Want More?There is a popular notion that starting a new business is a voyage of discovery. There is the siren call of adding just one more cool feature that oh-by-the-way might push back the launch date by a month or three; the chum of early buzz that attracts competitor FUD: and more than an occasional bout of sea sickness with the ups and downs of each day's adventures.
We've had our share of discovery. Our alpha was really well received and we got some terrific feedback from marketers at some of the most recognized companies in the world. We were really lucky to boot in that we got some great, critical thinking from the folks at those companies. And we listened.
I'm thrilled that we proved the fundamental goodness of our science. We had a hunch that influence moves networked markets and the alpha proved it. The methodology for surfacing influencers, measuring their impact and mapping the critical path of their conversations is a beautiful thing. And the ability to engage and then understand the implications of your actions is the chiller in the mix.
But we also learned that we needed to expand the scope of our search. So we're accelerating the development of our index--we're on track and actually a couple of days ahead of the development schedule--and believe BuzzLogic will own the largest index of conversational sites on the Internet when we're done.
We also learned that our user interface was ideal for power users but left the folks who wanted a Czech like zip-in, zip-out experience... wanting. The new UI designs are much cleaner, streamlined and intuitive, and we're getting good feedback from those critical thinkers.
I guess one of the things I'm happiest with is that we trusted our instincts and listened to our customers. We would love to be selling our application right now, but pausing a beat to get it right will pay off in the long haul. I think.
Comments (3)
Who are those ‘influential’s, yes the press should be- but if they are not doing the job, why not true citizen journos ? I also think that the ‘influential’ is still based on classic in-house media perspectives, PR people to press people. Why, should a story in the FT, on a tech story, be better than a trade-media story--often written by a more experienced journo, three days before the FT picks it up! Google stats, based on actual traffic to a given story showing for everyone to see/access may not be something in the pipeline but it would sure change the media dynamics?
Which story appealed the most may be the way forward. If it’s a citizen journo piece, then so be it?
Posted by Mark Osborne | September 29, 2006 4:53 PM
Posted on September 29, 2006 16:53
Mark—We certainly agree that influentials can be citizen journalists. One of the original motives for starting the company was to identify exactly those bloggers who were shaping journalistic coverage, as my own background as a journalist has shown me that journalists rarely are the source of the story they cover—that is, they rarely expose new information based on enterprise reporting efforts, but cover what other people are talking about.
It's also the case that a lot of citizen journalism is talking about reportage from the mainstream press or information released by a company or political campaign--this is an infinitely complex environment. If we can bring recognition to the people who make news and ideas happen, as well as those who help spread messages most effectively, we know we'll be drawing a more complete picture of the world as it really is.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe | September 30, 2006 2:40 PM
Posted on September 30, 2006 14:40
Citizen journalism is certainly a current driver of the blogosphere, but ask why that is...
Here's my take:
Publishers have been slow to adopt both web-publishing of full stories (many began as subscriber based or variations on print editions) *and* even fewer publishers have adopted the SEO/RSS tools and mindset to make it easy for people to find published news content on the web. It's not a failure of the press to cover the story, but disruptive technologies without ecosystem revenue drivers that publishers were unprepared to support.
That's why most Google searches deliver back Press Releases or other corporate drivel, and not relevant news stories. Whether Sponsored Links or Search Results, there's a lot of "advertising money" driving what consumers see as news. Publishers aren't paying to optimize their content.
That leaves an enormous opportunity for us to look for news elsewhere. Like from bloggers, that tag and index and explore topics with more relevance than a paid-in-yellow-pages-search-engine.
I agree: a citizen journalist notices something, often local and via the news outlets or niche-interest personal experience, and blogs about it amplifying what might otherwise be a little noticed news story. That is good.
While we all read about high profile breaking coverage starting on a blog, mostly I see a lot of bloggers experiencing what the professional press does, and realize they need to generate content on slow news days... then they simply repeat or inaccurately spin whatever they can find! That is bad.
Marketers accelerate this effect because it's easier to persuade/pay/influence a citizen blogger to write about your product/service/etc than it is to persuade a member of the press who will ask harder questions, be held to an editorial/ethical standard, or conduct objective research on the topic.
Mitch has it right that looking at sources and sneezers is a complex and emerging idea that will dramatically change the communications field.
Posted by Edward O'Meara | October 4, 2006 7:50 AM
Posted on October 4, 2006 07:50