Josh Benner

Category: Commentary

  • Why 2011 is Groupon’s year

    Groupon is already a popular web service with over 35 million members worldwide. Since its founding in 2008, the site’s growth has occurred at a remarkable rate, and while there are millions of people who already use Groupon, I think that this is the year the site truly explodes and becomes ubiquitous within our society.

    I realize social networking is different than Groupon, but it is interesting as the popularity of Facebook and Twitter have grown, that

    As an example, there are lots of people who know about Twitter but who don’t use Twitter and who have never had Twitter accounts. With Groupon, I believe that 2011 will be the year where it trul

    The reasons why Groupon will explode so dramatically this year:

    1. While people have obviously known about Groupon before now, I feel like this will be the year where the stie truly breaks through the fabric of popular culture and becomes ubiquitous within our society. As more people start to realize the idea is about saving money and how easy Groupon is to use, the numbers of registered users will continue to shoot. Think of it like Facebook’s expansion, but coupons instead of social networking.

    2. More and more people are going to have access to the site. In the U.S., Groupon is available in over 150 cities and can be found globally in 27 countries (both figures according to Wikipedia).

    3. Their advertisements are going to tighten up this year. Earlier this month, it was announced that people are going to have more customization options in terms of which groupon offers are sent to them. I feel like the fact that this hasn’t happened already is in large part due to the phenomenol success of the site so far, and difficulties in keeping up with huge demand from businesses to partner with Groupon.

    It only makes sense to send Groupon offers where there is a higher likelihood the person will use them. For instance, where I live (Columbus, OH), my January 3 Gruopon offer was this:

    WOW!

    An 86% discount on spider vein removal treatments. That’s a great deal.

    However: I don’t have spider veins (at least I don’t think I do, but that seems like one of those medical conditions where: if you think there is a possibility you might have it, then, you have it).

    Smarter advertising will add even more street cred to the already popular site. And it will help to..

    4. Get more men signed up. Over three quarters of Groupon users are women. It will be important as the site utilizes more targeted coupon offers to start having “manlier” things.

    I love Groupon but I feel like some of their offers are things that men would have absolutely no interest in such as: spa treatments and cheap Justin Bieber t-shirts.

    5. Grocery stores and other retailers are starting to catch on to the idea of people using their phones as the actual coupon instead of physically printing or cutting something out. This will work well with Groupon.

    6. For any social site to work, it needs to have a cool factor. Groupon has it. As U.S. News and World Report mentioned this fall, a lot of people who use Groupon are not necessarily the common “coupon clipping” percentage of the population. A lot of Groupon users are younger and the site is going to continue getting more and more popular with older users as they hear about it from their younger children, coworkers, and great grandchildren.

    In many ways, the growth potential of this site reminds me of Facebook. In its first year, it went from 0 to around 1.5 million users. Now – a year after that – the site is over 35 million users. I think it is very much within the realm of possibility that the site could be over 150 million users by the end of this year.

    1.5 million to 35 million

    In March, the site was available in 40 cities and the goal of founder Andrew Mason was to be in 100 cities by the end of last year (they ended up being in over 150).

    In case you are unfamiliar: Groupon is a site that offers a daily deal, a coupon to a local business. The deal is always at least 1/2 off on a good or service. There are a minimum number of people who must signup for that day’s offer in order to activate the Groupon. In short: the consumer is saving money and learning about new stores/places/things, and the small business is making money.

    jrb

  • MySpace: Finger lickin’ good

    I was checking my emails this morning, and THIS is what I get from Myspace.

    Wow.

    Creativity grade: A+

    I was overwhelmed by the originality of this email blast pertaining to their new push to get people to use their new mobile app. First I read the subject “Myspace Mobile, it’s what’s for dinner.” And then I open the email and it’s a picture of a table with cell phones on it.

    I feel like my response to the “Myspace it’s what’s for dinner” email was about the same as it would have been had I received an email this morning from broccoli saying “Broccoli, I’m what’s for dinner.”

