e-Marketing Today

I’m pleased that I can publish on my eMarketing Blog interview that I made with Ms. Esther Dyson, definitely one of the most influential woman on the Internet. Esther Dyson is Editor at Large at CNET Networks, one of the most powerful Internet media companies that own digital assets like Download.com, MP3.com, Com.com etc. She started working at CNET after she had sold her company EDventure Holdings to CNET. She publishes expert articles on Release 1.0 and organizes one of the industry’s best conferences like PC Forum where gather Internet decision-makers like Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, Salesforce.com Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff or Marc Zuckerberg, Facebook.com CEO. Esther Dyson was Chairman of ICANN board for 2 years. She is regular speaker on major conferences like AD TECH, World Economic Forum, Shop.org, Comdex usually as a keynote speaker. She is also a well-known investor. Some of her investments are in Meetup.com, Technorati, Delicious and Flickr.

You can find more about Esther Dyson on http://www.release1-0.com or to visit her frequently updated Flickr page on http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/

Dejan Bizinger: Internet is much more different from early days in 1995. What do you think about the power that it has today in shaping people views, socialization and shopping habits?

Esther Dyson: The internet gives *people* the power to shape other people’s views and shopping habits. It’s easier for people to find out what like-minded people think about products. It also gives them the ability to find one another.

DB: What is your prediction about the future Internet trends?

EM: Among other things, we will no longer have much anonymity. Although my specialty is the Internet, by 2040 , in the developed world, that won’t distinguish me from any other observer of human behavior. Most information will be on the Internet, whether freely available or not, and most people’s actions will be traceable…if someone with power cares to go to the trouble. The only question is how difficult laws and policies will make it to do so.

But there will be more to this trend than the government spying on innocent victims, or even on they-asked-for-it dissidents. The big questions revolve less around anonymity, pseudonymity or total transparency, and more around societies’ tolerance for diversity on the one hand, and recognition of individuals’ fluidity on the other. Those are the things we need to watch out for, even more than for breaches of privacy. Is it possible to have a tolerant society where much once-private behavior is visible? In fact, is such visibility necessary for tolerance to reign and the range of
acceptable behavior to broaden?

That’s my hope. Because right now, we’re losing anonymity in two opposite ways. On the one hand, we’re losing power to authorities who are demanding ever more information from us – in order to fly, as we pass through tollgates or even just tool down highways, cross borders or even just enter
public buildings. We are also giving up more and more information - wittingly or not – as we shop and tk what else, both offline and online.

Yet on the Internet, we are also jumping at the chance to be famous. People google others, and worry over their own Google rankings. They collect friends on the social network sites and send what used to be family-style Christmas letters out to friends. Even as individuals evince more and more concern about privacy and related issues around identity theft, more and more people are getting onto the Web as themselves, publishing blogs, posting photos, contributing reviews to
ratings sites and revealing all (or so it seems) on dating and social network sites (such as Friendster).

So what’s next? What’s the backlash to all this? Will these trends simply extrapolate smoothly, or what kind of opposite reaction will they provoke?

For starters, I think many people will move pretty rapidly from no identity to multiple identities. Whether you’re simply an individual attempting to remain fluid and not get caught in a single identity (only a studious geek, or only a fun-loving mom or a talented musician) or you’re concerned about privacy and you want multiple identities to throw the authorities off track, ! expect to see more and more people with multiple identities that may or may not be easily traced. (For sure, most such identities will be traceable by authorities with subpoena power, but not by your neighbors, your colleagues or even your prospective employer.)

Nonetheless, our slime trails will become increasingly visible. Here, I think we’ll see a cultural change – a sort of “reputation statute of limitations.” Curiosity will continue (we’re human beings, after all), but there will be a broader understanding of how people can change. (I would love to see websites get better at dating their material, while Google and other search engines could, for example, show recent information in black, while older items would be shown in increasingly lighter shades of grey.)

But the good news is that individuals are gaining power at the expense of anonymity. Not only can they publish their erstwhile secrets: they also publish their wants and offers. The Net is empowering individuals to engage with others not just as consumers picking from what’s on offer, but as active negotiators defining specs for others to meet.

To be sure, that does not require complete identification, but it requires credentials, reputation and the like.

