Gregory Talon - Digital Strategy Blog

Criterias to review a job opportunity

2010-10-09T05:43:00.000-07:00

Entrepreneurs review business opportunities, VCs review investment opportunities and talents review job opportunities. Let's focus on the last one as we're all often concerned by it.

I've identified 4 factors in order to drive a job acceptance decision.
They're for sure relevant to me, as probably to any passionate individual trying to do great things.

1. Opportunity Impact :

Is the company on the right strategic opportunity?
Is customers satisfaction good enough to enable growth?
Does the company have enough cash to run?
Does your role give you the opportunity to make / activate a difference.

2. Passion
Do you have passion for what's the company is trying to deliver?

Are you a natural customer of it or of its ideal execution?

Will you feel proud of its brand?

3. People
Will you find the right emulation within the company?
Do you have a strong desire to actually work with 75% of the people you met during the interviews? Is there a clear learning opportunity?

4. Money :
Does the offer meet your financial requirements to achieve your personal plans?

Accept the offer the job if you can reply positively to all those points, meaning that they are satisfied already, can be turned as satisfying by you or your boss (his focus day to day focus should be clear to you).

Hope this will help you as it helped me,

Spotify free offer. It's "over"

2010-05-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

Awaited. logic.

Probably under investors preasure, Spotify needs to demonstrate that they can convert prospects into paying customers. Today they restricted their free offer to 20 hours streaming per month which seems like a trial only option.

http://www.spotify.com/uk/get-spotify/overview/

Advertising supported music is dead
Advertising supported music is well dead as predicted by all experts. With the imminent launch of a streaming version of iTunes, things are getting more and more serious.

Will the Unlimited offer be successful?
If the Premium offer is fairly convincing for iPhone and android users, I have huge doubts about the unlimited offer forcing free users to pay 5 pounds per month to continue what they were doing before (now with an ad free experience). We'll see, after all, 5 pounds is what I dreamed the pricing to be before I got my iPhone and went for the Premium offer.

Let's see what comes out of this :)

Btw today there is yet another big band giving out their full album streaming for free on Myspace.

Have a cool week,

Gregory

The unsexy truth behind online music revenues

2010-04-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's kind of crazy to see how it's turning really tough to generate fair money by selling your record. This study shows what the online music industry (in his current state) has to offer to an artist and it's not really sexy... Look at how many millions of Spotify streams you need to generate in order to get 1000 dollars...

Spotify is not gonna make people pay for the music itself
Recorded music doesn't worth that much. It's a free thing for people. Spotify, last.fm are definitely not gonna change that. The old business model of the music industry is clearly dead. And I don't even think they actually are trying to. Spotify is making people pay for a great listener experience which is different.

What's the role of the record now?
This doesn't mean people are not ready to pay, it just means they won't pay for the music itself. The remaining role of the record is just to build a fans base that will turn profitable with other business models.

MUSIC RECORD = FANS BASE ACQUISITION TOOL

Some artists do earn more money than this
Just as an example: Did dJs every tried to get their salary mainly selling records or streams of their records?
Not really, they offer their remix for free and play them in clubs, like a lot...

"Being a DJ, next to video game tester is probably the most easiest and overpaid job on the planet" James Murphy - LCD Soundsystem

By the way, this month 2 great bands, LCD Soundsystem and MGMT launched their new album on their own website, making it available for free, integrally. to everyone. This even before making it available on Spotify...

10 entrepreneur mistakes I'll try to never reproduce

2010-04-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

I knew 2010 was going to be a creative year and it seems I didn't lie to myself (so neither to you). I'm glad of few things I did well in the past but I also made loads of critical mistakes.

If I sometimes naturally avoided those errors, I still wanted to note them so it's always clear in my mind as I did make some of them twice or more. So here are some of the biggest errors I did while developing products and leading entrepreneurship projects. You can check the "Experience page" on gregorytalon.com to know more about what I did, acomplished, failed...

But for now let me give some lessons to ... myself!

1. Thinking too much about the potential versus current delivery.

You've got a vision, it's great Gregory, you know what you want your thing to become in the next years, but hey! Get real man, do you have what it needs? Not missing any resource? It's not about how many ideas you have, it's about how many you deliver.

2. Choosing the coolest language for my application (in that case, Ruby on Rails), which means taking the risk of not finding enough developer to deliver.

Activating a cool and talented developer is cool Gregory, securing your long-term product delivery is what you need.

3. Thinking that a developer can deliver in a timely manner just on his free time.

Even for the alpha version, your lead developer can't efficiently work on several codes within the same day Gregory. Find a solution for him to dedicate at least 3 full days a week on what you want him to develop.

4. Planning too optimistically or sometimes not planning at all.

Things always take longer than expected. Own your delivery, don't ask your developer to be accountable.

5. Thinking I can build a very ambitious product without any financial backing (and negligible personal capital investment).

Stop dreaming Gregory. Your development team needs to live just like you. Profitability will also take time to come.

6. Not being totally fearless

Doubts are fortunate, fear must be forbidden.

7. Trying to deliver the perfect thing on day 1

Start simple; iterate fast, you did it well few times.

8. Pushing bugs and issues back to the next day.

The longer you wait, the longer it will take to fix.

9. Not having a price.

This one is always a tough one cause your model always evolve in the first 2 years but make sure your business model is clear and ready to evaluate before dreaming your product roadmap.

10. Being too romantic about business & start-up dynamic.

Be 100% rational. Solve problems.

I think that's it.

Hope it will help you too,

As you know I'm also a musician, I play drums for several artists including a rock band called Dead Pirates. Let's a have watch of Wood, the first music video directed by Simon and our band leader / famous illustrator, McBess. We'll be playing in Roma for Bangart.it Magazine end of May, so I wanted to celebrate!

Gregory

2010: Relaunching Gregorytalon.com

2010-01-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all of you. I'm starting 2010 on the right path and I wanted to let you know that I'm relaunching my personal site. I think 2009 was the less creative year I had this decade following an intense entrepreneurship project fail in 2008. 2010 is only one month old but already a lot different.

