Andy Boyer

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Category: Personal (Page 41 of 49)

Amateur Writers, Start Your Engines

November 5, 2007 /

For months, maybe years, it’s been increasingly difficult to determine the blurry line between "professional" and "amateur" when it comes to news reporting or developing entertaining videos.  Now that line seems to be simple enough – If you are developing content, you are an amateur, and if you are a professional, you are on strike.

What a perfect storm for the aspiring amateur writer who never had the stomach to quit their job, move to LA, and battle for seats on ‘Joey" or "The Danny Bonaduce Show."

With the writers on strike, and thousands of cable channels still running 24 hours a day, content will be in demand.  Now if I was running programming for a network, I’d probably look two places – International and the Internet.

With only so many countries that speak English, the International channel dries up pretty quickly.  So the next stop is YouTube and the Blogosphere.  How many ways are there to turn some sort of blog or YouTube channel into a hybrid Internet / TV program?   And if a kid is developing content for kicks and giggles, how much do they really need to pay him?

It’s a huge open window for aspiring writers.  During the last threat of a writer’s strike, the "reality show" was hatched by networks as a defense mechanism, and that genre ended up dominating TV for nearly a decade.  What genre will this strike launch?

Sonics 2.0

November 2, 2007 /

The NBA kicked off season #40 in Seattle last night, in a game notworthy for it’s few absolutes:

  • It wasn’t the actual first game of the year, as the team had played in Denver the night before
  • It may or may not have been the last home opener in team history.
  • They never looked like they would get killed, and never looked liek they would win.
  • The roster is stacked full of people you may have heard of, but wouldn’t recognize if they sat next to you.
  • The arena was almost full
  • The fans didn’t quite know how to root for the players and boo the owners

But that made for an interesting dynamic. Some of the recognizable attractions remain – like Squatch, the Boom Squad and Sonics Dance team. T-Mobile still has big ads and the Dunking Ushers still put on a cool show. But there were no more Starbucks ads, and unless I missed them, the Southwest Airlines promotion seemed to be gone. At least there was no ad for the Stillwater Savings and Loan or Petroleum Workers Union 476.

There were some very noticeable handmade signs that I’m surprised fans were allowed to bring into the arena, including, "Noklahoma" and "Trade Bennett." It certainly would not have been unreasonable for an ownership group to force security to remove signs that denigrade the team or execs.

The loudest roar of the night was not prompted by the scoreboard, Squatch or PA Announcer – it was started by the fans and was simply a cheer of, "Save Our Sonics" that reverberated through the stadium for a few minutes. KJR’s Softy Mahler could be seen in the corner of the stadium taking part, and maybe 10% of the stadium was standing for it. With a little more organization, this cheer could take on a bigger role in future games, much like the "Go" ‘Huskies" cheer at UW shifts from side to side.

And finally, here’s an angle people aren’t writing about. The sales, marketing, admin, HR and other folks who work for the Sonics today are all Seattleites. They don’t want to move to Oklahoma. So you have owners who want to go, fans who want them to stay, employees who want them to stay and players who don’t care.

But one thing that is absolute – Kevin Durant is going to be a stud.

About the MSFT / Facebook deal

October 25, 2007 /

Well I don’t have anything to say about the Facebook / MSFT deal that is any smarter or insightful than anything else already published.  But here’s my personal view on how this affects people like us.

The life of the average blogger or other purveyor of Social Media just got better.  Google’s Ad Sense, the gold standard of Internet advertising, had started to get a little stale.  That happens to everyone making truckloads of cash – the need to radically innovate lessens.

But now, MSFT is locked into Facebook forever, and as Facebook impressions rise, MSFT ad impressions rise, and Google has to do more to please the millions of publishers out there.  Competiton is good, and in one investment, MSFT was able to do join up with an established web property haven’t been able to do with any of their homegrown properties – deliver a universally admired user experience, with virtually unlimited growth potential.

And wow, a valuation of $15 billion….. That’s simply amazing.       