    I would have thought, “This is sad. Broccoli is so removed from reality and so completely not relevant.”

    In all seriousness, I find it ironic that a company who was once king of social networking but is fading into obscurity would have a subject line that quotes a popular catch phrase from the 90s. It’s one thing that used to matter using another antiquated relic of popular culture.

    I argue that a more appropriate email would have been “Myspace: where’s the beef.”

    The app basically does the same sort of things that any other social networking site’s app does (it’s just coming after the big boys have already made apps that people, you know, use).

    I briefly considered getting the app, but I don’t remember my Myspace password.

    Don’t get me wrong, I know that I could easily reset it, but what’s the point? I noticed a change that Myspace made to the layouts. As many people will recall, Myspace pages used to say the date that the person last logged in. They took that down.

    Makes sense to get rid of. Myspace probably doesn’t want people to be profile hopping and noticing that no one has logged in in years.

    Sad. I thnk a lot of us liked having that “last login” back in 2007 as a badge of honor. And now it’s gone.

    jrb

  • Things I won’t watch this year: Heisman and NCAA title game

    The NCAA is the most legalistic entity that man has ever created, with the possible exception of the Sanhedrin. The fact that Cameron Newton is eligible is unconscionable. It was no surprise this weekend when Newton was awarded the Heisman Trophy, but i did not watch. Just as I will not be watching him play in the national championship game next month. Why? Because I’m not in the mood to watch auburn win knowing that the title will likely be stripped away from them in the future. If that happens, it is as if this game will have never happened, so what is the point of waisting my time now to see something that will have not have officially ever existed in the future?

    Did Newton have the best season of any player in the country? Absolutely. But in the same season when Reggie Bush became the first Heisman winner to return the award ever as a result of being ruled ineligible for the 2005 season, giving the Heisman to someone who has a high likelihood of later being ruled ineligible is highly irresponsible.

    But that’s not fair to Cam.

    Fair? Fair? This entire situation is completely unfair to the fans. College football is not a perfect mirror of the civil society, and I think organizations should be looked at from a more utilitarian view. In the NCAA, if an athlete’s family receives funds, the athlete is ineligible. Regardless of if the athlete knows.

    If Cam’s father, Cecil Newton took funds, Cam is ineligible. But that’s not fair either. No, it’s not fair, but it’s not worth the entire sport taking another major credibility hit for the sake of waiting until we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that he broke the rules when we do know that they attempted to break the rules.

    That’s the price you pay for trying to break the rules.

    The NCAA knows the Cecil Newton solicited money from Mississippi State. Mississippi State was originally Cameron Newton’s top choice after he left Florida, and his father wanted to get a six figure sum of money. Mississippi State wouldn’t pay.

    It’s interesting. It’s interesting that Mississippi State was Cam’s top choice but they wouldn’t pay, however Cam went to Auburn. If Cam’s father didn’t receive money after he solicited money from Mississippi State, but Mississippi State was Cam’s top choice, why is Cam at Auburn?

    Let’s recap:
    top choice: Mississippi State.
    Then your dad tries to get money from Mississippi State.
    Mississippi State says “no.”
    Newton goes to Auburn.
    If Mississippi State was your top choice and wouldn’t pay you, why wouldn’t you still go there?
    Could it be that Auburn boosters were willing to pay?

    I know Cam doesn’t know about what’s going on. But he also transferred away from Florida before the university could have an expulsion hearing for academic dishonesty. Newton said that he had transferred, not because of the fact he faced expulsion but because Tim Tebow was coming back.

    Interestingly he transferred before Tebow ever said he was returning for his senior year.

    The feel good part of the Cameron Newton story has, for a long time, been a story about a bond between father and son and how Cameron has said on multiple occasions that he had given his father the reigns of selecting where he would play football. However this weekend, Newton cont stayed he had decided himself.

    There was the stolen laptop.

    There is a history of times when we know he has lied, where he has done things that are shady, where we KNOW that his dad tried to get money, and where a church of which his father is pastor seemed to magically receive a donation in order to keep its doors open.

