John Battelle - afternoon keynote at the BBS

Just met John Battelle, he’s a really chill guy. I feel like he would be a really awesome guy to sit down and hang out with. Maybe someday I’ll get that privilege.

He’s giving an afternoon keynote at the BBS, I’m assuming that Teresa is covering it on BBS homepage, so I’ll write here…

History of John Battelle - graduated from Berkley, started Wired, started the Industry Standard, invented the top banner, and so on. Not bad for a lifetime, eh?

Anyways, he starts out with the three humps of technology: “Digitize Back-Office” (fortran, the first people touched technology), then “Digitize Front-office” (big leap to more people with a GUI), “Digitize the Customer” (This is web 2.0, more or less). This is a LOT more people touching technology than ever before.

Google is the interface to that third wave. Google is how we navigate this third wave.

This is an awesome connection: Search interface is still in the 1.0 area - because it’s a command line (just like DOS was with DIR). The humongous difference is that search is in real language. We are starting to use computers with real language.

The Web itself is a platform. It is the platform for this third hump of technology - it doesn’t matter what browser you use, it’s all about the web itself. If you can figure out, in your business, to make a mutual-building relationship between you and your customers, you win.

Search is the first cultural artifact that has a permanent record of everything you do.

Battelle just put up a chart for the price of converting leads to customers - search cost per conversion is about $8.50, direct mail is $70.

We use search to declare our intent (in that little box), and then search re-organizes the world for you. That’s radically different than the old model. You used to buy the media that gets to the right demographic (you hope). Now you get the ability to buy intent (buy the keywords - they’ll match with someone’s intent).

‘Join the Point-to Economy (links = votes = attention)” In other words, make a site that lives, as individual pages, in the world that can be linked to, and link.

Battelle says that criticism is OK - that responding to criticism properly can actually build your brand.

Now, he’s turned his attention to advertising in the new system - how big companies are taking new steps, in many cases it’s taking content and using it as advertising. MS used regular “did you know” copy to advertise Outlook.

Symantec is running their RSS feed (their blog posts) as ads.

Now he’s going to chat a little bit about FM. Sounds really cool - it’s a big support structure for medium to large blogs and these blog’s “authors.”

Question: What kind of blog would you start right now if you wanted to get into Federated Media? Answer: Anywhere there’s a good ecology, and make sure you have a good voice. Question: Do you get ads for a network you don’t yet have? Answer: Absolutely. Like HP might ask for a “printing” federation, etc.

Question: What technologies are coming up that are really exciting to you? Answer: Well, one, I think Vox is really cool, and I think it’s awesome how it makes it possible to integrate tons of things that are not normally easy to integrate. Also, I think something that’s going to come down the pipes is a tool that lets developers easily mash up RSS.

Question: If you sell ads against content, how do you feel about your idea that you must attach ads to intent? Answer: Because we advertise against content that understands its users intent - a blogger is, at least FM bloggers are, connected fairly well with they’re audience.