brandonmendelson-blog

[brandonmendelson-blog]

You gotta love a company who ups their prices despite the fact that actual click-through rates are going down. You stay classy Facebook.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Content Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Drink

This morning, I woke up and read Nick Bilton’s weekly New York Times’ column. Nick is a friend and one of the best bloggers/writers/journalists out there. But with today’s column, he was way off base. 

Having already said what I wanted to say about the Path situation, I debated if I should weigh in again. Then I read Nick’s column again. There’s a way to say what he wants to say, but he goes about it the complete wrong way. I felt like I had to respond. 

But before I could, my CrunchFund partner Michael Arrington wrote almost exactly what I would have written — but in a more effective way. As a dog owner/lover, Michael thought up a great analogy: “So the belly is shown.”

Read More

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Idiots Say Mitt Romney Is Losing Because Of How He Uses Facebook

Hey,

Did you know Mitt Romney is having a Facebook problem? Did you know it could COST HIM THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

That's what this one guy at Forbes said ... because Forbes is a reliable source of information. 

At least ... they used to be. Then they started letting guys like me and over six hundred other assholes say whatever they want under the Forbes name. Now it's like The Huffington Post without sexy bikini photos and kittens: Fucking terrible.

Oh well. I thought I'd share this to give you a good laugh on a Sunday morning. Enjoy!

[brandonmendelson-blog]

About Tomorrow's Grammys And Their Ratings

So, not to sound morbid here or anything, but ... If the Grammys do a huge number in terms of ratings, don't let the social media people claim that to be some kind of victory. The spike will (if it happens) be attributed to the death of Whitney Houston.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

The Tech Blog Bullshit Cycle Continues

The cycle continues. Bad news about a tech company? Cover-up / Apologist bullshit on a tech blog.

Also: I guess all I have to do now is say someone is a friend of mine and that clears them of any wrong doing? 

Huh. I gotta try that one sometime.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Glad to see someone is making some sense here in the media. Is a pattern emerging here?

(And of course, you can count on the tech blogs to defend the company and the social media marketers to show up in the comments section to say things like "they just don't get it.")

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Score One For The Internet? Or For The Media?

In the book, I documented at least four instances where Wired magazine inaccurately portrayed things. Here's just the latest example of the people at Wired pushing a narrative that isn't factually accurate. (And to be clear, CBS certainly didn't help matters. Instead of fact checking and questioning the examples they brought up, they lobbed the guy a nice fat softball to hit out of the park.)

This "Social Media beat Komen" thing was repeated in The Wrap, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times.

(And just like in the book, the person writing for The Huffington Post has something to sell you. What a shock.)

Thank God someone at The Daily Beast has a brain and explains why really went down with Komen. As always, the media drove the action, not social media.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Let's Play A Fun Social Media Drinking Game

Step 1: Read this article.

Step 2: Go to the comments section.

Step 3. Take a drink every time a social media marketer pops up. (Hint: Check the URL of their name.)

Step 4. Take a drink every time one of those social media marketers say "measuring the ROI of social media is easy" and then give a very vague, generic sounding answer.

Step 5. Drink when they name drop a company but then don't provide any links or anything to back up what they've said.

Step 6. Drink whenever you see some variation of "It's not about the ROI" or "It all depends on what your goals are" (which is really a round about way of saying, "It's not about the ROI").

Step 7. Drink whenever you see an Apples to Oranges comparison. "2% of people fill out comments cards at a hotel, 50% leave a comment about that hotel on Facebook". Not the same thing, like, at all.

Step 8. Drink when you see buzzwords like "community", "trust", "engagement", or stupid shit like "social media has to be ingrained into the company's DNA" and any mention of the sales funnel.

Repeat until dead.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

This ad for Mad Men is on the side of the Andaz West Hollywood hotel, which used to be known as the Continental Hyatt House, that’s located next door to the Comedy Store.