Where does this all lead? Is there safety in numbers? If a million people admit to having smoked dope, or stolen hotel towels or tk, can one do so with impunity?

Here the issue is not so much privacy as accountability on the one hand, and society’s willingness to condone a government that might single out its enemies. That’s a bigger question than privacy. The optimists don’t worry. The pessimists are hiding.

DB: You were ICANN chairman for two years. What is your opinion about the importance of domain names and what do you think about the dot com buzz of selling domains for several million dollars?

ED: I think domain names are not all that important; it’s much more useful to run a good business than to have a good domain name. That said, domain names are still an interesting business, but a competitive one in which it is hard to make money.

DB: Do you think that outsourcing can cause problems for the people living in USA and Western Europe, that they will loose their jobs or have lower salaries? Do you see some country or region that can be a good competitor to India regarding outsourcing?

ED: I think that the US and Western Europe have their own problem, which is a lack of interest in technical education… so that they are falling behind other countries. I see outsourcing as a big opportunity for talented young people in emerging markets, who will one day become good customers for companies in the developed markets. However, the US and other countries do
need to figure out how to help their IT workers handle this change… with retraining, unemployment insurance and other measures. perhaps some of them could train the next generation of students… Others should go to developing markets and apply some of their talents there.

DB: You sold your company EDventure Holdings to CNET. How is it to be a part of one of the biggest Internet media companies?

ED: It gives us many more resources, which is good.

In this exclusive interview we asked Mr. Joshua Baer, SKYLIST CEO to discuss current trends in email marketing business with the focus on CAN-SPAM and steps that have to be taken in order to minimize SPAM problems.

Joshua Baer’s role in shaping email marketing solutions and best practices is unparalleled. Over the last decade, SKYLIST has displayed outstanding growth and remains private and profitable.
While growing SKYLIST, Josh has also continued to actively contribute to the email community at large. His email community contributions include influential roles in industry standards development forums, authorship, and frequent conference and panel presentations. He is a steering committee member of the Email Service Provider Coalition.

In 1998, Mr. Baer co-authored Internet RFC 2369, establishing a standard way for users to subscribe and unsubscribe from email lists. UnsubCentral is his latest brainchild and spin out company dedicated to aiding CAN-SPAM compliance obligations.

Dejan Bizinger: What do you think about the future of email marketing and email publishing?

Joshua Baer: We just went through a scary dip for past year and half since the enactment of CAN-SPAM and the explosion of affiliate marketing, but the viability of email marketing is starting to climb again as people become more comfortable with the new regulations. CAN-SPAM is helping, as is authentication. People are sending more targeted and personalized mail, rather than high-volume mass mailings, realizing that more is not better when it comes to email.

DB: What do you think about the importance of blogs and RSS in e-publishing?

JB: I think they are still peripheral. There has been hype surrounding it, which has been encouraged by the spam problem, but in essence, it is still fundamentally not push technology, which is what makes email “the killer app.” Email is powerful because its push technology, not pull. If you sign up for something you don’t have to remember to go back and get it.

DB: Do you think that a lot of email newsletters and SPAM that cause email overload will have for the result that less people will include email marketing as an item in their online marketing budget and tactics? What does this mean for list hosting companies such as SKYLIST?

JB: People are increasing budgets now, people feel more confident in the viability of email, as spam solutions continue to emerge and grow stronger.

DB: What is the greatest benefit of email marketing?

JB: The efficiency of cost and feedback. Cost, time and functionality. It costs less and takes less time to produce, deliver and get feedback than ordinary channels and you can get much more clear and detailed feedback. It makes marketing more of a science, less of an art.

DB: SKYLIST is one of the first companies that offered CAN-SPAM compliant product StormPost. How effective is the CAN-SPAM law?

JB: It is important to understand how effective any law can be. Murder is illegal yet people are still murdered every day. The law isn’t the end-all-be-all solution to the problem, but it has helped heightened awareness and encouraged best practices. No law can solve this problem outright; it must be combined with best practices such as authentication and reputation. Solving the spam problem is not about figuring which mail to block, but which legitimate mail to accept.

DB: Do you think that Microsoft SenderID is the first big step in fighting against SPAM? What have to be done more in order to minimize SPAM?

