While speaking at LeWeb3 on the subject of “green businesses” in today’s Web business ecosystem…

“If you were to try and sell Squidooo, Blogspot or Technorati in their current state today they would not be worth much money—because they’re so polluted.  Nobody wants to buy real estate in a town that’s filled with toxic waste… and those three towns are filled with toxic waste. 

So actually if you do these bad things and pollute the river you’re actually going to have a hard time having an exit.”

Jason Calacanis
CEO
Mahalo.com

“I have been getting a lot of people asking me: Have you seen any interesting Social Media Campaigns these days?

Wrong Question

There is no such thing as a Social Media Campaign.  Social Media is not a campaign—you cannot view it through an outdated advertising lens.

If you are an individual it is about creativity and expression and connection.  If you are a company it is an attitude, behavioral and cultural shift.  It should be about persistence and dialogue and being in it for the long-haul. It is strategic.”

Doborah Schultz
MMI International

“Why don’t we find more relevant ads online more often, in more places? It is certainly not a matter of technology. We now have ad delivery technologies that can do with ads just about anything that you could imagine.

In my opinion, it isn’t the lack of ability to deliver a relevant ad that is holding us back; rather, it is the lack of relevant ads to deliver. We just don’t have creative enough arrows in the quiver. We don’t have enough different ads with enough unique and differentiating elements that can communicate specific relevant messages to consumers.”

Dave Morgan
Executive Vice President, Global Advertising Strategy
AOL
via Mediapost

“Engagement is not a metric that anyone understands and even when used it rarely drives the action / improvement on the website. Why?  Because it is not really a metric, it is an excuse.  An excuse for an unwillingness to sit down and identify why a site exists.  An excuse for a unwillingness to identify real metrics that measure if your web presence is productive.  An excuse for taking a short cut with clickstream data rather than apply a true Web Analytics 2.0 approach to measure success.”

Avinash Kaushik
Analytics Evangelist
Google Inc.

In response to Pete Blackshaw’s pointed questions:

“Are we as marketers over-using or abusing the term conversation?

Are we truly credible in putting that term to use?
Is ‘conversation’ as we see it synced up with how consumers truly view that term? What will it take to ensure the term works for the long term?”

“Yes, we’re overusing the term...it’s the latest catch phrase for the cool-kid marketers, most of whom have never really engaged a market in dialogue.

As marketers, we’re masters of the crafted message, disciples of the branded monologue. We’re the last people consumers/customers would trust, since the perception is that we’re slick, biased shills. What we need to be successful long term is to help the C-team understand this massive volume-level increase in the voice of the consumer, i.e., their voices are as loud or louder than marketing and the marketing budget.

Once they understand and get over it, management must grant us the authority to actually engage our customers in true conversation—one that’s not vetted by legal and PR.”

-- Erik Weaver

“Marketers aren’t using it enough, and most of those who use it aren’t really trying to create conversations with consumers. There are some, like Dell, who do seem to really want to hear what their customers and constituents have to say, while many others just give it lip service. Just because it’s thrown around a lot meaninglessly doesn’t mean we should kill it off before we really understand it.

Yet consumers aren’t going to talk about having conversations with marketers, products, or brands. As a consumer, I don’t want to engage in a conversation with Tropicana because I drink its orange juice every morning or J. Crew because I shop there. Heck, people don’t have time to have all these conversations. They just want value, performance, style, utility, or any of the basic attributes that the brand or product is designed to give them.

Once in awhile, for some brands that truly matter to them, the consumer will take the time to engage in a conversation.”

David Berkowitz
Director of emerging media and client strategy
360i

Via Pete Blackshaw of ClickZ

“The synthetic relevance Facebook is pushing is a drug for the strung-out advertisers of the world: they desperately need a hit of something to make them believe they matter again.

As advertisers buy into Facebook - no one will be better off - except Facebook.  Marketers and firms won’t gain true connection with consumers.  And, crucially, consumers will be trapped into not just receiving crappy ads - but sending them as well.”

Umair Haque
BubbleGeneration.com