Slide.com Web App

October 23, 2007 /

I think I’m about 2 years behind on this post….But I saw this little app on someone else’s web site and had to try it out. I know I’ve heard of Slide.com, but I guess I don’t spend enough time on MySpace to have seen it put to good use. And I really haven’t seen it on Facebook yet. (Maybe my Facebook friends aren’t the creative types.) Anyway, it’s a pretty cool way to add some visual functionality to your web site. Check it out at Slide.com (By the way, the images for this little test come from Imagekind.com.)

Ad Club Seattle Covers Social Media

October 16, 2007 /

Seattle’s Ad Club brought Social Media to the forefront today, as Eric Weaver, Principle of Brand Dialogue, and Laura Porto Stockwell, VP and Director of Interactive at Publicis, "explored this new(ish) medium and (taught us) how it affects your brand and you personally."

The house was packed and just about everyone stayed until the end, indicating agencies and professional marketers are at least interested in figuring out how to wrap their arms around this giant mixture of bees and butterflies called Social Media.   Look for more events like this in Social Media, and Spring Creek Group will be at many of them.

Walk Now, for Cure Autism Now

October 9, 2007 /

This Saturday, the people from Cure Autism Now are hosting ‘Walk Now" at the University of Washington.  Autism attacks more children at a faster rate than any other disorder out there today, and Cure Autism Now is singularly focused on finding cures and treatments.

Autism suffers an invisibilty issue at times, because parents with Autistic parents are often confined to their home and long therapy sessions.  Current treatments can run as much as $90k a year, with many not covered by insurance who call them "Experimental," so think about how much spare time you would have trying to make $200k a year and care for an autistic child at the same time.

Anyway, Walk Now is a great event and gives you a sense about the real effect of Autism.  You can get more info at the Web site, or just show up at the UW this weekend. 

Check out Widget Bucks

October 3, 2007 /

I’m going to give a big ol’ plug to my friends over at mpire, and congratulate them on the launch of Widget Bucks.  Here’s the straight skinny from one of their promotional emails:

Are you earning $2 – $15 CPM on your current ads? Do you wish you had more control over the type of content being displayed on your site? Are CPA ads frustrating because you can’t control if a user actually does make a purchase?

After years of dealing with ad networks, we saw too many ads that sucked and networks paying too low of CPM’s to effectively monetize people’s sites, we decided to do something about it. We’re proud to announce the launch of WidgetBucks.com a shopping ad network. With our widgets displaying contextual product offers in an engaging format, we’re seeing $3-6+ CPM on thousands of sites.

Today we have made our beta available for you to try it for yourself and start earning more money. Configuring the widget for your site is quick and easy and you’ll see immediate results.

I will be playing with Widget Bucks tonight here on AndyBoyer.com, and we’ll also be testing it on MyElectionChoices.com.

A Plug for Proper Direct Marketing

September 28, 2007 /

I sign up for a lot of things to check them out, so I’m on a ton of mailing lists.  I’m not complaining, because it certainly doesn’t take me very long to zap through my inbox and delete 25 emails from Shutterfly, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Art.com, etc… who obviously have a spreadsheet that says, "If we send 1 million emails per week, 10,000 people will open them and 100 will buy something."  Such is the world of anonymously blasting your email base.

But today I got an email from the folks at Lumosity, a "brain games" site I wrote briefly about a few months back.  I had forgotten about them.  They sit in my favorites bar, but the link is dusty from lack of use.  So getting an email from them was an actual pleasure.  I *wanted* to read that email because I had forgotten about them. And they had new things to tell me, so I appreciated hearing them. 

So here’s a lesson to take from everyday life and apply to Direct Marketing. "Don’t talk unless you have something to say."  After all, it’s free to talk too, but you rarely see people coming up out of the blue to start a conversation about nothing with you.  And "Special 20% off sale" is not something to say. "New package discounts to Fiji" does not count as something to say either.  Lumosity’s message was, "You joined our beta program, now we have new games for your brain, do you want to check them out?" That counts as news in my book.  Now if they hit me every week about their newest game, they’ll go in the "Annoying yet not Spam category."  But for now, they get a plug.

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