4 reasons to relaunch http://www.gregorytalon.com

Believe it or not but gregorytalon.com is a core asset to my career for 4 reasons:

1- Its production process helps me formalizing where I stand today and where I want to be tomorrow.
2- It delivers a clear and easy to read positioning story to its targeted audience.
3- It helps me to stay in control of my personal brand online including my seo results typing “Gregory Talon” in Google Search (not that I have anything to hide, but I realised that I would probably dismiss 80% of candidates after seeing their facebook profile so let’s show something smarter first when it comes to me)

and the more important that makes this relevant:

4- It generates numerous exciting opportunities per year.

On top of that it's a real pleasure to do. I don't even have to deal with 50 individuals during 18 months in a matrix organisation to deliver a new product experience. (day to day life at Yahoo!)

A polarizing & differentiating asset:
Running your personal brand online has always been quite polarizing. Some will criticize you. Some will think it's clever and brilliant. Some would say you're doing too much...
To me, creativity is just about performing actions that others wouldn't dare to perform.

This asset has been a core self-marketing tool that generated interesting opportunities for me the last 5 years. This is actually the 4th version and to me the smarter one to date. It's the landing experience of other actions I perform to get my objectives completed. It's just here to ensure the perception of my professional profile and to help me converting opportunities into actual exciting experiences.

As you know music is really important to me, so I wanted to "celebrate" this launch sharing this Spotify playlist with you. It's made of 30 tracks that influenced my music culture from Soul to Electronic music passing by Jazz, Rock and even some Fusion (hear music for musicians).

http://open.spotify.com/user/8bitsboy/playlist/4aLFYBlTFVSLDRRWiZtgMk

Hope you'll enjoy it.

Are you running something similar and want to share results?
How do you manage your professional identity online?
Did your personal site / blog generated profitable opportunities?

I'll try to allocate more time in 2010 to my blog, I didn't deliver much here in 2009. Still it has been a good SEO tool to keep "leopards" calling you ;)

Here is a track called "Leopard Tree Dream" from Giorgio Moroder. Probably one of his best tunes.

Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation

2009-10-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Interesting talk about the existing gap between what science knows and what companies do to increase performance and reduce employees' turnover.

Product development doesn't sound well with Democracy

2008-12-04T02:54:00.000-08:00

Today I wanted to take few minutes to write about something obvious (kind of...) but very difficult to apply in companies, especially big ones. Product development needs to be based on users' insights to meet a demand and reach a good level of satisfaction, but it should be excluding democracy!

First for the ones that don't know what Product development is, let's define it quickly:

"Creation of products with new or different characteristics that offer new or additional benefits to the customer. It may involve modification of an existing product or its presentation, or formulation of an entirely new product that satisfies a newly defined customer want or market niche." Business dictionary

"The overall process of strategy, organization, concept generation, product and marketing plan creation and evaluation, and commercialization of a new product" Entrepreneur.com

I'm not very satisfied by those definitions actually, so let's try to do mine.
Product Development is a sub part of Product Management, Product Development is taking concepts and ideas to real experience (I mean real product or feature). In terms of task, a product development manager takes a value proposition and design the experience that deliver the expected value to the users. He has to write a Product Requirements Document and to evangelise it. Then he follows the production to make sure that what is released is 100% inline with the value proposition.

Then a good product could be define as a product that delivers a good level of satisfaction in line with his specific value proposition. Just that! Nothing more! And that's what is difficult to do!

Why?
Because value proposition is formalised by a sentence that should remain the same forever or at least be evolving very slowly with years. In opposition to this, users and colleagues formalise their demand differently with a slightly different balance of concerns about things that are not initially core to deliver your value proposition.

The execution of an idea has to be done rigorously with the minimum of distraction. Once you have insights of users, a product development manager should almost act as a dictator. He is the guard ensuring that the execution reflects perfectly the value proposition in every details.

Here is a good quote about this problem from Jeff Lash:

"However, product development is not a democracy. There is no voting, and if there was, not everyone would get a vote, and not all votes would be equal. While it may be tempting to structure an open process by which stakeholders have the opportunity to provide input and are given a level playing field, this is really an illusion and a disservice to the product manager. If everyone gets an equal vote, then why have a product manager at all? All you would need is someone to tally the votes."

Should a Product Manager act as a dictator in a company?

WoW that's probably hard for lot of people, but some of them succeed to do it right:
Steve Jobs as a great example is leading is product strategy and product development very closely. By this fact, it's probably very frustrating for his employees to work at Apple cause they must have a limited impact on product strategy. But at the end of the day, a product needs a clear long term direction that is reflected in every details, the more people are involved in product strategy decision, the less clear and durable strategy is likely to be.

I don't really know any exception to this. Maybe you do?

Jeff is also saying:

"Product managers are responsible for what the product should do; do not attempt to absolve yourself from that responsibility by pushing decision-making back on to the product development team or a wider group. Good product managers are able to get input from all of the relevant players and use that information as basis for decisions. Not everyone will agree with your decisions all of the time, but if you do your job well, your decisions should be understood and respected."

And I would probably agree on everything except this :
"Product managers are responsible for what the product should do"
I think Product managers are responsible for what the product was, is and will be actually doing.

The bigger the company is, the more charismatic the product manager needs to be!
Don't get me wrong, there is really cool product managers in start-ups but doing a good product in a start-up is an easy task compare to do it at Yahoo!, Google or Ebay. (Please scope this sentence to Product Management, and forget about Finance issues). I would like to be in a start-up to stop having to argue all the times and take a clear lead. It would be so much easier!

Dave McDowell, one of my boss at Yahoo! told me one year ago: " there are many "true" ", he's right, each decision has its reasons that somehow may be logic, but I think there is only one relevant decision. And it's difficult to demonstrate it to everybody before actually be looking at results. When I'm not charismatic enough to do my job that well, I start to act as an hidden dictator, I enforce things without approval and to be able to show facts. You might think it's dangerous... Yes maybe, but if you can't take any risk, why being in business?

If there are too many deciders in your company, what about externalising Product Development?

