STARRING 

• Gian Fulgoni, Chairman and co-founder, comScore

As well as popping into see Max during our recent US trip, we also caught up with Gian Fulgoni of comScore in the Chicago office (their HQ is in Virginia where CEO Magid Abraham and much of the engineering team is based).

comScore is one of the main providers of internet measurement and competes with Nielsen Online (formerly Nielsen NetRatings), Compete.com, Hitwise, and Quantcast as well as others. That said, comScore and Nielsen are generally considered the bigger boys of the bunch given how often their share data is cited in the media (e.g. monthly shares in the lucrative online search market).

The internet measurement sector is very technology-hungry. In the early years, comScore literally ate up millions of dollars to get its IT infrastructure established and working right. It has one of world’s largest databases as a result of the oceans of data being sent back daily from panelist PCs (a widget records their internet activity, with their permission, and siphons it, along with detailed transaction data, over to HQ). These efforts were rewarded when, in 2007, comScore was annointed one of 47 technology pioneers at the WEF in Davos.

2007 was arguably a good year for comScore’s initial investors. 2007’s IPO provided for a much-needed liquidation for this band of investors who backed the firm since 2000, including after the dotcom bust when venture financing virtually dried up.

At one point comScore’s market cap hit $1bn; it’s still pretty amazing to think that a company that has only been trading for around seven years is already worth over half as much as TNS, a widely admired and solid growth firm, but one still largely based around traditional research techniques.

In this short chat with Gian, we discuss an area that he’s passionate about: why ad. dollars are only slowly moving online. It’s that old chestnut: online finally commands a significant amount of consumer attention (compared with other media such as tv), and yet still only commands a fraction of the advertising dollars spent on tv and other mass-market media. We also ask him about whether Facebook is worth the reported $15bn, the conversation having taken place shortly after Microsoft made its investment.

comScore is Gian’s second business success. Prior to this, both him and Magid led IRI through a period of rapid growth. And in-between, he found time to invest in Gibsons, a successful steak restaurant in Chicago (which we, of course, had to sample – very yummy!).

Series:MarketingTalk

 STARRING 

• Sean Pillot de Chenecey, Captain Crikey
• Sarah Davies, MD, Henley Centre HeadlightVision

Sean refers to his company, Captain Crikey, as an ‘alternative marketing consultancy’ and listening to this chat with Sarah you certainly get an alternative, highly sceptical view of web 2.0, social networks and Second Life. Listen as Sarah defends some of these exciting innovations from the man who believes that luddites are a “…much maligned set of people.”

Sean also shares the reasons why we should have more Chav representation in agencies.

Series:AdTalk Series:MarketingTalk
Series:Events Series:AQR Series:Trends07

All market, social, and opinion researchers on FaceBook. One list for all of us to be able to post, query, and communicate. Let’s democratize the industry

Now, not everyone has found the Facebook experience useful. Virtual Surveys staffer Karen Scholfield (who happens to be a colleague of Ray), opines here about how the whole thing has frankly been overblown.

Read on…

But Facebook as a serious tool? I don’t think so. It’s a bit of fun, a way of seeing what people are up to, an easy way for someone like me who’s really bad at keeping in touch with people to actually keep in touch with people. A way of finding people you knew a long time ago but whose phone numbers you subsequently lost (no-one had email at uni or college!). Will it become a serious tool? Who knows, maybe it will – but, will any of us still be using it this time next year? By then, the next big thing might have already come along and Facebook might be far behind us. In which case, we might all be leaving trails of cyber-breadcrumbs in a virtual forest elsewhere – if so, I hope it’s somewhere just as pointless as Facebook, otherwise I probably won’t bother.

Notwithstanding this, useful conversations are starting to happen and if you want to get the attention of the media (PR, marketing and biz development folks, take note), you can do worse than join their groups and participate, every now and then.

You can, of course, find our influencer-rich group ici. Go on, give it a go

The ‘it’ social network of today has featured strongly in the blogosphere lately, first because it opened its doors to everyone, and then opened itself to third-party developers.

All this is a pretty remarkable turnaround (at least in perception terms) for a company that many had written off only a year ago, when 23-year old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly rejected a $1bn offer from Yahoo!. As a result of the recent upsurge in consumer interest, it could be worth many times that.

Anyway, enough of the background, which I’m sure many of you smart readers are already aware of. Well, having tried Linked In to connect with ResearchTalk participants as well as other interesting folk out there, and not having been over impressed with its community features, we’ve decided to jump on the Facebook bandwagon. That’s right, much to our chagrin, we’re following the herd.

And unlike some groups on Facebook, everyone, but everyone is welcome to join the ResearchTalk group on Facebook. Because we’re an inclusive bunch (not that there’s any sour grapes from being excluded, for some unknown reason, from the Research Mag group, despite our widespread admiration for what they do).

Joining Facebook is very, very easy. And joining our group even easier. So give it a try. You never know, something wonderful may happen. We’ve already heard quite a few accounts of how, over the past year, ResearchTalk has helped shape ideas, strategies, business partnerships, recruitment and generally brought like-minded, smart and often very senior people together. The ResearchTalk group on Facebook takes this one stage further, so help us help you. It should be fun.

And in the furtherance of our pluralistic agenda, we’ll shortly post about other groups (and podcasts, blogs, etc.) that we recommend you subscribe to, or at least check out.

• The genesis of Reuben’s interest in Second Life
• Coping with the Second Life Liberation Army
• The virtual worlds landscape and the likely impact of Sony’s new virtual world ‘Home’
• Are virtual worlds a reaction to an alienation in real life?

7mins | Recorded @ Wildfire ‘07 | More podcasts in this series

Notable mentions
Habbo.
Habitat virtual world.
Linden Labs.
Multiverse.
Second Life Liberation Army.
Second Life.
Sony Playstation Home.
There.com.
Wikipedia.

Series:MarketingTalk Series:AdTalk
Series:Events Series:Wildfire07

• Bebo basics (incl. demographics and business model)
• Recent engagement campaigns with Coca Cola and Hasbro
• Future developments, incl. their new mobile service and Kate Modern – Bebo’s take on LonelyGirl15 (and done by the same team)

5mins | Recorded @ Wildfire ‘07 | More podcasts in this series

Notable mentions
Notable mentions
—————-
Birthdayalarm.com.
Coca Cola.
Engagement/conversational marketing.
Hasbro.
Lonelygirl15.
Michael Birch.
Orange.
Ringo.com.
Social networks.
Xochi Birch.

Series:MarketingTalk Series:AdTalk
Series:Events Series:Wildfire07