"Everything we're doing is about increasing engagement on publisher content," says Livefyre CEO Jordan Kretchmer. By drawing in conversations from where they're happening on the social Web, Livefyre sites will become the hubs of conversation about their own content again. People who prefer to chat on social networks can still be involved, but sites will still benefit from those conversations on their own pages. Twitter and Facebook are built in at launch, and Google Plus is coming soon.

The most important SocialSync feature for publishers is the automatic capturing of related comments on outside networks. When anyone shares or talks about an article on Facebook or Twitter, the comment thread on the article itself will automatically grab that comment and pull it in.

Twitter conversations are particularly hard to capture. Not only do they fly by in real time, they're scattered and incomplete. Many sites, ourselves included, love to use Storify to curate tweets manually, but the torrent of tweets can be too much to manage sometimes. Livefyre's new features can reduce that burden by grabbing related tweets automatically.

Facebook and Google Plus - which Kretchmer says is coming to Livefyre soon - are great for threaded conversations, but for that very reason, important conversations happen on those networks totally outside the confines of the original site. Those conversations represent huge value for publishers, and SocialSync will help sites that use Livefyre recapture it.

Kretchmer says the Livefyre database tracks the different sources of the comments underneath. To simplify the interface, Livefyre displays only one total number of comments. For comment threads themselves, publishers have a choice: they can separate out Twitter and Facebook comments from the on-page blog comments, or they can have one unified stream with just a small indicator of a comment's source.

The overall design of the commenting system can be styled to the publisher site. Kretchmer also says the system works "perfectly" on mobile sites. Real-time comment streaming, sign-in and sign-up through Livefyre or other social networks, and all its other desktop features work fine on mobile as well.

SocialSync is good for content strategy, because it will make the article page a more definitive location for users and search engines alike. But it's also good for community. It will take away that lonely feeling of coming to a blog post and seeing 0 comments. Kretchmer says that Livefyre helps publishers vastly increase the volume of comments and shares, creating valuable engagement between readers and staff, as well as driving traffic and increasing relevance to search.

Comments Are Part of the Story

Social networks have tried to provide this service themselves. Facebook offers a third-party commenting system, but it's not gaining much traction, and Twitter offers a range of resources to add value to publisher sites. But commenting services like Disqus - which we use here at RWW - and Livefyre let sites and their users use whatever channels they want for their conversations. Livefyre 2.0 and SocialSync will be great for publishers who want conversations to flourish without getting away from the stories that start them.

What makes a good comment thread? Start one here, and let's discuss!

But according to some publishers, if libraries start lending e-books, it could serve to "undo the entire market for e-book sales." Those were the words of Stephen Page, CEO of the publisher Faber and Faber who spoke last month at a library conference in the U.K. and announced the Publisher Association's new stance on e-book lending via libraries.

He told those present that "all the major trade publishers have agreed to work with aggregators to make it possible for libraries to offer e-book lending" with the addition of certain "controls." These controls would require library patrons to be onsite in order to access the e-books. And furthermore, libraries will only be able to lend one copy of an e-book to one individual at any given time. Why, it's almost as if digitizing books did not free them from their physical confines.

These restrictions hamper the access of those who cannot visit libraries in order to read books - the homebound and the disabled, for example. They make the process of interlibrary loan impossible. And honestly, they seem a little absurd. But these policies - both for personal and library lending - echo the sorts of restrictions that DRM has long demanded around music and movie sharing, and they come with the same sort of doom-and-gloom predictions should people be able to share content freely.

Looking for (DRM-Free) Alternatives

But not all publishers are on board with this idea. Springer Verlag recently announced that it would make its e-books available without DRM restrictions to institutional purchases. "Libraries buy direct from us and they own the content," says the publisher's director of channel marketing George Scotti. "Once users download content, they can give it out, share, whatever. They own it. Some of our competitors are afraid to do this, but we say, free the content."

Challenging the publishing industry's attachment to DRM, in an article this weekend in the Guardian, Simon Barron contends that "Applying physical paradigms to digital commodities shows a lack of digital understanding. Cory Doctorow argues that trying to control digital copies of work on the internet is 'a fool's errand: that digital works require different models for control, distribution and profit. The price for trading in digital commodities is to accept the nature of digital commodities: they can be copied, they are accessible virtually anywhere, and that physical restrictions do not and cannot apply."

Libraries of the Future: Lending E-Books and E-Readers

Whether or not they can access DRM-free content from publishers, Some libraries are adapting. Recognizing the growing demand for e-books, they are pursuing not just the lending programs for e-books but those for e-readers as well, in order to help their patrons access material digitally. While the Terms of Service say you can't share your account information on the devices, the Library Journal suggests that Amazon may be simply turning a blind eye to the enforcement around this.

Libraries will have to embrace digital books to stay relevant to readers looking for books. Of course libraries' relevance involves much more than simply being a repository for books, e- or otherwise. Libraries are community centers. They are places where people can access not just literature and the latest magazines, but also find Internet access and computer stations.

It's worth noting too, that despite the great role that libraries play in literacy and in the preservation of literature, they are only a small part of the buying market for books - less than 4% by Faber and Faber's own admission. So to say that allowing libraries to lend e-books will destroy the publishing industry seems - excuse my literary reference here - a bit of a tall tale.

You're probably know about the AddThis button even if you don't realize it - it's the orange "Share" button that's nearly ubiquitous across the Web these days. Acquired by the widget creation platform company Clearspring in late 2008, the button was already the most popular of its kind on the Web. The acquisition, said Clearspring, would allow AddThis to reach 300,000 publishers. That number has long since been surpassed. Today, AddThis is installed on 1.5 million websites.

Implementing the button is easy, which is partially why it's been so successful. It's also incredibly easy for the end user to access as well.

From the company's website, publishers need only select their service and style of button in order to get embed code ready for copying-and-pasting onto any website or blog. Those who choose to register with the service can also get built in analytics, too.

What's New?

