Megalize is to Media as Supersize is to Fries

Megalize Media. I told a friend about Megalize Media last week and he asked me what Megalize means. I smiled at him for being interested and began an explanation that wasn’t as succinct as I hoped but was a pretty good attempt at an explanation. I thought perhaps that many people might not at first understand what megalize means. That is because it is not a word in the Oxford Dictionary. It is a made up word, one that I am going to use to describe what I aim to do with ideas, yours, and mine…

Why don’t I start with what Megalize is NOT…

A keyword search for “Megalize” will bring up about 4700 results on Google search. The first one on the list is a site called ‘Megalize Larijuana’. It is a site that supports the legalization of marijuana. Megalize is a play on the two words by transposing the first letters of ‘legalize marijuana’.  This, of course, is NOT the message behind Megalize Media. I chose Megalize because of the root Latin word “mega” which means a million. My hope is that I can turn some thing such as a single idea or piece of content or media and multiply its share-ability by a million. In other words, millionize! Megalize is to Media as Supersize is to fries! (or soda!)

Now you might wonder why I chose a name for my media company that already has a presence on the Internet… To this I answer that “megalize larijuana” did not show up on my radar. I fell for the name megalize because I think that with all the large numbers you hear spoken out there representing dollar valuation for companies such as Uber or Facebook and WhatsApp, valued to be worth billions of dollars, I thought that the goal of reaching a million sounded humble and reachable. After all, I am not asking to be Google, named after the extremely large number ‘googolplex’ (which is a number that is 10 to the tenth to the hundred). Sergei and Larry must have imagined from the start that the company could someday reach that number in users or entries, or by some other metric. Besides, Megalizing something seemed at least more achievable than trying to Billionize or Trillionize something (however great that might sound).

Say 'YES' to Megalize!

A name has to live up to its root’s meaning. This is why, at least compared to Google, I think that Megalize represents a humble but reachable goal.  OK, humble and reachable, maybe, but not necessarily easy. I know it will take all I have learned so far and much more to get this done.  But once an idea has reached a million people, it won’t necessarily stop there. No one knows how much more reach an idea will drive after it has hit a million views, or reached a million minds. But one can imagine that it will likely continue to grow.

The challenge and joy will be in finding out what sticks and has the potential to go viral. It would be interesting to me to measure how long it will take, and what qualities it must possess in order to replicate the conditions that ensure a predictable result. Social media marketing analytics already exists to help interested people find out the extent and reach of their social influence. Many people seek to find the same answers I do. What makes me unique is my affinity and drive to reach a goal of a million— to not only adapt different strategies to measure, to map and to time how long it took to get there, but to find a way to make it happen faster and with better, more targeted results that lead to action.

 It is my dream to someday run an idea powerhouse that will nurture and fuel growth in all of the emerging sectors of technology and innovation while ensuring that news of these ideas and inventions are shared with everyone in a manor that reaches them individually and in the most profoundly motivating ways possible. I will need a lot of help to do this. I will need people like you who have taken the time to read and to listen, to keep reading and listening, and to connect me to others who will do the same. In turn, you get a voice. You will have a platform to connect, to argue, to support and to add to what is being said here, by me and by others who write me. So megalize us!

<Megalize is to Media as Supersize is to Fries>

Without the Calories!

Malena Iansiti @MegalizeMedia

#MegalizeMe

The Scent of Digital Flowers: A Lesson From Solitude

It’s funny what you start to notice about the world around you when you unplug and steal away from your smartphone and laptop and any other electronic device. You realize that you are all alone without those mechanical extensions of our brains, our tentacles to reach out to the rest of the world. It is a little unnerving to make your mind sit still and to try not to reach for an electronic device to entertain and keep you occupied. Thirty minutes is a long time! I could stand it if I were ready to take a nap but prescribing yourself a half hour of solitude for a writing assignment for school can be…well, excruciating---at least that first 5 minutes that I am trying to convince myself I can go without my phone and looking up Twitter to see if number of followers I have has increased.