JB: Authentication is the first step, it helps identify legitimate sources, and has cut a wide swath in the amount of fraudulent senders. However, it won’t solve problem by itself. We must build on a foundation of authentication with accreditation and reputation, making it a transparent open process.

DB: Should regular business e-mail be encrypted?

JB: No, encryption of all business email is overkill and unnecessary. In the future, business email will be cryptographically signed, i.e. validated but not necessarily encrypted.

DB: Please describe your three products: StormPost Hosting, StormPost Software and UnsubCentral (target companies for each product) and how they help companies to do their email marketing more effectively?

JB: The StormPost™ Software License is a top choice for organizations who want an internal solution that will deliver both email campaigns and cost savings.
StormPost customer benefits include:

• Enterprise level email database marketing capabilities.
• Unparalleled scalability and deliverability
• Advanced personalization, targeting, tracking, and reporting
• Unique reporting shows true delivery

It comes in three levels, Small-Medium Business, Enterprise and Service Provider.

StormPost Hosted Edition ( ASP ) provides self-service access to secure and private email marketing accounts. All StormPost hosted accounts are managed by a dedicated account team that provides both technical and ISP relationship support.
Hosted customer benefits include:

• Dedicated account management
• 24 / 7 emergency support
• No hardware costs
• Free, immediate upgrades
• Sliding scale CPM pricing based on email message delivery requirements

Fore more information on the StormPost Licensed and Hosted forms, please visit www.skylist.com.

UnsubCentral, Inc. provides email suppression and consumer preference management solutions to leading advertisers, ad networks, and affiliate networks. The Austin, Texas-based corporation offers solutions that create a secure environment for managing opt-out lists across the enterprise, affiliates and various third parties. Integrated with major affiliate networks and email service providers and reviewed by TRUSTe, the solutions ensure clients comply with the CAN-SPAM Act and data privacy requirements. For more information, please visit www.unsubcentral.com.

DB: You are a steering committee member of the Email Service Provider Coalition. Please tell us the main roles and activities of ESPC.

JB: The Email Service Provider Coalition is a cooperative group of industry leaders working to create solutions to the continued proliferation of spam and the emerging problem of deliverability. Our membership provides volume mail delivery services to an estimated 250,000 clients - representing the full breadth of the U.S. marketplace. The ESPC is currently working on solutions to spam and deliverability concerns through a combination of legislative advocacy, technological development, and industry standards.

The ESPC is comprised of three sub-committees:

Legislative – This committee guides our lobbying efforts on federal and state spam legislation. We provide direct advocacy before the FTC and Congress. For state issues, we have partnered with the Internet Alliance for monitoring and coordination. The geographic breadth of our group has allowed us to respond to many state spam statues directly, using members on the ground. This group meets weekly, with ad hoc meetings called from time to time to respond to state developments.

Technology – This committee is evaluating and developing technological solutions that would allow more accurate responses to spam (and fewer false positives). A technical working group has been formed within this group to explore and propose such solutions. This group meets as needed, with in-person meetings scheduled occasionally

Communications – This committee provides broad public affairs strategy for the Coalition. We have been actively working to highlight the consumer harm associated with false positives and filtering. This committee also provides guidance and support for our press relations.

DB: Describe a day in the life of Joshua Baer?

JB: A day in the life of Joshua Baer begins at 6am and usually consists of talking to customers and prospects as well as industry leaders. Many days involve press or analyst interviews and very often I am traveling all over the world to speak at conferences and trade shows.

{Author’s Note: This interview was made earlier this year for my blog on Blogspot}

Anne Holland, president of MarketingSherpa is an 19-year publishing industry veteran, previously served as the Head of Marketing for Holland Phillips Business Media, a $100 million publishing company. She helped launch one of the world’s first profitable subscription sites in 1995, and the trade publications Interactive Marketing News in 1994 and MIN’s New Media in 1995. Holland founded MarketingSherpa, a privately held media company, in January 2000 with the mission of helping marketers, advertisers and PR pros improve results, by publishing real-world marketing data and Case Studies.

Dejan Bizinger: Your company MarketingSherpa is highly recognized as one of the best e-marketing resourceS. What is the secret of your success?

Anne Holland: I wish there was a secret because that would make our work easier! But, it’s just very, very hard work and persistence. Everyone asks how we get our exclusive case studies. I find that very funny because it’s nothing more than good old fashioned journalism.