Prior to today, however, AddThis was not well-designed for mobile use and touchscreens, which is what makes this new release all that more exciting for dedicated mobile users like ourselves. On many websites, it's been more difficult than need be to find an easy way to tweet a link to an article we just read or post a link to Facebook, for example. More often than not, the link simply wouldn't get shared if the publisher didn't have some kind of built in, touchscreen-enabled tool for doing so already installed.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, one less link posted to Twitter is not a major issue, but it did make the mobile Web feel more clunky and less developed than its desktop counterpart.

AddThis aims to change that with the button's new mobile functionality, which automatically opens Web browser windows for you, with default (but still editable) text filled in. (And don't worry, there's no auto-tweeting/sharing here!) It also now integrates with the built-in email clients on the mobile devices themselves, allowing you to privately share the link with a friend whose address is stored in your contacts list instead of publicly broadcasting it to the Web.

Try it Now: No Code Update Needed

You can see the demonstrations of the new AddThis in these two YouTube videos here and here.

Alternately, you can try AddThis yourself by tapping the "Share" button below this post from your mobile device. We didn't even have to update our code to make this happen - it just works.

This is only one of the many upcoming "new features, experiments and products that help to tackle the problem of mobile sharing," reports Clearspring's Justin Thorp via email. Dare we hope for dedicated native apps next?

The latest version of social news site Digg is currently in restricted beta, with an additional 20,000 users added at the beginning of July. The new version adds the ability to "follow" people or publishers via a feature called "My News." This will be the default Digg home page, and it's prompted many to compare the new Digg to Twitter and Facebook. Another big change is that publishers may now automatically submit their content. This changes the game for both power users and publishers, because previously the secret to getting onto the Digg front page was for a power user to submit the story. That's no longer the case.

Up till now, the definition of a "power user" on Digg has been someone with the ability to make stories popular simply by submitting content or "digging" it up. There was also a lot of back-scratching that happened behind the scenes among both power users and publishers: 'You digg my content, I'll digg yours.' Digg has attracted a lot of criticism in the past for these practices inside its community.

Simply put, Digg's power users wielded a lot of power because they dictated which publishers got pushed onto the Digg homepage. Digg is a large source of traffic for publishers, particularly tech news publications. In the past, tech sites like Ars Technica and Engadget have received a hugely disproportionate number of Digg frontpages, compared to other tech sites, since they were favored by power users.

With the new Digg, publishers may opt in to having their articles auto-submitted to Digg via RSS feed. But will this stop the gaming?

How The New Digg Affects Power Users

We spoke to Digg power user JD Rucker, a.k.a. oboy on Digg, to discuss the impact of Digg's changes on his community.

Rucker recently wrote a post entitled The New Digg: A Shift in the Balance of Power, which argued that "the new Digg will make many current 'power users' impotent" but also create opportunities for new types of power users.

In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, JD Rucker explained that "rather than submit [articles], current long-time power users will be able to expose content that they like through their Diggs."

This list of diggs is similar to a list of daily tweets, since people follow what the power user diggs. It's also similar to Facebook, because other users may 'like' what they digg by digging it too.

The idea, said Rucker, is that the power users who succeed at attracting followers will become "tastemakers" - which is the term Digg founder Kevin Rose used when he announced the new Digg in May.

What Happens Behind The Scenes

Many people aren't aware of the amount of "gaming the system" which goes on in the social Web. I consider myself fairly naive about a lot of it. But I know this much: despite the altruistic front of many successful people in the social Web, many of them have gamed their way to the top.

The following is how JD Rucker explained how Digg's power users will (or won't) adjust to the new Digg. It also reveals the power games that are played on the site:

"They [power users] can still network via IM and control publisher accounts to keep themselves relevant, but the vast majority will fail miserably because they won't be able to adjust to the new algo[rithm]. They'll spam, spam, and spam some more until they either give up and move on to other sites or abort operations altogether.

Others are already planning on leaving.

The "savvy" ones who have built-up networks not reliant on IM, [and] who will also have access to multiple and/or strong publisher accounts, will soar."

I asked Rucker what he meant by "control publisher accounts." He replied with this generic example: "Bob Power User, who is getting paid by RandomDiggDependentSite.com, is currently using his and his team's power user accounts to submit." Rucker described this as "a small cottage industry."

That's right, some power users control publisher Digg accounts. This practice will continue on the new Digg.

A Whole New Ballgame: Let The Games Begin...

We like to write about how wonderful the social Web is and how it has improved society and business. That's certainly true, but the Web is also big business, and it is ruthlessly gamed by many social media 'pundits' and publishers alike. The new Digg is partly an attempt to clean up some of that on its site by preventing its power users from controlling the submission of content.

JD Rucker stated in his post that the new Digg showed "guts" because it is such a big change. I agree. The new Digg cleverly mimics Twitter and Facebook, becoming a place where you can 'follow' influencers and publishers to get your daily news fix. What's more, power users now have the opportunity to attract large followings, which is a chance for some of them to become influential personalities.

However, the new Digg won't stop the games of power users and the publishers who glom onto them. There's too much (online) power and money at stake. It's game on again!

Follow ReadWriteWeb on the new Digg

Rose says these new features play into the hands of publishers because the viral aspect of sharing stories with friends will help stories achieve higher digg counts. If one person diggs a story, it shows up on the homepages of their followers, and if they digg it, the process continues. To make the process of getting articles online even simpler, publishers can now claim their RSS feeds and automatically publish their content on Digg without having to visit the site.

These changes and additions may be just what the doctor ordered for Digg which has had to continually delay these updates. Personally the preview looks pretty slick, and may actually bring me back to using Digg on a more regular basis. Check our Rose's video below and let us know what you think in the comments.

The bits of this platform bring together the visions of a social, personalized and semantic Web that have been discussed since del.icio.us pioneered Web 2.0 back in 2004. Facebook's vision is both minimalistic and encompassing - but its ambition is to kill off its competition and use 500 million users to take over entire Web.

