But beyond that, it’s anybody’s guess as to what will happen next:

Is it a case of "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer" that will allow Yahoo to move Jerry Yang and Yahoo forward less distracted by Microsoft’s various advances and the joint Icahn-MSFT proxy threat?

Or is it just the overture to a renewed round of negotiations that could still lead to Microsoft buying Yahoo outright?

Given that last week’s developments had seemed to indicate Microsoft growing weary of Icahn as an intermediary, and that some observers had previously bet on a renewed MSFT offer before August 1 to bolster the chances of unseating Yahoo’s entire board in a proxy fight led by Icahn, the latter possibility appears increasingly dim.

But given the now nearly 6 months history of the Micro-hoo saga, who really knows at this point. What we do know however is that if negotiations continue at whatever level, it would continue to serve as a distraction for both Yahoo and Microsoft from what they should be concentrating on:

Innovation.

So bad have things gotten that this fact was acknowledged in no less than MSFT’s internal email on how to get its listing Internet division to profitability:

… 4. Fix our online branding – Our brands are fragmented and confusing today, and we recognize a need to clarify and align our online branding . We are now driving forward to address this opportunity.

Ironically, in that same May 18 email MSFT’s Kevin Johnson was pre-announcing their latest attempt at search "disruption", "Live Search cashback" (yes, the lowercase ‘c’ is intentional, someone at MSFT must have thought that it was "cool").

Let’s examine why "Live" is such an unfortunate choice for branding Microsoft’s search offering along with a slew of other properties:

1. Since "Live" was from all appearances originally conceived to refer to an online version of Windows and Office products (e.g. "Office Live Small Business", etc.), it draws an implicit comparison back to those products as being NOT "Live", or, in other words, "Dead". And that can only be considered to be unfortunate.
2. By matching the term "live" with a slew of other terms across many different properties, there is brand dilution built right into the naming "methodology".
3. "Live" is also a well-used, one could even say well-worn term in a context of "real, live, as in not recorded events" in entertainment and media, while browsing the internet is not really considered "live", unless we are talking about live streaming of audio or video. And so things get particularly confusing when paired in ways such as Microsoft’s "Craigslist killer" attempt "Windows Live Expo", which conjures up images of a real-life trade show or other similar events in most people’s minds. So it comes as no surprise that Live Expo never got any traction and is now being decommissioned.
4. "Live" may actually also be generally too generic a term to capture any real mindshare: "Live Search", "Live Expo", "Live _Anything_" do not carve out enough of a unique mental real estate in the way that newly minted terms, and/or terms with novel usage such as Amazon, Yahoo, Google, and eBay can. Ask yourself if there is a reason that just about none of the internet companies built on "generic" domain names ever really took off. Buy.com, Shop.com, etc. etc.
5. Oddly enough, single syllable terms may also be too short to, except for a very small number of exceptions, create enough naming differentiation and rhythm: One syllable is like one single "beat", when the majority of successful brand names (not necessarily companies) are two or sometimes three syllables long, with the stress typically falling on the first syllable: INtel, BEbo, iPhone, Gmail, Windows, YouTube, Meebo, Facebook, MySpace, eBay, PayPal, Kayak, iTunes, iPod, craigslist, Wordpress, Blogger, Apple, flickr, twitter, Yahoo, Netflix, Google, Netscape, Drupal, Hotmail, Amazon(3), Firefox(3). Add your own favorite non-techy examples here.

The bottom line is, brand names need to be memorable first and foremost. And by being easy to say (using rhythm and even rhyme), you and I and everyone else are more likely to repeat them - out loud or to ourselves. Add uniqueness that ideally carves out a new spot in our mental real estate (a "category label" - think Q-Tips, Xerox, and yes, Google, as in "to google someone or something"), and that is NOT confusing, and you’re there.

To bring it back to Microsoft, "Windows Live Hotmail" isn’t it. Hotmail (not originally created by Microsoft) was actually a very good brand name, which accounts among other things for it’s wide, "viral" spread throughout the world.

Bizarrely enough, Microsoft in it’s tortured branding forays and strict insistence on spreading around its still powerful "Windows" brand , had considered dropping the "Hotmail" name entirely in favor of "Windows Live Mail".