DB: You sell many publications in your SherpaStore, both in printed and in PDF version. What is the ratio in buying between printed and PDF books?

AH: Good question! It started out at about 60% printed, 40% PDF. But now five years later it’s about 30% printed and 70% PDF. The length of a report can affect things — some of our reports are more than 200 pages long and lots of people don’t want to print that many pages out.

DB: What is your opinion about future Internet trends?

AH: RSS will not replace email, it’s a supplement that has yet to be tested in mainstream. Search marketing will continue to grow substantially as a staple in most marketer’s budgets. Email is now fairly steady as a budget item and marketing tactic, I expect slight growth. Same for banners and contextual ads. Rich media and behavioral ads will growth 30% or more in the next two years and then level off. Wireless ads may finally penetrate US marketplace as the big cellular providers merge. And ecommerce will continue to grow outside the US as international consumers learn to trust online and credit cards.

DB: How much do you work daily?

AH: I work pretty typical hours for a president of a publishing company… I get in around 9:15am and leave around 7pm, and don’t ever take lunch. Now that we’re in our fifth year and fairly established, I only work weekends occasionally. Plus I’ll be able to take my first vacation in five years this summer in conjunction with a speaking engagement in Zadar Croatia!

DB: What is the last book you read?

AH: I’m reading several books about Yugoslavia, Serbia and Croatia to prepare for my trip.

DB: What is the favorite reward for yourself?

AH: Hiking in the wilderness and in national parks.

DB: What is your favorite web site?

AH: Mapquest.com - I use it constantly.

I have made this interview with Douglas Rushkoff in 2005. for the purpose of publishing in one computer magazine. Now, I’m publishing it on Emarketing Blog.

Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other’s values. He sees “media” as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and “literacy” as the ability to participate consciously in it.

His ten best-selling books on new media and popular culture have been translated to over thirty languages. They include Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, and Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy and graphic novel, Club Zero-G. He has just finished a book for HarperBusiness, applying renaissance principles to today’s complex economic landscape, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. He’s now writing a monthly comic book for Vertigo called Testament.

You can find more info about Douglas Rushkoff on http://www.rushkoff.com

Dejan Bizinger: From 2002. blogs are hot topic. There was and there is much hype related to blogs. At one side many people still doesn’t know what blog is and on the other side blog was chosen for the best word for the previous year. Why are blogs important and for whom?

Douglas Rushkoff: Blogger, one of the original blogging tools, is really just an interface for making websites. The beauty of the web is that anyone can publish pages. The problem with the web is that many people don’t understand any html. And they don’t understand how sites are hosted, or how to make and maintain one.
Blogger allows anyone to create a web page very easily.

The people at Blogger, very correctly, assumed that most people creating personal web pages would want to be able to update a single page very easily. And that’s what blogs are - pages that are updated on a regular basis. So this tended to favor daily journals by individuals, or what have
become known as web logs.

So a “blog” has come to mean web log. What’s the difference between a web site and a web log? Not very much, except that a web log tends to be an individual’s journal or thoughts, and not, say, an e-commerce site. Blogger would not be a good tool for creating Amazon.com.

DB: Blogs were buzzword, now they are mainstream. It is now similar case with RSS and podcasting, they are still buzzwords. Do you think that RSS and podcasting will also become mainstream?

DR: Blogs are not mainstream, really. They are simply known about in the mainstream. This is because some major news stories were forced open by web logs. Matt Drudge’s page predates “blogs,” but really takes that form: an individual sharing his thoughts and observations, unregulated by a major media company. Because blogs can break stories and challenge major media coverage, they get coverage, themselves.

I think podcasting will become popular and well-known, because it is a very clever use of an existing device. RSS feeds are a more traditional use of the Internet - more like newsgroup readers. I think only the more advanced users - those of us who don’t really like the web so much as interface -
will be into them.

DB: Do you think that bloggers should include ads on their blogs and RSS feeds? Can this make an influence on their independence?

DR: Do I think they should? I think people should be nice to one another and not murder. Aside from things like that, I wouldn’t dictate to people what they should or shouldn’t do. All I would ever ask - and Americans still equate this view with communism - is that bloggers evaluate how posting
advertisements might influence the way they write. They must look at the reasons they write their blog, what they hope to get out of it, and whether turning it into a business will compromise their original goal.

