As we have reported in both MIN and DMR, Yahoo’s new social media network, Buzz, is using its beta release to drive traffic from the Yahoo front page to a limited range of branded media sites. Yahoo itself has been touting partner success stories, namely sites that get massive spikes when one of the highly rated articles in this new recommendation engine floats to the Yahoo.com page. But now metrics provider Hitwise is suggesting that Buzz is rivaling Digg in the places that matter most to major media partners. Heather Hopkins, vp research, Hitwise, UK says she was “amazed” at new charts showing Digg.com driving only 10% more traffic to news and media destinations in the last week. To be sure, Digg.com still is the gorilla in the room when it comes to driving traffic to blogs, games and video. Hopkins concludes that Buzz’s quick rise proves “there is likely room for a new entrant in social news media.” Well, there is room if you have hundreds of million of eyeballs already coursing through your pages. What Yahoo is proving is that it still has scale no one else enjoys, and it can throw that weight around to its partners’ benefit when needed.

As everyone knows by now, AOL will purchase international social media/network Bebo for $850 million. But no one seems to agree on whether this was a smart move, let alone a smart price. Yes, it gives AOL’s large ad business a great deal more inventory. But Google complains that its ad deal with MySpace has been tough to monetize, in part because people engaged in social networking do not like clicking away to advertiser sites. AOL’s recent buying spree has been focused mainly on advertising technology and networks (Tacoda, Quigo, Third Screen) and so this marks a major attempt to keep its own position as a content portal relevant. CEO Randy Falco sees it as reasserting AOL’s legacy at the heart of online community. Of course, social networks are stronger on entertainment topics, and arguably this gives Time Warner a nice international promotional platform for its TV, film and print properties. Or, it makes AOL a more attractive acquisition target for someone else. Rumors persist that AOL is not done buying, however.

It is still not clear how successful content publishers will be in their recent efforts to cash in on the popularity of casual gaming. The monstrous success of sites like Pogo.com and PopCap titles everywhere suggests that opening a game center at a women or men’s service site somehow will keep them on the site longer. SoapOperaDigest.com just opened such a wing, and we have seen the model floated at iVillage and MaximOnline in the past. This genere remains an enticing lure for publishers. New research from Interpret shows a stunning reach for casual gaming, up to 145 million users in 2007, and 71 million of those play for 1 to 2 hours per week. The seriously sticky medium increased its average play time per week last year by 28%, to 5.1 hours. Best news for publishers is that 85% of users prefer ad-supported free gaming. Interpret found that casual gamers are 22% more likely to seek out new product information and 36% more likely than the average user to switch brands for the sake of change. In other words, gaming environments on third party publishing sites could be ideal platforms for branding messages…if publishers really can push their visitors into these areas.

We all know that page views and unique views are on their way out. Right? That might be the prevailing wisdom, but, on the ground, that’s what we’re all still using to measure the popularity of our sites. We’re also using those metrics to sell our sites to advertisers. Some of you might also use time spent on site, bounce rate, and other metrics. But nobody is really happy with them. Why?

You rely on Google analytics, third party vendors, or internal software to measure page views and unique views. But how much of that is spiders? How much of that is real? Why does Nielsen give different results from comScore? And how do you know that your time spent on site numbers aren’t inflated by someone leaving their Web browser open and walking away? Did they really watch the entire video? And what about tab surfing? In short, these metrics are not completely reliable–they remind me of measuring print magazine engagement and readership: How many people see each copy; did certain ads make an impression; etc, etc, etc. Basically, in an age of computers, calculations, and hard numbers, we’re still making estimations and guesses.

John Byrne, executive editor at BusinessWeek.com, has a solution for some of you. Using two indisputable metrics, Byrne is able to create what he calls the “reader engagement index”. It’s simple. Take the number of comments posted on your site by readers and divide that by the number of stories you’ve posted. You end up with the number of comments per story. In the case of BW.com, that number is 23 for the month of December. That means that on average, for every story, blog posting, podcast, and video, BW.com gets 23 of its readers/users to give feedback and insight. That seems good to me, but I don’t really know; I’m curious to see January’s REI for BW.com.

