Dave Francois

abcactionnews: Big-name brands go to great lengths to get you...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:45:03 -0500

Big-name brands go to great lengths to get you to buy. Watch our tips on seeing through the smoke and shaving dollars off your grocery bill.

A Social Super Bowl and the effort barrier

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:39:44 -0500

In the final three minutes of the Super Bowl tonight, there were an average of 10,000 Tweets per second.
— Twitter (@twitter) February 6, 2012

That’s a pretty impressive stat. What I’m less impressed with was the job second screen apps did at tying game information, curated social media and advertising together.

Typing a quick tweet, or Facebook status update, or responding to someone else is a pretty low hurdle. Checking in to IntoNow, or Shazam for specific information on an advertiser, or to tie in my viewing experience, proved to be more difficult.

The apps didn’t prove fantastic at overcoming basic levels of ambient noise, let alone a Super Bowl party. When something did sync, the information was not up to par. Guess what? ScoreCenter XL on the iPad gives me better game information, Twitter gives me better access to Twitter and Facebook does a much better job of telling me what my actual friends and family are talking about.

And I still can’t figure out why checking in to a commercial is a good idea. Consumers already don’t love advertising, why is it a good idea to think they will expend additional effort to see more of it with no clear return?

Second screen apps have a future, but developers and product managers need to figure out what the value proposition is for the consumer. The web and the proliferation of mobile devices have rendered the concept of one stop shopping obsolete. Lowering the barriers to entry, reducing the effort required to interact and creating value are core ideas to the web in general, but absolutely necessary in this space.

It’s better to do one thing very well than to try and please everyone.

E.W. Scripps launching live video programming on mobile devices

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:44:00 -0400

Our station group has just rolled out our live mobile streaming product and I couldn’t be more excited! We’ve already done a couple of test runs to see how it works and how the audiences consume the stream, and we’re seeing some nice usage.

I love the possibilities this opens up.

How the BBC lost 60,000 Twitter followers to ITV

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 10:57:27 -0400

How the BBC lost 60,000 Twitter followers to ITV

Adventures in TV land presents: the ABC Action News studios.

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 21:52:32 -0400

Adventures in TV land presents: the ABC Action News studios.

The case for hashtags everywhere

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:01:00 -0400

Hashtags ostensibly started on Twitter. But where they started isn’t important. What’s about hashtags is that they provide a common mechanism to organize topics across platforms.

Want to discuss the Home Run derby on Twitter? Just add #HRDerby to your tweets. In fact, Major League Baseball was promoting it on the air and at the park.

But why does it just have to be Twitter? Google looks like it’s going to implement hashtags on Google+, and we can already see them on Facebook when people use a single tool to cross post to Twitter and Facebook.

Hashtags are platform agnostic way of bridging the gap between traditional and digital media. We already know that social media boosts TV watching and engagement. Imagine the opportunities if every social platform used this paradigm to categorize information. They would even be useful in headlines to help give users a stronger information scent.

As Google+ rolls out new features, other social networks will have to adapt in order to stay relevant. Traditional media loves the ability of social media to help them more fully connect with their audiences, but there is the danger that what was positioned as a network might simply become a feature of a larger product, i.e. Foursquare and Twitter. Twitter doesn’t own hashtags, just like Foursquare doesn’t own location-based check-ins.

What are the must have functions of those platforms that are not already replicated within Facebook or Google+? And if not now, what about down the road?

Regardless, hashtags should be adopted as a standard across the digital media industry. They make it easier for traditional media to adopt a social service by lowering the promotional barrier, audiences are beginning to clearly understand their utility and there are benefits to everyone involved, from being able to sell custom hashtags on your network, to connecting platforms and making information easier to find.

Video chat is the 3-D TV of social media

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 21:48:14 -0400

With the recent flurry of activity in the social media space regarding video chat, I’m not so sure anyone wants it that bad.

Hangouts on Google+ have some amazing functionality like group video chat, YouTube sharing and video switching.

Facebook’s Skype integration puts you immediately in touch with your entire social graph.

But video chat has been around for awhile, and given allthe hype surrounding it, you’d assume it’s more popular than it really is.

Which is why we should see this for what it is: the 3-D television of social networking. At first it’s marketed as some sort of killer must have app, but in reality, it’s just one neat feature that may or may not draw you further into the service.

Google+ is just Facebook + Twitter + Skype + WebEx + Camtasia + Google Reader

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 19:37:02 -0400

That’s all really. Let’s look at the list.

Asymmetric following (Circles)? Check (Twitter).
Sharing links, video, status updates and photos in a stream with comments? Check (Facebook).
Full video chat (Hangouts)? Check (Skype).
Code indicating full managed meeting and screencast functionality? Check (WebEx, Skype, Camtasia).
Topic based subscription with integrated sharing (Sparks)? Check (Google Reader).

This is Google pulling a Microsoft. Pick the best ideas, roll them all, call it your own and profit. How long until we start seeing AdWords show up on Google+?

Your complete guide to navigating the current online privacy shift

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:35:19 -0400

Your complete guide to navigating the current online privacy shift

Why the WSJ Mobile App gets two star customer reviews

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 12:25:29 -0400

Why the WSJ Mobile App gets two star customer reviews:

This is a great usability study of where the WSJ went wrong on the design of their perfectly good mobile app, confusing users and making everyone generally grumpy.

Hyperpersonal and the interest graph vs. hyperlocal

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:57:00 -0400

Hyperlocal is a strategy that defines perceived primary audience information desire as emanating geographically. In reality, it is also a strategy rooted in the concept that advertisers can more successfully sell their products by refining their targeting to where their potential customers live.

These assumptions inherently morph into the same blunt force marketing silos we call demographics. Is a female aged 25-54 with children making over $100k a year more likely to buy your product? Or should you instead be targeting a 33 year old married woman with a five year old, a six year old who loves Macy’s, but never sets foot in Target?

Is a person in this age of e-commerce and instant mobile price checks likely to buy a product simply because it is physically near them? Likewise, does that person necessarily even care about the community they live in?

Most of America does not resemble the dense, tight knit communities that exist in the North Eastern metropolises and the Pacific Northwest. A preponderance of gated communities, sprawling suburbs and far flung exurbs dot the landscape, with nary more community than an eight lane road flanked by strip malls and chain restaurants.

Hyperlocal as a driving force requires community, and community is not equally present across this land. So while that approach may thrive in some places, in others it will not be as impactful for one reason or another and can only be a small part of the overall plan.

What then should a local publisher do to turn itself into a utility for a local audience and local advertisers alike? With the rich data sets provided through social media API’s, local media companies need to tap into the interest graph and begin a full throttle jump into creating hyperpersonal experiences for their audiences.

A typical local news consumer may live in a specific town, but be specifically interested in a certain type of crime, as well as golfing. Instead of surrounding a crime story with generically related content, those interests can be harnessed to surface relevant content to that user based on actions users actually take. So they may read a crime story, but be served golf and science content based on what they have read in the past, identified as interests based on their social profiles, or purchased on an e-commerce site.

The social graph can recommend what others in your social group are reading, but the interest graph is the key to serving up customized and engaging content that will have a higher likelihood of being consumed.

Interests and habits match up more neatly with advertising categories and consumer action than simple geography and age. Harnessing the data and effectively merging it with a smart content strategy is the key to driving readership and conversion rates.