After the first few minutes of being unplugged, unwired, de-interneted, I noticed that the buzzing in my head got a little loud. It wasn’t really a buzzing, per se, but more of the sound of air and a loud silence. It took me a few minutes to calm my mind, to try to unfocus on all the things that were competing for attention. The dog, my housekeeper, my phone, my half-done projects, “Hubs”, the phone calls, the texts, and the temptation to read articles from my Twitter feed. Social media is famous for capturing hours of millions and (now we know) billion(s) of people who hop onto their Facebook apps to see what everyone else is doing, presumably to connect with friends who are actually on the app at the same time.

But - I think - when have I actually gotten on Facebook to see if someone else was online for a live chat or instant message exchange? Hardly ever to never is my answer. I like to see what other people in high school are doing these days without actually having to ping them.  Finding out one of your friends is pregnant on Facebook is fun and it makes you feel great to be one of the first hundred to congratulate her. But, wait a minute… do I use Facebook for what it was envisioned for?

These are the thoughts that came into mind when I cut myself off from electronics. Funny enough, all I thought about were things related to my phone or my laptop—ultimately, electronics. The electronics was still with me!  They also worked after I turned them off…  I thought about the time before I got my first iPhone, and before that, my first laptop. I was such a newbie in the electronic gadget world! As with many of us that have kept up with the times and got a cell phone, laptop, or with what many now are calling phablets (phone+tablets), I have forgotten what it was like to just unplug and smell the roses, or the orchids or the pine cones. I have been more enamored with the high-resolution pictures my iPhone 6+ and my Macbook Pro can show me of eternally blooming blossoms, and eternally breathtaking sunsets to notice and appreciate the real things when they are happening right in front of me and are in danger of fading away. Same thing with digital images of my loved ones and myself. We tend to hang on to the representations of us, the flattering Photoshop or Instagram-filtered selfie photos we like to put out there to represent us—or what we think is a good likeness of us in the most flattering light. But I pondered in solitude what my life would be like without those inventions, without this handheld extension of myself.

I wondered who I would even be, how I would see myself if I didn’t have my phone… Would I be a better person because I would take time to smell the roses? Would I have more friends? Or would I just be a better friend because I would pay more attention when I spent time with my friends, because I couldn’t take for granted I could just ping them on social media or via SMS. I wonder how my life would be different if I resisted the electronic and digital age. It was a lot to think about and not all of it was positive. I feel I silently and unknowingly gave up my independence to my cell phone, while I was mistakenly celebrating that it had given me more freedom and access.

Thinking about the little things I stopped noticing is a reminder of the things I gave up.  This kind of thing can make anyone a little nostalgic. I became nostalgic about the time I had a longer attention span, when I had better recall of facts and stories. I remember when I was less desensitized to news and felt new inventions were something I could stay curious about for at least a few weeks to a few months. Nowadays, I can purchase the latest and greatest app that promises to make my life better only to forget that I even had it before I learned how to use it. To date, I have almost 300 apps from the Apple store and all of them are awesome. I just wish I took the time to learn how to use them before buying the next one. Maybe someone should create an app that clears out old apps that you haven’t used and puts them in a bucket or folder for recycling... Or a smart app that categorizes them by utility. I know I can do this myself and have tried. But I have more than 20 music-making or music playing apps and every time I try to set up folders I just end up wanting to categorize them even more. This takes too long and before I know it, I abandon the task to make a call, check my email or Twitter or texts.

