Thanks Steve

Randy Hamilton — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 18:48:23 +0000

Steve, I owe you my sincere gratitude. It was you who got me started down the path that has become part of an insatiable mission in my life– a thrist to create, to innovate. I was an early Apple II computer that turned my world upside down. That little machine gave me the ability to not only dream, but turn ideas into reality. And it was your entrepreneurial spirit that lives today not only in me, but droves of people across the world.

Who knew that years later I’d be sitting in your office at NeXT Computer, completely amazed at all of your accomplishments that adorned your office… from Apple to PiXar. And I remember you saying that one day, your operating system NEXTSTEP would be on every computer in virtually every home across the world. I didn’t quite know what you meant as it seemed like a tall order at the time. But as you promised, you delivered, and today Mac OS X is a living testament.

From Steve’s 1995 commencement address at Stanford University:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Thanks Steve.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Big Data’s Effect on Data Management

Randy Hamilton — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:46:35 +0000

Globally, the amount of data created and consumed by individuals and organizations is growing at an unprecedented rate. Industry analysts from Gartner^{CITATION Ray10 \l 1033}predict that enterprise data in all forms will grow 650 percent over the next 5 years, while IDC claims the entire world’s volume of data doubles every 24 months.^{CITATION Ric09 \l 1033} By 2021, some estimate there will be as many bits in the digital universe as there are stars in the physical universe, much of it unstructured and unorganized. This deluge of data represents a source of competitive value for the enterprise as well as new challenges for business leaders and IT professionals. An entire new class of solutions – applications, consulting, storage strategies – organized loosely under the “Big Data” moniker, has sprung up to meet this eruption of data. Ill-fitted to the narrow, expensive, and operationally fragile strictures of traditional data warehousing or business intelligence; Big Data requires new thinking, new strategies and new architectures.

In Part 1 of Basho Technologies White Paper series, “The Next Evolution of Data Management,” we discuss the global explosion of data, how big data is impacting data management, and how the market is responding to these new challenges with the creation of next-generation data management systems like Riak EDS.

Download the free white paper here

Basho Technologies has a new CEO

Randy Hamilton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 21:08:40 +0000

Basho announces the appointment of Don Rippert (CTO at Accenture) as Basho’s new president and CEO. Don’s understanding of the project lifecycle and complex enterprise-class IT will prove invaluable as Basho continues to scale its sales and engineering efforts.

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Basho Technologies is about to change the game in a big way. Stay tuned for more… much, much more.

Goodbye Newspaper, Hello Big Data

Randy Hamilton — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 17:33:00 +0000

Folks, I’ve moved on, beyond the land of local social media and futile attemps to convert the local newspaper into a revenue ‘money-machine.’ When first getting involved in this market I did my diligence. I couldn’t have been more excited. The market potential is enormous, and the newspapers positioning is ideal for the local social marketplace. Unfortunately the adage holds true… “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I now see why the so many before me have thrown in the towel. The newspapers are now running on borrowed time– fumes. Their window has closed and they are the deer in the headlights. We’ve seen complacency in species and industries before, which attributed to their eventual extinction. You see, the unfortunate reality is that the local newspaper is the reason the local newspaper is quickly fading into oblivion. It has nothing to do with technology or market. It’s just Darwin kicking in. Their only hope… yes… what we’ve heard only too often… “government bailout.” YIKES!

I found a ‘few’ (very few) in the newspaper industry who actually ‘get it.’ But the overwhelming majority couldn’t begin to comprehend. And like hungry vultures after a wounded animal, every vendor and their brother continue to line up to sell snake oil solutions to the newspaper. By the time we got to them, the newspapers were already lying in a fetal position and quivering… beaten bloody from shallow broken promises of solutions that were never to be. And for the trailblazers, the ones who got it? My hat is off to you for taking the leap and trusting your gut. The true believers of the real solution we crafted will reap the rewards and can hopefully be the guiding light for what remains of the industry.

