Andy Boyer

Author: Andy Boyer

  • A Feel Good Story, Courtesy of the New York Yankees

    Maybe it’s because the new Yankees regime is headed by the Boss, Part Deux.  Or maybe they just seem softer now that Red Sox Nation has taken over the mantle of "Most Obnoxious Fans Alive."  But for whatever reason, the Bronx Bombers trip from Tampa to Virginia Tech to play an exhibition game and visit the student memorials certainly feels like altruism and genuine caring, not a marketing stunt.  Amongst all the hate and rhetoric being thrown around the political fields these days, it’s nice to read something like this ESPN.com article.

  • If Bear Stearns Can’t Manage Their Finances…

    I mean, if a company that manages money for a living, doesn’t know how to manage money, then reallly, what chance do any of us have?  Here’s a stock chart you don’t want to see in your portfolio…

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  • A Week With Simply Too Much to Choose From

    It seems like the winter doldrums have ended, because suddenly the news is awash in one fascinating story after another.  Just when I want to sit down and write my own dumb blog, something comes across my Google reader and I end up lost in other people’s work.

    So here’s what got started and not completed last week:

    • An analysis of the Sonics situation from 4 perspectives.  Just the fact that Steve Ballmer can’t get any respect from the Wash Legislature tells you somethng about those folks in Olympia.
    • Is Obama airing his own dirty laundry all at once in preparation to hit back at Hillary?
    • The Spitzer debacle – If he’s Client No. 9, how freaked out are 1-8 right now?
    • The Spitzer debacle part 2: I don’t quite understand how she is going to make $1 Million on this.  Is it unfair to say that we, the gossip hungry American people, are the real whores here?
    • Is there anything more perfect in the universe than the first two days of March Madness?
    • Plus, tons of tech news, an exploding stock market, an investment firm getting a bail out loan, Yahoo merging with MSFT, and on and on and on and on.

    I must focus.  Will get something completed shortly.

     

  • Thanks to all the Folks at the SVC

    I want to thank Larry Asher and everyone who attended the seminar on Social Media that Spring Creek Group principal Clay McDaniel and I hosted yesterday at the School of Visual Concepts.

    It was really interesting to see a roomful of people who wanted to figure out how to promote their blog and social media presence, from perspectives as varied as ad agencies, design firms, newspapers, aspiring authors, philanthropic endeavors, small businesses, freelancers and giant medical centers.  I don’t think Clay and I expected such a wide range of interest.

    (In a shameless plug, I want to extol the virtues of GotVoice’s Voice-to-Text service.  We were in the seminar about 7 hours and I never checked my voicemail.  It would have been a total pain if I had to listen to each one instead of being able to just read each voicemail as a text message.  Full disclosure: I do some work for GotVoice.  But it was very useful yesterday regardless.) 

    It sounds like we may put another one of these together in April or May.  If you missed this one, hope to see you then.

  • Pity the Poor Guy Running the Wyoming Caucuses

    Think about this.  As long as Wyoming has been a state, it hasn’t mattered one iota what happened in their caucus.  Heck, a caucus was simply a reason to get together in March and have a few beers and celebrate the coming spring. 

    It’s not a knock against them, it’s just nature.  Being Wyoming, they couldn’t risk having a caucus in the middle of a January blizzard.  And since barely anyone lives there, no candidates were coming to visit anyway.  So they put some guy named "Joe" or "Steve" or "Sam" or something in charge of making sure ballots got printed.  And Joe or Steve or Sam had to call a bunch of buddies, or just the same people from 4 years ago, and find a few houses willing to throw a few caucuses.

    But not this year.  All of a sudden, Wyoming’s 12 little delegates matter.  And now you have a whole bunch of guys named Jack or Jim or something calling Joe saying, "Uh, I only have room in my living room for 12 people.  On the latest evite, it says 237 people are coming…"

    As my friend described it, it’s like being the kid in school who forgot about his science project, grabbed 5 leaves from outside and taped them to construction paper, only to find out everyone has to present in front of a live televised audience, and Hannah Montana and LeBron James are the judges. 

    Look at Texas, where the Democratic Party had weeks to see that there would be a huge turnout.  Yet you have the biggest mess ever imagined, a caucus that people compared to a rodeo.  You think those guys are the only ones who are going to be stuck with their pants caught in their lassos?

    I mean, pretend you volunteered up to run your kid’s Little League tournament, and then 6 months later you find out the other teams will be from Iraq, Dubai, Pakistan, Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia and the US teams will be coached by Brad Pitt, Bono, Rosie O’Donnel, David Duke and Louis Farrakhan.  It’s not your fault.  You aren’t prepared for this.  It just is what it is.

    So pity the poor guy running the Wyoming Caucus.   And make sure you tune in.

     

  • Are Lower Clickthrough Rates a Problem?

    Business Week asked the question this week:

    "Google: Are Ad Concerns Overblown? – The number of ad clicks fell in January for Google and Yahoo. But how important are those click-through rates, anyway?"

    "comScore (SCOR) said clicks on ads placed on Google were little changed in January from a year earlier, and that they fell 12% from the last three months of 2007. For Yahoo, ad clicks fell 3% from the fourth quarter."

    According to Google and Yahoo, Internet Advertising is alive and well.  But others have questions.  The detractors say:

    • "Advertisers are simply bidding on and buying fewer keywords."
    • "Credit-strapped consumers are simply doing less shopping online, and therefore clicking less often on the ads that direct them to retail sites.
    • "We remain concerned that a slowing U.S. and possibly global economy could further hinder Google’s growth," Stanford Group analyst Clay Moran wrote.