I think I need to slow things down a bit. I know you can’t slow time, but maybe what I mean is that I want to care more about the time I have, and not be in such a hurry for the next thing. What this solitude experiment has taught me is that slowing down and unplugging is valuable because of the feedback you give yourself. It’s the self-reflection that is at first jarring but ultimately rejuvenating. Taking stock of where you are and taking a look inside requires space and time for yourself. Being alone used to mean that I could check my phone without being rude to anyone but it has become clear that the person I have been rude to most is myself. Not taking the time to unplug made me feel like I was on the train that never stopped. It always had to go forward trying to get somewhere but ultimately always leaving somewhere to get to the next. And all you see out the windows is time and images flying by, without smelling the orchids behind the glass. Even a picture of the most beautiful orchid on my iPhone could not replace its scent or texture when you come up close to it and hold it in your hand.  Such is the power of solitude away from electronics. Taking the break from my phone made me feel more human and connected to everyone else that is on this train. I implore anyone who has not taken a break from electronics to try it some time. Your own revelations might bring you closer to yourself and ultimately to your (forgotten?) humanity. 

BRAND INTEGRITY= GREAT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

There are two completely different sides to the concept of integrity.  On the one hand integrity depicts the quality of being honest, and built on solid moral principles.  On the other hand integrity denotes the state of being whole and undivided, obtaining cohesiveness in all its details.  Nowhere do these two seemingly separate qualities come together more effectively than in defining the ultimate customer experience. 

Hadi, my husband’s BMW sales person, omniscient but never obvious, careful of every detail in the buying and service experience, keeper of the BMW brand and champion of its emotional and rigorous qualities, but also direct, truthful, and earnest as he explains how that engine part will really take ten days to get to Boston.  Really.  Ten days.  But that is what it was, and he was right.

A great customer experience is awesome in its details, clear in its purpose, honest in its message.  The antonym:  The Mass Registry of Motor Vehicles.  Not even the name is honest.  That is not what it does.  It’s not about being a registry, it’s about being a container for frustrated people who need to wait for hours in a crowded dusty space, for information that should be available on line. The only thing you find on line?  An estimate of the average waiting time, which is so NOT what you find when you get there.

A great customer experience reinforces the brand in ways that are consistent, but often feel surprising, perhaps even insignificant – at least until you really think about it.  To many of us suspicious customers, the Apple brand brings up concerns.  It could not possibly be this good.  The experience, no way it is really as seamless as it seems.  Down to the Genius Bar at the Apple store.  What, a friendly and truly happy customer service representative?  Impossible, and yet it is true.

Perhaps nowhere has the Apple brand been so surprisingly, and uncompromisingly reinforced as in its decisions on iOS 8 and data privacy: “At Apple, your trust means everything to us. That’s why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.”  This is how Tim Cook’s commitment to privacy begins.  And surprisingly, the commitment ends with Apple actually delivering on its promise, driving Cook’s holistic vision in its details.  Privacy is an important pillar of the iOS8 software. Multiple new features are designed to grant customers greater control over their privacy, how third-party applications track information about them, and how personal information is treated. A sampling of this functionality includes:

§  New settings allow users to restrict apps from determining their location unless the app is in active use, preventing apps from collecting location data in the background unless explicitly authorized to do so

§  An ability to see and modify an app's individual privacy settings on an app-by-app basis

§  A notification to a user that an app is using their location in the background with a new, brightly colored, double-height status bar

§  Apps that have permanent access to the users’ location will occasionally re-prompt users for access to their location

§  Randomized MAC addresses make it harder for networks to track devices

§  Developers are required to tell users why their apps need location data when asking for permission to do so

§  iOS 8 allows app developers to request access to only a selected contact instead of having to request access to access to a user’s entire Contacts list

§  HealthKit data is secure, cannot be sold to advertisers and permissions work on a per-app, per-data type

§  A new Safari third-party cookie policy includes option to block all third-party cookies on the Safari browser regardless of whether the user has visited the site previously

Apple delivers on its privacy promise with honesty in its details, and the brand and customer experience is reinforced, yet again, in new and unexpected ways.  The phone actually actively notifies you when privacy data is being used.  Did we expect that? Not me.  And this is why I love it even more. Integrity rules.

