception is suffisant to recruit users massively. For example, Myspace.com is recruiting 250 000 news users with a 0$ marketing budget, simply by the velocity (viral marketing) of the product.
Be careful it's not a promotion action, viral marketing is not a campaign (which is more buzz marketing), the virus is the product, not a message around the product.

The web 2.0 (defition : "content produced by users" and not by the web platform editor anymore or for some others : "value generated by users" cf Olivier Ezratty), which is characteristic of the product, allows (in addition to not spend money on content production) to let the users make the promotion of the product (mostly not the company role anymore). This fact is huge to reduce marketing costs and companies have to include this logical in their web product / web services ! (when it's relevant and possible).

Most of the time, FR marketers don't believe in that, i've understand that it's caused by the fact that they don't manage the product so this fact maybe doesn't valorise their expertize :)
Basically, for many web marketers, you need to spend millions of euros to recruit millions of users. I hope it will change, but some of them seem to be so brainwashed by their "consulting" & communications agencies that they can believe that myspace need to buy Skyblog to generate value in France...

Quite different of the viral marketing, you have the network effect which is simply buzz i think. I'm not sure to be able to explain the exact difference now, maybe my binomial Carl will try to do it.

The brand definition is also very important in the product/service's conception. Sometimes you need a strong brand like Yahoo! but not in the case of a product based on customization & personalization the brand have to be less important to let user at the first plan.
"Myspace" defines more each member's space than a strong brand. And it has to be like that.

One more thing linked to the product but which is linked to promotion too is the On-network Marketing. It's the art to promote the product on the product and it's pretty relevant when the company have several services or products in the same Network. (example on Yahoo! Portal : ads to promote Yahoo! Music on Yahoo! Mail). Yahoo! it's the most advanced company on this expertize and i was in charge of it for France as On-network Marketing Manager.


2. Marketing around the product (promotion without ability to change the product)

I'll start to list all kind of marketing actions :

. Off-Network Marketing :

> SEM :
> SEO :
> Affiliation :
> Partnership :
> White labels
> Banners campaign
> Mini sites
> Distribution (more business development than marketing) :
> Address location
> Barters
> PR
> Events
> TV ads
> Print ads
...

. On-network Marketing :

> Banners campaign
> Network integration (promotion of a product B on a product A)
> In product actions (to develop product usages)
> Newsletter

Only the relevant ones have to be used to promote your product/service.

Let me take an example,
Kelkoo has never invested on KK brand, cause if you look at the way people are buying products on the Internet :

a. First they tape the generic name of the product in their favorite search engine
b. Find the product with the best price on a e-commerce site after comparison.
c. Buy it

> Most of the lead realized on shopping engine as KK are buyed by KK...

Shopping engines have to buy most of the traffic cause it's seems to be impossible to gain customer loyalty. So all actions related to brand marketing will be ROI negative. But SEM, SEO ,Whites labels, Partnerships are pretty important to recruit users and marketing teams have to develop ROI methodology to ensure that they are not buying the traffic more high that KK will be able to monetize it.

Yes for me, on the Internet, no reason to define Marketing as cost center. We can make it generate direct financial benefits.

Track Costs, Track Revenues, Test almost all available solutions, Learn, Optimize ROI, only invest on ROI positives actions.

Try to be 100% Objective.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Breaking news about myspace

In a direct challenge to Apple's iTunes, MySpace has announced its intention to sell songs from the 3 million unsigned bands on MySpace.com. Even more surprising: the songs will be sold as unprotected MP3s, free from DRM. MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe told Reuters: "Everyone we've spoken to definitely wants an alternative to iTunes and the iPod. MySpace could be that alternative."

The new feature will be powered by Snocap, the music distribution service from Napster founder Shawn Fanning. Snocap only recently launched a MySpace music player, which allows users to buy unprotected songs via Paypal. Snocap charges the artists a small distribution fee, and most of the tracks are DRM-free. Unlike the fixed-price model of iTunes, artists on Snocap set their own price. Once the service is live, DeWolfe wants to add copyright-protected songs from major record companies, and it's rumored that MySpace has spoken to EMI regarding the move.

It's worth noting that America's second largest social network, Facebook, is already a promoter of iTunes - it's currently giving away free iTunes tracks to members. YouTube is also getting into the music game: in mid-August the site announced its intention to host "every music video ever created". And in late July, booming social network Bebo launched Bebo Bands, with a near-identical setup to MySpace music. But the move to sell music directly through an embedded player is a bold one: MySpace users are notoriously hard to monetize, yet they continue to pay for music downloads. This latest addition could help MySpace monetize its users far more effectively, dramatically increasing the site's revenue. With a $900 million search deal under its belt, MySpace's revenue opportunities are looking better than ever before.