    But everything is on the up and up.

    It is not Worth further diminishing the NCAA for the sake of being “fair.”

    The NCAA has strict rules about families taking money and the rules are in place regardless of if the athlete knows. As I’ve said before on my website, this is the way it has to be. Otherwise, the athletes could play dumb, or even legitimately be unaware, but in either situation, the family’s could take bribes. As a result, the rules must be very strict and enforced across the board.

    If the NCAA keeps throwing away its credibility, it is going to get progressively harder to get back. If Cameron Newton and his father truly are innocent, I think the fact that they attempted to break the rules is enough to make him ineligible. Their original sin was when Cecil Newton initially attempted to break the rules. That action, and their previous histories give a lot of circumstances that bring their honesty into question and it is because of all of the controversy which they have brought upon themselves, that people should not have cast Heisman votes for Newton and why he should not be playing for a national championship.

    John Stewart Mill would be proud of me.

    jrb

    sources: some of the points in this article, I have heard made by local Columbus radio show host Scott Torgerson.

  • Geolocations: the Future of Social Networking

    (note: this is the first in a series of commentaries on social networking and geolocation technology)

    Since the summer, Facebok and Twitter have both been announcing changes to get more involved in the geolocatoin tracking game. Today, Facebook mace several announcements pertaining to Places, the site’s location platform. Along with Google, all of these sites are pushing location updates more and more. The reasons are numerous, but many are uneasy about the idea of updating a GPS location online for all to see.

    Is it safe?

    To some, the answer seems like an obvious no, and for many others, there is an inherent uneasiness with the changes that are being made.

    One thing is certain. There will be people who utilize geolocations for illegal and immoral purposes. To think anything else would be naieve. People have already used social networking site like Facebook and Twitter to commit crimes.

    If a person updates their location, for instance that they are eating at a specific restaurant, the update is making one thing clear: If they are at a restaurant, then they are NOT at home. So can it be dangerous? Yes, but it can also be dangerous to have a job where you work the same hours everyday, and are predictably away from home at the same times everyday.

    We shouldn’t live our lives in fear. People may use social networking sites for illegal purposes, but it’s not the fault of the site when they do it. It’s the fault of the criminal. Eliminating geolocation technology would not ensure a crime wouldn’t happen. It would simply mitigate a resource that a potential criminal would have. Anyone who has enough determination to do something illegal is going to commit the illegal action, regardless of resources.

    I see numerous status updates of friends on Facebook and Twitter everyday that say things like “going to (insert name) mall,” or “grabbing coffee at…” If an individual says where they are in a status, then how is that any different than showing where they are?

    Geolocation tracking is the future. I think there is value in embracing technology and where the world is going. Last month, Facebook reached over 200 million worldwide users who use the site through mobile phones, triple where they were a year ago according to the Facebook blog. In two years, smart phones will be as ubiquitous in America as regular cell phones are today.

    We will be a nation of people with our own personal GPS devices. I see value in embracing where social networking is going, instead of cowering in fear and trying to remain cocooned from the world. I don’t understand the point of social networking if you’re trying to be fearful of a world where information is public.

    Don’t get me wrong. I believe that people should ALWAYS have the right to determine what they post and what they make public. I also advocate for smart social networking. I don’t think updating a geoloco status from your home or a friend’s home is a good idea. Nor would I think it is a good idea to tag your location without thinking about what you’re doing: i.e. don’t Tweet, “Walking down that same dark alley that I always walk down alone at this exact same time on Wednesday nights with an unlocked briefcase full of money.”

    I digress. And I realize no one would ever Tweet that. (You couldn’t, it was longer than 140 characters).

    Considering as much emphasis that all of the major social networking sites are placing, as well as the increasing number of networking sites specifically created for mobile phones, it’s clear that Silicon Valley expects geolocation to be big. There will be bumps in the road at times, but I think there is a lot of good that can also come from this expanding technology.