There’s lots more to say on this. I’ll save it for later postings here and for the upcoming issue of min’s b2b.

Also, you can read my original post on the story, with more details on marketing and words from Byrne at minonline.

I make a lot of typos.  And misspellings.  I’ve been known on occasion to miss a letter here or there in someone’s name–a very bad mistake, and one that always stings when you see it in print.  But, tell me this, how important is it?  Take yesterday’s post, where I put “you’re magazines” in for “your magazines,” now corrected.  In the previous post, “poweful” instead of “powerful.”  I could go on.

I think there are three kinds of magazines in this regard:

1. The Perfect: The New Yorker comes to mind.  There are few of these guys.  The NEVER make mistakes, and when they do, you hear about it (see the Wikipedia scandal).

2. Mostly Everyone Else: The group consists of mostly everyone else.  They make mistakes occasionally, but they are generally professional, and mistake-free.

3. The Skimpers: I can’t think of any because they don’t last long.  We all know why being vigilant about small errors is so important: if you slip into skimp-land, you may not make it out alive.

The truth is, humanity, especially consumers of specialized business information, will put up with the “mostly everyone else” category.  (And thank god for that.)  Why?  For one, as long as they get the information they need, the presence of tiny errors–to an extent–is tolerated.  But, it’s mostly because most people aren’t expert writers or designers.  They are so in awe of what we in the industry can do in print–writing, editing, thinking analytically and in an organized fashion–that they do not have a strong frame of reference from which to criticize.

HOWEVER, and here is my main point, this is not true in the face-to-face side of the industry.  At your events, everything must be perfect, and there is no middle ground: It’s either perfect, or it’s not.  Why is perfection so important here in comparison to print?  Don’t attendees mostly care about doing business, making conections, and gaining knowledge?

Yes, they are.  And, frankly, if you deliver good value to them, you can probably afford not to be perfect.  But they will remember your imperfection, and tiny errors could make them decline your invite to attend or sponsor next year.  Why?

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In B2B media, we are pros (literally) at helping our clients market their brands. More and more, we’re being asked to think of creative ways of telling a product or service’s story to its possible customers. But how often do we think of doing our own marketing? Probably pretty often for some of you, as it should be. After all, with the media industry in a transitional phase, the rise of online advertising, the potential rise of mobile, and the wide fluctuations we’ve seen in pint this year, it’s more important than ever that we tell our story effectively to the clients we serve.

Twenty years ago, that story was fairly simple and an old one: we have a great magazine here and if you want to get in front of your customers, you should buy a program with us. Today, that’s no longer the case.

So, I wanted to share with you a press release that came accross my desk today. The gist: Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine is running a fantasy stock picking contest open only to marketers, advertisers, and potential advertisers that offers cash prizes for the participants who see the most stock market growth in six months with a fantasy portfolio staring out at a value of $100,000. This past month, Clark Katayama of godfrey Q and partners and Andrew Alper of Legg Mason each won $500 in real money for winning the contest and growing their fantasy portfolios by $5,000 over the course of 30 days. And that $500 is just $1,000 out of the $31,000 that Kiplinger’s is planning on giving away over the course of six months; at the end of the contest, Kiplinger’s will award $10,000 to its overall winner (the person who added the most value to his/her portfolio), $5,000 to the runner up, and $1,000 each to the next highest portfolios. The contest is open to “employees 21 or older of an advertising agency or the advertising, marketing or media-buying department of an advertiser.”

I bet you’re already trying to think of a way to weasel your way into playing the game.

The results? Hundreds of advertisers have signed on. And for the next six months, they’ll be intimately engaged in the Kiplinger’s brand in a way that advances the brand’s message: we are personal finance. Not only that, they are subtly telling the marketers that they know how to get eyeballs, and they know how to move the needle when it comes to marketing; translation: if you think we put a lot of effort into this to drive our sales, wait ’till you see what innovative things we can do for you to drive your sales.