However, the move could spell trouble for some of the startups that are plugging in to MySpace. The music community ProjectOpus released their own MySpace music player earlier this week, providing a link to a page where users can purchase the track. Sonific, another startup, has also begun an invite-only beta of its music player for MySpace, blogs and social networks. Sonific is focused on building a massive database of licensed music, and users can buy the tracks through iTunes or CDBaby, with Sonific pocketing the affiliate commissions. Once MySpace begins to offer music sales directly through its own player, there's a risk that these services could be sidelined.

Article found on Mashable / Reuters.
I'll comment it when i've got some times ;)

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Myspace Magazine? Great idea?

Today i will link an article of pete cashmore /
http://mashable.com/2006/08/24/myspace-magazine/

"MySpace is in discussions to launch a magazine, according to a brief article in AdAge.

The ink-on-paper publication would feature interesting MySpace members, as well as features on music and social life. MySpace are looking for partners - but if it goes ahead, they're likely to team up with Nylon, the music and fashion magazine that worked with MySpace on its annual music edition in May.

They haven't committed to the venture yet, and hopefully they'll realize fairly quickly that this is a terrible idea. For one thing, MySpace is international, while magazines have distribution costs (I assume it would be US only). What's more, a real-world magazine could never be as diverse as the web - it would be too general and populist. And besides, why would you want to read an edited version of MySpace when you can just load up your browser and access the content that you find interesting? Bebo TV almost makes sense, but a MySpace Magazine defies logic.

I wonder whether Google's MySpace search deal covers magazine ads?"

by Pete Cashmore of mashable.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I think it's the first time i don't agree with a "myspace idea" !
From my side this idea to make a Magazine is totally not relevant to myspace.

(More than Google Pete, i think this idea comes from Newscorp!)

Let me explain my point of view. Myspace has solve a big issue on the music market : the lack of diversity!


How myspace magazine should be so different of Rocksound for example? If think it will not, because it's not web 2.0! But it might be if it's based on the content popularity on Myspace. But if it's popular on myspace the user can get it on myspace and maybe already know the info. The solution could be to edit just one magazine per year during summer when people can't access to the web in hollydays as it's difficult to leave myspace for few weeks when you're addicted... I don't know...


(Oh excuse me, exept if they make a 105 millions pages magazine with 250 000 new pages per day! Not a good business idea! :) The first 2.0 magazine lol)

Even worst i think it could impact negatively the Web platform cause it will reduce this image of diversity that all users create and love so much!

As a french user, i'm not happy of the myspace launch on the FR Market!
This because french Myspace members are pretty cool already and early users...
The myspace french top artists is very different of the french charts, the first bands are : Justice, Nouvelle vague, Uffie, TTC...

Do you know those artists? Obviously no...
But i love those artists! It's diversity! For me it generate value!

All the US 16-25 are members of Myspace already... So the major started to promote their artists like Britney Spears on this page. The Myspace US top artists is not that elitist anymore, the myspace music home page is loosing diversity and is more and more closer to a Yahoo! Music home page... More and more like the charts...

But the myspace music home page is not so important cause you browse music by the network, discovering the music of your friends on their page. You're free in your diversity, in your interests...

It will be hard with a Magazine!


Another points, one hudge key factor of success for myspace is the customization!
How to customize a magazine? Difficult...

One another great factor of success is the rich media experience. How can you get a rich media experience on a magazine?
I really don't like this idea :)

But it's good idea to recruit and to gain artists loyalty. Because if they can be promoted in the magazine due to there network success... It should be good... But look at the myspace records quality... The music wich is on is quite bad!

And you? what are thinking about that?


Gregory Talon

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

I'm back to Yahoo!

After my Internship and two weeks of hollydays in the south of France, i'm back to Yahoo! (as employee this time) until my Master degree year start at HEC.
New articles will come soon...

Monday, August 21, 2006

Search Engine Strategies - Eric Schmidt interview

Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Watch, speaks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Note to one guy in the audience is suggesting a big idea, look the face expression of Google CEO, Eric Schmidt when he heard that idea... This video is pretty interesting.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Difference between Viral Marketing & Buzz Marketing

Yes, it's totally different. More and more agencies are selling those words trough the same expertise... I'm not an expert but i try to know what i'm talking about. As i had this discussion this week with some Yahooz! of FR marketing team and as my binomial has written a very good article on his blog. Let me do mine!

