Now read this quote from Gary Cowan of Datasphere in Street Fight today:

People throw out the word, “cookie cutter,” but what does that actually mean? Does it mean you have a website laid out in a way that makes sense and you use that layout across the board? Tell me why a New York website needs a different layout than a Los Angeles? What is so fundamentally different between those two markets that you would want a layout that’s completely different? That’s the only thing I can draw from the cookie cutter comment, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Problem 1: lots of reused and frankly bad content is spoiling the experience. For one, using the same everything, including content, is disingenuous to your readership and advertisers who believe they are supporting their neighborhood when they are actually only supporting your bottom line. It is cookie cutter for sure, but maybe even worse than that.

Problem 2: Let’s talk about layout for a second. Let’s face it, Starbucks works. It is efficient. It serves coffee at a local level and lots of people love it. But there are other people who prefer locally owned and run shops. When people call you “cookie cutter” they are simply stating the obvious fact that you are operate and look like a chain. Chains are not usually thought of as local or grass roots or deeply tied to the community.

One of the reasons people embrace local independent online media is because they identify with the place they live – a place that is quirky and unique. Why would the layout of a website in LA look different than in NYC? Because those places are themselves different. They have different economies, transportation, weather, people and most importantly people from those places think of themselves as different. And that difference is why they are interested in drinking at a quirky local coffee shop where they know the owner rather than Starbucks.

The funny thing is that I think you know that. You brand everything with your local media partners. When you make phone calls to sell ads you say you are calling from the local TV station. You know that people respond to local and you leverage your brand to seem local, established and engaged.

But I digress, I doubt any of this keeps you up at night. Although I bet high churn rates do. . .

But the problem is Google treats my identities as logins like everybody else. I cannot be simultaneously logged in to my personal Gmail and my Google Apps Gmail at the same time or even on the same browser. Worse yet, there are products that are central to Google’s strategy that were not at the time available for Google Apps customers, such as Google Voice, which is tied to my personal account.So if I want to use Google Voice and my business email account, I have to have at least two browsers open. In some ways, this shouldn’t be a big problem. However, these days browsers have to be very capable things to handle all the nifty HTML5 tricks that make web-based apps like the ones I need work. The problem is that browsers are now serious resource hogs. Two at once plus iTunes is enough to choke up my 1-year-old, top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. Really.

To make matters worse, I run a company with multiple brands and small groups of collaborative workers. I have ben -at- macermedia.com and ben -at- sacramentopress.com and my personal account. So if I want all my email, all my calendaring, all my Google Voice functionality and Google+ (I’ll get to that in a minute), I have to have THREE browsers open.

I wouldn’t really mind. I get it, I’m the exception. It’s just that it works so well in Android Honeycomb! Google seems to want to be my mail client, not just my ESP. It seems to want to be the hub I turn to.

Why don’t I use Google+? Simple. My main browser for sharing and interacting is the one I use for my work email, calendar and docs. That means I am logged into my work account and thus NOT logged into Google+. I can share on Twitter. I can share on Facebook. I can do it any which way – buttons on sites, copy and paste URLs, use third-party web apps like timely.is. What I can’t do is share or get notified via Google+.

But this is not really about Google+. That is just the most obscene example. What this is about is consistently having Google Apps stand for “Google six months ago.” I don’t want less than the average user – I want more!

What strings these two issues together is simple. Google must recognize that Google Apps is not a traditional enterprise product. But that is a great thing because work environments are changing. Therefore, to be useful in emerging work environments, companies should not be paying for special logins, but accounts within logins that have access to the right new features to help them work as a team.

Users need access to different identities and workspace applications like docs, Google+ and maybe even waves. Users need to be able to easily do this from one browser and on one mobile browser on their smartphones. Web applications must allow multiple identities and accounts to be accessed by one simple login.

So get on this Google! Either do that or let Google Apps wither on the vine if you don’t recognize the changing work environments and focus on the needs of stodgy operations that really don’t like you anyway.

Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20554

Dear Chairman Genachowski:

October 3, 2011

The undersigned organizations are innovative local online news organizations serving communities across the country. We are new, start-up enterprises, and we are part of a growing movement of local online sites dedicated to news, information and community. As the legacy media industry has undergone increasing strain in engaging in local community and investigative reporting, our enterprises have stepped up to begin rebuilding local journalism.

Because we are dedicated to serving the local information needs of our communities, we read your working group report, The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age, with great interest. The report pointed out that our start-up enterprises are not yet self-sustaining enough to fill the gaps left by legacy media cutbacks, and we do not disagree with this conclusion — as of today. But our potential to serve local audiences is being proven every day in our communities, and local online enterprises such as ours will emerge to be an important force in the lives of Americans.

The report correctly concludes that sustainability and workable business models will be essential to the future of local online journalism. Advertising is an important element of this future. In that regard, the report points out a modest change in policy that could make a real near-term difference in the sustainability of local journalism: a shift in the federal government’s advertising spending from national media to local media. As the report states: “Targeting existing federal advertising spending to local news media could help local news media models— both commercial and nonprofit, online and off-line—gain traction and help create local jobs, while potentially making taxpayer spending more cost-effective.” We understand that the Television Bureau of Advertising and the Newspaper National Network support this concept, on behalf of the local television and newspaper industries. We agree.

