The Gift that Keeps on Giving

The Problem:
Everyone knows that the fastest way to grow a new business is to generate positive word-of-mouth references.  But, what’s the most efficient way for a start-up online company to do that?

The Company:
YouTube allows people to share their videos online and became the fastest growing website in the history of the Internet.  Its growth was so impressive that it was acquired in 2006 by Google for $1.65 billion in stock.

The Technology Solution:
How does a startup come out of nowhere and in 18 months get purchased for more than any other online company?  It does it by generating more traffic than anyone else.  On an average day, YouTube serves more than 100 million video streams.

Although many success factors assisted the rise of YouTube’s traffic, researchers Deepak Thomas and Vineet Buch concluded in 2007 that the company owed much of its phenomenal growth to the use of widget marketing. On the Internet, a widget is a small software program that is designed to be easily inserted into a webpage to provide some added function. There are widgets that are self-contained games, widgets that display late-breaking news items, and widgets that are simply designed to attract attention. You can even create a widget to display the latest entry from your weblog on another website.

By making it easy (through the use of widgets) for visitors to embed YouTube hosted videos on their personal blogs and websites, the site also made it easy for its users to introduce new people to the joys of online video viewing.

The Outcome:

The buzz generated by the clever videos people hosted on YouTube created an escalating flow of traffic to the site. Even better, the resulting incoming links from widely dispersed YouTube widgets on a multitude of websites further boosted YouTube’s Google page ranking. In the end, that flow of traffic became worth more than a billion dollars in less than two years.

But what can you do if the customers who most need what you sell are stubbornly resisting your marketing efforts? Tomorrow, DataDocsDailyDose.com will show you how the world’s largest car manufacturer has learned to help customers who don’t want to admit they have a problem.

–J.D. Mosley-Matchett, Ph.D.
“The Data Doc“
You have questions? She has answers!

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A Month of Voyeuristic Learning…

 

Remember the movie entitled The Wizard of Oz? Everyone in the Emerald City spoke in awed tones about the “great and powerful Wizard” who appeared as a gigantic, surrealistic, and very nonhuman disembodied head. Speaking in a thunderous voice heightened with intimidating lighting effects, the Wizard was fearsome, indeed.

 

That is until Dorothy’s dog pulled aside a curtain to reveal an ordinary looking man running a control room that electronically projected the fearsome images and sounds. And once the truth was revealed, the posturing could be eliminated and everyone could focus on accomplishing the original goal.

 

Sometimes technology can be intimidating. Sometimes it obscures the original goal that it was supposed to accomplish. Sometimes it’s good to slip behind the curtain and discover just how things actually work.

 

This month we will examine how real companies have tackled real problems with the technology at hand. Sometimes the efforts will be elegant. Sometimes, they will be little more than the technical equivalent of glue and string. But all of these mini-cases will push past any intimidating technology to reveal just how an important business problem was solved. So don your ruby slippers as DataDocsDailyDose.com leads you down the yellow brick road to uncover a month of business technology solutions.

–J.D. Mosley-Matchett, Ph.D.

“The Data Doc“

You have questions? She has answers!

 

 

 

Writing the Next Great Novel

Everyone has a story that the world needs to know. But there has always been a prohibitive cost factor if you wished to share your story with people outside your circle of family members and acquaintances. Fortunately, current technology has not only simplified the process of publishing, but it has also reduced distribution costs to zero for aspiring authors.

Following Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in 1440, little changed over the centuries. Granted that the twentieth century provided automation and power improvements, but presses remained the tools of mass communication and the improvements more directly benefited commercial ventures rather than individual writers.

The first technological breakthrough in personal publishing came about with the rise of the personal computer, laser printer, and desktop publishing programs. Even so, these tools lent themselves more to the production of report and pamphlets rather than bound volumes and novels. There was also the remaining problem of distributing the resulting tome beyond one’s immediate sphere of contacts.

In July 2005, online bookseller Amazon purchased CreateSpace which produced “on demand” DVDs for aspiring videographers. CreateSpace later expanded its production capabilities to include book printing on demand (POD). In August 2007, CreateSpace announced an on demand, self-publishing service for printed books, audio CDs, and video DVDs. Authors can use readily available layout programs to submit their formatted texts to CreateSpace. Amazon.com then lists the book and collects orders from interested buyers.

The physical books aren’t printed until ordered online by paying customers. And the final product is available in either a hardback or paperback version, regardless of whether one copy is sold or a thousand.

Because this POD system requires no advance payment or set-up fees from the author, you no longer have any excuses for keeping your “inner novelist” under wraps. So, get busy and start writing! Meanwhile, DataDocsDailyDose.com will be investigating a new communication technology to share with you tomorrow.

–J.D. Mosley-Matchett, Ph.D.
“The Data Doc“
You have questions? She has answers!