Hum... If you need Product Strategy Consulting, you probably don't have the right product manager in your team. But there are more companies than good product managers, so consulting firms will probably have their place forever. Externalising the product development to one consultant (a product strategist) could be actually good to work on a totally new concept, but ask him to lead your Engineering and User Interface Design teams, to work in your office and talk to your users. If he's not directly involve in your actual production, the result is likely to be very disappointing even if the initial concept was the most relevant one.

Concepts, ideas are what you dream of, the product is what you are.

(This sentence is debatable depending of the industry so consider the branding as part of the product)
Users don't dream forever! Someone has to be responsible of closing the gap and keep closing it during years.

Ideas are cool, but they are not real. If they don't get real, they are worth nothing.

Hope you enjoyed this one.

If I was a VC I won't give any penny to...

2008-11-23T07:45:00.000-08:00

Today I wanted to post about a though I had about Search and Online Communication BtoC markets. After 2 years of work on Yahoo! Mail and a previous experience in Search Area at Convera, something suddenly became very obvious to me:

If I was a VC today, I won't be likely to give any penny to a startup creating a BtoC Search engine or an advanced Webmail, especially if they tell me that their objective is to switch users from big providers... No matter how cool the product is in terms of features. Sorry for Ciul or others really cool and talented start-ups but I think that's actually right to say.

Some of you might think: "this guy is telling me S###" so let me explain.
Google search as Yahoo! Mail (or Gmail) are currently delivering a good level of satisfaction to more than 50% of online users worldwide.

What are the main expectations that Search and Webmail users share?
The service needs to be fast and reliable at anytime.

Just think about 2 situations:

- You're in a store, and you need to quickly check a product price online with your mobile before buying your next digital camera, you do a search and find out that your search engine site is currently down...

- You're late to take your eurostar, your booking reference is in your booking confirmation email, right in your inbox... You need it to get your ticket and take your train. You try to access your email with your Laptop at Saint Pancras station, your webmail is not accessible...

In both case, I'm pretty sure you'll be pissed off with your provider, and will probably churn at some point. Communication and search are two area where productivity and reliability becomes more and more essential. The day Ciul went on mashable.com, techcrunch.com ... their delivery was really poor... How many times did you see Google search having downtime?

As far as I remember, I've seen Google having a downtime one time only in close to 10 years, (maybe i missed some... or not). Note that even Google is not doing that great with Gmail reliability, they have large scale outages frequently.

Those markets will remain dominated by big players, cause you need the scale, a huge network and a terrific architecture to deliver the basics right. When a startup is innovating in that area in terms of features, bigs players just have to deploy the same idea to a far bigger scale.

If I don't see any opportunities for those kind of startups today, you could maybe get acquired if you do a very good user interface. That's probably your only chance to scale... You won't success without a big player infrastructure here.

Few weeks on the Yahoo! US campus

2008-11-15T03:43:00.001-08:00

Since few months, I'm working on a key feature of Yahoo! Mail planned to be launched in 2009,
from Product Management to Product design, passing by Product Development. This project is probably the most complex I had to work on since I'm at Yahoo! So at some point, to be able to write the PRD (Product requirement document), I had to travel and meet the Yahoo! product and engineering teams in Sunnyvale. Looks good to me!

This is for sure one of the advantages of working for a big company like Yahoo!. The downside is to have your face picture on Valley Wag the day of your layoff, fortunately I'm not there yet. I spent two weeks in San Francisco, taking the Yahoo! Shuttle to commute to Sunnyvale campus everyday (1:30 each way).

I've been amazed by the campus ambiance, there is definitely an emulation there that we don't have in Europe. I would say, the valley seems to be a geeks' microcosm. Let me explain, the vision of people in the valley when it comes to users' education and demand is very different. Let's say you've been using Photoshop exclusively to do illustration design for about 10 years. One day Adobe force you to migrate to Illustrator, would you understand this new interface in 10s and never think about asking to be switched back? If not, you're probably not smart enough or potentially from India or something.

Don't get me wrong, even if it drives bad product management decisions sometimes, it also drives a big amount of innovation, contributing to a massive flow of new online business every single month. I think that in Europe we are less optimistic (naive?) about online business in general, so we try less which means less success at the end of the day... That's also probably why it's more difficult to lever money in Europe, we are more sceptic, less enthusiastic, more conservative!

I was in the valley when Sequoia capital send out their "RIP Good times" deck to their portfolio. It was a bit hard for me to feel the panic from Yahoo! Cause I think we actually don't. Or at least people in the Yahoo! Mail team don't.

2009 is gonna be a pretty interesting year with increasing users' expectations.
I guess it will be harder than ever to satisfy in 2009 for big actors like Yahoo!, Ebay or Google. You'll see I bet Google search ACSI score will decrease this year.
A new era for start-ups will come soon.

Thèse professionnelle sur les réseaux sociaux (en Francais)

2008-11-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Ma thèse sur les réseaux sociaux est a présent distribuée.
Elle traite de l'avenir des réseaux sociaux et répond clairement a la question suivante:
"Vers un monopole ou l'émergence de réseaux sociaux verticaux?"

Cette thèse fut la concrétisation de 2 ans d'investigation sur le sujet des réseaux sociaux et de 2 business plans (So ME en Décembre 2005 et Warpzoner en 2007).