Push a "viral" video on the web has nothing to deal with viral Marketing. More and more books considered buzz = viral... the danger is to miss benefiths of viral marketing if you are considering that it's "viral" to put a cool video on the web to promote a brand with low costs...

For me the 2 concepts are totally different and are not to use in the same way and objectives.

Buzz Marketing could be define by a launched message, transmitted trough people during a short period. It's what we call in french "bouche à oreille". The message is dying by himself after the short sucess of the buzz!

One good example is the campaign lanched by my first company DDB Paris to promote the site voyage-sncf.com. The print campaign's announce was that scnf is building a train line accross atlantic! People were quite surprised and some of them were trusting this message. So they started to discuss about that ad. But today few of them remember this... It's Buzz Marketing!



If you use it the trend will be like that. This graphic is extracted for Mr Godin's book...

The trend of the user acquisition if you use Viral Marketing is trully different! as the life cycle of viral products. The viral product doesn't die with the time, it expand as a virus. Each day the growth is faster than the previous day. This is exponential!



In viral marketing, the virus is the product! not the message like in the buzz. People needs other people to use the product and that's why it's exponential. Users are in charge of the product promotion so it doesn't cost anything. Look at Myspace.com, this site is recruiting 250 000 users a day with no online marketing budget and count 96 millions of users in 2 years!
The bands need their fans to growth on the network and the consumers need others consumers to gain popularity!

Myspace seems to be the best viral marketing example on the web.

Another example of viral service is the SMS, as i've said my dear carl, providers didn't predicted the success of this kind of services. During many years the growth of the service has been exponential as each user need other people to use it! It's Network effect!




Keep in mind the Metcalfe Loy is explaining that the more a Network has user the more it gain value. Carl said that this rule isn't limited to the networks and it's relevant for cultural products too! More you have users more the product gain value.


Everything has a end...

Hi all, FR team, EU & US colleagues!

6 months ago i was declining MSN's internship offer to do my internship at Yahoo! (Cool i can say now that i don't regret ;) )
This, in order to get Performance Marketing experience at Yahoo!, to understand how this company is working and capitalize new web expertises.
I was supposed to help Ludovic, my first Y! Mentor on On-Network Marketing management. After the marketing reorganization i had the opportunity to challenge the ... Model deployment alone. The great Pascale became my new tutor, Gabriel and Gaelle started to work with me.

My closer colleagues were outside of France : Andreas (UK), Julia (DE), Susanne (UK), Sonia (UK), Rosie (UK) Chieu (UK), Salvatore (UK), Lawrence (UK), Eva (ES), Deana (US), KIM (US) INES (US) & COCO (US). I don't want to forget Helene my dear french Marketing intern colleague and all FR BU/Products managers as Altay, Shamir, Jeff, Marie-Jeanne, Pierre Do, Mathieu, Nicolas, Greg, "Bruno Bruno!", Olivier, Stéphane... I had also the opportunity to help EU and FR communities products teams...

Special thanks to Raphael wich has done IIM school like me (remember it's the polytechnics of the Internet lol) for all his advices!

At Yahoo! i had the chance to challenge models and to reach objectives as a real employee, and that's what i was expecting.
I want to say THANK YOU ALL for your trust, your patience & learnings, it was a pleasure to work with both of you and i had a great international human experience.

Today i'm quite sad to leave the Yahoo! family but as i've to do one more master degree year at HEC, i still impressed to challenge new models in the future for others companies and maybe at Y! again.

Let's stay in touch, the web still a small world, specially in EU, we'll meet again!

...

Greg

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Rebranding with our name!

Orange is rebranding their new skype-like service wich allow user to make free phone call from their computer. This after the France telecom rebranding to Orange!

One year ago, Carl Hallard and I, were working on a new product for France Telecom R&D in order to answer to a call to tender. They've trully appreciated our work.
The name of our product was Orange Link.

Yesterday Carl paged me the url of a Orange's page related to the ex-Livecom product... And what surprise! This is called Orange Link now, written exactly with the same style... No comment!

http://www.orange.fr/bin/frame.cgi?u=http%3A//orangelink.orange.fr/

The name is good Yes! Thanks.

Monday, June 05, 2006

The freshman CEO

Find out how college student Sean Belnick, 19, started his multimillion- dollar business. Watch the video :
http://www.yahoo.com/s/321443

Cadhillac club - Newport Jazz Festival

Hi there,

Let's share some of music culture. Since five years i perform on my drum, i've discovered several jazz artists with incredible technic and velocity. Most of them are drummer, guitarists and bassists and they're some of the best instrumental players in the world.