The story is that a comic jumped to his death from that building…

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Silicon Valley's dirty little secret is that the startup boom is mostly a disguised jobs fair that directly benefits the big corporations

The Dirty Little Secret Of Silicon Valley's Startup Boom...

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Arianna Huffington, head of the Huffington Post Media Group, chimed in at that point, highlighting that traditional TV networks would never interrupt an interview with Beyonce Knowles when news of the U.S. departure from Afghanistan breaks. But the Huffington Post Streaming Network would interrupt to share the news and then ask Beyonce for her thoughts on the news, the executives explained.

AOL to Launch Huffington Post Streaming Network in Second Quarter

(Editor's Note: This is how democracy dies.)

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Facebook Continues To Deceive Advertisers

The good news for Facebook is that there are a lot of people out there who have been brainwashed into thinking advertising on Facebook works. It barely does, but by the time they've figured that out, they've already given Facebook a lot of money. 

Hence: Facebook, right now, is insanely profitable.

In instances where Facebook advertisements are successful, it usually happens among already well established brands and the Internet Community (the people who do the majority of the content creation and the talking around these parts who also happen to be well off, rich, educated, mostly white, and live in places like San Francisco and New York).

Everyone else just gets fucked, but you never hear about it because it's not a narrative the media, especially the tech media, like to run with.

But the bad news for Facebook, and the good news for us, is that their bullshit won't last forever. Even in filing for their IPO, Facebook, whom makes 80% of their revenue from advertisements, said this:

"Advertising on the social web is a significant market opportunity that is still emerging and evolving. We believe that most advertisers are still learning and experimenting with the best ways to leverage Facebook to create more social and valuable ads". (Source)

In other words: "Don't blame us for bad and faulty metrics to determine if our advertising works, the people advertising with us don't know what they're doing. Blame them."

So there you go, the people at Facebook are insanely rich right now because you're dumb, according to them.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

The Menlo Park, California-based company added experienced political staffers to its Washington-based public policy team, including Joel Kaplan, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Kaplan gave $5,000 to the PAC and is treasurer. With a new powerhouse team in place, Facebook's lobbying expenditures skyrocketed in 2011 to $1.35 million from under $400,000 in 2010, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Facebook execs gear up political influence arm

[brandonmendelson-blog]

Fun With ESPN ... And Math

"Apparently, for ESPN, mobile is now “the company’s fourth-largest network” and “has 150,000 people plugged into its mobile offerings at any given time” with “users spending 45% more time with ESPN mobile content in 2011 than the prior year,” according to this report in Media Post. Those numbers are stunning — but not surprising (to me, at the very least). With more than 400 million smartphones expected to be sold, it makes perfect sense for sports to get the mobile bump." (Om Malik)

Let's do some math here ...

If ESPN is seeing 150,000 people access their mobile offerings on a regular (let's say daily) basis and there are 400 million smartphones sold, that would mean 0.0375% of mobile phone users are accessing ESPN on a daily basis.

Assuming, of course, that there are 400 million smartphones sold in the next year or whatever.

But still, this is yet another example of the numbers being distorted and presented out of any sort of context in order to advance a narrative. A narrative that benefits guys like Om Malik, who invest in companies and want to recoup that investment by getting people excited and using those platforms.

There's also an assumption that new smart phone users are going to use ESPN. We have no idea if that's the case, and even if it is, who are those customers to begin with? If they're already loyal ESPN fans, then it doesn't really matter where they're accessing it because they're not just accessing it on that one device.

[brandonmendelson-blog]

I am starting to worry about the concentration of media power into the hands of a relatively small number of very high-traffic Web companies. It’s similar to the concern people have raised for decades about the power of the news media. But instead of fearing the power of TV networks and newspapers, we now need to be concerned about the power of online media companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, China’s Baidu, Wikipedia, Twitter and Amazon.

SOPA and PIPA Defeat: People Power or Corporate Clout?