En voici le plan:

1. Executive Summary

2. L’auteur

3. Le phénomène des réseaux sociaux en ligne
3.1. Définition
3.2. Structuration sociale
3.3. La valeur délivrée par les réseaux sociaux
3.4. Friendster : 1er acteur positionné
3.5. Myspace : la thématisation des réseaux sociaux
3.6. Facebook : élitisme social
3.7. Impact les médias et la communication en ligne
3.8. Croissance des investissements publicitaires
3.9. Intérêt des groupes médias traditionnels
3.10. Impact sur le e-commerce
3.11. Intérêt des pionniers de l’Internet
3.12. De nombreux nouveaux entrants sur le marché
3.13. Deux hypothèses d’avenir pour les réseaux sociaux

4. Vers le monopole d’un réseau « multi-spécialiste »?
4.1. Une masse critique atteinte en occident
4.2. Effet réseau potentiellement irréversible?
4.3. Limites sociales
4.4. La division des classes : un frein sociologique
4.5. Myspace VS Facebook : concurrence indirecte
4.6. Coexistence de deux réseaux sociaux dominants
4.7 La multi-spécialisation : un besoin existant
4.8. Leviers de « multi-spécialisation » : outils génériques
4.9. L’ambition Facebook
4.10. Stratégie de Myspace et alliance avec Google
4.11. De sérieux atouts pour convaincre les annonceurs

5. Émergence de réseaux sociaux de niche?
5.1. Réseaux sociaux de niche ou réseaux sociaux verticaux
5.2. Les limites des réseaux sociaux non verticaux
5.3. Spécialisation et légitimité
5.4. Accroître sa différenciation sociale
5.5. Masse critique et viabilité
5.6. Le vrai potentiel des réseaux sociaux de niche
5.7. Diversification verticale
5.8. Une initiative européenne?

5. Conclusion
6. Bibliographie

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

Cette thèse réalisée pour HEC Paris & Telecom Paris fut rédigée en Février 2008.
Ce document s’adresse à tous les acteurs qui voient dans les réseaux sociaux une
opportunité de création d’activité, de développement produit ou d’investissement
financier qu’il s’agisse d’un réseau social généraliste ou de niche.
Il permettra également å tout marketer de bien comprendre le phénomène des réseaux sociaux et comprendre le contexte de leur investissements publicitaires sur ces derniers.

Vous pourrez l'obtenir en l'achetant 129 euros via Paypal.
La these vous sera envoyée par email dés bonne réception de votre paiement.
C'est avec plaisir que je discuterai avec vous et répondrais a vos questions sur le sujet.

3 years at Yahoo! (Almost)

2008-10-29T13:41:00.000-07:00

Back in January 2006, I was searching for an internship in an Internet company, a pioneer. I applied to Google, MSN and ... Yahoo!

If I had to provide estimations on hotels count in France or to do other HR tests at Google, I actually had the opportunity to share with my futur tutor about the industry at Yahoo!

My role was a bit undefined when I entered Yahoo! France Marketing team and that's what decided me to go for Yahoo! I saw an opportunity to have more responsibilities. My prediction was quite accurate, I was not even sitting with the rest of the Marketing team, but with the media producers of Rue Torricelli in Paris office. I took over the role of promoting all Yahoo! FR products on the Yahoo! Network. We call this On-network marketing. My closer colleagues were in United Kingdom and Germany. I've been quite dedicated to deliver some thousands of media plan's lines, bidding to get inventory against sales team in a healthy competition.

At the end of the day this model was wrong! Showing a Yahoo! shopping ad to a user checking his email is close to pointless, even if it's actually making money. That's a great way to generate dissatisfaction, reducing the clarity of the value proposition and decreasing performance.

I had the opportunity to extend my internship as employee, but I preferred entering my master degree at HEC Paris where I've learn more about Digital Business Strategy. I was financing it by operating a 50% margin on line "gaming" service, delivering websites for companies, and improving my SEO skills :)

After 4 months out of Yahoo!, I was back after a direct marketing campaign sent to Brad Garlinghouse (VP Communication and Communities). My new mission was to recommend how to maximise Yahoo! user value. Yes! I was part of the "Make Yahoo! more social" recommenders in 2007, we'll find out soon if we executed well on this one...

At this time I met George Hadjigeorgiou, General Manager Yahoo! Communication & Communities in Europe, a very dedicated and focus Manager. He hired me (bad choice!) as Product Marketing Manager of Yahoo! Mail to integrate his team in London. My role quickly took a European scale, making the experience more relevant to each segment of Yahoo! mail users (from newbies to brand advocates) and positioning the product in United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

After 7-8 months I evolved to a Product Management role. Learning a lot about operating a product, how to measure and increase 20 millions users' satisfaction score. Yahoo! Mail is really the most interesting product to work on at Yahoo!, at least in Europe. Users are very exigent when it comes to their emails.

Part of my team was relocated to Switzerland as we are moving our European headquarter to Rolle. I've also seen the first mass layoff at Yahoo! last January. Business rules the world... The company started to focus more on priority assets to ensure we make our starting point job much better than anyone else. The company didn't focus enough for sure.

Oh I almost forget, the Microsoft story!
I guess people like to work for Yahoo! and think it's already too big (?) Maybe we'll go through this again soon, probably, looking at our YHOO share price... I've nothing to say about that, I personally don't see the value for our company.

The last quarter, I've been doing more Product Development, also contributing to more global projects with partners. I spent some times in Sunnyvale to meet US product management, UED and engineering teams. It was kind of amazing to be on this big Yahoo! campus where most of the things happen...

It was two weeks ago, companies just received the "RIP Good times" deck from Sequoia Capital, so the valley started to layoff massively. "Go Real or Go Home". La messe est dite as we say in french... Yahoo!, just like the others companies has to execute lighter and to focus more.

We are entering a new exciting period, now entrepreneurs don't have that much choice anymore, they need to go real, cash is king but never forget about user satisfaction. Everybody will need both to stay alive during the next 18th months.

Challenging!

HEC Graduation ceremony

2008-06-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

We did it! I'm now graduated from the 1st ranked european business school (HEC Paris) and french top engineer school (ex-ENST, Telecom Paris now ParisTech). We had the opportunity to do a Digital Business Strategy master degree program directed by Julien Levy (The Mercator) & Marc Bourrot.

Note that I've sleep two hours the previous night, fixing potential legal problems at Yahoo! with the US until 4 am...

Stay focus on what I want to be

2008-06-01T14:25:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last years fighting for having the opportunity to do what I love in life, the system was not helping me to, I had to do it by my own... Because I did quite well, I've been honoured to finalise my studies at HEC. I was finally tasting kind of a safe path.

This year in London has been intense.

My intuitions drove me off this new safe road.

I had strong believes:
. Being able to manage things serving my aspirations and things meeting my obligations simultaneously, equally and perfectly in my work life.
. Having found the right woman since 4 years, a no contextual love.

Lot of things have changed, lifestyle, country, language, entourage, pretty much everything actually...