Facebook Open Graph: Publisher Plugins

The Open Graph is a set combination of publisher plugins, semantic markup and a developer API.

Login with Faces & Facepile: The simpler publisher plugins enhance Facebook Connect. They makes it easy and compelling to sign in by leveraging Facebook cookies and showing faces of Facebook friends who are already members of the service.

Like Button and Like Box: These plugins add the liking feature to any content, typically the whole page. Both can be enhanced with semantic markup, described below. But the very basic intent for these is to get users to Like on the site and post a link to Facebook, which is then permanently stored on a user's profile and points back to the original site.

Activity Feed and Live Stream: These plugins show static and dynamic activity on the site. Activity Feed lists recent likes and comments from the site, while Live Stream shows a real-time view of activity on the site and is intended for interactive events.

Recommendations: This plugin surfaces personalized recommendations for the user based on what friends and everyone else is liking on the site. It is intended to drive the users to other pages on the site.

Facebook Open Graph: Semantic Markup

Facebook announced simple, RDF-based markup to make the plugins smarter. In a nutshell, the markup enables publishers to say what object is on the page - a movie, a book, a recording artist, an event, a sports team, etc. This automatically enables semantics, that is, an understanding that the user is not just interacting with a webpage, but that he or she is liking a specific kind of thing. Semantics then leads to bucketing of the objects into categories like books, movies, music, etc., and gives rise to all sort of applications, including personalized recommendations.

Perhaps even more importantly, the markup helps Facebook connect the users across common interests across different websites. For example, if both Pandora and Last.fm annotate a page about The Beatles using Facebook's markup, then users will be able to see their friends, who like the Beatles across different sites. This is very significant, because the data around friends is sparse and scattered around the sites. Previously, Facebook would surface this data in the stream without persisting it. Now, the information about a friend's likes of movies, music, books, recording artists, events, sports team, etc. will be permanent on Facebook profiles and readily available in context around the Web.

Facebook Open Graph: New API

The new Facebook API is elegant and streamlined. It makes it easy to access user information (with permission of course) such as profile, friends, etc. All of the calls are REST based and return JSON objects. For example, my profile information can be fetched like this: http://graph.facebook.com/alexiskold. The authentication is based on OAuth 2.0 protocol and makes it simple not only to connect, but to also prompt for permissions to access user information.

This new API turns Facebook into a read/write storage of users' tastes. And not just one user - all Facebook users.

Implications for the Users

With this release, Facebook asks users if they are willing to trade off privacy for personalization. To be clear, no personalization is ever possible without users telling a system about their tastes. What Facebook is asking for is necessary in order to then create personalized Web experience. Whether users want this sort of thing is a different question, but assuming that you want to know more about your friends you will.

Friends' interests around entertainment, sports, travel, etc. will be categorized and available. It will be easy to figure out what your friends are into both on Facebook and around the Web. In addition, Facebook is going to be using its own engine to bring you recommendations for related content. This will further accelerate the discovery and cross linking between friends. This will likely further impact the amount of search people do around the Web. As Fred Wilson pointed out - passed links replace search.

Yet, the crux of user implications is neither of the above, but one single issue: privacy. It is unclear at this point that this issue is a concern for actual Facebook users, but it is clear that tech world is raising its eyebrows: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Dave Winer, Jeff Jarvis and many others expressed their concerns. People are saying that not only Facebook will know too much about us (because Google is already there today), but that it will be able to control too much.

Personally, I am skeptical that the average Facebook user is going to care all that much. People are notoriously naive about being watched on the Web, and this is likely to be no exception. More likely than not, Facebook users will enjoy the personalization aspects of the new platform and won't think much about it - until Facebook starts openly targeting them.

This was not been part of f8 of course, but Facebook is likely to use the information for targeting. After all, advertising is a major part of its monetization already so why won't it make it even better? If this targeting is too spot on, lots of users will probably get annoyed. Facebook is likely to sooth them via Facebook credits and heavy discounts, negotiated because of their massive volume.

How exactly users react remains to be seen, but they will probably like the new Facebook more because of increased relevancy and interaction with friends around the Web.

Implications for Publishers

On the surface, this Facebook offering is a no-brainer for publishers. Who does not want more social activity on their site? However, in reality this is far from a slam dunk. To understand why, consider two types of sites: sites that are either social networks or have social networking integrated, and the sites that have their own commenting and ratings systems. In the first camp you will find Last.fm, Flixster, Goodreads, etc. None of these sites were a launch partner, understandably so. Social connections around music, movies and books are their bread and butter as are the ratings, reviews and recommendations. If they switch to Facebook for all of this, what do they have left?

So any site that already has social networking built in has to decide to abandon that before jumping into the Facebook Open Graph. The even worse problem is the ownership of ratings and comments. Are publishers really ready to give that up? Nobody seriously thinks that users are going to be rating through Facebook and then through the site again. So how is this going to work? It is unclear at this point, but it's likely publishers will ask for ways to replicate or export comments and likes that users sent to Facebook via their site. Perhaps an open API that allows publishers to manipulate the data is the answer, but it is easy to see how some publishers would be very concerned.

However, if you run a website like eCommerce or a blog or a service like Pandora that currently does not have a lot of social built-in, this offering is a no-brainer as it will instantly start recycling your pages through the massive Facebook power of passed links.

Implications for Competitors

This is aggressive and brilliant move by Facebook - and Twitter, Google, Yahoo, MySpace, AOL, eBay, Amazon and others, except for Microsoft, should be really worried. It appears that Microsoft is content with just partnering with Facebook, perhaps rightly so. Possibly a Bing deal is in the works, which would make a lot of sense.

For all other players on the Web, the worry is that Facebook is trying to close the loop in exclusively owning user eyeballs. Apparently Facebook is not content with just connecting people; it wants to connect people and things. And not only that, it wants to do it around the Web. And not just any people - friends. You don't need to look too closely to see that Facebook is creating a feedback loop, which includes it, users and the rest of the Web and excludes its competitors.