So here they are Dennis chambers (drum), mike stern (guitar) bob berg (saxo) and linlcones goynes (bass) performing at the newport jazz festival! Dennis chambers is certainly the best drummer of ever playing all kinds of music like Funk (with the great Georges Clinton), Latino Pop (with santana), jazz / rock (with birelli lagrene). I agree that this kind of music is sometime reserved to people who are musicians but this video isn't the worst, no that much difficult to appreciate...

I used the Yahoo! Video to upload this video. That's better than You tube!

Sunday, June 04, 2006

Re-branding!

We all know that Wanadoo, Ma ligne TV and Orange are now One unique brand :
Orange

It means one brand for Internet, TV and Mobile activities.
Why?

Obviously for my point of view it's caused by the growth of the mobile devices versus the pc growth. Basically in 2010 there will be almost 2 billions Mobile phones in world and 900 millions PC... So, for the long terms, it seems relevant to re-brand all activities to the mobile current brand : Orange.

But for the short term i think it's quite dangerous. The image of orange is pretty oriented on Mobile and we can't preduce that it will be quite bizarre for Wanadoo portal users at the beginning... And one additive things, why did they spent so much money to launch Wanadoo brand to rebrand it now ?

I'm quite happy cause the new portal is quite bad! Very difficult to read... To much content on the Home page... No big focus...No priotities...
It sounds good for Yahoo! ;)

The Online EU campaign is so borring... so i prefer to show you the little movie instead (wich is no so good too) :

My FUB (French Unsigned Band) of the week 1

Hi all,

In the past i used to develop an unsigned artists community around my video association : coup de poing prod. The French EMO group i'm going to present you was one of the first band to join. My contact was the their ex-drummer and he has left the group now.

Here they are : Thirty six side






You can listen their music in good quality on Myspace obviously :

http://www.myspace.com/thirtysixside

More info about the band and their new album :

http://www.thirtysixside.com

Sunday, May 21, 2006

When all the Web thinks to make Web 2.0

It's crazy how the Web 2.0 concept is used to qualify Web 1.5 platforms now. I can't even support anymore the word Web 2.0! Even sometime, i find ridiculous to use this term to qualify our Business Plan So ME, cause of the way it's use now on the Internet!
Stop! Just push a user's choice is not so Web 2.0! 6 months ago this term was used with some sense but now... pretend to be 2.0 is just a Marketing message!

61 % of french people think...

61 % of french people think that there is no difference anymore between the right and the Left!
Survey realised on a 1007 citizens panel.

New Yahoo! Home Page : Codename Spirit























Hi there,

So the long-anticipated Spirit project is live on the web now!

Yep, the new Yahoo home page is available for public viewing
More content and lotsa links to aspplications like mail, messenger's contacts, weather...
Funny thing is, bright and spiffy as it looks, and as much as the usability is 200% better.

There's plenty of Ajax magic to make the Yahoo homepage more interactive and Yahoo has made a big effort to make the user the primary focus of the new homepage. It reflects Yahoo!'s unique position at the intersection of people, media, and knowledge. It presents better access to information and the stuff of our lives, and more individual choice about the appearance of the page, thanks to Ajax, DHTML, and personalization technology.

The search module is more simple to use!

The Pulse module is reflecting what people does :
- What they search
- What they watch and listen
- What they buy
...

Yahoo! Home page didn't look old fashioned anymore.
But there's lot of things to redesign yet, specially in France as News Property for example!

To see spirit accross the world :

Us : www.yahoo.com/preview
FR : fr.yahoo.com/preview
UK : uk.yahoo.com/preview
DE : de.yahoo.com/preview
IT : it.yahoo.com/preview
ES : es.yahoo.com/preview

...

Gregory

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Hard Gay at Yahoo! Japan

I knew that Yahoo! is a very fun company to work in...
But Japan seems to be more...



English subtitles

Adwords Policy issue



Obviously it's a real problem for Google, to not allow multiple accounts for several company owned by the same group. If they apply this rules, they will loose significant profits...

ADVERTISE ON YSM : Yahoo! Search Marketing (ex Overture) ;)
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com

Monday, March 27, 2006

Dubay : 1991 to 2006

The evolution of Dubaï is very impressive.
I'm planning to go do Dubay next year to know more about the culture & this strange market...
For more info about dubaï : www.dubai-voyage.fr
1991 :



2006 :




Please Note that i've seen that i've written Dubaï with a Y. I let it like that because i drive lot of traffic on this word :)

Friday, March 17, 2006

Microsoft unveils Vista Lineup

Microsoft Corp. today announced the product lineup of its upcoming Windows Vista operating system.