Driving Ads, Not Cars

Driving ads, not cars

As I was commuting to School yesterday, I could not but contemplate this question.  Why would Google invest in driverless cars?  If you had asked an auto industry executive five years ago if Google was a competitor or partner, they would probably have replied with a blank stare.  Today, Google has become a real force in the automotive sector, driving the Android Open Automotive Alliance, and making large investments in the development of driverless car systems.  Why in the world would they do this?  Because of privacy.  Or even better, lack thereof.

The Open Automotive Alliance was launched in January 2014, with GM, Honda, Audi, and Hyundai to focus on driving adoption of Android in cars.   Android is already rapidly becoming a dominant force in the mobile sector, going from nowhere back in 2009 to what looks like virtually complete dominance in just four years.  With Android now prevalent in cars, Google will be able to track consumers across an entire day of activities, from waking up in the morning, reading their news on their mobile, updating their social presence, commuting to work, stopping by to get their morning latte, and so on, with a combination of work, social , commuting and family activities.  All of them forgot to “opt out”, long, long ago…

Android is an information machine, and with its deployments, Google tracks everyone’s continuing position, search queries, interests, reservations, consumption, etc… the value is enormous.  Just think of commuting time, which is an average of 30 minutes each way for the typical US worker.  An hour a day for one hundred million US users is about three hundred hours per US consumer per year, which is about the same as we spend on Facebook.  In other words, getting Android to work, and getting Google control over information and activities in the car could generate as much advertising value as the entire advertising opportunity offered by Facebook.  Well worth spending the money on driverless cars.  A few hundred million dollars in driverless sensor and software technology seem like a pittance against the value of not having to worry about running into the car in front of you, as you order your latte or plan your next vacation.

Although the convenience of using car time for shopping and social networking seems attractive, the idea of building on Android’s already enormous personal and confidential data seems truly scary.  What is the limit?  Will Google track the motion of our hands as we brush our teeth and sell the information to optimize toothbrush design?  What activities, if any will remain truly private?   What private moments will we ever have to contemplate on crazy ideas like driverless cars?

Really? Uber Needs Damage Control

Really?  

I have met Travis Kalanik and I am an avid Uber user.  I love the service.  After spending a decade getting frustrated with Taxi drivers that could not find Logan airport in Boston, I have come to appreciate Uber’s great service.  But when my 16-year old refused to take an Uber home today because he felt the company was evil, I started to think that may be too much has happened over the last couple of weeks for Uber to bounce back completely.  Is it too late for Uber to learn from its mistakes?

It’s been a bad couple of weeks.  Uber’s SVP of Business Emil Michael propelled the company down the slippery slope when he “outlined the notion of spending ‘a million dollars’ to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists.  That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press – they’d look into ‘your personal lives, your families’, and give the media a taste of its own medicine.”  The same story mentioned how a different Uber manager had accessed a reporter’s travel records. 

Uber has a history of carelessness in talking about data privacy.  It published a blog in 2012 that essentially calculated the proportion of rides that were linked to one night stands (the “rides of glory”) across various cities.  And it did so on the company blog.  More recently there are several other instances of careless remarks about privacy by various Uber employees, even including Kalanik.  Adding to this, rumors about intentionally canceling rides to frustrate competitors, and a number of relatively isolated local level “brush fires.”  Definitely a hands full for Uber’s public relations folks, who include David Plouffe, one of the leaders of the Obama campaign.

How can Uber recover from all of this?  As a big fan both of of Kaladnik and of the Uber service, I hope for a speedy recovery, but fear long-lasting repercussions.  The issue is less the difficulty of mending fences with the public and the press, but more the challenge of transforming an organization that caused these problems to begin with.  In the end, Uber needs to stop the guerilla fights with Lyft, press, and politicians, and embrace its success.  In ramping up its service across most major cities Uber already defied the odds.  It succeeded in building a great service and a major brand in record time.  So why not take a breath of fresh air and enjoy this major American success story?  Can the organization driven by a relentless, almost fierce intensity be capable of stepping off the accelerator and live the dream it built for itself?