Windows incidentally was always a decent brand as long as it is reserved for naming an operating system, anything past that was needless brand dilution. I have discussed previously where the strong but mistaken urge toward brand dilution stems from: Corporate hubris and misunderstanding of branding fundamentals.

The three-way "negotiations" between Carl Icahn, the Yahoo board, and Microsoft turned up another non-starter offer for MSFT to cherry-pick Yahoo’s search assets, which in turn led to much finger-pointing, and general acrimony.

The result is that Icahn may now be out of the picture, and that Yahoo will survive through its August 1 shareholder meeting. Unless Microsoft comes back with a last minute complete buy-out offer at a guaranteed, cash-equivalent price that is ($29 per share would seem like the absolute minimum in this regard).

But it all seems increasingly unlikely, leaving Microsoft without a strategy, and Yahoo desperate to get past the distraction of the entire episode, and its operation back on track.

Jerry Yang is apparently begging his troops to keep working (for the second time in two months), and as I previously pointed out, for good reason. And even though we don’t hear similar exhortations form inside the Microsoft bunker, there is little doubt that Microsoft is not similarly affected:

During the entire first half of 2008, the only news out of Redmond other than the Micro-hoo botched deal attempts, has been the announcement of the "Live Search Cashback" (LSCB) attempt to sort of buy search query share using a rebate gimmick (that had failed to work before). That MSFT and some commentators touted this as a "game changer" proves the depth of their dilusion.

I have been working on a detailed post for why LSCB was such a bad idea in many (technical) ways, but the end-result is much easier to ascertain through some simple tests: I occasionally have been checking LSCB price quotes against Google search results for identical items, and the FREE(!) product listings at the top of Google Universal Search beat the LSCB prices with the "discount" (that MSFT is kind enough to hold in escrow for you for up to 2 months) MOST OF THE TIME!

I expect ComScores due out this week to tell the tale that Live Search Cashback has caused nary a blip on the search share radar screen. Even Microsoft seems to not be talking about it anymore…

During the same time frame, Google has had major announcements regarding their OpenSocial, GoogleGears, Google App Engine, and Google Android (Google’s mobile phone) software kits, all the while honing their core search and search ad serve in the background. Even Yahoo recently announced a relatively substantial opening up of their search toolkit to developers for third-party applications.

Back to Yahoo’s Serious Issues

(more…)]]> http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microhoo-post-mortem-post-part-4-the-patient-is-not-quite-dead-yet/feed http://businessmindhacks.com/post/twitter-updates-for-2008-07-11 http://businessmindhacks.com/post/twitter-updates-for-2008-07-11#comments Sat, 12 Jul 2008 04:59:59 +0000 Alex http://businessmindhacks.com/post/twitter-updates-for-2008-07-11

"they are going to lose the Viacom lawsuit in a really big way. If that happens, not only will there be a massive liability, but it will open the doors to everyone else sitting on the sidelines letting Sumner Redstone do the hard work. YouTube will be torn apart by plaintiffs like piranha[s] going after fresh bloody meat."

Even though I love the piranhas metaphor, I beg to differ on the premise that Viacom is acting in its own best interest in this ongoing saga. I think they are cutting into their own flesh.

(Others with more legal knowledge than me have argued that even from a copyright infringement stand-point, Viacom has at best only a limited leg to stand on, but we’ll see, courts can be… uhm… tricky. Read more on this in the comments to Hank’s post).

Exhibit A: Rupert Murdoch (of News Corp./FOX/WSJ/etc.) said in an interview in late May:

Q: So why didn’t you sue YouTube? Plenty of pirated stuff there. A: All the time. Simpsons are all over it. We had mixed feelings about it, but when it came down to it, we figured it was doing more to promote our shows than it was to hurt them.

(AllThingsD.com via AlleyInsider.com)

Therefore, in my view Viacom (Sumner Redstone) is taking the worst possible route: The recent court subpoena for YouTube’s viewing records is already a PR disaster. What Viacom should have done/be doing is force YouTube/Google into a deal where they get to place ads next to this "appropriated" content, and get a share of the fees plus free advertising for themselves (e.g. in the end frame).