And sometimes life hurts you in the head with a bludgeon...
I spent some times asking myself, what I was going to do.
What is sure is that I value and love what I'm doing and what I try to become on both personal and professional side.

At the dawn of new big choices, I know what I want to become. I'm lucky.
It's the time to rationalise influences, prides, dogma, fears, side expectations... to focus on important things that could face imminent death risk. By this I mean, remembering that I'm going to die, as everyone will, helps me to avoid considering contextual and less important things when I have to make important choices.

Even if I don't have all the answers yet...

My master thesis on social networks

2008-01-08T05:26:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, I've done the presentation of my thesis to HEC Paris and Telecom Paris.
It actually received very good feedbacks.

More than 2 years after my first business plan on social network (Called So ME), I've dedicated some time to a thesis dealing with the future of social networks. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to translate it in English yet. Anyway, this is called :

"L'avenir des réseaux sociaux :
vers le monopole d'un multi-spécialiste ou l'émergence de réseaux sociaux de niche"

First i came through all the past big steps of social networking sites and impacts on the Internet actors, introducing the next challenges. In a second part, I analysed the hypothesis of a monopoly driven by network effects and multi-specialisation. In a third part I focused on the potential rise of some niche social networks.

This thesis could address consulting needs of any actors seeing social networks as a potential activity creation, product development or financial investment opportunity.

I'm currently thinking about how to distribute it. Any advices?

Myspace : Bad Move (switched back)

2007-10-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

{EDIT: Due to lots of negative feedbacks, Myspace has switched back to the previous version.}

Myspace has done one thing pretty bad today.

They started to touch to user's profile.
Now users can see crap lines on their customized profile.
They spent like so much time to make it beautifully (or not), i think they won't appreciate this change. This is not myspace role to make profile beautifull. That's the rule they set with myspace experience...

I remember the Marketing director speech about myspace.
He said that the user profile was like the user bedroom.
So just think about it : Would you like your mum to change your bedroom deco?
Especially just for separation lines... It's useless!

They used to start to update the rest of the site (wich is good) and they improved quite well the user home page. I understand that myspace need to update the layout technically because they want to launch an application plateform just like Facebook. But If the users see this, it will be very annoying for them. Hope they will understand the error and switch back.

Welcome to London

2007-09-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

As said on gregorytalon.com since 1 year (I'll update it soon), I've planned to move to UK so it's done now. After 3 days in London i can say that's great. It will be the opportunity to raise my English to a native level, which is not bad at all ;)

I'm gonna join Yahoo! UK in the SOHO Office as Product / Marketing Manager.

I'll also be writing a thesis (part of my HEC MS) on Social networks, my predilection subject since 2 years now. Lot of things to say, quite an exciting part of the WEB, potentially impacting both. I'll try to make it the most attractive to read.

Back from Japan

2007-05-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

All good things have an end. My travel to Japan with my fellow HEC students is over.

Japan is a great country. Now i understand why Japan is the 2nd world power : They have a business (industrial) god!!! Regarding the japaneses, there is not so much individuality (it seems) in their attitude but they are very fashion. They use cellphones intensively like no others. If I had to define the country I would have selected those following words : Sushi, Video Games, Anime, Mobile & Karaoke. I visited Nagoya, Osaka, Kyoto, Tokyo...

As the differences with US & EU are very strong, now I understand why Google, Ebay... have so much difficulties in Asia... Battle between Asian and US actors will be hard in the next coming years...

Now I'm back and it was the occasion for me to deliver my first conference at IIM on friday morning. This to share with 60 students on Internet industry, on their ambition / passion for Internet, Animation and video games industries... I found it very pleasant to try to transmit some messages that were key factors for myself, to interested students. Thanks for their attention.

11 days to discover Japan

2007-05-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to take some days out of the country in order to discover Japan during 11 days.
I've always dream to do that (i used to be a gamer :) )

I'll be back on May the 18th.

Microsoft May acquire Yahoo! for 50B $

2007-05-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

I simply don't understand how it could work...
Don't you?

Basically i see the value for Microsoft but I don't understand why Yahoo! is considering it. It will make more redundancy (Y! has it already... ) Anyway we'll see if they'll make it this time, the stock took 18% :)

Digital News #1

2007-04-16T13:27:00.000-07:00

BestofMedia acquired Tom's hardware :
My fellow student Emmanuel de Chezelles (fondator of http://www.jeuxvideopc.com/ & Game product director at BestofMedia group), announced the acquisition of Tom's hardware http://www.tomshardware.com/ by BestofMedia group, becoming the first french online media group with 19 Millions of UVs. This is also the occasion for me to congratulate Emmanuel for all his work and success.

Ruby on Rails VS PHP

2007-04-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

I guess net entrepreneurs have some hesitations on choosing RoR or PHP for their new product.
I think an understandable post (for entrepreneurs) revealing advantages and weakness of each programming language with a direct comparison approach could help us in this choice.

As I’m not CTO, I’ll request developers to give their opinion and to bring value to this post. I don't think i can't make it in one shot. So i'll edit it each time i understand one additive thing on this subject.

I had several discussions with great young French developers such as Matthieu Aubry or Jérémie Bordier, Matthieu who build www.phpmyvisite.com (a Google analytics competitor) is basically more PHP addict, Jérémie is more pro Ruby...

What i understand by now is that Ruby is fully object oriented when PHP allow procedural & object approach. What’s make Ruby famous is his framework: Rails. You have to know that since rails exist, there were some frameworks developed for PHP also as PEAR.

Ruby's arguments:
. Easy to read & understandable
. Volume of lines reduced
. Easy and cheaper to make and maintain web apps' evolutions
. Faster to develop
. Geek Buzz for your project & trendy developers

PHP's arguments:
. Free to use and to install (Ruby is free too but Hosting companies don't install it for free yet)
. Still Faster in production
. Lot of experience around it (Allmost everything has been coded already)
. The biggest developers community (Think HR)

Ruby 1.9 with the new YARV interpretor will maybe solve the speed issue of Ruby in production. One example of bad optimisation of RoR on Twitter that drive costs in production :
http://www.ff00aa.com/fr/space/2007/04/12/340-ruby-on-rails-sur-un-gros-site/
Not easy to see this as a lesson cause we don't know if everything is well optimised here...
Franck Perrier reports me a great productivity gain on Eyeka using RoR.