Perhaps most of all, Uber should take its incredible passion for execution and turn it inward.  Proven by its ability to scale up a world class service and ensure consistency of quality across disparate cities and countries, Uber now needs to look inward and realign its values.  More than worrying about ramping up its next city, Uber must focus on driving a culture of integrity, privacy, and customer respect across its internal organization.  There is no excuse not to focus on this.  Too much has been built already to mess it up by a number of careless, unnecessary mistakes.

Travis, your customers should still be your biggest fans.  Help me reinstall enthusiasm in my 16-year old by driving the internal changes your organization needs.  Your service will show.

Why I Chose Media

Why I chose Media

I love media, which is why I chose it. Media is a broad topic that includes all kinds of areas that I am interested in including digital media, social media, and news and entertainment media. Ultimately, I love Media because I feel keeps you in the center of the universe.  You figure things out, learn things, and keep your relationships going.  It’s how you stay on the pulse of everything.  How you know that ISIS is in trouble (or not) and that someone is pregnant.  Heavy stuff.  I love Media because media is all encompassing.  There is no humanity without media.  If there were, we would not know about it.  If as tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it, the tree does not fall.

 (Found out on Facebook that Lorena's having a baby boy!)

For the purposes of this blog, I have chosen to focus on digital media because digital media encompasses all these things. Digital media is produced in digital formats, delivered to its audiences through digital platforms, and for the most part, lives in the digital space of the Internet “cloud”. 

Digital Media is becoming the format by which everything is shared. Digital media is ubiquitous. News and entertainment, from movies and TV shows and music are ultimately translated into digital format so that they can be easily marketed, sold, delivered, and consumed by any audience on the internet. Digital technology has changed everything:  the way we listen to music, how it is recorded, shared, stored and sold. We can now watch movies and TV shows without having to own them on a DVD or having to stay home to watch them on cable when they air because now we can stream them to our home TVs and mobile devices. Using digital formats allows us to receive and consume digitized content on demand.  

 With the ease of sharing the medium, come platforms with which to discuss, criticize, capture and share them with the ease and freedom Internet speeds allow. These are platforms in which communities have gathered around shared interest to consume, connect and share their thoughts, preferences and ideas about their favorite shows, news, sports, music and entertainment, etc. On these platforms, people can become stars without having to leave their city or state or become advocates for causes they espouse in different areas of the nation or far off lands. Look at platforms such as Kickstarter and Spotify. From babies, to ISIS, and from Facebook to Taylor Swift, Media puts us on the map. 

Google and PPC: The future of pricing?

Google and PPC:  The future of pricing?

Little did most of us realize that when Google implemented its pay per click (“PPC”) model back in 2002 the world was never going to be the same again.  Most of us may not remember that Google started by focusing only on natural search.  Leveraging the “Page Rank” algorithm that Larry Page and Sergei Bryn had worked on in their Stanford Computer Science PhD, Google started its path of success by simply providing the best research results.  At its inception, Google offered no ads at all.

The roots of PPC go back to the founding of GoTo.com in September, 1997.  GoTo.com, which changed its name to Overture in September 2001, offered a service comprised entirely of advertiser-generated listings where advertisers bid on keywords.  Consumers came to GoTo.com to search for things, they clicked on keywords and advertisers paid.  Overture later provided its paid listing service to partners such as AOL and Yahoo. 

It’s not until October 2000 that Google entered the advertising market, more than 2 years after its launch, using a traditional cost per impression model.  Google’s initial revenues were moderate.  But when it announced a major overhaul to its AdWords platform on February 20, 2002, its revenues began to skyrocket. Google switched to a pay-per-click model, similar to Overture’s, except that it decided to introduce some refinements, including quality scoring, to help determine the order of paid listings. Google became a money machine (see figure below).