There are several things that other big players might try to do, the worst of which is to try to mimic Facebook. The "me too" that we've seen way too many times recently has not worked, and will not work now. The second best choice is to try to block it. As strange as it sounds it might just work. Between publisher and user issues there are a lot of concerns, and a carefully orchestrated and coordinated campaign may seriously hurt this initiative. Remember, Beacon was brought down fairly quickly by a combination of user backlash and derogatory press.

The third option - to embrace and extend this platform, to innovate on top of it - is likely to be the best move. Innovation has always trumped stagnation on the Web. The problem is that it might not be that easy to embrace this initiative. After all, it does not look like Facebook asked everyone to gather around the table and cooperate on this. It might not be open to cooperation, but if it is then this is the way forward.

Technically speaking, what Facebook has done is elegant and correct. From markup, to plugins, to API, all of it is modern and awesome. The missing bit is that Facebook appears to be the only repository of data in this equation - and that makes the whole offering seriously closed. Publishers and users don't have a choice as to where to store the data. It is going to Facebook and Facebook alone. Perhaps there is a way to rework the system in a way that fixes that. We will look forward to see how this unfolds.

Implications for Facebook

Clearly this announcement is yet another turning point for Facebook. Before the conference Facebook was the biggest social network on the planet. If its vision actually happens, Facebook will be the biggest network of people and things on the planet- or to put it differently, it will be the taste graph of the planet.

Obviously there is a different technology that Facebook will need to be building. It already perfected the social networking part, but semantic analysis, recommendation systems, vertical categories like movies and books, as well as having completely open read/write storage of tastes is completely new to the team. The biggest challenge that Facebook will face is to inject, re-deliver and most importantly make use of the data that is flowing into it.

Facebook will be doing some serious number crunching and UI revamps to prepare for this next phase of its life. But perhaps the biggest experiment and test will be delivering relevancy. Google succeed with this in search; Facebook will now have the challenge to bring relevancy to the recommendations and taste-based advertising arena.

Implications For the Semantic Web

One of the most exciting parts of the Facebook announcement to me personally is the possible breakthrough in semanticizing the Web. We've written previously about the Semantic Web here, and it has been a personal passion of mine. What Facebook has done has a chance to make vast parts of the consumer Web including movies, books, music, events, sports, and news semantically tagged. Publishers and websites finally have a strong incentive to mark things up and get return traffic from Facebook.

The actual protocol that Facebook suggested is very simple. To describe the object on the page, the site owner needs to specify the title, type of the object, image, url and the name of the site using simple meta tags. The format is extensible and additional tags can be added. For example, for a book a site can add an isbn number. This format leaves room for ambiguity. The goal of classic semantic markups traditionally has been to refer to entities precisely; for example adding the director to a movie, or a year to remakes. The Facebook protocol does not seem to have this.

There were lots of previous efforts to markup the Web. To name a few, RDF, microformats, Google Rich Snippets, Yahoo's Search Monkey (based on RDF and microformats), and lastly, abmeta, which was developed by me with help from Peter Mika at Yahoo. Of all these formats, Facebook's is most similar to abmeta because the markup is placed into meta tags, and is simple and human readable. This simplicity is the key to broad adoption.

So all around, this is a great chance for the Semantic Web to finally hit consumer verticals and become real.

Implications for Developers

Every new rich platform that has been rolled out in the past couple of years presented a big opportunity for developers and this one will be no exception. While we do not know exactly what sort of applications will be build on top of new Facebook, we know that they will be very powerful. This platform has the potential to give rise to to new kind of personalization and attention economy that people have been talking about for years. It has of course, a chance to majorly backfire, but I am optimistic.

This will be a gold rush for application that is likely to last for at least a year, like the last one did. It's too early to tell whether this will be a platform that survives and does not hurt is participants. However, it is very likely that the best applications built on this platform will be owned by Facebook. Still, there is a huge new opportunity here for developers and the sky is the limit.

Checkmate?

Facebook made a major chess move. It might have checkmated its competitors, or perhaps it might have to lose another piece like it lost Beacon. Whichever is the case, right now there are deep implications for Facebook and its competitors, publishers, users and the Web at large. What Facebook has announced cannot be ignored and can not be undone. Everyone needs to figure out the next steps and understand what to do.

Time will tell where we land, but my gut is that positive things will come out of this. If nothing else, let's give Facebook credit for innovation and re-imagination the Web.

According to this study, sales of digital textbooks will increase 100% year-over-year in 2010 and the continue to grow rapidly for the years to come.

Factors in Favor of Digital Textbooks

Pricing, as the authors note, is a major factor that will make digital textbooks more interesting for students, who often spend hundreds of dollars per semester on textbooks. Flat World Knowledge, for example, offers its e-textbooks for free and only charges students for the print versions. Currently, teachers at over 400 colleges use Flat World Knowledge's textbooks for their courses. Other e-textbook companies like CourseSmart and MBS Direct also saw very strong growth in their sales last year.

Other factors in favor of digital textbooks include the increasing availability (and affordability) of e-book readers and netbooks, as well as the move towards the ePub publishing standard for e-books. It is also important to note that textbooks publishers have long seen digital textbooks as way to shut down the market for used textbooks, which accounts for close to 35% of the textbook market today and which - of course - doesn't earn these publishers a single dollar.

What Will these E-Textbooks Looks Like?

It will be interesting to see what these textbooks will look like. Thanks to new initiatives from Wolfram Alpha and other data and service providers, interactive textbooks could soon replace static texts. The problem there, of course, is that these textbooks are more expensive to produce than today's textbooks. The lower cost of digital distribution and the publisher's ability to cut out the middlemen (distributors, campus bookstores etc.) will help to offset some or all of these additional costs.

