A few months ago, I wrote a piece about everything. You know … everything. Every thing you could ever want to know about everything you’ll ever encounter. Everything. I hope nobody thought I meant it. I ended the piece with these words, to underscore that:
If it sounds like I’m running a tremendous number of ideas together in one story, well . . . I am. And that’s the point. You can boil everything down to Influency* , but before we can, we need to figure out what everything is . . . for you.
Yahoo!/Tumblr: Finally Making Porn a Legit Business
You read it here first. Pornography just went legit, and we have Yahoo! to thank for it.
That’s probably not the first thing that Yahoo! buying Tumblr makes you think about, but it’s the biggest change that this $1.1 billion transaction makes happen. Yahoo! would like to think otherwise, of course, and we’ll talk about that, but the biggest impact of Yahoo! buying Tumblr is that porn just went legit.
Typically, big companies don’t like porn. And social/censorship issues notwithstanding, that’s a perfectly acceptable business position; who needs the liability of hosting questionable content on your servers?
Just how important is a) creating video and other media and b) owning it? Ask Lorne Michaels and the production company that owns Saturday Night Live.
SNL has been around for a very long time, and the volume of video that the decades-old franchise has produced is huge. And until now, the only place you could see it was at the web site of NBC, the television network that airs Saturday Night Live and always has. Well, SNL’s archive is moving to Yahoo!. Meaning that NBC, which you’ve always thought was the company that guarded the assets of everybody’s favorite weekly comedy program, just lost the rights to air those videos; it turns out NBC didn’t own them. Live from Yahoo!, It’s Saturday Night!
In case you’ve somehow missed this, we’re big believers in Search Engine Optimization. Let me be blunt: remove the “it’s snake oil” part of the conversation (and it isn’t), and the simple truth is that if you don’t optimize your presence on the Internet so search engines can and want to find you, you have a very big problem.
Here’s a game changer: Digital Zoom isn’t all bad.
Media has a huge impact on Influency*, and we adjust our views of and advice on how to handle certain issues as the realities surrounding them change. Search Engine Optimization is getting harder, for example, so much so that we’re talking about images more than ever. And we used to tell our clients to stay away from video, but that’s changed: you must produce video as part of your optimization efforts.
And in an act of complete photographic heresy, I’m changing my position on Digital Zoom.
Being The Answer Guy, I get asked a lot of questions about not only our 2013-era focus on Integrated Marketing and Influency, but also, more broadly, computers. How DO those things work, anyway?
When Windows 8 was approaching release I did some testing of the new operating system—not so much because I was excited to upgrade but because Microsoft had announced the end of support for Windows XP. I don’t really need help with Windows, but ‘the end of support’ means that there will be no more security upgrades, and in our always-connected (or EVER connected, actually) world that’s just not acceptable. This meant that I needed to choose between replacing many of the computers at Answer Guy Central or upgrading the operating system in them.
Influency takes a lot of work. And sometimes what was influence-y yesterday is less so today. This is why, even though there’s nothing about Influency that you couldn’t make happen yourself if you had the time, you hire The Answer Guy.
Here’s a new example of why.
This morning, both in my newsfeed and on Google+, I came across a story by Barry Schwartz. I’ve mentioned Barry here once before, referring to his site Search Engine Roundtable as a great resource for Optimization (and of course, therefore, Influency). I still read Barry, but that might change soon; I’m starting to think that Influency is in the process of passing him by.
I love the coincidences that happen in the pursuit of Influency. Like coming across the picture you see here at a blog about Intellectual Property, just a few days after telling you how we handle image copyrights.
Or that Seth Godin, a marketing legend who feels as though he’s pretty much dropped out of sight lately, could cross my radar so soon after a piece I recently wrote about him. And Seth’s point, for a second time in a week, boils down to this:
Sometimes, even in marketing, it’s OK to be a contrarian.
Generally speaking, I hate software patents. I believe they stifle innovation and make it harder to achieve Influency unless you’re a lucky company like Apple, sitting on a trove of patents, or you’re one of those folks making an entire business as a patent troll.
Sometimes, though, someone comes up with something that gets done, via software, and it’s inventive enough and unique enough that the question of whether software patents are a good idea takes on another personality. This isn’t that.
Yesterday, Netflix lost the right to carry about 2,000 movies. Also yesterday, YouTube ‘declared victory’ over television. And this weekend, my fiancée and I are moving her daughter into an apartment of her own, where she has no plans to sign up for cable television.
Wrap you head around all that, and if you come to any conclusion other than ‘the media business is really, really changing’, you need to start over.
When are you too old to be a programmer?
As an old guy, my perspective is skewed. That’s OK; all of our perspectives on all issues are skewed by who we are. But is there an answer that ‘makes sense’?
According to a new study, older people might actually make better programmers than younger ones. This is a seismic shift in the way the topic has long been discussed, and in conflict with something I asked about a few years ago; might older people be too set in their ways to use SmartPhones?
How does this book factor into a discussion on Influency?
If you’re looking for a quick read/impossible-(for most people)-roadmap-to-Influency, use this link or click the picture at the top of this piece and get your hands on a copy of It’s Not About The Tights.
It’s a complete coincidence that I told you about the way we handle pictures at Answer Guy Central just a few days ago. This morning, I heard for the first time about PhotoDropper.
And I’d like to point out that I’ve linked to Photodropper.com both in the image at the top of this story, and in the link you see above.
Big deal? You bet it’s a big deal.
The stuff in the picture is corny, isn’t it? Throw together the right set of tiles and you can win at the customer service game! The customer service equation is easy to solve! The customer is always right!
Well, no, to all of those things including the one about the customer always being right. You’re allowed to say “no” to customers, just as long as you’re willing to see them become ex-customers. You’re even allowed to say no to the customers you want to keep if you say it politely, firmly, and are willing to discuss the issues you’re saying no about in terms that matter to the customer.
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Influency Marketing, Strategy, and Coffee
He’s not usually thought of the way Seth Godin is, but Mark Schaefer is one of the best marketing minds around. And this week, just as Godin has, Mr. Schaefer threw out an idea for discussion that we use here.
You know what I’m talking about: It’s Influency*. In Influence marketing: What’s next?, Mark Schaefer makes the point that Influency Marketing is all about; marketing is undergoing a huge change, and if you don’t manage a lot of things well, your marketing will fail. And that’s Influency. ... READ MORE of Influency Marketing, Strategy, and Coffee at Answer Guy Central, your Influency and Integrated Marketing Source By Clicking Here (331 words, 1 image, estimated 1:19 mins reading time)