Once a person is being paid for the number of hits his website gets, it can tend to influence the way he writes stories, and kinds of stories he writes. This is not a crime; it’s just a property of the media ecology.

If a blogger comes to depend on the income his blog generates, then this will in turn make the blog less completely independent of commercial influences. Again, I repeat for clarity: I am not making a value judgment on this. I simply want people to accept that turning a blog into a business is
a choice with repercussions.

The same is true for me: some books I write for free, others I write for money. Although I want the ones I write for money to be completely free of commercial influence, I can’t help but write differently when I have a boss to write for.

DB: Some people that became famous bloggers started working for some traditional media like newspapers. Do you think that there will be more and more similar cases?

DR: It may prove to be a kind of “minor league” for writers who want to become professional columnists, sure. In that sense it could make the editorial space more of a meritocracy. On the other hand, it may just lead to the most extreme and sensationalist writers getting into the newspapers. Sometimes, an editorial board is a better judge of columnnists than the public.

DB: Some people say that there is no money in blogs. If that so, how blogs became so commercial?

DR: Things can become very commercial without producing successful revenues. The web became very commercial, even though most businesses lost all their money. The United States is extremely commercial, even though it is now losing money.

DB: More and more CEOs and high-level executives start blogging. Do you think that this way of communication is better than a classic PR?

DR: “Better” is a tricky word. I think it is different than classic PR, and will probably prove the most effective when the CEO actually writes the blog instead of letting his blog-writer do it. George Bush doesn’t write his own blog, so what’s the point? If people don’t believe these are the real blogs
of these important executives, then they will be pretty useless.

DB: Please name several blogs that you read on a daily basis?

DR: None, really. I don’t have time to read blogs on a daily basis. I check in
weekly to a few of my best friends’, maybe, but usually just go to a blog if
I am emailed about a particular post.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Philip Kaplan is a well-known entrepreneur. He has gained popularity with his F***edCompany.com web site where he was writing about dot com failures.

Now, he is AdBrite CEO, contextual ad network, one of the main competitors for Google AdSense.

In this interview you can find info about AdBrite, his views on current trends in online advertising, how to get VC funding, how to make successful companies etc.

Dejan Bizinger: Please describe your service AdBrite?

Philip Kaplan: AdBrite is “The Internet’s Ad Marketplace”. We connect thousands of
webmasters to thousands of advertisers. We sell, host, and service advertisers on our publisher’s behalf.

DB: Why should people use AdBrite and not Google AdSense, for example? Google AdSense is a great system for showing Google’s ads and getting paid for clicks.

PK: AdBrite allows the publisher to accumulate and manage *their own* advertisers. AdBrite allows the publisher to define his products, layout, pricing and terms.

Many publishers use AdBrite and Google AdSense for two separate revenue streams.

DB: What do you think about the current online advertising industry and how do you see it in years that come?

PK: The online advertising industry is just getting started. Only a small percentage of overall advertising spending is online, even though most of our advertisers target demographics spend more time online than watching TV or reading paper. It seems online ad spending should outgrow traditional ad spending in the years to come.

DB: You are a young man but you already have several successful web sites and services. What are the most important steps in order to create successful and profitable web sites?

PK: I always try to do as much as I can with as little as possible. I also think solid technical and programming knowledge is key to my work thus far.

DB: You’ve already raised 4 million dollars from leading venture capital company Sequoia Capital. How easy is to get a VC these days?

PK: My guess is if you have a good business idea, a proven track record of success, and have earned the trust of other people in the business, it shouldn’t be too difficult. Making the decision to pursue outside investment was the hardest part for me.

DB: How did you get an idea to make your popular news rumour and commentary web site about struggling dot com companies called F***ed Company?

PK: Like many people, I was astonished by the hype and spending of dot-com
companies and create a site to chronicle the downfall.

DB: Why many dot com companies failed?

PK: There are roughly 25,000 unique companies listed on F**kedcompany.com.

DB: One of your services Mobog is a popular moblog site. What do you think about moblogs and blogging in general?

PK: Back in the olden days, we used to call blogs “websites”. I think
websites are great.