Entrepreneurs have to manage human, business & technical aspects... This choice could impact both... But we have to insist on the fact that, whatever you choose, the success is mainly due to who is going to make it. I'm not really able to choose at this stage, some of you could help us! Feel free to contact me to give your opinion and let's share about it.
talongregory (at) yahoo.fr

------------------------------
Post edited 5 times with developers vision

Yahoo! Mail will turn to unlimited storage

2007-03-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! put an end to the storage rush when Google is offering 2.8 Go and 2 Go for Windows live... This in order to be in line with people new usages of Mail.

This is a good news and lot of things could follow to deliver on "archiving your life" value.

Sony PS3 launch event : When execution leads bad customer experience

2007-03-25T03:06:00.000-07:00

6pm under the Eiffel tower, with 3 dedicated barges, one big screen, a radio dj, one show on MTV & GameOne, 1000 guests... Customers had the worst event experience of ever for a new game machine launch... Just trying to explain what I've seen there. Customers were supposed to be accommodated at 6pm, i was there only at 7pm but anyway... First, the event was announced to be under the Eiffel tower, not really true... It was on the quay... so what was going there?

I've been accommated by 10 vigils, a wall of barriers blocking the access and several cops... Welcome! ... 50 boys and girls where waiting... One vigil was talking the 3 20-25 years old and well dressed guys but with different origins... Telling them that if they're not going to buy the machine, they could go away... After some hesitation i asked to a vigil what's going on...
He told me : "No demonstration, just wait midnight (very cold weather), show your payment card, enter, buy, and go away..." Ok so it's exactly like in a classic store like FNAC or Virgin without the good customer relationship management of the sellers. OK after some minutes walking around the place to see what's really happening, i didn't see anything, just one dj's announce telling exactly the contrary of what the vigil said to people... Go home and watch the event on MTV Greg...

I want to say thank you to Sony Marketing FR guys and responsible event agency if there is one. Great job! Lot of money waste, great ROI (Only 50 machines sold versus 1000 on the barge!). The event could have been great but if you had allowed people to enter, maybe there would have been more people there and more machines sold... What i understood there was that Sony wanted to dedicate the event to VIP only. Ok cool... Ensure that they're will be there next time!

But main thing : the ones who buy your machine are not VIP and you should have test to make them feel like VIP during this event... Lost! Let's play Wii, Xbox 360 & DS...

One special thanks to Xbox 360 Marketing team for the great XBOX 360 barge action "XBOX 360 loves you", it was the only funny things of the event...

Myspace VS WAT Episode 5

2007-02-23T00:32:00.000-08:00

Last month i was thinking that myspace could reach 2M UV in January and it seems that it was not so realistic as it "only" gain + 191 000 UV vs December. Skyblog growth is continuous (i don't understand really that point but it demonstrates that the life cycle is not 2-3 trendy years)

Yahoo! 360's vertiginous fall (- 50% in 2 months) has ended, it regains 91 000 UV (+ 40%)... WAT's growth is slowing down with + 113 000 UV as the marketing budget for january should have been reduced versus december... This site is not engaging its users, retention is very low for that kind of site and was yet lower in january than in december. It's not social it's just yet another Yahoo! music property...

One fondator of Amiz.fr contacted me to present me his site, so i've integrated it to this analysis cause the related datas are back in NNR.

Audience (January UV):

. Myspace FR: 1, 691 Millions of UV (+191 000 UV MoM only)
(Beta officially launched in the middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360: 210 000 UV (+91 000 UV MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT: 713 000 UV (+ 113 000 UV only MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

. Skyblog: 5 186 000 UV (+ 265 000 UV only MoM)

. Amiz: 132 000 UV

Retention (December pages by user):

. Myspace FR: 70 (+19 MoM!!!)

. Yahoo! 360: 15 (no data last month)

. WAT: 5 ( -6 MoM)

. Skyblog: 164 (+16 MoM)

. Amiz: N/A

Next Episode on March the 14th

Previous Episodes:
Episode 4 : January
Episode 3 : December
Episode 2 : October
Episode 1 : September

Myspace Music Store live / Snocap integration

2007-02-16T08:44:00.000-08:00

All members just received the announce. Myspace music store is live.
Snocap has been integrated on Myspace music artists profiles.
The first artist push in the newsletter is Snoop Dog.
Here to view is profile

The integration is quite good but not perfect marketed, it's quite unpersonal in the wording "buy this artist's music", "buy my music" is basically better...
The cost of an MP3 is 0.83$!!!

Itunes Store...

It's time to build sense

2007-02-11T06:10:00.000-08:00

Friday Carl Hallard (Currently working in the Marketing team of Paypal) and i, decided to turn one idea to reality. We had this idea 1 year ago when we were building SoME Business plan.

It will take time, we'll need talents to build sense together. First, we would like to meet technical talents working with passion. (Ruby on Rails addicted could be cool).

We think it's all about love, if we have passion, we'll make good job. We don't care about your location, your age or your education.

To meet us and share about it: Contact me

Myspace's growth is 30% per quarter

2007-02-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

Rupert Murdoch interview :

Will Ebay make the deal? (With Myspace)

2007-02-07T00:35:00.000-08:00

Myspace is currently discussing with Ebay, if you've read this article you won't be surprised.
Maybe this will be crucial for Ebay. Maybe it's simply : "make it or loose the e-commerce market". Sometimes i think it's just like Yahoo! and Google few years ago. Yahoo! didn't make it and you know the results...

I'm pretty sure that Myspace is a great opportunity for Ebay to growth now. Ebay network will be pretty hard to socialize... Myspace users are waiting to buy and to sell...
It's easier to make transactionnal links based on social experience than social links on commerce experience...

If they don't make it, another will. One survey of December says that myspace users are likely to sell and buy products through their social network, it's a more trusty network than Ebay one.

