Ashley Norris of Shiny Media + final Q&A
Ashley Norris is finishing off today's Brands & Blogs event, explaining what Shiny Media does, and why advertisers should be engaging with "influential, intelligent, informed and interested" bloggers. Latest entry is below, with chronological updates after the jump.
13.10: Another question: do brands play nasty and attack each other in these kind of campaigns? Richard says it's happening on messageboards and forums, where brands pay people to write negative reviews of their competitors, but not so much on blogs. Jeremy says B5 Media has caught some companies out - "we thought, who feels that strongly about socks?!".
13.11: Questions are hotting up now: should brands respond to negative comments on blogs? Jeremy says yes, but only if you can respond honestly, and you can't do it for all comments obviously. But it's worth doing selectively.
13.14: And that's it. Lunch, wine, and a chance to go up to the 18th floor of Centrepoint and spot rainclouds.
12.45: Everyone around me just left. I promise, it wasn't my fault. Anyway, Ashley Norris, Shiny Media's co-founder, is explaining that Shiny's network is getting 2.5 million unique users a month, and turnover in 2007 is expected to top £1.2 million. Big companies are advertising too. Oh, and that funding from BrightStation Ventures? It was £2.25 million.
12.46: So why does Shiny need the cash? The whole concept of Blog 2.0, he says. But what will Blog 2.0 look like? Ashley's talking about three big companies' opinions: Weblogs, Inc, Gawker Media and B5 Media.
12.48: Weblogs is now part of AOL, and is a bunch of successful channels within that portal. Gawker, it's a hybrid format with tabloid newspaper style comment. So it's a replacement for newspapers. And now B5 Media, see blogs as huge international networks that straddle the world, covering all manner of niches.
12.49: Ashley says Shiny Media's view is that blogs are the new specialist magazines - a view shared by the likes of Blogo, WeblogSL (Italy and Spain respectively) - like a Haymarket or Future Publishing of the online world, building up blogs around cars, gadgets etc. Sugar Publishing in the US has blogs aimed at young women - the online equivalent of mags like J-17 and More. And Magicalia and Demand Media - both looking to develop specialist communities online.
12.52: Just as Ashley talks about how we’re liveblogging this event, the Wi-Fi goes pear-shaped. Typical. But yes, the future is rich content. Video reviews, how to guides, news reports and so on. Over 500,000 people a month are watching Shiny’s videos on YouTube. It’s a huge boon - you can show why a phone’s keyboard is rubbish, or leg it back to the office from Top Shop with a new Kate Moss dress to show how it looks on a real person.
12.54: The next big thing for blogs’ development is social networking. Let people create profiles, and upload their own images and videos. Apparently Shiny is going to have loads of secret stuff for loyal users. Plus forums, Q&As, polls etc.
12.55: Ashley says social networking works best in vertical channels (e.g. tech, fashion), you need someone driving the debate, with news, opinion and engagement, and then have users come back and contribute their views.
12.57: Phew, Wi-Fi working again (see over the jump for the updates written while I was swearing at it). Ashley's talking about niche blogs, and Shiny's Nollie, which is an extreme sports blog for women. And how people might laugh at the idea now, but they did at ShinyShiny (gadgets for women) a few years ago, and it's now getting 350,000 unique users a month, and attracting big advertisers.
12.58: From next week, some Shiny blogs will have a video player at the top of the page, taking users off to a specific video page, where they can watch content (including pre-roll ads etc).
13.00: Shiny is also looking to work more closely with brands - for example running surveys, and even getting its community to beta test new services / products.
13.01: Ashley is finishing off with some love for blog readers, who are influential, intelligent, informed and interested. And they're apparently going to be pivotal in shaping the future of brands. That's it for the formal presentations, now it's a last chance for Q&As before lunch.
13.02: First question: what about moderation, and ad campaigns getting negative feedback? Richard says Glam just had a client (exfoliating foot cream) call up in a strop, because a user had said their product was watery. And Glam replied that "This is trusted content. If you don't like it, don't make it watery!". And because a bunch of users had been trying the product, and many liked it, the company eventually came back and said it'd been a hugely successful campaign. Watery or otherwise.
13.04: Ashley says Shiny has a similar policy to the Guardian, keeping an eye out for offensive content on its blogs and removing it where necessary. But that's a different thing from people giving their honest opinions on a brand. "If you are getting constantly slagged off, improve your products. The days of being able to protect products in that way are gone."
13.06: Richard is talking about a big campaign for MTV where users on B5 Media's blogs were invited to give their opinion on whether a certain series should be recommissioned. And there were thousands and thousands of comment, many of them flames and abuse. But among them, there were 300-400 genuinely useful comments, which provided valuable feedback for MTV.
13.07: Last question: what are people doing to harness the power of micro-blogging? Ashley says it's very early days, although several Shiny blogs are publishing feeds on Twitter. But he'd like to integrate micro-blogging with the blogs - for example, blog editors twittering about what subjects they'll be covering that day, so users can chip in.
13.09: Also, Shiny Media is working on ideas to turn its blogs into Facebook applications. Not just about poking either.
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