But after you threaten and posture, you lose most leverage that you might have had to politely force a Win-Win. (BTW, I don’t hold Google entirely blameless in this, they could have done more to court the "old media" content providers, and might be monetizing YouTube a lot more efficiently than they have been doing so far. Which is to say, they haven’t.)

Better yet, they (Viacom) should have been the ones uploading the content THEMSELVES on YouTube, with their own link text showing, etc. (rather than create me-too sites that are slow to catch mind-share). If they were even marginally Web-savvy, they would have surfed the YouTube wave themselves, and would now be positioned a lot better than they are.

This way they could have LEVERAGED YouTube for their own purposes, sending people from there to their full-scale episodes. I said 2-3 years ago that I’d be willing to pay $1 for each of my favorite Daily Show episodes, etc. Why did Viacom fail to see that they could have had their own iTunes-like TV content distribution?!?

This copyright infringement thinking is pure scarcity mentality: It is one thing for an unknown author to not want their articles/books/etc. being used verbatim and without attribution somewhere else, but for a well-worn-in BRAND such as Viacom’s shows, that’s simply not the problem. Everybody already knows who created it and where it runs. (This is BTW the reason why YOU MUST BRAND!)

Nurture the Infected?!

And while it’s fun to partake in all of the speculation and hand-wringing over specific features (iPhone App store, enterprise IT compatibility, battery-life), the truly important underlying dynamics can often get lost in the fray.

One such factor: The ingenious marketing employed by Steve Jobs and Co.

And it’s here that "The Magician", or more specifically, "The Magician" archetype comes into play:

As I first heard this pointed out by Rich Schefren and Jay Abraham in one of their "Maven Marketing" teleconference calls from earlier this year: Steve Job’s is perfectly, and, we must assume, somewhat deliberately positioned as a "Wizard of Oz"-like character in the consumer electronics space, the magician who disappears behind the curtains and reappears with new, ever-more-amazing wonders of technology.

While I had studied archetype branding myself for a while, I must admit that I had never heard the Steve Jobs/Magician analogy used up to that point. And when the unveiling of the new iPhone 3G occurred June 9, Rich and Jay’s brief remark snapped right back into focus for me.

Here he was, Steve Jobs, "The Magician" on the stage of the WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference).

Mind you there is a vast amount of orchestration going into this feat. From Apple design philosophies (their "clean" design could be seen to evoke "grail"-like associations!), to purposefully withholding detailed product information until the timed announcements at Mac conferences, to Steve’s own stage-craft in triumphantly unveiling the new gadget of the day.

Everything has to be just right to fully support the archetype. But in doing so, whether consciously or unconsciously, Apple and Steve Jobs are occupying a very valuable space in the minds of a fickle public. And "The Magician" image serves both an extremely useful guide-post (does this next action fit our archetype branding?), as well as a uniquely powerful marketing device in this respect.

It is a brand quite literally burnt deep into the neural networks of consumers world-wide, in a way that even the valuable Apple brand never will be:

Nothing sticks better in the mind than these largely unconscious, archetypal patterns, the original building-blocks of the human mind. At that level, you don’t have to explain very much at all. It’s simply understood, and universally so (archetypes hold true across all cultural contexts).

Many marketers and small business owners ignore this fact each and every day at their own peril, "leaving" the proverbial "piles of money on the table."

You can get your own copy of Rich and Jay’s "Maven Matrix" here (opt-in required, NOT an affiliate link). It’s a useful primer on archetype branding. Skip past the salesy intro to page 30 or so for the real meat of the report.

Photo: MacRumors

But this time even usually stalwart Micro-hoo cheerleader Michael Arrington of TechCrunch is saying that Microsoft may be going too far in its Machiavellian machinations to want to feast on Yahoo’s carcass.

Meanwhile David Kirkpatrick, senior editor of Fortune Magazine, argues that Microsoft will inevitably buy Yahoo, making the case that it has gotten personal for Redmond ever since Google wrested the crown of perceived "greatest and most powerful tech company" away from them.

