itLinkz plans to develop, launch and manage more than 500 specialized social networking web sites. We currently own more than 3,000 domain names.So, a mix of B2B and B2C, but make no mistake--the business model here is advertising. In this particular case, I think their goal is a bit overambitious. Remember VerticalNet? A mile wide, a millimeter deep. But still, this is precisely the kind of company that can sneak into your space without a single editor or publisher in that market even knowing about it.
These online communities offer marketers a unique opportunity to identify and reach consumers closely aligned with their advertising needs and, in many instances, represent previously untapped online markets.
Our online communities are successful because they combine cutting edge technology with input from leaders in the various industries and disciplines we serve. These include experts in the fields of medicine, accounting, legal and manufacturing along with thousands of hobbyists including golfers, fisherman and equestrians to name just a few.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Meet the competition
As I'm trawling the Web learning about social networking tools, sites and vendors, I came across Nurse Linkup, a social networking site for the nursing profession. It's got all the standard stuff you'd expect--blogs, networking, forums, news clipping, member pages, etc. What's interesting is the business model. The site is run by itLinkz, which has this to say on its web site:
Friday, February 16, 2007
The next big thing in B2B e-publishing
Like most publishers, our next stage of growth will come from online and events, to make up for the decline in print. However, more and more, I'm convinced that as we begin to expand beyond "magazine" web sites, we're firmly entering a Web 2.0 world where nothing looks familiar.
As we move away from B2B publishing 1.0, here's what will come next. We just need to figure out how to adapt these trends to our markets and our audiences. And then figure out the revenue angle.
1. No editors. (Did I mention that?). Look for communities to generate their own content that's much more meaningful to the community. For the community. By the community. No editors necessary. (Keep the editors doing their jobs on existing mature properties. But no need for hiring new ones just to launch more e-properties.)
2. Instead of suppliers/advertisers managing customers, we'll want to consider ways we can allow customers to manage suppliers. This is called vendor relationship management and inverts the whole supplier/buyer paradigm. Publishers connect sellers with buyers today. Tomorrow, they will need to learn how to connect buyers with sellers. On buyers' terms. As publishers, we need to ingest this into our DNA. That'll be tough...many of us are focused on how we can deliver buyers to sellers, on the sellers' terms. (Think lead generation.)
3. Sophisticated invitation-only social networking tools allow buyers control who they let into their networks. Think buddy list for B2B. By the way, this isn't for liver-spotted white males over the age of 40. This is for the mypsace-wielding set coming out of school now and getting their first jobs, quite used to social networking in school, and willing to use such tools for work.
Some links that I've been reading/listening to and finding interesting, in support of the above:
The social customer blog
The Clue Implementation unit -- a hands-on podcast about connecting customers, communities, and business.
The E-Sourcing Forum blog.
And more. Will continue to share new things I find.
As we move away from B2B publishing 1.0, here's what will come next. We just need to figure out how to adapt these trends to our markets and our audiences. And then figure out the revenue angle.
1. No editors. (Did I mention that?). Look for communities to generate their own content that's much more meaningful to the community. For the community. By the community. No editors necessary. (Keep the editors doing their jobs on existing mature properties. But no need for hiring new ones just to launch more e-properties.)
2. Instead of suppliers/advertisers managing customers, we'll want to consider ways we can allow customers to manage suppliers. This is called vendor relationship management and inverts the whole supplier/buyer paradigm. Publishers connect sellers with buyers today. Tomorrow, they will need to learn how to connect buyers with sellers. On buyers' terms. As publishers, we need to ingest this into our DNA. That'll be tough...many of us are focused on how we can deliver buyers to sellers, on the sellers' terms. (Think lead generation.)
3. Sophisticated invitation-only social networking tools allow buyers control who they let into their networks. Think buddy list for B2B. By the way, this isn't for liver-spotted white males over the age of 40. This is for the mypsace-wielding set coming out of school now and getting their first jobs, quite used to social networking in school, and willing to use such tools for work.
Some links that I've been reading/listening to and finding interesting, in support of the above:
The social customer blog
The Clue Implementation unit -- a hands-on podcast about connecting customers, communities, and business.
The E-Sourcing Forum blog.
And more. Will continue to share new things I find.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Attack of the spiders
As anyone who runs a Web site knows, up to two-thirds of the raw unfiltered traffic is from spiders and robots. Penton's Eric Shanfelt wrote an excellent post on how publishers may inadvertently (or intentionally) inflate their traffic by including these numbers.
We all must struggle with ways to filter out this activity, either by filtering IP address, user agent, domain, or even usage pattern (hitting the same page on the site 1,000 times in a minute, for example).
The better software gives us tools to handle this. But I find even so, the spiders always seem one step ahead. We now have begun to see spiders filling out forms on our site. In January, we saw a huge spike, and before I succumbed mutual back slapping around these hallowed halls about how successful we are, I did a little digging. Turns out 100% of the increase is from direct, non-referral sources. I.e., Google, Yahoo, MSN referrals are the same. I doubt a huge chunk of people would suddenly type the urls of our web sites into their browsers.
Digging deeper, I saw ample evidence of robotic activity (hitting the same 4-year-old article hundreds of times, for example). What's weird is, when I looked at the IP address range, there was literally no pattern. There were hundreds of different IP addresses. A whois revealed they all resolve to the same entity, further confirming suspicions.