You can find the full report here]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/digital_textbooks_set_to_capture_almost_20_of_the_market_by_2014.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/digital_textbooks_set_to_capture_almost_20_of_the_market_by_2014.php E-Books Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:02:09 -0800 Frederic Lardinois Video platform provider Brightcove just announced the launch of a new tool for website publishers called the "Brightcove Experience Framework for HTML5." The framework allows the company's 1,300 customers create HTML5-compatible websites for delivering video content to Apple mobile devices, including the upcoming slate computer known as the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

There has been a lot of debate about the move to HTML5 for Web video support, an area previously dominated by Adobe Flash and its accompanying Web browser plugin. Some publishers claim making the switch is a burden while others, most notably Apple CEO Steve Jobs, say the move is "trivial." The truth, says Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire, is that "it depends." For some publishers using homegrown video solutions, building a new HTML5 website is indeed hard work, but for customers using platform solutions (like his, of course), the transition is much easier.

"Transition" might be the wrong word for describing the launch of HTML5-enabled websites like those said to be coming from NPR, the Wall St. Journal, and apparently, CBS. Companies aren't just creating a new HTML5 website and discarding the older version - they're creating a second website to complement the first. And both websites will run side-by-side for years, says Allaire. He, of anyone, should know. Now the CEO and founder of Brightcove, Allaire's background includes a stint at Macromedia as the company's CTO prior to its acquisition by Adobe. While there, he actually helped build the original Flash platform.

Brightcove Aims to Close Gap Between Flash, HTML5 Feature Sets

The device driving the adoption of the upcoming Web standard known as HTML5, the core markup language used to create the pages of the World Wide Web, is the Apple iPad. Like its smaller mobile siblings, the iPhone and iPod Touch, the iPad won't support the Adobe Flash plugin.

Flash has long been a staple on the Web for things like video content, online ads and even casual games, but for various technological and political reasons, Apple does not support it on its mobile devices. According to Apple's CEO Steve Jobs, this isn't an issue, since creating websites using HTML5 technology is "trivial." To some extent, that's an accurate statement. Allaire confirms that at its most basic form, preparing a video and putting it on a webpage using HTML5 is not a difficult process.

The problem is that video publishers have come to expect more than just a simple video player like that what's offered via HTML5 in its current state. They're used to options like branded players, analytics, social media integrations, advanced player controls and other currently Flash-only options supported by Adobe's technology. Brightcove, however, aims to catch up with Adobe's feature set over the course of the year. At launch time, its HTML5 video player will support basic playback, auto device detection and H.264 encoding. In three months, more features will be added including "robust templates" to replace the basic ones available now, viewership reporting, advertising and more. And by the close of 2010, the company will offer publishers complete analytics, advertising and engagement features.

However, even when HTML5 video players reach a place where they're on par with what Adobe Flash can do, it will be years before publishers can discard their Flash-based websites. According to Allaire, the issue is that the percentage of Web browsers that support HTML5 is "tiny," and those that do so haven't yet settled on one video codec as the default. Until there's uniformity in the implementation of HTML5 video, publishers who need to reach 100% of their Web audience will offer multiple versions of their websites, dependent on what device, browser and operating system is in use by their website visitors.

The HTML5 Transition: A Burden on Publishers?

There is a lot of debate as to the burden created by the transition to HTML5 by media publishers. Some argue that the move is not difficult, time-consuming or expensive - and anyone claiming otherwise is spreading "FUD," (aka "fear, uncertainty and doubt"), a term used by tech geeks to deride these types of complaints as being non-substantive. Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs, reportedly trivialized publishers' concerns using, in fact, that very word ("trivial") ) when demonstrating the iPad to Wall St. Journal staff earlier this year.

On the flip side, others, including a number of media publishers who recently complained to Silicon Alley gossip and news site Gawker, say the argument has merit.

Where does Brightcove, then, stand on this issue? Allaire says that it depends on the video platform the Web publishers in question currently use. If they're on Brightcove or a similar platform solution, creating sites with HTML5 video content is a "publish once" process. However, those who have developed homegrown video publishing systems over the years will face more challenges. Lest you think this group includes just small-time players, Allaire rattled off a number of big names who do just that, including Disney, ABC, CBS, Yahoo and MSN.

HTML5 Solutions Abound

Allaire can't say how many of the company's 1,300 customers are planning their own iPad-ready sites since the tool was only made available to its publishers today. (Time and the NYT were the only publishers involved in the pre-release tests.) However, he can confirm that there is high demand from the company's customers, even saying that "almost all of the consumer-facing brands," specifically news magazines and TV brands, wanted a tool like this in order to create iPad-ready sites.

Brightcove isn't the only company to meet this growing need, either. Competitor Ooyala beat Brightcove to the punch in terms of being the first to announce iPad integration with its video platform, but Allaire said he can't compare their offering to his because the announcement on their end was "too vague." Outside of video platform solutions, projects like Jilion's Sublime Video will also allow publishers to create HTML5 video experiences while falling back to Flash for unsupported Web browsers. However, this solution doesn't - as least for now - offer all the features Brightcove says it will have in place by year-end.

When the iPad launches April 3, there will undoubtedly be a number of HTML5-ready websites ready for the new computing platform. But those that don't offer the same won't be in any immediate trouble for their decision (except for perhaps receiving a bit of bad press). Although the iPad is expected to land in the hands of a solid million or so users by the end of the first quarter, that pales in comparison to the 500 million broadband PC users who visit sites on a desktop-based Web. That being said, there's no doubt that Apple's choice to forgo Flash will impact the Web and the Web publishing industry for years to come.

Disclosure: The New York Times syndicates ReadWriteWeb content.

The Fliptop service is available in two formats - one designed for website publishers and another designed for web surfers. The first provides an embeddable button that publishers can add to their site. When clicked, this button prompts the user as to which topics they want to follow. A sports site could set it up so fans could just check boxes next to their favorite team names, for instance. Another option below the checkboxes lets you further refine the content you choose by keyword filters. So, here on ReadWriteWeb.com, for example, you could follow news about "mobile, real-time web, apple" etc. (Keywords are separated by commas).

After picking your options, you click "Next" and then choose how you want to be alerted - either via a traditional RSS feed or by email, Twitter, Facebook, or SMS text. If choosing the email option, you can even configure how often you want to be alerted - once per day, once a week or immediately.