For many B2Bs, it won’t be as easy as this. But the key is that Kiplinger’s found a way to engage its clients, showcase its marketing creativity, and also enhance its brand image. Maybe this program didn’t enumerate all the of the different things that Kiplinger’s can do for its clients (it sort of did); maybe it didn’t stay on message (I think it did); and maybe it didn’t even enhance the brand image (did did did!!!), but it definitely got qualified leads in the door, and once they’re there, it’s up to you to tell your story.

UPDATE:

The very nice PR person who sent me the story in the first place has asked me to add, for all you minsiders, that registration for eligible contestants closes December 15 and that you can go to www.winknightsmoney.com to sign up. Happy hunting.

I had a great conversation yesterday with Businessweek online editor John Byrne about how things are going on his site, particularly with his video and podcast offerings.  Much of our discussion will be printed in this upcoming week’s min’s b2b, and the rest will be published online at minonline.com/digital/ (behind the firewall).  For those of you who aren’t yet full-fledged minsiders, here are some of the points that were made:

• Just putting an executive in front of the camera and having them pontificate does not a great editorial product make.  What works?  Strategy, news reports, quick analysis, (and we’ll add product demos).
• The Web begs you to integrate different kinds of media to give the user a complete package.
• Integration, especially the kind of integration where advertisers in print push users to the content online, is the way to go.
• Invest time and money in training your editors.
• You need not create videos with top quality production values: sometimes down and dirty is best.
• Podcasts are still popular (and profitable).
• The key to a good podcast franchise (and the reason to do it) is subscribers.
• Your users will consume your media if you place it prominently on the home page.  People like audio and video: you just have to help them find it.

This resignation makes me look back at Steve Weitzner’s move from CEO to head of international business development for CMP.  Was this something he really wanted?  What he pushed out by the home office in London where parent UBM is based?  Was the feeling mutual?  A few weeks ago, I would have said that it looks like Weitzner left on his own terms and is now doing what he really wants to be doing.  Now, I’m not so sure.

One other question, does Marder’s leaving have anything to do with Weitzner’s?  Again, the timing makes me think that the home office in London (ie, David Levin, UBM CEO) was not happy with top management, etc.  I’ll endeavor to find out.

Rumors

The search for CMP’s new CEO is on.  I’ve heard two names from a few people.  Let me preface this by saying that this means nothing, really…just what’s floating out in the ether:

Tony Uphoff - a recent acquisition from Nielsen (he was running The Hollywood Reporter).  He is now running CMP’s business technology group

Gary Hughes - Hughes is the CEO of CMPi, UBM’s European B2B media branch

Most of this week’s issue of min’s b2b is devoted to discussing what I will call, for lack of a better word, green.  The focus of the issue will be what I wrote about in my post below: using the power of our editorial products to promote environmental awareness in the various industries that we serve, etc.

But make no mistake: there’s lots we don’t talk about.  We barely touch the issue of recycled paper and soy-based ink.  We don’t talk much about distribution, or digital magazines, or marketing green initiatives, or strategies for launching green columns or products.  There is a lot more we can discuss, and we will in the coming weeks and months.

I’d like to publicly call out the other publications that cover B2B media and ask them to join me in making this plea to our readers: let’s band together as an industry and resolve to reduce waste and the environmental impact of our own businesses while helping the businesses we serve do the same. 

In my last post, I linked to Paul Conley’s five questions for B2B post on his blog.  I think it’s an excellent series of articles, with deep, thought-provoking questions.  Perhaps it is best suited for middle and upper management, but I would encourage anyone who is interested in the industry to read it.

I do, however, take exception to his third post, which focuses on diversity in B2B.  Before responding, I should say (although I don’t think it should matter) that I’m a Jewish male, 25 years old, and that I have written about this subject before in an earlier post where I chastised American Business Media for holding its annual charity golf and tennis tournament at a club that, to me, stunk of disinclusion.

First, let me answer a question a friend posed to me this past weekend: Do I think I’m a racist?  I say: No.  Why?  Because I prefer not to judge people by their race, or assumed race.  When I do judge them, I judge them by other factors, including but not limited to character, intelligence, wit, personality, and personal taste.  I do not judge them by race, creed, color, nationality, sexuality, sex, gender, etc.

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