HHotelConsult hoping to make sense of his brainpan's thoughts, rambles, ambles, and more. Hotel Industry banter, social media thoughts, and general blather.
Ed Note: Pardon my current technological shortcomings, for the time being. You might have to click on the pic to open the full size photo of the website. Â Currently, I am having trouble having them display full screen in the blog post itself. Pardon that. Cheers!
I know, no matter how people excuse it, you can’t use flash anymore.  It’s not even a conversation, and when I am forced to have it… I get frustrated.  I also know you need to have a mobile page.  Please, neophytes or luddites, *please* understand a mobile-optimized website is *NOT* a hotel specific branded app.  You don’t need the latter unless you are one of the big 5.  If they don’t know your brand, or boutique concept, they won’t know to search for it.  Don’t let giddy marketer buzzwords excite or cloud your understanding of these complex technological trends. I only say complex, because, as the old joke goes, we hotel people are not pioneers specifically because pioneers were shot in the back with arrows.  We have always been behind the curve. Always.  The innovators have always been long term and conservative.  We have some colorful characters in this business, as well (looking at Chip [who's site isn't too bad, either] or Ian, particularly…), but the classics have always been plodding and broad scope visionaries like Stan Bromley.
More website dicussion after the [More] tag! (more…)
Enjoy the TechCrunch article… and always, always, always enjoy the commentary. I find it interesting if not hilarious. If it isn’t hilarious enough for you, check out the comment section of this blog post, where it basically proves Facebook users are clueless (or 4chan had a blast acting like a mischievous army, once again).
Yelp seems to be taking this situation seriously though; umm….enough to post a Craigslist ad for legal counsel. I would imagine there are better ways to hire lawyers than CL, but hey, just says a lot about the management that got them into this mess.
But these cries of extortion… once again… are more about (more…)
Spot on and completely hilarious, I am sure many of you have felt this frustration. Apparently, everything is negotiable nowadays, eh? This makes it nice and ridiculous, for easy lunch time digesting.
Here are some of the links I previously spoke about in regards to social media sites not being profitable. I note, when people find that these sites are not profitable, I am often met with surprise in lieu of all the buzz and media about them. Buzz does not profit make.
YOU READER! You yourself may not have thought of it – but facebook, youtube, yelp, tripadvisor, linkedin, twitter…. none of these powerful sites have proven the social media ad-model, nor been able to turn a profit. I am not sure if I published these links already, but they are good for thought. It is sort of ripped out of a previous yelp conversation, found (yes unfortunately on yelp) HERE. It is a good thread about yelp. I am not going to elucidate, but we might all agree that Fishbits X is one of the most thougthful, prolific yelpers out there (tongue firmly in cheek). The below tracks some of the conversation about monetization and creating web 2.0 to actually be profitable, which it is not.
And I think the AOL Yahoo thing brought out some interesting comments… especially from Randy Falco http://gigaom.com/2008…
“But despite drawing large, engaged audiences, other social networks have not been able to make the experiences relevant to users and marketers alike.”
Yelpers don’t want complexity. They just want lovely free parties where they can be happy. Nothing wrong with that, frankly. Sounds good. Actually.. really, really good.
But happiness does not sustain itself all the time… those parties may be no more if something doesn’t happen… and fairly fast. I did just notice a new feature called “Things I Love” on the yelp profile main page. This is worked in so as to create highly targeted advertising for the members. If they like dogs, they can market dog food. If they like their fiance, they can market wedding vendors. It is a brilliant idea, but I already chatted about how Facebook’s model doesn’t work. Even running a couple tests produced some negligible and even odd results.
So, when JP Morgan suggests that 2009 will be the year that the ad model fails…. my ears perk up and I wonder a couple things. Namely, will there be unexpected opportunities if they are not able to get ROI or make these things profitable?
This is fascinating, and social media is so big right now… ballooning, saturating, and a media darling which has gotten an almost cult of personality like focus in the news.
I cannot imagine that they will make it profitable, nor can I imagine it going away.
What do you think is going to happen? I think that a lot of these sites don’t have strong business leadership, and there is a lot of panicking going on right now. As long as they focus on the business more than the parties….