    For people who are concerned, I can’t fault you for being uneasy about geoloco. But I believe that if you look into the technology, there are ways to do it safely.

    jrb 11/3/10

  • MySpace: the AOL of Social Networking

    MySpace isn’t dead. But the social networking website that has been to Facebook what Apollo Creed was to Ivan Drago in “Rocky IV” may want to start looking into hospice care.

    Last spring, Owen Van Natta was named the CEO of MySpace. During the summer, Van Natta brought Katie Geminder over to the MySpace team. Geminder headed the RemakingMySpace project, an aggressive attempt to recreate and rebrand MySpace from the ground up.

    Almost a year worth of work to pull up on the free falling plane, and MySpace is back to square one with the termination of Van Natta on February 10, and Geminder leaving the company at the end of last week. TechCrunch.com reports that new co-president Jason Hirrschorn hated RemakingMySpace from the beginning, and was quick to scratch the project once in power. There have also been numerous other senior employee departures this month.

    MySpace has done whatever it can to erase any memory of the RemakingMySpace project having ever existed.

    Would RemakingMySpace have worked? I don’t know, but with a second total regime change in less than a year, it has been a year wasted. Social networking is very much a “now” competition, and Facebook vs. MySpace has gone from the heated war of coke vs. pepsi to the internal combustion engine vs. the horse and buggy.

    How many times can they completely retool the executive hierarchy of the company and have botched layout retooling projects and still remain relevant? There are more and more social networking websites being created and MySpace is out of site and out of mind. While it doesn’t seem like that long ago that MySpace was the king of all things social networking, the mighty have fallen.

    Is MySpace invincible? Was AOL? It is not exactly the same as the two serve different purposes, but a decade ago, America Online was a leading internet service provider. In many ways, AOL was synonymous with the internet. But where are they now?

    AOL’s popularity peaked between late 2001 and early 2003. Since that time, subscribers have been dropping from over 26 million users to barely five million, and they keep falling.

    On August 9, 2006, MySpace reaches 100 million accounts. At that time, Facebook had roughly 10 million accounts. It is difficult to know exactly how many profiles are on MySpace, but default friend Tom has over 274 million friends (so there are at least that many). You may be inclined to argue, “Wow, that’s a lot of profiles.” I agree that a lot of people have MySpace profiles. It’s just that people don’t use MySpace profiles.

    Facebook is enjoying over 260 billion page views per month. That is 11 times higher than MySpace as the graph from pingdom.com shows.

    The reason why I compare MySpace to AOL is that they both went from the industry standard to relics. Other service providers came along and left AOL in the dust. It became an inferior product. Innovation, which has been the hallmark of sites like Facebook and Google has passed MySpace by. With Facebook building up such a significant worldwide lead, the ultimate feature of both sites is too similar and Facebook has already won. There is potential in other networking sites which provide different function. Twitter with microblogging and Linkedin with being a professional site.

    But what is it that separates Facebook from MySpace? The fact that you can choose some fonts? If anything, the differences in layouts and fonts has done more harm than good as compared to the clean appearance of Facebook. The fact that it is easy to listen to music on MySpace? That isn’t a new feature, and at this point, what has that really done for the site anyway? It is a haven for webpages of bands that nobody listens to.

    And besides, music playing sites like pandora and rhapsody are just as good.

    Last month, I decided to create my own MySpace page. I had one for a few months in college, but decided to deactivate it since I never logged in. I requested several dozen friends of mine as MySpace friends. To this point, SIX of them have accepted my friend requests. Is this there way of telling me that they don’t like me? No. They haven’t accepted my friend request because they have not logged in. Some of these people have not logged onto MySpace in over two years.

    On paper, MySpace may always appear to be one of the social networking leaders, but for practical purposes, they have already been passed by, and are fading into obscurity.

    Like the Romans, and Europe’s domination in Olympic ice dancing, empires never last forever. The posts on MySpace are going out into the unnotice, internet abyss. You can’t spell empty space without “myspace.”