If Ebay provide his CtoC payment solution it could be the KO for Google Checkout...

Myspace deal on e-commerce seems to be the deal of the year. Myspace shouldn't wait too long, users are waiting, specially to buy music...

Google may loose Gmail Brand in Europe

2007-02-01T13:28:00.000-08:00

After Deutchland, Google is about to loose the Gmail Brand in all European region cause of Daniel Giersch a entrepreneur and HIS (lol) brand Gmail. In DE and UK Google is already using @googlemail.com and not gmail.com anymore...
Duplicated brand > Not indexed anymore :)

Jack Ma - Alibaba Group

2007-01-27T03:14:00.000-08:00

Interview of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group (Yahoo! China recently acquired by this Chinese company) in Davos. Alibaba is the e-commerce leader in China and i think in all asia with also Alipay, the leading CtoC Payment platform in Asia.

"it will take time for them to learn, i think they'll be back in the next 5-10 years" talking about US companies in China...

"I think that's why i'm very confident with china, every young people start to create, to be entrepreneurs..."

"We'll be global in the next 5 years, in US, EU..."

I'm currently waiting for the launch of Alipay outside of Asia, Myspace could has been a huge opportunity but it's seems to be too late.

"France must learn to forget faster" - John Gage

2007-01-27T03:03:00.000-08:00

French version of the Video :

One interesting discussion with John Gage, vice president of Sun Microsystem (with Loic Lemeur) about France's value in the mondialization...

Myspace's approach of the value chain

2007-01-20T06:47:00.000-08:00

After a long discussion with my binomial & friend Carl Hallard, i would like to share on Myspace approach of the music industry's value chain... (The picture is the myspace page of Fancy an emergent french band)

I remember my school's tutors wondered us : "where do you place So ME (Our platform) on the value chain?" We were not sure, especially because it was a new web 2.0 platforms editor (Business plan 2004). So ME, the first launched platform was an intermediation one for artists and fans (a Myspace like but with a deeper focus on the relation between fans and artists), allowing "experts" (artists) to sell entertainment/cultural products on the site...

Value chain seemed to be the thing we must respect and we used to say "We respect the value chain and bring solutions". It has been designed to bring promotion tools and revenue drivers for artists, diversity and direct contact with artists for fans, tools for Majors (to select the artist with huge potential artists with an objective approach)

I think Myspace's success is mainly due to this. They focus on bringing solutions to most of the value chain actors... If you think Myspace is blog or just "6 degree rule", you're wrong...

We don't need to respect how things goes in the current value chain but we need to bring solutions to actors that are currently involved in. Then when you get most of the market share as Myspace or Apple with the Ipod you can bring your own value chain in a sense.

Myspace has created social links between people around their interests, involving expert as emergent artists, video makers, nights clubs staff... as fans and other consumers (public), they will start to allow them the generate commercial transactions. It's relevant to introduce commercial transactions on a Social Network but it's not easy to generate social links based on commercial transactions.

Yes i know that some people are now engaged after meeting them as sellers and buyers on Ebay... Just crazy but not very representative...

Why will i need to buy music in a store if i can buy it to "my friend" the artist directly on Myspace?

Today the only reason i could buy music in a store (for myself) is that "my friend" artist told me to, or cause the packaging add a specific value... (I've finally put all my cds' packaging in my cave last week...). I've never buy MP3 files yet but I'm just waiting for Myspace to allow registered artists music sells to do it and I can't wait (yes truly!)

I think Myspace will become the first MP3 paid distribution platform, Apple store is not so relevant for Myspace users...

Myspace could become a strong e-commerce player soon.

Who is going to make the smart move to deploy his CtoC payment solution on Myspace?

. Ebay with Paypal

. Yahoo! / Alibaba with Alipay
. Google with Google checkout

I think it's the most important deal to make this year for Payment solutions to expand market shares. It seems to be Paypal but we don't know really...

Will Myspace and Newscorp turn into e-commerce successfully?

I'm more in love with the e-business than with any company so i hope it they will do it!

Myspace VS WAT Episode 4

2007-01-16T13:44:00.000-08:00

Last month myspace's growth was slow as all the market. The site has officially been launched in January so we can expect huge growth next month.
In December, myspace FR has gain 224 000 UV to reach almost 1.5 M UV.
Skyblog is slowing down... Yahoo! 360 lost 30% of traffic (- 50% in 2 months), the product is dramatically loosing market shares... Quite surprising, I didn't know if they launch another acquisition with big budget but WAT traffic increased by 200% MoM! As retention has not been improved I think they've done it lol

Will myspace reach 2M UV in January? I think that's realistic!

Audience (December UV):

. Myspace FR: 1, 448 Millions of UV (+224 000 UV MoM only)
(Beta officially launched in the middle of August 06)

. Yahoo! 360: 117 000 UV (-41 000 UV MoM!!!)
(officially launched in the middle of February 06 with no marketing budget
but integration on low Yahoo! portal)

. WAT: 600 000 UV (+ 395 000 UV only MoM)
(officially launched in the middle of June 06 with huge marketing
> SEM, Banners campaigns...)

. Skyblog: 4 921 000 UV (+ 94 000 UV only MoM)

Retention (December pages by user):

. Myspace FR: 51 (-7 MoM)

. Yahoo! 360: No data (7 last month)

. WAT: 11 ( +4 MoM)

. Skyblog: 149 (-2 MoM)

Next Episode on February the 14th

Previous Episodes:
Episode 3 : December
Episode 2 : October
Episode 1 : September

Direct Marketing Campaign to get a mission at Yahoo!

2007-01-05T04:26:00.000-08:00

During the 6 last months i used to think about how to get the opportunity to bring something to Yahoo! US on product side. As I’m too young and not Stanford branded, with a bizarre deal to make (1 week at Yahoo! 1 week at school and so on during 4 months), using the HR way was not relevant to make it. So i've decided to launch a direct marketing campaign targeted on the 4 top management persons managing products BU's including the famous memo author.