But in arguing that Microsoft desperately needs Yahoo’s scale, Kirkpatrick falls into the same "scale will solve things" thought trap that is deluding Microsoft, and plenty of commentators throughout the blogosphere in both posts and comments as well.

Currently Google’s monetization advantage vs. Yahoo (confirmed, and likely similar vs. MSN/Live Search), that comes from their focused execution is somewhere around 50-100%. And it has NOTHING to do with "scale".

It has everything to do with the advertisers being able to afford higher average bids due to higher average conversions. Period.

Conversion is the only thing that ultimately matters to an advertiser. Scale is a straw-man. If YHOO or MSFT had equal or better conversion numbers for the same keywords, then advertisers would jump on that. The individual advertiser could care less about the total query share numbers, or total number of clicks, they only care about their ads converting when they are being shown and clicked on.

If you mail a direct response ad, do you care what total percentage of the region or nation that mailing list reaches? No way. You care about the conversion numbers, because if an ad doesn’t convert you can’t long afford to mail/run it. In search ads, if you fail to convert the clicks you get, as a small business you can be bankrupt before you know it. It’s that simple.

The total volume of searches or even clicks for a keyword on Google, Yahoo, or MSN/Live has little or nothing to do with it. It’s simply that at lower conversion rates on Yahoo or MSN/Live, advertisers have a harder time making the economics work for them.

Steve Ballmer should change his tune at the next Microsoft company meeting:

Conversion, conversion, conversion…

(more…)]]> http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microhoo-post-mortem-post-part-3-delusions-of-scale/feed http://businessmindhacks.com/post/wordpress-25x-design-issues-why-i-am-staying-with-my-233-renegade http://businessmindhacks.com/post/wordpress-25x-design-issues-why-i-am-staying-with-my-233-renegade#comments Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:52:07 +0000 Alex http://businessmindhacks.com/post/wordpress-25x-design-issues-why-i-am-staying-with-my-233-renegade I had put off writing this post for a while, partly because I wanted to take the time and really give Wordpress 2.5 a whirl before bashing it.

For several months now I have watched the discussion on the Wordpress.org support forums - especially about the much maligned admin back-end changes, run a security "back-porting" experiment to keep my heavily customized version of 2.3.3 viable, and put 2.5.x through its paces to see what it does and doesn’t do.

All along, I’ve been taking copious screen-caps to help build my case. And at least for me, the verdict is in: Wordpress 2.5.x has been largely a mistake. Here’s why:

1. The layout and design changes to the admin backend have done preciously little to solve the problem of wasted vertical screen "real-estate", even though a supposedly top-notch design firm was hired in the redesign. Not sure what they were thinking, but even though the menus were made a little more sane, I still find no real consistency in what was done.
2. Several things that actually worked well for people (and especially power-users) were taken away for no apparent reason, with sometimes additional complications being caused. Yes, I’m talking about the "Widgets" screen, as well as the needless moving around of the "post controls" away from the right hand of the write screen (wasting, surprise, surprise, even more vertical screen real-estate).
3. It doesn’t truly address several of the long-standing issues with the WYSIWIG editor and the "wpautop" function that is at the root of these (which also happens to make Wordpress slower than it needs to be). Sorry for the arcane tech reference, but it’s necessary to remind people that Wordpress overly messing with people’s HTML has gone on far too long. The current "HTML" view in the write screen is now a very strange hybrid.
4. And as I’ve argued in great detail in the posts on the security back-porting experiment, none of these rather extensive design changes needed to be rolled into the same update with the much needed security updates. They could have been kept separate, allowing users to continue using 2.3.3 for the time being. If Apache is able to do this, so should Wordpress… Stop using security fears as leverage to push your feature "upgrades".
5. Just for fun, along the way one of the more testy threads on the Wordpress.org forum was closed by Mr. Wordpress Matt Mullenweg himself, even though there were MANY, MANY complaining about issues with the 2.5 admin back-end design. Listen to your power-user base every once in a while, they are the one’s evangelizing your product for you (go read some Guy Kawasaki on this issue). They are the ones that might have to live through dozens of upgrades for clients, and their often painful aftermath.