For Consumers

However, you don't have to rely on publishers to begin using Fliptop before you can try it. A browser bookmarklet is available which lets you drag-and-drop a Fliptop button to your web browser's bookmarks. Click the new "Subscribe" button it creates when you're on any page that has an RSS feed (look for the orange icon in the address bar of your browser). When clicked, you can configure how you want to follow that site. At the moment, your only options here are email or RSS.

The service is simple, incredibly easy to use and useful for anyone who feels overwhelmed by their news feeds. (Gadget blog readers, rejoice! This product is perfect for you!).

The only downside to the service as it stands right now is that it requires you to fill out CAPTCHAs when signing up. These spam blocking tools force you to type in the blurry words you see into a text box before confirming your subscription. And if requesting an email subscription, you then have to click yet another confirmation sent to you via email to assure Fliptop that you really did want to subscribe. We appreciate that the company is looking out for us, but two confirmations is at least one too many for what should be a speedier service, in our opinion.

Will Fliptop Make Website Subscriptions More Mainstream?

The real question now is whether something like Fliptop will encourage more people to follow a website's content via an automated mechanism, be it a customized, filtered RSS feed or an email digest. The idea of subscribing to a website directly via an RSS feed is one that, for whatever reason, never quite caught on with the general public. However, those same folks probably use RSS without even knowing it - like when they follow their favorite blog on Facebook, for example. The updates they track there are, in most cases, automated via RSS technology.

Fliptop could potentially reach these same sort of non-technical users too, thanks to its simple terminology (publisher buttons say "follow" not "subscribe"), a clean layout and easily understandable filtering options. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see if any web publishers pick this up and place it on their site.

But cracks are appearing in AdSense. AdSense is 30% of Google's revenue, so this matters. Any weakness in AdSense is important for Google's investors as well as advertisers, publishers, users, and entrepreneurs.

AdSense was a runaway success because it met the needs of online publishers, advertisers, and users all at once:

• Publishers could get revenue simply by pasting a widget on their website.
• Advertisers could extend their performance-based search-driven advertising, which they already knew and liked, across the Web.
• Users began to see ads that actually made sense in the context of what they were reading, and many of the ads came from smaller advertisers whose products and services would not have otherwise reached them.

But each of these constituents is starting to see problems with AdSense. Let's start with publishers.

Publishers

BtoB Magazine published an article on June 5th titled "Declining revenue has publishers rethinking Google AdSense." It quotes many B2B publishers who echo the conclusion that revenue from AdSense is no longer meaningful to them, that it does not "move the needle." This is less a reflection of AdSense's decline than the fact that traditional publishers have gotten smarter about how to sell advertising online. They have had to. Print is in decline, and the Internet is their only hope. Getting some "spare change" from AdSense may have been okay in the past, but they need a lot more now. Plenty of good alternatives exist on other advertising networks, and publishers are getting a lot smarter, too, about selling directly to their consumers.

Who cares about traditional B2B publishers that are migrating online, you say? What about those big native-online publishers? Well, Facebook just hired the guy who masterminded AdSense, but don't expect too see AdSense ads there. Rupert Murdoch wouldn't like to be thrown scraps of revenue for MySpace with a partner that makes all the rules. And one couldn't imagine Twitter pasting AdSense ads on its network. What large online publisher could get a meaningful amount of its revenue from AdSense?

Back in around 2006, all you needed to do to get VC funding was build a website that got user traction. "What about revenue?" they'd ask. "AdSense," you'd say. "Okay, then, here's the term sheet." Anybody try that with a VC lately?

Ah, so it's all about the long tail, right? Yes, a lone blogger has few other options. Everything else takes too much effort. They are not making a living from it, so they are satisfied with "spare change." Many of the alternatives to AdSense seem rather scammy, along the lines of, "Make a lot of money working from home." Google is well respected as a brand, and everyone knows what they'll be getting from AdSense. Don't they?

Actually, most people don't know one very important part of the deal: the percentage of the revenue that the publisher gets. You can parse the data from Google's financial filings in aggregate. But knowing its percentage in aggregate does not matter to a publisher. Google may be giving a great deal to a large publisher with clout. What do you, the little guy, get? You may know how much Google is paying you for the clicks that you generate, but do you know how much the advertisers are paying for those clicks? If you get $100, did advertisers have to pay Google $200? Did you get 50%? Was it only 10%? Maybe Google sold the clicks you generated for $1,000, and you got 10% of it? How would that feel?

To Google and its investors (more about them later) this ability to simply turn a lever and get a bigger percentage of revenue is marvelous. Who would not want that kind of pricing power? But to your average publisher, it seems to violate one of the most basic rules of business: knowing the terms of the deal, knowing who gets what.

The long tail is also where the problem of click fraud is most serious. To protect it, Google will (quite rightly) sue publishers who scam the system. But now publishers are suing back, and winning. This is ugly stuff.

In another murky corner of the Internet are "made for AdSense" sites that scrape other publishers to generate ad clicks. This is also considered click fraud.

So, the long tail looks rather like fishing in a murky bottom, full of nasty catches, and hardly a bright future for a great company like Google.

Advertisers

Hang on. Get real, you say. None of this matters because Google sells more advertising than any other company, and that's all that matters, right? Publishers, big and small, will take whatever Google gives them because Google has advertisers locked up.

Yes, that is true in search. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft, nor any of the myriad of search startups, has made a dent in search advertising. AdWords reigns supreme.

Not so fast, though. First, some perspective. Traditional brand-based advertising is still bigger than search advertising, which is why Google bought DoubleClick. But the current excitement and creativity is centered on social media advertising, and Google is not a player in that game (yet). So, search is only one part of the ad market.

More importantly, AdSense clicks are converted differently than clicks on Google's search page. Getting people to talk about this on the record is hard. Off the record, many advertisers/marketers and ad agencies will tell you that those conversions are not the same.