And now I move forward, into the land of big data in the cloud… off to trail blaze in yet another transformative industry.

10 Strategic Changes the Newspaper Must Make to Reinvent Themselves

Randy Hamilton — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:53:30 +0000

In recent posts I pointed out many of the challenges the newspaper industry is facing:

Subscription and advertising revenues are on the decline
Attempts to move to the internet have had lackluster results
Operations have been cut to bare bones
Analysts have for the most part abandoned the industry

In the recent PEW report State of the News Media 2011

“…newspapers suffered continued revenue declines last year—an unmistakable sign that the structural economic problems facing newspapers are more severe than those of other media. When the final tallies are in, we estimate 1,000 to 1,500 more newsroom jobs will have been lost—meaning newspaper newsrooms are 30% smaller than in 2000.”

According to an article from the American Press Institute:

“The newspaper industry is at a strategic inflection point – a period of disruptive changes that threaten its current way of doing business with no clear future path. The threats come from many directions but are manifesting themselves in the form of declining circulation, rising costs and downward revenue pressure. These trends show no sign of reversing themselves. The industry’s very survival is dependent on its ability to reframe completely the way it does business, and find new ways to attract and keep customers.”

The war against the newspaper industry is mounting—as are new-media competitors focused on local market share. The threat is real and the competitors are unrelenting. But all is not lost! There is still time to be disruptive and thrive—that is if the newspaper industry does not let their legacy business model stand in the way of seizing new opportunities.

Click here to see the full text of this post as well as the 10 strategic changes the newspaper must make to reinvent themselves.

Newspaper 2.0–The Social Newspaper

Randy Hamilton — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:29:28 +0000

For the past several years now, people have been claiming that the internet edition of the newspaper is ‘Newspaper 2.0.’ So if we follow that train of thought, moving the newspaper to a mobile device is now ‘Newspaper 3.0?’ Look folks, moving the print edition newspaper onto another medium is not a revelation. It doesn’t justify announcing a next-generation leap–especially when that move resulted in nothing less than cannibalizing the newspaper’s bread-and-butter legacy edition, cutting deep into their revenue base, and putting their sustainability in question. Read the entire story here!

A Disruptive Model for the Newspaper Industry

Randy Hamilton — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 18:46:29 +0000

This is a call to all newspapers… change the game… NOW!

To effect real change, the newspaper industry must change their fundamental way of doing business. This doesn’t mean they should abandon their professional journalism. It means that they just need to change their approach and ‘how’ they do business. If they embrace this change, this may very well be their finest hour.

This post discusses a new model for the newspaper industry — a new way of doing business. Can the newspapers make the shift and move themselves back into a leadership position- – into a sustainable model for the future?

Read the entire post here… Newspapers — Get Disruptive!

What the Big Online Companies Do NOT want Local Publishers to Know

Randy Hamilton — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:04:44 +0000

Big online media giants fear one thing most — that local publishers might one day wake up and realize that their trusted brand and relationships pose a major threat to their plans to dominate in local markets. Well that time is here and now. We’re now starting to observe a sea of change. If 2010 was the year of business waking up and accepting social media, 2011 looks like it might just be the year that local media gets on board and takes steps to resume their leadership role in the local community.

But it ain’t your father’s Buick my friend. The face of the newly remodeled local media company can’t look like the old one. The nation’s newspapers are still in a circulation freefall. The Audit Bureau of Circulation show the average weekday circulation for dailies have fallen over 8.7 percent year-to-year. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Services Survey indicate a year-on-year decline in newspaper operating revenue between 12% and 22%. The legacy subscribe-ad business models of local publishers simply can’t sustain in the rapidly evolving world of socialnomics.