OK, so let’s get into the details. Here is what my own customized Write Screen looks like, using the FCKEditor plugin and changes to the admin stylesheets and /wp-admin/menu.php.

(more…)]]> http://businessmindhacks.com/post/wordpress-25x-design-issues-why-i-am-staying-with-my-233-renegade/feed http://businessmindhacks.com/post/twitter-updates-for-2008-06-16 http://businessmindhacks.com/post/twitter-updates-for-2008-06-16#comments Tue, 17 Jun 2008 04:59:59 +0000 Alex http://businessmindhacks.com/post/twitter-updates-for-2008-06-16

Today, Microsoft apparently walked away from a Yahoo deal more thoroughly than they previously had, which in itself makes little sense and proves how much Ballmer and Co. have kept themselves in suspended animation during this ongoing saga.

Now, as far as Yahoo was concerned, we knew that they wouldn’t get a lot done given the continued wheeling and dealing by billionaire investor Carl Icahn. Despite Jerry Yang’s pleading with the troops to keep their noses to the grindstone, there is simply no way that Yahoo has not been deeply affected:

I was at Sprint in a former life at the time when the proposed merger with WorldCom was going on, which ultimately, and it turns out mercifully, was blocked by the DOJ. And I can tell you from that experience that very little of substance beyond basic maintenance mode happened inside Sprint for well over 6 months.

All eyes, minds, and water-cooler conversations were cued on the proposed deal and its ramifications. And that was under relatively amicable circumstances mind you.

So, with the pronouncements by MSFT today, Yahoo’s stock taking a big hit, and Yahoo in turn announcing that a deal to outsource search ad serves to Google may be happening as soon as today, someone might be tempted to say: The nightmare is over.

Or Is It?

Despite all of the "titillation", the Icahn back-and-forths, the rumor, the innuendo, and the inflated/bruised egos, let’s take a step back and look at the fundamentals of this:

(more…)]]> http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microhoo-the-post-mortem-post-part-2/feed http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microsofts-branding-mess-claims-another-victim-windows-live-expo http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microsofts-branding-mess-claims-another-victim-windows-live-expo#comments Sat, 07 Jun 2008 01:20:40 +0000 Alex http://businessmindhacks.com/post/microsofts-branding-mess-claims-another-victim-windows-live-expo News broke today that Microsoft is phasing out its Craigslist competitor attempt "Windows Live Expo". My goodness WLE, we hardly knew (of) you…

It’s no wonder this site failed so completely, Microsoft’s branding is 100% wrong and horrible: Meaningless, confusing, too long/not snappy enough, unmemorable, etc. etc.

They don’t get branding at all. I wonder if they’ll ever get off the "MS" and "Windows" train. If not, NOT A SINGLE ONE of their web properties thus branded will EVER have a chance to fully succeed. It cannot happen since it is against every principle of branding psychology.

There needs to be a simple answer to the question: "What’s a ____?"

Everyone and their dog knows the answer to "What’s a Craigslist?"

"Windows Live Expo"? Not so much. What does a classified ad site have to do with "Windows" (which presumably is an operating system)? Nothing. The entire "Windows Live" idea is horrible, but even if it had worked for anything else, this would only create brand dilution.

And "Expo"? What does an expo(sition) (i.e. a trade show or other exhibition) have to do with classified ads? NOTHING.

The idea that things can be subsumed under one’s current, possibly large and powerful brand is a very common mistake and self-deception with large companies. The logic is "our brand is powerful, why not extend it to this next project/product/etc.?" (And this is for obvious reasons very hard to argue against in internal meetings, as no one wants to appear to belittle the power of one’s "tribe"/brand.)

Here’s why it doesn’t work: Because the original brand if it worked at all was built up in the minds of the public as tied to the category that it competes in. Notice in this context that Microsoft’s other flag-ship, near-monopoly product, the "Office" productivity suite and even its sub-components, is named "MS Office" and NOT "Windows Office".

Microsoft would in fact have been better of naming the classified ad site e.g. "TheList by Microsoft" or some such thing, pretty much anything would have worked better than what they chose.

And notice that none of this has anything to do with the technology execution of the site. It’s just human psychology. Cheers!