The PPC model is particularly interesting because it only charges the advertiser when the user actually clicks on an ad.   The model is thus action based, and a better indicator of the consumer’s propensity to actually buy the product or service that is being offered.  PPC works much better than the more traditional cost per impression model, and commands a much higher revenue-level per consumer.  Because of the PPC model, and because of the efficiency of its auctions, the search-advertising model does a great job in matching indications of supply and demand.  The auctions are an efficient way to assess the advertiser’s quality and quantity of supply.  The consumer’s click is a great indicator of the consumer’s interest in demand. Demand and supply thus meet in the middle, and provide Google, with a service that essentially prints money.

Is PPC the future?  A number of other settings already seem to be going that way.  Take Spotify.  It is free to the user (or charges a small, flat fee) and pays the content provider as a function of the number of times the song is played. The user’s actions thus drive the content provider’s revenue, in a direct fashion, kind of like a PPC model, but in reverse.  The consumer clicks and Spotify pays the musician.  Could the model be added by providing a quality scoring?  Could a better rating system optimize the uniqueness of the service and provide more value added?    

In contrast with Spotify, Netflix appears to pay fixed amounts for content, although the amounts are renegotiated often, increasing in magnitude, presumably as streaming volume increases.  Could Google’s lessons apply to Netflix as well?  Why shouldn’t Netflix work with something closer to Spotify’s reverse PPC model?  Would the variety offered by the service improve? 

The list of service providers goes on.  If we examine Uber, Lyft, and AirBnB, their approach shares both similarities and differences with Google’s model.  But none appear nearly as sophisticated as Google, and none appear to have deployed the same revenue engine.  I wonder if more lessons from the Google and Overture model could be applied to optimize these services.  Is the future of pricing in the new economy the PPC model or is Google just a unique and incredibly successful example?  What else can be learned from Google’s efficiencies that can be applied to other environments?  Time will tell…

The Humbling Experience of Setting Up A Blog

I used to think I was a whiz at figuring out how things worked such as when I figured out how to use Photoshop to edit photos and create artistic images without a tutorial. Or the times I could easily configure and change settings on any cell phone and tablet. Even teaching myself how to use Final Cut Pro for video editing and Logic Pro for music production seemed somewhat easy compared to my experience setting up my Wordpress and Squarespace blogs.

I could get lost for hours in exploration of those creative tools and come out smelling like a pro (well, sort of). Why then was it so difficult for me to figure out how to set up a blog site? The experience has been truly humbling. I have now spent a total of about 40 hours trying to get to this point and even though it's about 1:00am on a Saturday night that I am writing this, I have to say I am very satisfied with myself. Well, I will be satisfied once I see this blog posted. I have wanted to set up a blog for a while now but needed a reason and a focus...

Weeks before setting up this blog, I set up Twitter account and learned how to tweet content I found on sites that I liked and thought other people might enjoy. Reading other people's content is fun and engaging while it allows me to learn a lot from what people put out there to share. Twitter is the social media platform that I found most engaging and inspiring. It allowed me, a normally shy and reserved person, to put my thoughts out there for the world to see, judge, share and enjoy (or not). My love of Twitter is what sparked my interest in social media that has led me to explore and gain a deeper interest in digital media and marketing.  There is something to be said about the simplicity of expressing your thoughts or crafting a 140-character headline to promote a link you want to share. Unlike my experience with setting up this blog, it was easy. I have also become faster at reading and sharing the news in my feed and expect everything else to move at that speed. Relative to the time it takes to read a 140-character tweet on Twitter, reading instructions on how to set up a blog takes forever! Well, not really forever. It does take a lot of patience though. Hopefully by the time you see this posted I will be on my way to feeling and looking like I'm getting to know my way around this space. Until then, I hope you enjoy reading my blog and have patience with me as I stumble my way through to getting there (I can only get better!).