Some will argue that the local publisher has already moved to the internet, and it isn’t working for them. But their move was nothing short of patchwork. Was this a strategic move or a tactical one? Did the business model shift? It’s like when Kodak woke up one day in the late 1990’s and realized that the world was changing around them — the enemy was at the gates and their market share was rapidly eroding. They swiftly took action and in the early 2000’s added digital to their array of products. It failed miserably. Eventually Kodak realized that what needed to change was their business model — their fundamental way of doing business. They had to ‘reinvent’ themselves. The newspapers aren’t much different. Local media companies once thought all they had to do was put a digital facade on their business and voila!, they were web savvy. But their business models didn’t change. And the digital version of the business was treated at best as the bastard child– a ‘necessary evil.’ So they tried erecting paywalls thinking that they could coax people into buying their content. But like the Maginot Line, customers simply walked around, and not through. You see, bolting on short-term fixes without a strategy is not the answer. The newspapers must transform. They must ‘reinvent’ themselves in order to survive and thrive in an ever changing world of hyper-information.

So how should newspapers approach the problem? Quit focusing on content. It’s not about content, it’s about communication. Communication is the key to harnessing the explosive network effect of social media. Sure, great journalism is fantastic and it’s what they do best. We all love great journalism, but today, seemingly everyone is a journalist. Even premium content in this day and age is a commodity. With an ocean of information available at our fingertips, and what attracts us is not necessarily premium content. If you haven’t noticed lately, people are very much interested in connecting and communicating with other people, online. And on the commerce side of the equation, people are looking to connect with merchants in a myriad of ways, to save money, or to simply find what they are looking for. But in the local community, people are right now looking for leadership– someone they can ‘trust’ who will give them the means to connect and communicate locally. The local newspaper is the obvious choice for this. The local newspaper has been a long-time friend of the community. They are the Switzerland of the community — the long-time trusted brand who has relationships throughout the land. Would you have more trust for a Facebook or Google brand who doesn’t give a hoot about the individual person, or someone you’ve known and trusted in your very own community for your entire lifetime?

Now let’s talk monetization. The newspapers are the connecting point for the local merchants and the community. This is where newspapers can absolutely dominate. The newspapers are in the advantageous position to give the local community, businesses and consumers alike, a platform from which they can connect and communicate, to create stronger, more meaningful relationships while driving awareness of relevant local products and services. And on the content side, newspapers can still do what they do best, by providing premium journalistic content. But this content will be intertwined with local homegrown journalism and commentary, as well as relevant local content pulled from external social media sources like Oodle, Fwix, Twitter, Yelp, etc. And, since people now live in various and multiple virtual places, the new local newspaper will have to jump on the bandwagon and syndicate their community homegrown content out to social media places like Facebook and Twitter.

In December 2010, the Amador Ledger Dispatch out of Jackson, CA launched the beta of their latest online property, MyACHome.com, running on a social marketing platform developed by TotalPaas, Inc. out of Palo Alto, CA. MyACHome is an example of a local newspaper reinvented. Rather than print feeding the online, they’ve flipped the equation and put their online model first. When someone wants something to go into print, it first has to go online. To make the online property interesting, local relevant content is constantly fed from a myriad of external social media feeds. And, to enhance the legacy newspaper, the Amador Ledger Dispatch pulls great homespun content (pics, commentary, blogs, etc.) from MyACHome.com and publishes it in its newspaper. The Amador Ledger Dispatch believes that the legacy worlds and online worlds work best when you cross publish and cross promote between traditional print and online. As for advertising, local merchants can help themselves to a self-serve online system to create and publish ads and deals. Ads flow both online and back into the print version of the newspaper. But for the latest-greatest local content and up-to-the-minute local deals, people go to MyACHome.com.

The local ad market is lucrative, estimated at over $100B. The threat from local publishers to impact or even derail the big online companies plans is very real. According to an article from The Business Insider, December 2010 “…the real threat to Groupon is coming laterally, from established players (newspapers, magazines, vertical sites, TV shows, etc.) who already have audiences in the millions, established brands and in-house sales staff.” And the last thing big online companies want to see is a vendor with a readily available social marketing platform that supports the local publishers in their quest to reinvent themselves.

