A VC - Latest Comments in Clearing Something Up

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:06:28 -0000

They stay longer and read more according to my google analytics

Re: Clearing Something Up

viteb — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:10:31 -0000

I am agree with your comment that social media will draw more traffic to the website but do you think are those visitors relevant? (i am comparing with google or search engine traffic with social media traffic).

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:52:16 -0000

Very funny

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:25:11 -0000

Ah. That's the 64 thousand dollar question. I think it may be that you don't insert paid links at at all. There are already discovery modes in twitter like search (pull) and retweet (push). I suspect that modes like that provide opportunities. But I have not totally figured this out. That's why I talked about it. I'd like to get as many people thinking about this and working on it as possible. As I said in my talk, google didn't figure out paid search, Bill Gross did. And its certainly possible that facebook and twitter won't figure out passed links either

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:13:13 -0000

I'm with you

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:06:23 -0000

Thanks erik

For some sites, like perezhilton (which I don't have access to the logs) facebook is way more important

For some (like techcrunch), twitter is more important

For some, like etsy, its about 50/50

Across our portfolio, it about averages out to be even

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:04:20 -0000

Hmmm. That's "food for thought"

Re: Clearing Something Up

odednoy — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:50:41 -0000

Fred,

It was a pleasure to meet you at the conference. I enjoyed your talk. Sorry some people took it out of context. I do believe that the concept of passed-link is a high growth area. It is human curated - and therefore provide relevancy that is different than Google search (besides the fact that its real time).

I hope that you do not go back to the regular scheduled program, since its obviously being disrupted :)

Oded

Re: Clearing Something Up

Benin (@BeninB) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:48:41 -0000

Nice, I like that analysis.

The links which get passed around on Twitter definitely get my attention much more than the 10 or 20 links that come up on the first page of the Google search results page. For me its the perceived authority factor that if someone is posting that via FB or Twitter that they must know what they are talking about. Of course, we know that this is not always the case, as there are quite a number of hawkers passing links on every single tweet they post to Twitter.

Nevertheless, and especially true for my big ticket purchasing decisions, my usage of Twitter search has gone up drastically in the past months.

Re: Clearing Something Up

Void — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:46:09 -0000

What is not tried - I did not understand what is being described! >

Re: Clearing Something Up

tpurves — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:55:55 -0000

Except that passed links convert better than search generated links precisely *because* they aren't paid right?

So how do FB and Twitter integrate paid listings in a way that generates more value than the current (abysmal) CPM of social media ad rates?

How do you insert "pay" into passed links without corrupting the trust and value that people perceive in passed links? (which is why they click on them and convert)

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:31:21 -0000

you rock jonny!

Re: Clearing Something Up

InhaleExhale — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:29:27 -0000

Christian,

Feel free to use the pic. They are licensed with a Creative Commons Attrtibution-Share Alike license, which means that anyone can republish them as long as they give me attribution.

Re: Clearing Something Up

Carl Rahn Griffith — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:40:17 -0000

Good points. The power of the referred URL - whether received by email, FB or Twitter, etc - is that it is in the context of some descriptive text and endorsement from a friend/associate or someone you've been following and trust the opinion of. This gives the URL credibility - this is especially important with the ubiquity of URL abbreviators; I won't go to an 'anonymous' abbreviated URL unless it has an endorsement associated with it.

Re: Clearing Something Up

bojanbabic — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 03:35:14 -0000

Totally agree. I think that we need more Gs in term on moving large amount of money from existing sources to internet backbone. We have billion dollar search backbone, SaaS backbone ... and social media should stand alone. Thats why I think that fb and tweeter should not be bought, since money these days is so centralized. but I guess you now more about it ;)

Re: Clearing Something Up

Erick Schonfeld — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 00:52:19 -0000

Fred, I've updated the post to reflect that you were also talking about Facebook. Since I didn't get to ask you in person, what is the breakdown between Twitter and Facebook traffic for the sites that you measured?

Re: Clearing Something Up

Marcel LeBrun — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:16:46 -0000

I was at the #140conf and enjoyed the talk, though we didn't get a chance to meet.

While I think the increased traffic from Twitter that you are seeing is significant, I think there is an even more significant phenomenon taking place with Twitter that makes it even more valuable, but is harder to measure with traditional web analytics alone. In addition to the increased referred traffic that twitter/FB drives relative to Google, Twitter is also a medium where ideas propagate where Google is not. We are used to measuring referred traffic, but the science of measuring how ideas propagate is not as well known, but the value is very real.

In my own business, for example, our brand has grown significantly because of the generosity of our customers who recommend us liberally to their network. We can measure the propagation of this on Twitter (and other media like blogs, etc.), but the vast majority do not contain links (see http://bit.ly/Feedback for anecdotal sample comments on Twitter... very few links).

So I would argue that the value of Twitter in terms of driving new people to hear about and visit your site (choosing my words carefully vs "referred traffic") is even higher than you are seeing with your analysis because of the power & role of Twitter in propagating ideas.

So what is the value of an idea which propagates on Twitter, which then causes people to "Google" the brand in order to find the site. In this case, Google appears as the referrer, but Twitter is really the medium which propagated the idea. In this scenario, Google is just the white pages directory.

Just some more food for thought as you continue your analysis.
Regards,
Marcel
CEO, Radian6

Re: Clearing Something Up

Mikel A. — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:41:21 -0000

The sad thing is that before Erik Shonfeld went to Tech Crunch he was a well respected reporter. Now he just aims for page views. Sad.

Re: Clearing Something Up

Christian  — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:09:26 -0000

Ok didn't used the jonny pic, full: http://bit.ly/cYEou
cheers, christian

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:08:23 -0000

You can republish my stuff but I can't speak for jonny

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:07:16 -0000

I am sure it depends on the site and the category of product or service

I suppose I should have qualified that

But we do see passed links converting better on many sites

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:06:21 -0000

It took me a second to figure out what you were referencing

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:06:19 -0000

Clearly because that's an anti-social comment

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:05:14 -0000

I'm glad you liked that

I was venting and I wanted everyone to know that I know I was venting

Re: Clearing Something Up

fredwilson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:04:14 -0000

I'm not saying that google/search will go away as a source of traffic. I think it will remain a very important and significant source of it

Its just going to have share the market power with others

I don't think google should buy either of them. I think all three should co-exist as important functions in the internet operating system