Conversions matter. Clicks are only the first step in the process of earning revenue. Conversions, either directly into revenue or into something deeper in the conversion funnel, such as a free trial, are what advertisers care about.

Logically, an AdSense click wouldn't convert as well as a click on Google's search page. That ingredient of direct intention on the part of the user is missing. Some advertisers may not be savvy about tracking conversions and will therefore pay the same for both types of clicks. But Google can hardly rely on dumb advertisers for its growth strategy.

Advertisers will pay less for AdSense clicks, then. This could cause AdSense revenue to decline (more on that later). Or instead, Google might "dial back" the percentage it pays out to publishers, which would almost certainly spur the system's decline in a vicious cycle. Smart publisher and smart advertisers would desert AdSense, leaving Google to profit by mediating between dumb publishers and dumb advertisers. Not a good long-term strategy.

And then there is the "brand safety" issue. The keyword approach to contextual relevance can create those ugly mismatches that you occasionally see. You know, like when you see an ad for kitchen knives while reading an article about a vicious stabbing? Readers are only faintly upset or annoyed by it when they notice it, but advertisers consider it a major issue. This is the kind of thing that keeps brand-builders up at night.

Weaker conversions and brand safety issues in search-based advertising will only fuel the excitement and creativity in social media advertising. Is AdSense simply a bottom-fishing volume game?

Why is it hard to get advertisers and their agencies to talk about this on the record? Martin Sorrel, founder and CEO of WPP (the world's largest advertising agency) speaks of Google as a "frenemy." Actually, now he has renamed it a "froe." WPP buys $850 million worth of ads per year from Google, which would normally give WPP a lot of clout with media firms. Yet Google also disintermediates ad agencies. One just buys AdWords ads directly from Google.

The relationship between advertisers and Google is delicate, one that would not be helped by advertisers speaking to journalists on the record about weaknesses in one part of Google's services. Advertisers with clout prefer to negotiate behind closed doors.

Users

The most important person in the AdSense eco-system is the user. As long as the user is clicking and buying, all is well. Publishers and advertisers will both be happy. Users may be buying less now, but that is a simple cyclical issue: we are in a consumer recession. When the economy recovers, AdSense will recover.

Well, maybe. There are three reasons to doubt this:

1. Ad blindness. Advertisers are in an arms race for attention, leading them to produce ever more creative ads, in turn leading users to tune out those bland, familiar old AdSense ads all the more.
2. Social media alternatives. People trust other people more than they trust ads. That is why Ad-land is channeling its creativity into inserting its brands into their conversations.
3. Declining relevance. Users who do not get what they want from clicks will stop clicking. If they don't see AdSense ads on high-quality websites, and if the ads they do see are not relevant to what they are thinking about at the time, they won't click.

Google's Investors

Let's jump to Google's Q1 2009 results. The headline was that Google's revenue grew 6% (compared to the same quarter a year prior) to $5.51 billion. We can break that down as follows:

• Revenue from Google websites grew by 9% to $3.70 billion,
• Revenue from Google's partner sites, also known as network revenue or AdSense revenue, fell 3% to $1.64 billion.

According to the numbers, not all is well with AdSense. Still, a 3% decline does not sound like much; it would raise questions only with a fast-track company such as Google. Maybe this is simply the effect of the recession.

But maybe it is an early sign of a fundamental weakness in AdSense. With AdSense making up about 30% of Google's revenue, such a sign is big enough to matter. This should be a serious concern for investors. If I owned Google stock, I would be looking very hard at network revenues in Q2. Network effects can lead to explosive, hockey-stick-like growth on the way up... and falling-off-a-cliff declines on the way down. When all three constituents (publishers, advertisers, and users) were getting great value from AdSense, revenue exploded. If all three suddenly lost interest, that virtuous cycle of growth could turn into a vicious cycle of decline.

Judging from its actions, Google management fully understands the issue. Follow the money. Look at what Google is acquiring. Its two biggest acquisitions have been:

1. DoubleClick, which it purchased for $3.1 billion, allowing Google to diversify from search-based advertising, so that it could have more clout with advertisers;
2. YouTube, which it purchased for $1.65 billion, allowing it to lock up the fastest-growing inventory, video.

Look at the websites and services Google invests in. It plays to control inventory so that it doesn't have to depend on publishers, and so that it has better control over relevancy matching. Some of this has gotten a few publishers riled enough for them to go on record, particularly when their services lie directly in Google's path.

So, don't feel sorry for Google. It's taking care of the AdSense problem. We'll have to see, though, whether investors buy that story. Investor reaction to Google's Q2 report will be interesting.

Opportunities For Entrepreneurs, New Venture Intermediaries

If AdSense is in decline, that leaves open a big market for entrepreneurs. Publishing is not a winner-take-all market. Google will not control all online inventory. Advertisers and their agencies like choice. And users click on whatever is relevant.

We see two plays in this environment:

1. Match relevance. Match relevance means parsing content to deliver more relevant ads. This is easy to say and hard to do. A lot of smart semantic tech ventures are focusing on this problem. This is smarter use of search technology than Quixotic tilting at Google's search bar dominance.
2. Connecting CPM to CPA. This is another hard problem to solve but promises a huge payoff for the winner. Publishers like selling CPM (cost per mille): it is easy for them, and the burden of performing lies with the advertiser. Advertisers, on the other hand, like CPA (cost per action or acquisition): it is easy for them, and the burden of performing lies with the publisher. Both parties look at the CPC (cost per click), because that is trackable from both sides of the transaction. But CPC is just a proxy for what each really wants: CPM and CPA, respectively. Any venture that brings publishers and advertisers together with a deal that satisfies the needs of both will do very well. There is a huge opportunity here. High-quality websites that really engage with their audience will certainly do well by CPA metrics, but the solution will have to be really easy to implement.

What Do You See?

Please give us your feedback. And if possible, tell us your vantage point: publisher, advertiser or new venture intermediary.