While our analytics vendor (we use Unica's NetTracker, which I like better than others I've tried) is struggling to advise me on how to deal with this, it seems to me the best solution is to simply exclude all traffic that doesn't accept cookies, since as far as I have observed, spiders don't accept cookies (today, anyway).
Unica feels this would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but I'm not so sure. You pretty much need cookies enabled to do ANYTHING useful on most Web sites today.
Too severe? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Signed,
Tired of fighting spiders and robots
We all must struggle with ways to filter out this activity, either by filtering IP address, user agent, domain, or even usage pattern (hitting the same page on the site 1,000 times in a minute, for example).
The better software gives us tools to handle this. But I find even so, the spiders always seem one step ahead. We now have begun to see spiders filling out forms on our site. In January, we saw a huge spike, and before I succumbed mutual back slapping around these hallowed halls about how successful we are, I did a little digging. Turns out 100% of the increase is from direct, non-referral sources. I.e., Google, Yahoo, MSN referrals are the same. I doubt a huge chunk of people would suddenly type the urls of our web sites into their browsers.
Digging deeper, I saw ample evidence of robotic activity (hitting the same 4-year-old article hundreds of times, for example). What's weird is, when I looked at the IP address range, there was literally no pattern. There were hundreds of different IP addresses. A whois revealed they all resolve to the same entity, further confirming suspicions.
While our analytics vendor (we use Unica's NetTracker, which I like better than others I've tried) is struggling to advise me on how to deal with this, it seems to me the best solution is to simply exclude all traffic that doesn't accept cookies, since as far as I have observed, spiders don't accept cookies (today, anyway).
Unica feels this would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but I'm not so sure. You pretty much need cookies enabled to do ANYTHING useful on most Web sites today.
Too severe? Would love to hear your thoughts.
Signed,
Tired of fighting spiders and robots
Thursday, February 01, 2007
My obsession with frameworks
Lately I have been obsessing over software frameworks. I will borrow the excellent lay definition provided by Prescott Shibles, my counterpart over at Prism (now Prism/Penton, or really, Penton):
Also good reading is Paul Conley's post on open source CMS's, with some good comments from the B2B media peanut gallery.
I have now started a framework collection, which I'd love feedback on from the B2B publishing community. Which do you use? Which ones am I missing, that I should add to my collection?
Let me explain...the astute reader will note that my last post to this blog was over a year ago. That's because I was sucked into software development hell. Three vendors, tens of thousands of dollars in the toilet, and a boatload of broken promises later, I have emerged with successfully relaunched Web sites, Packworld.com and AutomationWorld.com, built on the Joomla open-source CMS. This is after a well-known vendor in the B2B space failed, after nearly 15 months, to deliver anything, with their proprietary "enterprise" solution. Another well-known vendor in the space charged lots of dough for consulting and then told us the obvious.
Thought all the charlatans were flushed out of the system during the dot com boom? Think again. They live and thrive. Beware!
M29, a small, nimble, West-coast development shop was able to haul my sorry keister out of the fire and deliver a working full-blown Web site in 7 weeks, with another one delivered 3 weeks behind that.
The fact is, I find Web site development to be a messy, unpleasant process.
In the software development world, relying on pre-existing frameworks can speed up the software development process, and ostensibly make it much easier to build a robust Web site, or increasingly, web-based application.
Publishers need to learn what software product developers already know, by building software in a way that's fast and flexible, without falling apart at the seams every time the requirements change.
Feel free to comment on this post with your horror story, or success story, in the use of application frameworks for developing Web sites and Web applications. Let's all be a little wiser, and spend less time developing software, and more time serving our readers and advertisers with great products.
An application framework, for those of you non-techies, is a toolset that enables rapid application development by automating some common needs (permissioning, data entry/modification/deletion/configuration). It helps you get a custom app to market much faster than traditionally possible.This comes from a dialog on Prescott and I have been having on how Prism/Penton is leveraging open source content management systems, and more importantly, software frameworks, for building Web sites.
Also good reading is Paul Conley's post on open source CMS's, with some good comments from the B2B media peanut gallery.
I have now started a framework collection, which I'd love feedback on from the B2B publishing community. Which do you use? Which ones am I missing, that I should add to my collection?
Let me explain...the astute reader will note that my last post to this blog was over a year ago. That's because I was sucked into software development hell. Three vendors, tens of thousands of dollars in the toilet, and a boatload of broken promises later, I have emerged with successfully relaunched Web sites, Packworld.com and AutomationWorld.com, built on the Joomla open-source CMS. This is after a well-known vendor in the B2B space failed, after nearly 15 months, to deliver anything, with their proprietary "enterprise" solution. Another well-known vendor in the space charged lots of dough for consulting and then told us the obvious.
Thought all the charlatans were flushed out of the system during the dot com boom? Think again. They live and thrive. Beware!
M29, a small, nimble, West-coast development shop was able to haul my sorry keister out of the fire and deliver a working full-blown Web site in 7 weeks, with another one delivered 3 weeks behind that.
The fact is, I find Web site development to be a messy, unpleasant process.
In the software development world, relying on pre-existing frameworks can speed up the software development process, and ostensibly make it much easier to build a robust Web site, or increasingly, web-based application.
Publishers need to learn what software product developers already know, by building software in a way that's fast and flexible, without falling apart at the seams every time the requirements change.
Feel free to comment on this post with your horror story, or success story, in the use of application frameworks for developing Web sites and Web applications. Let's all be a little wiser, and spend less time developing software, and more time serving our readers and advertisers with great products.
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