The report understandably focuses on the potential for such a shift in federal advertising policy to foster local newspaper and television coverage. But the potential benefit of such a shift in policy for local online news enterprises could be even more dramatic and important to the public interest. Our highly granular local orientation permits us to offer tightly targeted advertising models that could benefit government advertisers and make their efforts markedly more cost-effective. This result would provide the government with extremely efferctive advertising choices and allow taxpayer dollars to go farther. And the benefits of even a modest amount of government spending on local online news enterprises could be, in a relative sense, far more beneficial in sustaining local online journalism than expenditures on legacy

The Hon. Julius Genachowski October 3, 2011
Page 2

media. Even modest advertising revenues will permit us to expand news coverage, create new journalism jobs, and better serve our local communities.

Needless to say, these decisions should be made by professionals within the government and within advertising agencies on an entirely content-neutral basis. We believe that can be accomplished. The result would provide the government with extremely effective advertising choices. And the by-product of this more effective advertising policy will be a movement toward sustainability and self-sufficiency on the part of new, innovative local news organizations that can serve the information needs of local communities today and in the future.

We look forward to today’s hearing, and would be pleased to provide any further information that may be helpful to you.

Respectfully submitted,

The Hon. Julius Genachowski October 3, 2011

Signed:

/s Joel Kramer

Editor and CEO MinnPost.com Minneapolis, Minnesota

/s Ben Ilfeld

Operations Manager SacramentoPress.com Sacramento, California

/s
Polly Kreisman

Publisher and Editor theLoopNY .com Westchester County, N.Y.

/s Jeremy Iggers

Publisher
Twin Cities Daily Planet/ www.tcdailyplanet.net

/s Suzanne McBride

Editor and Publisher, AustinTalks Founder, Chicago Talks austintalks.org

Patch represents a huge ally of local and hyper-local sites. For one, more local media is welcome in my world. There still is not enough coverage. In addition, Patch does pay editors. This keeps good journalists working local beats. We can all applaud that. The fact that Patch is well funded means it can experiment with new models of journalism and with new business models without fear of immediate failure. All of this is wonderful. None of this scares me.

What scares some is that Patch could poach stories, resources and advertisers. I think Patch ought to address the first two concerns whenever they go into new communities. Patch must come in as an ally and a good neighbor. Patch editors must abide by the rules of the blogging roads just like everyone else. If they do not they will find themselves with less traffic and little good will from locals and local businesses.

As for poaching advertisers – it happens in competitive markets. And it can be a very healthy thing, because Patch has the resources to reach out to lots of advertisers who have never spent a dime on local online advertising. They have the capacity to build a larger market. This is not a zero sum game. Local online advertising is growing and more boots on the street selling means more local businesses buying. We have found it easier to sell an advertiser who has already been approached or bought ads from other sites.

The things that do go bump in the night are activities that do not contribute to a healthy local media ecosystem. For example, I am much more worried that people will just play Farmville, watch Hulu, and read their favorite gadget blog (I know I do). I’m more concerned the local businesses may not have an opportunity to try independent local online advertising and see how effective we can be. I lose sleep every single night because it it our job to offer better innovative products so we can compete. That is our job.

Our job is to create The Sacramento Local Online Ad Network. Our job is to create Deal Ticket (our Groupon competitor). Our job is to build community and then innovate business models that will be effective for our local business partners. We have to help local businesses thrive just as we have to help our larger community thrive!

And Patch can help. Patch can help by competing and pulling out all the stops. They can help by educating local businesses and paying local editors. Patch can help by creating more local news and innovating. Patch can help by being a good neighbor and reaching out to form alliances with local and hyper-local operations. Patch can be a huge ally. I, for one, say: welcome.

At the time we had already begun work on SLOAN, The Sacramento Local Online Ad network. Geoffrey Sakala from The Rancho Cordova Post and I were exploring a partnership to help both publications. An advertising network made sense theorhetically, but it took 8 months to actually make SLOAN a reality.

The practical challenges of building a local advertising network are daunting. Details from sales territories to publisher payments have to be worked out and tested. Publishers in the local space have been so fiercely competitive for so long that just getting everyone in a room is challenging. In addition, most hyper-local publishers have full time jobs other than running websites. Keeping in contact is difficult let alone building the level of trust necessary for a local advertising network.

We hired Lynn Mayugba, an expert in sales and corporate strategy, as the lead on this porject. She has been nothing short of phenomenal. Trust me, the theories are all wrong. While local advertising networks are crucial infrastructure of local media markets, it takes a personality – a force of nature – like Lynn to put passion and theory into practice. These are not organic structures built of my dreams, but rather through tireless effort.

Now that SLOAN is a reality, I want to thank a few people who really put in the time to make this all happen.

Thank you Lynn for all the reasons stated above and for your continued excellence.

Thank you Geoff Samek, co-founder of The Sacramento Press. He is my daily rock and inspiration. So much of SLOAN was defined in conversation between us at our desks over the last eight months.

Thank you Geoff Sakala. This was your vision as much or more than mine. You researched platform partners and found Adify. You endorsed SLOAN when there was only vaproware and helped bring publishers together.

Thank you Bryan, Eva, Leif, and Welly from Adify. I know its your business to help, but you always seem to give a little extra with SLOAN. I can feel your passion for our project.

Thank you staff of The Sacramento Press. When I think of the future of local media, you’re it. Our newsroom is so vibrant and optimistic and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Thank you publishers for taking a step forward with us. What an amazing day. You are the best of the best. Small to large you are the area’s premier local online publications.

Thank you advertising partners. With your help not only can we build a more efficient market, but we can build stronger than ever brands. With your guidance we will continue to make SLOAN better and better.

]]> http://www.sacad.net/2010/02/another-example-of-a-post/feed/ 2