The local newspaper still has the eyes and ears of the local community. The big question is — will the local publisher wake up and realize that they have an enormous advantage, before it’s too late. And the bigger question — will they take action?

Local is Fueling Much of the Online Ad Market Growth

Randy Hamilton — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 19:08:22 +0000

If you ever wondered why so many people are trying to ‘crack the nut’ on the hyperlocal advertising industry, industry analyst Mary Meeker in her recent report reminds us of just how big the online advertising opportunity is and how fast it’s expected to grow.

According to Meeker, the online advertising industry is on a path to exceed the $50 billion mark over the next few years. Meeker, an analyst at the market research firm Morgan Stanley released her report at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Meeker claims that Americans spend 28 percent of their time on the we, but only 13 percent of ad spending is devoted to the channel. This indicates that the market has an enormous opportunity for growth.

Mobile technologies, especially smartphones will drive advertising spend even further. “It’s the fastest-ramping technology transformation the world has ever seen,” Meeker said. “I’ve been of the view for years that the mobile Internet was the next big thing.” Meeker even expects mobile commerce to replace ecommerce as smartphone penetration continues to grow. Driving this is the fact that wireless connections and geosocial applications enable impulse purchases and allow merchants to deliver coupons and offers to users at the time when they’re most likely to spend. According to a recent report from ABI Research, by 2015 expenditures on location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla are expected to near $2 billion.

Search Engine Optimization continues to be a strong player. According to comScore, more than 16 billion searches are conducted every month by potential clients looking for products and services. This highlights the continued importance of SEO and the role it plays in the online advertising market.

It is evident however that online local advertising is fueling much of the growth in the online advertising market. In 2009 Borrell Associates projected the online local-ad market to be worth $15.5 billion by 2013. According to a new report from Borrell Associates, local online advertising is now forecasted to grow by nearly 18 percent in 2011 from $13.7 billion this year to $16.1 billion in 2011.

These numbers provide further support for local media companies to place an even more emphasis on the development of online hyperlocal strategies. One thing is for certain, with increasing opportunity competitive pressures on the local media companies turf will only increase.

Online Monetization for the Local Media Company

Randy Hamilton — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:27:58 +0000

We’ve heard it all over and over again about the local media companies…

-They’re dinosaurs
-They can’t monetize online
-They are a dying breed

There’s a stigma in the market that local media companies can offer nothing more than an online news portal, and that their biggest assets, their local brand and relationships cannot be effectively leveraged and monetized online. We’ve even recently read of claims that “there are no solutions that allow for complete white label branding; no solutions that offer direct paths for monetization.” These people obviously haven’t seen TotalPaas.

TotalPaas understands the importance of the local media companies and the vital role they play in their local community. TotalPaas is a community-powered hyper-local platform-as-a-service, a “PaaS” designed for the publishers to extend their community leadership role by augmenting or even powering their hyper-local strategy. TotalPaas’ comprehensive private label branding solution preserves the local newspaper’s brand equity while managing and syndicating aggregated content, serving local and national ads, and providing a direct path to monetization. The publisher-focused platform automatically and directly tags content with geographic metadata. In addition, the platform aggregates both RSS and non-RSS content, while controlling which feeds are aggregated. The built in content management system allows for the direct management of elements from aggregated content while allowing customization through javascript widgets, hosted solutions and APIs. TotalPaas even provides a visual element for the local community by publishing content to interactive maps. Rather than charging exorbitant up-front and monthly maintenance fees, TotalPaas demonstrates its commitment by forging partnerships with an increasing scale revenue share.

The stigma has been dispelled. Media companies can be far more than an online news portal. With TotalPaas, local media companies can effectively leverage their brand and relationship assets by providing an unsurpassed hyperlocal experience for their community — a direct path to monetization.

For more information visit http://totalpaas.com
To see a live site running on the TotalPaas platform visit http://paasgo.com