There has been a lot of coverage about the potential Yahoo! acquisition by Microsoft over the last week. This coverage has looked at issues such as deal mechanics, antitrust implications, and the impact on advertisers. One aspect of the possible blockbuster deal that has not been adequately examined is the impact on web publishers, in particular the medium and long tail publishers who are almost wholly reliant on ad networks to monetize their ad inventory.

Short term: the acquisition will be bad for publishers

In the short term, the potential acquisition will be bad for medium and long tail publishers.

Yahoo! Publisher Network, Yahoo!’s competitive offering to Google AdSense, is an also-ran in the marketplace. It has been in beta for two years now. Most publishers that we work with wait a month after sending an application to YPN, only to have it rejected. YPN won’t serve ads outside of the US despite Yahoo!’s presence in the brand/display market internationally. Unconfirmed sources inside Yahoo! indicate that they will be re-launching YPN in the summer of 2008, but it’s entirely possible this timeline will slip as the acquisition process plays out. At the same time, Microsoft Content Ads, Microsoft’s competitive offering to Google AdSense, is in a private beta running on less than a few hundred web sites. It is hard to imagine that the merger process will accelerate delivery of either solution.

From a strategic focus perspective, it’s clear that Yahoo! and Microsoft are focused on the advertiser side of the online ad market. One of Yahoo!’s biggest development projects, Apex, is intended to integrate search and display advertising into one system for advertisers and ad agencies. Microsoft’s largest acquisition to date is aQuantive, an ad agency and digital solutions provider which is largely focused on advertisers.

Yahoo! and Microsoft can afford to focus on advertisers at the expense of publishers because they have so much ad inventory on their owned and operated web sites, which Google does not. The majority of Yahoo!’s and Microsoft’s properties are designed to keep users on their web sites, whereas Google’s main product (search) is intended to send users away, with the notable exceptions of Gmail and YouTube. comScore and UBS estimate that Yahoo! and Microsoft have more than twice as many monthly page views as Google as of December 2007. As a result, a combined Yahoo! and Microsoft would likely focus on how best to monetize their own ad inventory, and those of strategic partners such as Facebook and eBay, rather than inventory from an open publisher network.

Long term: good potential upside for publishers, but don’t hold your breath

In the long term, there is upside potential for publishers. However, it’s just that -- potential -- and has remained that way for several years now.

As a combined force, Yahoo! and Microsoft might see a big enough opportunity in the market to pursue industry solutions outside of their owned and operated portfolio of web sites. Yahoo! has started down this path with the Right Media, Blue Lithium, and Maven Networks acquisitions. Other media companies such as Fox Interactive Media and niche players such as Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia have started down the path of selling ads for external publishers as a way to grow their businesses. As the trend towards user level targeting increases, as opposed to web site level targeting, Yahoo! and Microsoft will need to find ways to target advertising off of their owned and operated site network.

Yahoo! and Microsoft can combine research and development budgets in a number of different areas to free up money for investing elsewhere. Within a combined entity, spending on search, email, infrastructure, etc. can all be reduced to free up money to invest in solutions that benefit publishers. In addition, Microsoft has a significant cash advantage over Google with respect to available money for investment. In 2007, Microsoft’s quarterly net income was roughly equivalent to Google’s annual net income.

Conclusion

In the short term, the Microsoft-Yahoo! acquisition process is likely to be bad for publishers. The lack of focus and investment that Microsoft and Yahoo! will have on the medium and long tail market will result in a slower pace of innovation and poorer monetization opportunities for publishers. In the long term, there is potential upside for publishers but the acquisition process, integration, and renewed product development will take a long time to sort out. The time frame involved reminds me of the old economics adage: "In the long run, we are all dead." How long might we wait until Microsoft and Yahoo! deliver?

This is a guest post by Rajeev Goel, the Co-Founder and General Manager of PubMatic, a publisher service that automates and optimizes ad serving decisions. You can follow Rajeev at the PubMatic blog.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_will_publishers_fare_under_microhoo.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_will_publishers_fare_under_microhoo.php Trends Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:34:33 -0800 Guest Author Semantic analysis service Inform.com announced today that the company has received a $15 million investment from Spark Capital. Inform analyzes content from online publishers and inserts links from a publisher's own content archives, affiliated sites or the web at large to augment content being published. The company says it already has more than 100 clients, including CNN.com, WashingtonPost.com and the Economist. Those who would contend that semantic web technology has not arrived can stick that in their pipes and smoke it.

Standards?

No. Inform crunches straight text and outputs HTML. I asked whether they publish content with any standards based semantic markup and they said that actual publishing is up to publishers. That's a shame, I don't see any reason why Inform wouldn't participate in the larger semantic web to make its publishers' content more discoverable. Perhaps when you've got 100 live clients and now $15m in the bank, it feels like there's no reason to open up and play nice with a movement of dreamers having trouble getting other apps out of academia.

Different Approaches

While many publishers have been criticized for linking only to their own internal pages for reference (including many leading blogs) it's good to see that Inform at least provides the option of including outside links. That is, after all, one of the most important characteristics of the web - links from one site to another.

Inform indexes blogs, audio and video as well at standard web pages. It's a smart idea and similar to a number of related companies you may be more familiar with. Our own Alex Iskold runs AdaptiveBlue, a semantic company that offers related links tied to links already added by publishers and a semantic browser plug-in. SystemOne is an elegant system that offers related content automatically during the writing process. Lijit is a custom search engine of sorts, allowing you and your readers to manually search through a confined set of content.

The key way the above services probably differ is the degree of automation that they offer. Inform is highly automated, once a publisher sets up general rules for brining in related content. A publisher might say, for example, to insert a link to their own content on any terms they have more than 20 articles about from the past week, or that their affiliate network can provide content for with a certain minimum percentage of relevance.

There's some heavy math and linguistics going on at Inform and it's a good example of how proprietary technology is headed for the bank while open standards based approaches dawdle. In theory openness and standards should be clear winners in terms of ultimate value delivered to any company, someday. In the meantime, publishers can deploy Inform's semantic technology now.