Scheduled for release later this year, the Microsoft Windows Vista product lineup will bring clarity to customers' digital world by helping them easily accomplish everyday tasks, instantly find what they want, enjoy the latest in entertainment, improve the safety of their personal information, stay connected at home or on the go, and help ensure PCs are up-to-date, more secure and running smoothly.

The Windows Vista product lineup consists of six versions, two for businesses, three for consumers, and one for emerging markets:

Windows Vista Business,
Windows Vista Enterprise,
Windows Vista Home Basic,
Windows Vista Home Premium,
Windows Vista Ultimate,
Windows Vista Starter

The number of offerings is the same as the number of offerings currently available for Windows XP. More important, the lineup is designed to deliver clear value to a broad range of customers, each product tailored to meet specific needs of various segments of customers - home PC users, small and medium-sized businesses and the largest enterprises - and is aimed at bringing 64-bit, Media Center and Tablet PC functionality into the mainstream.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

MySpace Messenger on the Way






The cool kids are all talking about the impending release of MySpace Messenger (screenshots below). The story appeared on Digg yesterday, and the commenters are impatiently trying to make it to work. No official launch has been mentioned yet.
So is this a good idea? Well, remember when I said that Fox should acquire Goowy? I pointed out that when MySpace users aren't on MySpace, they're checking their email or chatting on IM. If Fox Interactive can own that time too, they'll have 100% attention from the youth demographic. Hence, getting into the IM and email space would make perfect sense.

Update: Looks like it integrates with the other IM clients out there. Plus, a Digg user tells me they heard about this ages ago. That' me told! If you've got a MySpace account, check out the IM activation page.

Update 2: I'm getting some very mixed messages on this one. A commenter (both here and on Digg) says that MySpace tried and failed to create a messenger last year, but left these remnants around on the main site. It seems like a Digg user ran across them this week. A storm in a teacup, perhaps? Based on the validity of past stories from Digg, that might indeed be the case.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Overture > Yahoo search Marketing !

A new brand is born today!
Overture becomes Yahoo search Marketing!

All overture's products as Sponsored Links or Sponsored Search become Yahoo Search Marketing's products, avalaible at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com

This is taking part after the acquisition of Overture and Kelkou by Yahoo! group in 2003...

Thursday, February 23, 2006

4 years of friendly work at IIM...

We've passed our oral exam yesterday!
It was the last one in IIM for Carl and I as a team!
But not the last presentation together surely!

See our self-motivation just before our exam lol

Keep in touch dude!

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Kaz ! On myspace.com
















Let me present you a rock band of the artists community i used to develop in 2002-2003.

KaZ is an alternative pop/rock band, composed of Guillaume Damoiseau, David Pesic and Nicolas Simon. At the beginning of 2005, Arnaud Bottin, after having support them in studio, falling under the spell of the titles (but also of the three guys!) has joined them for playing the bass, leaving David returns to his first lovers of guitarist.
The music of the band alternates loud sounds, intense, thanks to some saturate guitars and soothing melodies which peacefully flatter the ear. In keeping a real place for the lyrics, KaZ creates its own universe and its identity sometimes in cutting, sometimes in cherishing the Humanity. For those who absolutely want a reference point, know that the band has drown its love from the music in some bands as the Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Queen, Deftones, Daran, Muse... No stories of a Quebecker here ;o)

After a first 6 titles EP "Hier ou demain" (2002), the band has just released its first album" Incandescent", subtle mixture of sharp riffs, melodic notes, obscure darknesses where the lyrics and the voice complete intelligently a powerful music and original.

You can listen their music on Myspace.com where they've an artist profile :
http://www.myspace.com/kazband

And visit their website :
www.kaz-music.com

(See you soon on Paris Nico!)

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Internship at Yahoo!


I'm proud to announce that after 3 months of internship search i've choose my way!
I had several opportunities at Microsoft / Msn, Business Interactive, Evene and Yahoo!...
I've decided to work in the Yahoo! Marketing team during 6 months and it will begin tomorow morning!






So MEDIA : Business plan



My binomial Carl Hallard and i, have just finished our Business Plan for So MEDIA SAS. ( a school case related to our courses in IIM... )
So MEDIA is a Web 2.0 platforms editor!
Our first platform, So ME is a kind of Myspace Music edited by Intermix Media... Maybe we'll have the opportunity to work on a real project similar to So ME soon...
To be continued...

Saturday, February 04, 2006

My Blog's opening!

Hello, that place is where i'll present you some informations about subject as Web 2.0, Interactive Marketing, CRM...

Undergraduate of University of Lenordo da Vinci / IIM School, i'm a junior webmarketer and project manager.

Welcome on my blog