    But Google, Yahoo and their friends say:

    • Google co-founder Sergey Brin, contends that an economic downturn will accelerate a shift in spending from radio, print, and TV advertising to the Web. "It makes a lot of sense for advertisers, if they want to be careful about their spending and they want to make sure they are getting a good ROI to use the exact kind of advertising that we are offering.
    • Barbara Baldwin, senior director of Polycom’s global brand programs, says her company has no plans to reduce spending in 2008. "During a recession it’s really important to maintain a consistent presence, rather than dropping your campaigns and then trying to restart," she says.
    • "I think click-through was not a great measure to start with," says Michael Leo, co-founder of Avenue A/Razorfish, which was acquired by Microsoft (MSFT), and current CEO of ad software and consulting company Operative. "I don’t think clicks tell us what is going on."
    • "This myopic fixation on clicks really does a disservice to the publishers who are putting together the inventory and the advertisers who are not getting a real sense of the performance," says John Chandler, principal analyst at Atlas, a division of Microsoft’s advertiser and publisher solutions business.

    What do you think?  Will a decrease in ad clicks torpedo the ad sales industry, and cripple all the new start-ups relying on advertising revenue?  Does the loss of these start-ups spell major doom?  Or does it merely allow for consolidation?  And is this consolidation needed anyway?

  • The Fight to Keep the Sonics – A Hero Emerges

    simmons.jpgThe sad story concerning the absolute theft of the Sonics from Seattle by Oklahoma oilmen has gotten almost no publicity to date.  Considering we are the city that launched Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Cranium and Pearl Jam, you would think collectively we might have the phone number of one PR person in town.

    But amazingly, for the most part, no one outside of Seattle seems to take note of a very simple story:

    1. In 2006, Oklahoma guys buy team that’s been in Seattle for 41 years  A team that plays in a 17,000 seat arena, in the middle of downtown, that was renovated 10 years ago.
    2. New owners demand $500 Million new arena from taxpayers, an arena that would cost more than the 70,000 seat football stadium and 47,000 seat retractable roof baseball stadium.
    3. City tells Oklahoma City guys to stick it.
    4. Oklahoma guys claim they can’t be successful in Seattle and announce they have remarkably found a city willing to take the team – in Oklahoma City.
    5. Local Billionaires who were asleep at the switch in 2006 say they will buy team to keep it in Seattle.
    6. Oklahoma guys, who now have Kevin Durant and six 1st round draft picks in the next 3 years, tell the local Billionaires to stick it.
    7. David Stern looks at Seattle fans, and tells them to stick it.  Then stick it again for good measure.
    8. Everyone acknowldges the only question is whether they leave in 2008 or 2010.

    Thankfully, one national reporter has taken up the cause.  And the amazing thing is, he is the Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, as influential as any writer in sports today.  His letterbag column is a must read, and carries with it the potential that NBA fans from across teh country could tell David Stern, "Hey, this isn’t right.  I support the Pistons, but damn if I’m going to support a league that will let some oil baron rape and plunder a 41 year old legacy."

    So please, read Bill Simmons.  Send an email to thank Bill Simmons.  Join the Bill Simmons Facebook Group.  Send the Bill Simmons column on to your friends.  Blog about Bill Simmons.  Because this Bostonian has emrged as the only sportswriter who seems to care that the Sonics belong in Seattle.  

    Digg the Bill Simmons article here.

  • Sonics Bulls 1996 Game 1 Intros

    Too loud to hear!

  • Dirty Rotten Comcastic Scoundrels

    Net Neutrality is a term that isn’t sexy enough to get the iTunes, MySpace and Facebook crowds excited.  But thankfully, we have a bunch of watchdog technologists keeping a close eye on this.

    In a nutshell, as I understand it, Comcast and other Internet Service Providers want to control how fast certain web sites can deliver content.  Think about Web site content as a car.  Right now, every car has access to every super wide highway, and there are no speed limits.  But if Comcast and its friends get their way, they would get to decide which cars get to drive on super highways, and which ones have to drive on pothole filled dirt roads.  They argue this would allow them to control piracy. 

    But most others argue that its a way for them to effectively shut down blogs and alternative media.  For example, my blog could be stuck on their "dirt road" list and take 2 minutes to load, effectively stopping anyone from reading it.  They could charge millions o fdollars for super highway access, and only the major media outlets and super corporations would be able to deliver content quickly. It would be impossible to launch a small web business, because your site would take much longer than the established ones.

    Since most people don’t follow this too closely, most people don’t really think it’s a big deal.  So here’s evidence that it is INDEED a big deal.  

    How big are the stakes in the so-called network neutrality debate now raging before Congress and federal regulators?

    Consider this: One side in the debate actually went to the trouble of hiring people off the street to pack a Federal Communications Commission meeting yesterday—and effectively keep some of its opponents out of the room.

    Broadband giant Comcast—the subject of the F.C.C. hearing on network neutrality at the Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts—acknowledged that it did exactly that….

    Be sure to read the whole article on Portfolio.com.  Very shady, very corrupt, and an indicator of the lengths Comcast and others will go to  control what web sites you have access to. 

  • A Web Show About Web Celebrities

    A few months ago I was at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, and I was amazed at the cult icon status some of the influential bloggers had achieved.  It was really quite cool to see these bloggers in person, and to see them interact with their readers.

    So now we see the rise of a new web startup based on this phonomenon.  You have your tech moguls like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  You have your giants without household name recognition like Larry Ellison, Sergei Brin and Jerry Yang.  And then you have your web celebrities who are really only famous inside the Web 2.0 community.  And darnit, these guys deserve press as well.

    This is the theory behind Pop17.com a webcast dedicated to the semi-stars of Web land.  So if you have your Andy Warhol 15 minutes of tech fame scorecard, you can now add the hosts and writers of this webcast to the list of semi-celebrities who all of us in this alternative world love.  Please someone create, "The making of Pop17.com – Behind the Show."