I needed to surprise them and i was thinking that nobody try to contact them directly. I used a Yahoo! answers EU campaign to design 4 personalized emailing introducing my request, our shared contacts and pushing them to discuss about it together. My speech was US oriented showing my passion for the internet and my can do attitude (My vision of my professional life). I precise that i sent it without any resume but i made a "call to be redirect" on my corporate website gregorytalon.com

It's quite crazy but why could it not work? Let's try, i had nothing to loose.

I wanted them to read it and to convert (not a 0,5% conversion rate allowed), so i included the receiver picture in the creative, not only mine. I was thinking that the first reaction will be "who is that young man pretending to..." so i've put it in the creative : "Who are you?" said by the receiver. I've tested it to know if they'll receive well and not as spam, i had big issues on that point during 4 days.

Then it works one of my receivers called a shared contact to know more about me. After 3 weeks of push with US, UK and FR with 5-6 contacts across EU helping me to negotiate with US. I'll start to work for Yahoo! US and Yahoo! EU on Yahoo! users value (subject has changed, even more interesting now). We'll work as a team with my colleague Julien Marie.

5 things you don't know about me.

2007-01-03T07:38:00.000-08:00

This is the blogosphere buzz currently!

Following invitation of Vincent Thome on his blog I'll do it also...

Here they are 5 things you don't know about me.

. I was 18 when I found what I love, when my life created too much lacks of loved things.

I've some Portuguese origins, my mother was not allowed to study when she was young because she was the older child of a 5 children Portuguese family. My father is a self-made man with no graduation. They divorced when i was 7 years-old and i started to live with my mother. I wasn't so good at school, and i spent one year to find what i love at the Paris VI science university. My mother wanted me to become engineer (high level one as she said) and my father wanted me to work as soon as possible. After 6 months of boring general science courses... I decided to leave the faculty and i started to make websites, first for my music band called Elerium to promote our music, then for my video makers association linked with an artist’s online community in order to promote our contributors' talents... I was good for many things like music, design, video... but i didn't find myself excellent on anyone of those things. I feel more comfortable with finding solutions for others. I was 18 and i had the chance to find what i love very early: Making Internet products & services bringing solutions and value for people with conviction that they're many things to build on all subjects!

. I'm feared of my death so I'm running faster each day to make my life great.
I used to be attached to things that don't change every time. I don't know really why and when but I've changed : I think that the better way to make more each day is just to challenge this objective with a huge amount of can do attitude. Why should i let someone tell me what's possible or not for myself. All is possible if you have the passion to do it with a different approach! I think i can say "many thanks" to Carl Hallard, Arnaud Portanelli, Guillaume Le Dieu de Ville, Pascale Furbeyre and Claude Vogel who helped me to understand that point. I'm trying to go deeper each day.

. I don't support flat periods.

It's pretty hard to feel good for me when i didn't reach to make "huge" progress.
Fortunately I'm confident that I'll connect the dots soon each day of my life and most of the time, work paid!

. I always tried to have experiences in places I'm not supposed to like
Agencies & HEC are good examples and I've learn lot on myself there. :)

. Something I even don't know yet

Following the tradition i invite Carl, Alban, Julien & Pete to share 5 things we don't know about them.

Myspace VS WAT Episode 3

2006-12-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

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

Just a little break!

2006-12-26T02:46:00.000-08:00

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"

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

2006-12-03T22:57:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-12-03T05:29:00.000-08:00

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

In Japan with HEC Digital Business Strategy

2006-11-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

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,

Lens : Small is the new Big

2006-11-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

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 :

Myspace France VS WAT episode 2

2006-11-20T06:06:00.000-08:00

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

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

2006-11-19T06:53:00.000-08:00

"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" ;)

Myspace more influential than Blogosphere?

2006-11-12T11:29:00.000-08:00

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?

You Tube : The beginning of the End?

2006-11-08T00:21:00.000-08:00

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!

France 2007 : What i deeply want to see!

2006-11-05T04:46:00.000-08:00

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...

What's next?

2006-10-31T02:33:00.000-08:00

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!

Revenue goals VS "budget goals"

2006-10-20T01:17:00.000-07:00

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. :)

Myspace VS the poor WAT and Friendset

2006-10-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

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"

This guy is going fast... so fast!

2006-10-13T05:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Google buys You Tube!

2006-10-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

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

2006-10-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

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!"

Internet & Marketing investments

2006-09-29T02:24:00.000-07:00

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.

Breaking news about myspace

2006-09-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

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 ;)

Myspace Magazine? Great idea?

2006-08-29T12:49:00.000-07:00

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

I'm back to Yahoo!

2006-08-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

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...

Search Engine Strategies - Eric Schmidt interview

2006-08-21T05:30:00.000-07:00


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.

Difference between Viral Marketing & Buzz Marketing

2006-07-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-07-29T05:17:00.000-07:00

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

Rebranding with our name!

2006-07-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

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.

The freshman CEO

2006-06-05T04:36:00.000-07:00

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

2006-06-05T01:22:00.000-07:00

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!

Re-branding!

2006-06-04T03:09:00.001-07:00

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

2006-06-04T02:17:00.000-07:00

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

When all the Web thinks to make Web 2.0

2006-05-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-05-21T05:14:00.000-07:00

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

2006-05-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

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

Hard Gay at Yahoo! Japan

2006-04-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

English subtitles

Adwords Policy issue

2006-04-30T07:40:00.000-07:00

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

Dubay : 1991 to 2006

2006-03-27T06:36:00.000-08:00

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 :)

Microsoft unveils Vista Lineup

2006-03-17T08:20:00.000-08:00

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.

MySpace Messenger on the Way

2006-03-16T07:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Overture > Yahoo search Marketing !

2006-02-27T05:07:00.000-08:00

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...

4 years of friendly work at IIM...

2006-02-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

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!

Kaz ! On myspace.com

2006-02-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

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!)

Internship at Yahoo!

2006-02-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

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!

A little gift : The Las Vegas Yahoo!'s Keynote video
http://vpod.tv/getContent.php/originalvideo/47EEC642-86A9-11DA-8494-9B2994076254

So MEDIA : Business plan

2006-02-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

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...

My Blog's opening!

2006-02-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

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