Internet Chaos

Here's why your viral campaign went nowhere; why your video on YouTube is getting way fewer hits than you expected; and why your blog was a bust.

The internet is chaotic. Success is random and unpredictable. Most success is the result of one person's good, odd idea and is very hard to duplicate or recreate. Creative strategy is less important than execution on the web.

You can make a hit record by making it sound like a previous hit. You can make a hit tv show by fashioning it on a previous show. But the internet is voracious. Look-alikes are not likely to be successful.

Chaos and oddness are difficult to plan or predict. There are, and will continue to be, a lot of one-hit wonders.

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The Ignoramus Superhighway

For those silly enough to believe in the "The Information Age" and "The Information Superhighway" here are Yahoo's Top Ten search subjects of 2007:

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Paris Hilton
4. Naruto
5. Beyonce
6. Lindsay Lohan
7. RuneScape
8. Fantasy Football
9. Fergie
10. Jessica Alba

It's encouraging to see Americans getting so much useful information about so many important subjects on the internet

For more on this, see The Entertainment Age

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In-Your-Face Book, II

According to The New York Times, Facebook is changing its "Beacon" marketing scheme after 50,000 people signed a petition protesting it.

As we reported earlier in "In-Your-Face Book", Facebook was playing with fire by paying only perfunctory attention to privacy sensitivities.

While consumers still don't fully understand internet privacy issues, TAC predicts that web-based marketing schemes -- and web sites trying too obviously to leverage user data -- are going to be facing more scrutiny and more unhappy users.

The scary part is that smart web marketers will get more skillful at utilizing user data in a more discrete -- one might say, sneaky -- manner.

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Unreasonable People

One of the things web providers are going to have to get used to is the irrationality of everyday people.

This can be seen in the reaction of webbies to the fuss over Facebook's "Beacon" program (see In-Your-Face Book). They point out that people put their most intimate details on their Facebook page and then get all stirred up when Facebook publicizes what they've been buying. Isn't this complete hypocrisy, they say?

Darn right it is, and you better get used to it. And you better not argue about it with your customers either.

People are not logic machines. Their behavior is inconsistent, at best. It may take a while for software engineers to understand what marketers learned a long tme ago.

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Readers Ignore Banners

TAC has been saying for some time that banner ads are a very weak form of advertising -- far weaker than most traditional advertising.

If you're a typical web user, you've probably been exposed to dozens of banner ads today. Can you remember noticing even one? We all trained ourselves years ago to ignore banner ads on websites.

There are statistics that show that click through rates on banners are remarkably low (see Legends of Interactivity, Part 2.) Now there is apparently research showing that viewing of banners is tiny.

From virtualhosting.com comes this: "Ads may be the bread and butter of your site, but studies have shown that readers largely ignore banner ads..."

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In-Your-Face Book

In its attempt to monetize its cultural success, Facebook is looking for trouble.

As we predicted in The Ribbon, consumers are getting increasingly suspicious of social networks prying into and publicizing their private activities. Consumers still don't understand how pervasive this is, but as they get a whiff of it, they aren't liking it.

Last week the Associated Press reported that users of Facebook have started complaining about a two-week old marketing program that reports to their "friends" about their online purchases. In other words, buy something from Overstock, and in a flash every one of your "friends" is alerted to what you bought. Hope it wasn't an inflatable girlfriend.

While you can opt out of this, the opt-out notice is apparently well-hidden by Facebook. This kind of perfunctory attention to privacy issues is just what's going to land them in deep shit if they don't watch out.

Within twenty-four hours, liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org had signed up over 6,000 people to protest this practice.

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Cookie Monstrosity

One thing you can say about the internet with absolute certainty -- there has never been another invention that has spawned more bad ideas.

The latest comes from Pepperidge Farm. From some retro universe they have launched a campaign called "Connecting Through Cookies" (I kid you not.) The centerpiece is a website called The Art of the Cookie.

You see, this website is going to be a social network (apparently there aren't enough online social networks) and lonely housewives are going to get together on line and talk about their cookies. And if you think I'm going to make a cheap joke here, I want to remind you that my daughter reads this blog.

Anyway, the marketing genius behind this had this to say... the company conducted ethnographic research by “going into our consumers’ homes, sitting down with them, talking to them about how they use our products.”

Hope you didn't pay too much for that ethnographic research, Mr. Pepperidge -- they use your products by eating them. No charge.

And, by the way, if there are any lonely housewives out there who want to connect through their cookies, I have a very nice single friend.

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The Ribbon

One of the things that worries me about the internet is the naive and foolish belief that it has, and will continue to have, a substantially empowering effect on the individual.

Web advocates speak eloquently about how the advent of the internet has allowed individuals to influence communities, organizations, and enterprises in completely unique and original ways. While there is some truth to this, I believe it is diverting attention from a much larger and more pernicious trend -- the alarming corporatization of everything in our culture.

I used to get off an airplane and know where I was. Not today. Today Dallas looks exactly like Walnut Creek. The local news in Cleveland looks exactly like the local news in San Diego. The Gap in New Jersey carries the same stuff as The Gap in Miami. The radio station in Atlanta sounds just like the radio station in Seattle. I could go on.

We have become blinded by science. We are swimming in a sea of dis-empowering corporate homogenization so vast we can't even detect it. The shiny new thing that is dangling in front of us -- the web -- is masking the big picture.

For now, the internet seems an antidote to the malignant effects of corporate homogenization. This is because the intrusive reach and depth of Google, Facebook, et al, are not yet understood by the general public. This will change at some point. When it does, the web may be viewed as the ribbon that ties the whole corporate package together. If that happens, look out Mr. Google Shareholder.

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Absence of Choice

A recent post by Seth Godin in Seth's Blog called "Choice" had this to say: 'If I had to pick one word to describe what's new, what's different and what's important about now vs. then, it would be "choice."'

As usual, TAC disagrees. What's new and different is absence of choice.

"Then" there was a mens' store, a pharmacy, a grocery, a shoe store, a fruit stand, a pizza joint, a coffee shop and a bakery on every corner. "Now" we're stuck with Wal-Marts, Rite-Aids, and Pizza Huts. Our economic choices are being consolidated at an alarming rate (see "Dull Men in Grey Suits.")

Of course, what Seth is talking about is electronic choice. Like most of us who sit in front of a computer screen all day, the web is Seth's default frame of reference. Certainly the web, cable and satellite tv, and other electronic innovations give us choices we didn't previously have.

But, as so often in life, there are cross-currents. When it comes to commerce, it's a different story. The best stats I can find say that internet commerce represented 2.4% of economic activity in 2005. Let's be generous and say it's doubled since then (guaranteed it hasn't.) If so, internet commerce comprises about 5% of our economic activity. So for 5% of our purchases we have a lot more choice. But for 95%, we have a lot less.

Choice? Anyone tried to find a tailor lately?

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